New Horizons on the Isthmus…Where the Road Ends It is difficult to remember the real meaning of the term “breathtaking” until something actually takes your breath away. In the interval of quiet between exhalation and inhalation you realize…there is nowhere in the world that you would rather be. The ancient god that created the Pacific…
He was tiring of the cold and wet Paris apartment life that winter. Celebrated fellow author and friend John Dos Passos recommended the island of Key West to Ernest Hemmingway. “A good place for old Hem to dry out his bones.” Hemingway arrived from Paris via Havana on the docks in April 1928 with his…
All the rivers of the world have a commonality. Upon their banks, whether in the Yukon, the Himalayas or Amazonia, mankind has paused and fallen into meditative trance. Compelled by their flow; the irrefutable metaphor for pas-sage of one’s own life and the unspooling of history, they’ve reflected that as their dust settled once again…
The winter of 2015 was a bitter season. Fishermen railed against it, but gales and hoarfrost blustered from the north. Sons and fathers gazed out the windows at the ruthless milieus and longed to be on the water, forced to live on the stuff of their dreams even as their patience withered to suffering. While…
OCEANOGRAPHY AND GENETICS The dawn of the nineteenth century was an exciting era. Science and geographic exploration were hand in hand discovering the nature of our world and for the first time organizing those discoveries of flora and fauna with the binomial nomenclature system of Linnaeus (the Latin derivation of Carl von Linne). Although familiar…
Cast your eyes to the northern sky and you will find it. It is cold, white and brilliant, the distilled essence of the north itself. Gleaming at the tail of Ursa Minor, “the little bear,” its radiance cannot be mistaken. Polaris, the North Star, has guided ships’ captains through dark nights since ancient men first…
It was a Key West kind of joint; you know the style. Canvas for a roof and slowly turning fans above. The lights in the swimming pool behind us were more than what the barroom had, so the potted palm trees swaying at the edge of darkness were enough to keep you suspicious. There were…
Shuffling the feet to scratch up the gravel hasn’t changed since l was young. The little road atop the levee, like so many others from childhood past was beleaguered by the grass on each side wanton to reclaim the last of the hill. I send out a shower of chat with the toe of my…
Nolo contendere and on to the next good story, you say? But it happened here before. Just a stone’s throw from where you’d knock back a cold one on the beach is the Chixulub crater. This is where the world ended, some 65 million years ago with a meteor blast of such magnitude that it…
There have been many nights spent far up unnamed river tributaries, the only sounds those of tiny frogs, the rustle of wind in the thatch roof and a distant deep voice of mystery from the jungle. But not this time. Not in this place. San Juan, Puerto Rico, waits until well past the witching hour…