Tag Archives: wilderness

Ian, Who Lives on the Mountain Overlooking the City Where He Works by John Brantingham

Photo of purple sky over mountains and trees
 

On a foggy dawn like this, at the edge of the cliff, at the edge of winter when the wind is blowing through the forest, all the ice chips clattering against each other, Ian loves the pin pricking ice against his cheeks. He screams into the chasm to hear the sound eaten up by the air. Later, he’ll commute down to town and anonymous himself in front of a computer, wearing his headphones, and typing, the words losing their meaning, his caffeine ritual keeping him going, but that wild place of cliffs, wind, and fog … Continue reading Ian, Who Lives on the Mountain Overlooking the City Where He Works by John Brantingham

A Leg in the Darkness by Alex Joyner

Photo of a paint horse with sunset through trees behind it
 

When the leg appeared out of the darkness, flung over the gate of the neighboring corral, I was howling along with Emmylou Harris. “Beneath Still Waters” was booming from the CD player in the old door-less refrigerator in Jackie’s garden, where I was sitting with Jackie until just minutes before when she went off in search of a horse I had seen passing along the dirt road like a phantom. Jackie swore I was seeing things. “You come out to Archer City, Texas and you think there’s nothing around here but horses.” But she set … Continue reading A Leg in the Darkness by Alex Joyner

Quetico by Larry Glass

Fog over water and trees
 

At some point—I’m not sure when—I came to accept that there are quite a few things that I can’t control. It was not a conscious decision, no epiphany, no wrestling with big ideas. It’s not really ceding control—it’s accepting what has become increasingly obvious, in truth probably somewhere between realizing and accepting. The stock market, terrorism, famine, middle of the night trips to the bathroom, gray hair, the clutter that my wife and kids leave on the kitchen counter where I’m trying to cook, the hair that our dogs shed on the furniture, the weather. … Continue reading Quetico by Larry Glass