Column: Safe Travels in Troubled Times

I love to travel by car, train, or boat. Whether a planned trip or an impulse adventure, making the most of an opportunity to revisit familiar and well-remembered places or explore new settings always makes me happy. For me the journey itself is as important as the destination. Music, conversation, comfortable silences, roadside diners, scenery, and side trips to see an old cabin or a waterfall or a special little bookstore add immeasurably to the width of each adventure. Research into the historical and natural elements also plays a part, and my love of actual, in-my-hands folding maps and atlases sweetens the depths.

Column: Blood Cries Out from the Soil

(this is for the dead)

Fighter jets are flying overhead; their screeching rage punctuating the rumbling roar of heavy-tread machines behind me. Particles of dust and exhaust cling to sweat-drenched skin in the searing sun. Everything feels dry, desiccated, as if all the shadowed life of this place has been swept over by a sudden desert. My attention’s drawn to something unexpected–four red strokes against white, crimson vivid as blood, pasted against a steel pole. It’s a glyph, a sigil, with a power steeped in terror.  I need to leave this place to find a friend, but my attention is held.