Latest stories

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes # 11—Taking the Path of Experience

V

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios…   I had finally come to grips with my task. I pondered the question of how to turn living into something more than just existing. Time is our worst enemy. Youth seldom considers time; it seems so endless. But youth is characterized by...

A Postcard from Where?

A

A Postcard from Celeryhenge Deep in the forests of a rainy northern isle, far beyond the cities and the moss-choked walls, lies one of our most enduring mysteries: the world’s largest primitive megavegetal site. Who or what piled these stalks in such deliberate patterns, and why? Was it an observatory to track the movements of the bowels? Was it an ancient site of worship? Was it just a...

Advice for When Travel Gets Hot and Sticky

A

Enormous trees with wide buttressed roots propped up the canopy: giants draped with vines, mosses and epiphytes which hung in tangled green confusion. All the way down to the impenetrable jungle floor, life grew upon life in one symbiotic Gordian Knot. The forest floor absorbed our footfalls: mine and two Embera hunters from a tiny village deep in Panama’s Darién Gap. The jungle crouched...

In Europe

I

In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century In 1999, as the 20th century came to a close, beloved Dutch journalist Geert Mak crisscrossed Europe to retrace the history of its last hundred years and to take the pulse of the great European experiment on the cusp of a new century. Along the way he spoke to the survivors of some of the most significant events of our times, allowing them to tell...

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes 10—Zack Speaks

V

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios… From The Philosophy of Zachary Peoples: Page 12: “I dunno, man. Philosophy’s interestin’, but I think that what you believe has to come from inside yourself, ya know? No one can teach you how to examine and make sense of...

Volumes Have Secrets

V

No matter where I am in the world, I feel immediately at home in a library. Oriented in space by the catalog system and the temple-like, almost ritual regularity of checkout desk, reference section, fiction and nonfiction. I also feel oriented in Time — through the mathematical chronology of the history section, and in terms of the linear development of human thought through the eras of...

A Postcard from Alexandria

A

To me, a library has always been a sacred place. I went there as a child in search of silence and reflection, just as others seek the dim solace of a church. I went there to find answers to my questions, just as others might seek a priest in times of distress. Sometimes I went there simply for the atmosphere — the smell of the books, the soft tread of shoes on worn green carpet, the weight of the...

The Courage to Dream Great Dreams

T

In the Black Hills of South Dakota, not far from the patriotic visage of Mount Rushmore, the curious traveler can find the growing realization of one man’s dream. In 1939 Chief Henry Standing Bear of the Sioux asked Bostonian Korczak Ziolkowski, already a well-known sculptor, to come west to carve a mountain. Standing Bear wanted him to tell the story of his people, “So that the white...

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes # 9—A Viewfinder for You

V

Vagabond Dreams Outtakes are “deleted scenes” from my book. Think of them as a “Special Features” disc of outtakes and curios. This incident took place in the highlands of Guatemala… Something had been nagging at me during my entire interlude in Antigua. I wasn’t sure what it was, and so I waited for it to reveal itself. I did magic tricks for the children of...

Travels with Herodotus

T

In 1955, just out of university, the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski made his first disoriented forays into the world outside the Iron Curtain. He had only dreamed of the simple act of “crossing the border”. Instead, he found himself sent to India, then China, and then Africa as a foreign correspondent. Untrained for the job and unsure of himself, he takes along a copy of...

NEWSLETTER

Sign up for my entertaining email newsletter


Recent Posts

Archives