December 8th, my birthday and I was spending the day hiking/snowshoeing in a typical Northwest day of light rain and very gray skies. Picked of Tim and drove to the trailhead and the start of our day long outing where we followed the old logging road for the six miles switch backing back and forth […]

The entrance was on the side of the white colonial cathedral. It was a dark walled tunnel with blackened wood tables that stretched from front to back. Candles randomly scattered lay in broken and melted pieces. My eyed followed the scribbles, marks and names that the faithful had written on the walls in wax with […]

Bright reflections bounced off of the water. I lay on the bow of the small launch as we gradually moved across the inland ocean of Lake Titicaca. The water stretched to the horizon which was topped by large glaciated peaks floating above clouds. We were heading to the Isle of the Sun, a barren brown mound […]

The temperature was hot – a Midwest summer.  I had spent the morning riding with my father in his pickup truck, checking irrigation ditches and the growing crops. We stopped at the pump house where clear water gushed from the great aquifer that lay beneath the panhandle of Nebraska. An old tin cup hung from […]

I climbed into the back of the canopy covered pickup with the contracted workers, heading to town after payday. This was the weekly trip that my father made with the men who worked in our fields. I was eight years old and quickly jumped into the back with them.  They spoke no English. All of […]