by Mary Caperton Morton
From around the road’s bend: a shriek of metal, a cloud of smoke, and a bus careens at our van, head on. We swerve madly for a near miss. Then I see the accident: a blue truck in pieces. A man lies in the road, very still. Our van squeals to a [...]

by Stephan Morrow
There was a time not so long ago, when the South Street Seaport Pier was just an abandoned piece of cement and the glare of the sun off the water with the wind pulling at your eyes as you sat at its edge so far out on the river that it felt like [...]

by Kevin Sebesky
09-12-08 – Monastery of Christ in the Desert, Abiqiui, New Mexico
Hikes on the mesas above the monastery must never be
undertaken alone and only when the Guestmaster has been
notified. The terrain of the mesas is quite hazardous
especially to unseasoned hikers. Guests who fail to observe
this rule will be asked to leave. Years back, a [...]

by Robert Earle Howells
How I came to be snorkeling in Hudson Bay amid 3,000-pound beluga whales is the story of a growing obsession. In the past five years, I’ve watched humpback whales feed and breach off the British Columbia coast…hovered offshore in a kayak while grizzly bears diffidently munched on tender shoots of late spring [...]

by Stephan Morrow
From the time I was sixteen I was drawn to Kazantzakis’ novel Zorba The Greek. For me it was the perfect handling of the eternal question of who finally lives the righteous life and what does that look like? Is it the man who is constantly examining life through thought and obsessing about [...]

By Terri Trespicio
From the moment I left it at the check-in counter at Newark International Airport, I knew my bag wasn’t going to get to Tel Aviv. I kept looking back over my shoulder, blinking dumbly, as you do at something you may never see again. So it was a confirmation of my worst assumptions [...]

BY ERIK R. TRINIDAD
“YOU ARE MY BROTHER!” exclaimed Tilak, my Nepali guide through the Himalayan countryside, on our trek along the trail to Mount Everest. His proclamation was a double entendre; for one, since I was a Filipino-American with brown skin and a vague ethnic look, I was able to blend in as a local [...]

By James Michael Dorsey
The blowing sand rocks our Land Rover as we reach the outskirts of Timbuktu.
Mahkmoud leans over the steering wheel and peers into the hazy lemon yellow that fills our windshield. There is no horizon between earth and sky and I wonder how he can continue to drive with no reference points, yet [...]

By Cameron McPherson Smith
Another big Pacific swell came up fast and silent, moonlight flashing on its face. Hurrying east, it lifted and then dropped our sixty-foot raft with the smooth motions of an elevator. I caught my stomach and adjusted a steering plank. The glowing compass revolved slowly as the raft pointed back on course. [...]

by Cameron M. Smith
I knew that polar bears tore apart cabins every winter, so the first crunch—the sound of a large animal stepping carefully in deep snow—stopped my breath. The second crunch tripped a dozen primal alarms, jolting me out of my sleeping bag to stand with the cocked 12-guage aimed at the door, the [...]