The trouble with having a blog is a sudden desire to take basic elements like your decision to go to Africa with shoes that suddenly feel too small, how to fix the squeak of your van with a wooden spatula, the death of your grandmother, the unexpected appearance of antivenin five months after you needed it, and an utter sense … Read More
Edge Dweller
You might not believe what I’m going to tell you. You might—if you have read things I have written in the past months—think I have some perverse law of attraction with tragedy. But maybe the truth of it is that I am trying to turn the tragedy around. When you find a dead body on your second day of vacation, … Read More
Left, Right in the Road
Last week, I left Jackson. I’d lived there just long enough to have a hard time leaving. I’d lived there just long enough to call it a home, though, to other more stable people, it seemed a stop on a quest for home. Sure, I lived in an unfurnished house on No Name Alley while strangers called my home in … Read More
The Poodle Permanent
I’m not a dog person. I never have been. I once knew a woman who returned a dog for its propensity to drool. She is my mother. Two weeks ago, I was talking on the phone with a potential landlord for a summer sublet when he asked if I had a dog. “Me?” I said, “No. I have a poodle.” … Read More
The Great Divide: Whipped Installment
THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, and THE UGLY OF CLIMBING COUPLEDOM (Part of an on-going series on my blog of posts from my column Whipped, for Climbing Magazine. December, 2006 Installment.) Download PDF I just want a boyfriend who climbs … I just want a woman who will go to Yosemite with me … I want a man/woman/dog … Read More