My car holds just enough gasoline to get me from Las Vegas, Nevada to Beaver, Utah.
I first learned this when driving from my sister’s place in Vegas to Madison, Wisconsin in 2015. I was almost done with the journey’s I-15 leg, and, as one does, I pulled into the gas station that presented itself at the moment when my gas tank was empty and my bladder full.
And came face-to-face with this:
Lawana, Andrew’s paternal grandmother, passed away on Palm Sunday. Her passing was not unexpected, but the timing was sudden. Andrew and I arrived in time for her viewing on Good Friday. We laid her to rest on Holy Saturday.
Easter Sunday was a whirl of activity at Andrew’s parents’ place. All the siblings, their significant others, and their children had come to see the family matriarch off. Lawana had brought us together for an unexpected family holiday, and we leaned into the opportunity, exactly as she would’ve wanted. Continue reading “Memento Vitae I – or, The Pansies and the Rainbows”
On August 21st, 2017, Andrew and I sat beside a ruined French fortress in the middle of Illinois farmland, waiting for the sun to disappear.
We’d found Fort de Chartres by accident. A couple days prior to the Great American Eclipse, we had driven from Madison to St. Louis to spend the weekend with family. This put us barely outside the path of totality. I was content to view the historic eclipse from St. Louis; I have a self-defeating habit of accepting things as they are, even when minor one-time expenditures of effort stand to significantly multiply my enjoyment. Sometimes serene acceptance is a virtue, but I haven’t yet found the wisdom to know the difference.
Thankfully Andrew was having none of it. “We drove all the way down here to see the eclipse,” he said. “We’re seeing the eclipse.” Continue reading “The Clouds Must Be Bewildered – Or, The Great American Eclipse”
When northern Utah’s spring comes and the accumulated mountain snow begins to melt, the canyon creeks swell and roar with clear churning water. Hikers beside them must shout to be heard. Tumbling rocks scuttle and scrape beneath the surging torrent. The frothing rumble of the deluge echoes against the red cliffs. Winter is swept away with a welcome violence, clawing at its last stone-shadowed hollows.
But on this February day in 2012, winter still ruled Rock Canyon. Continue reading “Memento Mori II – Or, A Bone in the Streambed”
Generally speaking, one prefers that unexpected things not fall out of library books onto one’s face.
Yet there I was a few weeks back, curled up in bed, engrossed in Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, when I turned a page and—well, the next thing I knew, my limbic system had kicked on and I was scrambling aside, swatting at my face and staring at the dark fluttering thing now landing on my sheets. Continue reading “No Accounting for Symbolism – or, Library Pressed Flowers”
In mid-February 2005, I was seventeen years old and headed home to Bangkok, Thailand after a ten-day school trip split between Finnish Lapland and Helsinki. Our party—roughly 25 international high school students and our two teacher-chaperones—had run afoul of the airline scheduling fates, and was stranded overnight midway between origin and destination. Continue reading “Uno Inherits the Earth”
Crystal Witnesses Wonders 