Six hikers collapsed on the tundra. Throughout our foray winding up the mountain on switchbacks through boreal forests, munching lunch on a summit, then knee-jarring our way back down,…
My husband rustles in the closet. I forbid my eyelids to lift, and I dive back into my dreams. “If you get dressed and go vote with me, I’ll take…
Should I or Shouldn’t I? My sister-in-law had planned the menus, pre-marinated, pre-cut, and prepared the food. My brother navigated our paths down dirt roads criss-crossing the brush to fishing…
“Suzanne?” I’m loading coffee cups into the dishwasher and pretend not to hear. No follow-up voice speaks, so I rinse plates and slide them in slots below the cups. I’m…
In a pamphlet he published called “Common Sense,” Thomas Paine expresses the last straw that pushed him over the ledge toward independence from Great Britain. No man was a warmer…
I have an uninvited companion. His name is Death. He barged in and dragged off my mother, my father, my in-laws, and pets in short order then came back with…
LORD of Birds and Questions On my morning walk in the neighborhood, I head south on Oceola Avenue and the sun burns like a campfire on my left cheek. The…
Dad picked up the salt shaker and tipped it over his tea. “Uh Dad, that’s not your steak. That’s your tea.” He continued with the salt, and few crystals began…
A tropical storm is simmering in the Caribbean Ocean, and its forecast track edges westward then eastward but always northward, where I sit at my keyboard. The thought of a…
I gazed over my steering wheel through swirling snow at an empty road. What a lonely stretch for my car to conk out on. A bridge bisected the highway between…
Last Man Off is the true tale of a fishing vessel sunk in the Southern Ocean near the Antarctic. Thirty-eight crew members hauled in thousands of lines of dangling tooth…
We walked through a historic neighborhood in an unfamiliar city. It was time to return to the hotel, and I knew we should turn right, but my husband headed left.…