So I finally read Craig’s book Stone Desert, and I’m glad I did. It’s a republication of an earlier essay collection alongside his original journals – sketches, scribbles and notes he made in his twenties while hiking and paddling through desert canyons in Utah, along the Green and Colorado rivers. For me, the book was […]
Miscellaneous
The wild boars of Berlin get a bad rap. Last week one of these beasts was mistaken for a lioness, triggering emergency alerts and a two-day armed search. During the pandemic, another boar stole the laptop bag of a nude sunbather, forcing an absurdly ridiculous birthday suit chase. When I lived in Berlin, I was […]
My neighbor and I went to see Barbie this past weekend. I loved it. Without saying too much, I loved the colors and the cleverness and the way that the characters said things that I have thought but haven’t said, and things that I’ve felt but that have never risen up and assembled into consciousness. […]
The end started a long time ago. I guess that’s always true in a sense. But this was years, really, even before the pandemic–for both of them, though mostly for her. As the dementia worsened and her care became more difficult, her daughters made that decision no one wants to make; the facility was nearby […]
This past weekend, I climbed Glacier Peak with a friend of mine. Glacier Peak is Washington’s fourth-highest mountain, and also one of the state’s five stratovolcanoes. (Perhaps you’ve heard of one of the others; I know I have.) What distinguishes Glacier Peak among its volcanic kin is its remoteness. It is at the eastern edge […]
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 […]
My best friend lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Despite meeting her over Zoom every Saturday since 2018, I’ve only seen her in person a handful of times. So when she came to visit me this Spring we decided to do something deeply silly to celebrate. Ottawa is not known for its high sophistication, but we do, […]