The Tortoise and the Hare

Originally published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian “”Mojave Desert!” Bill called out from behind the wheel, somewhere in the center of the night. He and I are the only ones awake on this desert caravan to Death Valley, the Green Tortoise’s...

Postcards from the North

Originally published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian “How delightful it is, and how it makes one’s pulses bound to get back into this reviving northland wilderness! How truly wild it is, and how joyously one’s heart responds to the welcome it...

Risky Business

“You come one? Bravo! Bravissimo!” the old woman said when I checked into the Malyovitza lodge. I had traveled all day on Bulgaria’s winding country roads to reach this small resort town in the Rila mountains. Sofia, Bulgaria’s capitol city, is a...

A Boulder Runs Through It

Published in Natural Home, Winter ’02 Picture a house designed by John Muir and the Brothers Grimm, and you’ve got Stonehenge.  Stepping through a boulder cavern, you spill out into a multi-tiered living room 23-foot-high. An 80-ton granite boulder forms...

Booming Beijing

Published in the July 2002 issue of Alaska Airlines magazine Yongdingmenwai. Yongdingmenwai. Yongdingmenwai. Great. I’ve just arrived in Beijing, I don’t know where I am, and no matter how I pronounce my hotel’s street name, it comes out all wrong....