Four weeks in, as a petition for absolution, I hiked, occasionally encountering other pilgrims as we weaved France’s verdant, wooded,...

I didn’t know at the time how I came unstuck. It happened on a day like any other day. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood. I do this...

The white GM box truck with ‘J Corduroy, Antiques – Collectibles’  on the side in scraped brown paint bounced us as the big tires rolled...

Which is the more difficult thing to do—love your immediate surroundings for the way they nurture you? Or hate them for all that they’ve...

All this happened back in 1965 when the Vietnam War was raging, and my high school pals and I were reading  MAD Magazine  and  The...

Those who do not want to lose their blindfolds for fear of the light, deserve the dark. – Quechan proverb   Cusco, Peru   "Not far now!"...

A few weeks before the Fourth of July, I was curled up on my couch, enjoying the soft light of the patio through my sliding doors, ready...

“Titles matter little. We are the children of our works.” —Don Quijote de la Mancha     Madrid,  23 de junio, 1656, Stilo Novo          ...

1 My knees and hands were bleeding and hurt like the dickens, but I was still holding onto the seashell I had picked up from the darkened...

I paid a goodbye visit to Windburn Barn figuring a bunch of college kids would have rented it by now, but there were no cars in the...

(Content warning: this story contains sensitive material related to child sexual abuse. Please read at your own discretion.) The music...

Willie sat on a week's old newspaper on the corner of Michigan and Adams, across from the Art Institute in downtown Chicago. It was a...

“Insane? I was perfectly sane. I knew that the best place for a genius philosopher to hide out was an asylum. Switzerland, no less. Cool...

My stepmother’s name was Alice, but I called her Malice because she haunted my childhood and was the evilest person I ever knew—and for...

Becca stood by the edge of the bridge, the oppressive heat of the day finally giving in to a light breeze that chilled her bare arms. The...

Herculaneum, 79 AD (Back in the 1980s, over three hundred carbonized skeletal remains were discovered submerged along the coastline of...

“This is my favorite part of the drive,” said Alberto. We were cruising over the 18-mile span of the Atchafalaya Basin Bridge, en route...

Stewart came from a town where the water was abundant but never clean. Lillian came from a town where there wasn’t enough water to keep...

1. Vin stood in front of the bathroom mirror studying the lump protruding from his left shoulder. Pinching it between his thumb and index...

There was something about the house at the corner of Humboldt and Spruce that gripped the imagination and drew the eye to it. It wasn't...