A man and his dog walking the world.
The morning sun broke through the pines of the Pacific Northwest, a fog rose off the damp asphalt, and the small town of Marblemount stirred to life. Here was the last place to buy food before a ninety mile stretch of forest that made up the Northern Cascades National Park. The town consisted of an […]
She wore a flowered dress and when she bent down to kiss me her hazel curls brushed against my cheeks. Her soap left a lavender aura, but regardless of what soap she used she always held the fragrance of flowers, at least for me. I was in love with her. It came upon me slowly, […]
Beside the lake, I laid in a clearing sipping coffee. Up the hill behind me, Savannah was sniffing through green and purple heather, while closer to me, my guide and my horseman were making boiled eggs in a kettle beside a boulder. While I drank the instant coffee, I took in the jagged mountains and […]
From the balcony we could see the mass of demonstrators marching in the amber lights of Baku at nighttime. Shouts of ‘down with the enemy’ roiled in the air like a maelstrom. The crowd was mostly men, but occasionally a group of women could be seen too. Initially, I was annoyed – it was two […]
It had rained through the night. I slept with my beanie on and with my sleeping bag pulled over my head and when I woke I could see my breath. For a while I didn’t move. My legs ached from the twenty-seven miles we walked the day before. Savannah was curled in the corner. She […]
None of the parliament members paid attention to the view. They were busy chain-smoking and laughing. The protests had ended in their favor and now euphoria hung in the air around them. I stood inside watching. The lights of Tbilisi at nighttime reflected wonderfully in the tall glass windows. They flickered like a fire. This […]
I stood in a barren courtyard beside the city palace watching the beggar children play with their kites. The only child concentrated on keeping his kite aloft was the youngest boy. The dozen other children were more concentrated on me than their kites. They flew with one eye and kept their other eye on me. […]
In the dark I pushed my paddle against the concrete and drifted to the center of the river. Behind me was the steady thwap, thwap, thwap of a woman standing in the river slapping her laundry against the concrete platform. I looked back to watch her. Her red and yellow sari floated around her ankles. […]
My first night off Sicily and onto the Italian mainland I walked a road along the coast searching for a place to sleep. To my right the rocky land shot straight to the sky and to my left the road plummeted to a rough Mediterranean sea. The sun was already below the horizon and the […]
The bowl was streaked with red bolognese sauce and the wine glass only held the dark dregs of the syrah. Both exceeded every expectation I had of Italian cuisine and yet I was unfulfilled. Palermo had it all – the food demanded it be savored, the wine had me heady the moment it touched my […]