A vast difference

by | Feb 1, 2009

Like many kids, I went to summer camp to learn to sail and ride a horse and tie a bowline. I whittled green boughs into perfect marshmallow-roasting sticks and stayed up way past bedtime reading by flashlight on my top bunk. I sang raunchy songs and played capture the...

Every body needs milk

by | Jun 1, 2006

This is a tale of 2 sisters, 2 canoe paddles and 300 gallons of milk. The year: 1971. My age: seven. Hair: piano-colored. Eyes: grape. Teeth: 17. Album of the Year: Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.” Most earth-shattering event: the launch of Apollo...
Icebergs

Icebergs

by | Apr 1, 2005

Glaciers are things of ineffable beauty, in which the purest tones of lightpulse and shimmer, lovely and untainted as anything on earth or in the sky. -John Muir “That’s Culross Passage,” Captain Ted announces, gesturing to the right through the gray rain, which...

Cause for alarm

by | Mar 1, 2005

Is it wise to trust in the kindness of strangers? In the shadow of fabled Timbuktu lies the medieval town of Djenné, and every child’s fantasy: here the most colossal mud pie in the world rises from the desert. The Djenné Mosque is 12,000 square feet and built...