The skirt of Las Vegas, Nevada, is a frictional zone scrubbed with busted tortoise shells and Joshua trees that lean toward the sun. High tension power lines intersect at substations and disperse from there into the desert. A buddy and I camped in this liminal space a couple months ago and all night long the […]
Travel
My 16-year-old is leaving alone for a month of language school in Tokyo. Being born and raised outside of towns under population 700, closer to 300 in some cases, should put a dizzying spin on the experience. We’ve had epic urban adventures together, but not off this continent, certainly not in the vast compression of […]
While visiting the Baltic seacoast of Lithuania a couple weeks ago, walking with my wife among hills of half-grassy sand dunes, I heard what I swore were sandhill cranes. I scanned an October sky pillared with distant cumulus until finding giant letters written high overhead, southward V’s and W’s a hundred yards long. Sandhill cranes […]
A couple of days ago, I wrote “homeward bound” with my index finger across the caked dust on the back window of my truck topper. I packed it with two weeks’ worth of clothes, with backpacking gear, with work supplies and dog food and human food. Then, I whistled my dog into the cab and […]
The big red van will soon be stuffed to the gills. Sometimes you just need new views, fresh air, and worries as basic as “do we have enough water”? So, we’re heading to West Virginia. Country roads and all that jazz. Full disclosure: It’s not quite the way I used to do it. For example, […]
The kitschiest town in Washington nestles in the Cascades, two hours east of Seattle and three west of Spokane, where the Wenatchee River elbows its way through a cleft in snow-veined mountains. This is the picturesque home of Leavenworth, a faux-Bavarian town that has gone all-in on a year-round Oktoberfest vibe. The ersatz chalets boast […]
I’ve lived in my apartment for more than 12 years. In early April, I realized for the first time that there are wisteria in the back parking lot. I suppose this is because I only caught onto wisteria, as an event, in April of 2019. I was in Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan. A friend […]
I fell in love in Japan. He was older, and so very tall. There was a glow about him, warm as sunshine. I could have sat and watched him for hours. Even though we didn’t have that much time together, I knew I would never forget him. He was so present, so grounded. Resilient after […]