By Sivani Babu A tragic close call in rural Colorado. Useless. I wiped at my sunglasses with my dirty hands, trying to clear the droplets that settled on the lenses. The water smeared and streaked across, creeping into dust filled crevices and turning to mud. It became even harder to see and I gave up, […]
By Steve Gardiner A drowning in Yosemite National Park A park ranger on a horse rode up behind Terry Rypkema and me and pleaded for our help. “You have a climbing rope,” she said. “Bring it up to the bridge, please. We have a possible drowning.” Terry and I had driven from our homes in […]
By Erik R. Trinidad A tale of Bedouins and bladders. “He said that he’ll drop us off at the settlement and that it’s a far walk… And it’s unsafe… And that we shouldn’t be heroes for doing it,” my new friend Sarit explained to me, translating the bus driver’s warning in Hebrew at Jerusalem’s central […]
By Erin Byrne What else except pain and suffering can we expect if we are not well, you and I? —Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to Theo van Gogh, February 1889 What if all you can do is all you can do? Curl up. Breathe. Exist. Breathe, exist. In. Out. This was not what […]
By Sarah Enelow 60-something Pete looked like he was on heavy sedatives, and to my unsettling surprise, he was also a professional pilot. “So, you flew commercial airplanes for Air Canada, with passengers in them?” I asked. “Yes indeed,” answered Pete with half-comatose eyes, the words pleasantly escaping from his upturned mouth. “And you retired, […]
By Simone Gorrindo I’d known Jane less than 24 hours when she told me a secret she’d been carrying around for months. She was driving me to see her Swiss doctor to take care of a bladder infection I’d had since I came to Europe six weeks prior. I was backpacking with three 18-year-old guys, […]
By Jillian Bright There is a force stronger than the sea itself in that little fishing town. It is mysterious and unidentifiable, ever changing and unquestionably powerful. I can feel it pounding in the surf that reverberates up the cliff, penetrating my thoughts as I write this. For some, Montezuma is just a speck on […]
By Bruce Berger During the early Nineties I became aware that a new word was circulating in La Paz, borrowed from the English. The word was privacy and so fresh was the loan that speakers weren’t sure how it went. Was it privacia or privacidad? There had always been the adjective privado, as in propriedad […]
By Marie Javins I awoke and peeked out of my room at Hotel Gabriella, which I’d crawled into late last night, after the 14.5 hour, 140-mile truck journey from the Congo-Gabon border to here in Dolisie. I vaguely remembered the night clerk being hopelessly inept. He’d taken a basket of keys, then counted the room […]
by Saya Des Marais Dedicated to Humpeng and family of Sabai Sabai Massage & Restaurant in Nong Khiaw, Laos. May your compassionate laughter never change. I was in Nong Khiaw, a dry, quiet village in the north of Laos, and I hadn’t left my guesthouse in three days. Three days earlier, I was stumbling along […]
