Recently, a short story I wrote appeared in Spillwords, an online journal whose aim is not to curate selectively, but to present each piece its best light, to its own…
Backpacking Desolation Wilderness
Desolation is one of the most accessible–and so popular–wilderness areas in California. The landscape, with it’s trail of clear glacial lakes, iconic granite slabs, thick twisted trees, and mercurial weather…
Backpacking Shenandoah National Park
At the tail end of a recent business trip I took a few extra days for a section hike in Shenandoah National Park. A couple of years ago I reviewed…
The Jackson Brodie Series, Kate Atkinson – Part 2
I finished Case Histories, the first novel in Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, crouched between cars on a sweltering train traveling from Cambridge to Edinburgh. That’s the same train Jackson…
The Jackson Brodie Series, Kate Atkinson – Part 1
Or–the special joy of reading a book set in the place where you are Last month, I took a trip that included a visit to my company’s UK offices in…
Backpacking Bucks Lake Wilderness
One day after summer solstice I took a short backpacking trip into the Bucks Lake Wilderness, following the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from Bucks Summit to Spanish Peak, then taking…
The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides
In the first chapter of The Marriage Plot, an elderly Brown English professor lays out a theory– “The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good…
Backpacking Ventana Wilderness & Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park
Backpacking Ventana Wilderness: A(nother) Rocky Start Three weeks after my first attempt I gave backpacking a second try, this time in the Ventana Wilderness and Pfeiffer Big Sur State…
Backpacking 101
Why Backpacking? That’s what most people asked when I first mentioned backpacking as a possible thing I might do. I’d thought for a long time that I might like backpacking.…
An Invisible Sign of My Own, Aimee Bender
Published in 2000, An Invisible Sign of my Own is Aimee Bender’s first novel-length work. The story opens with a fairy tale which serves a controlling metaphor. In a town…