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…
These islands are known as the “The Pearls”, Las Islas Perlas. There is much to contemplate about this from my vantage point, soaking in the Jacuzzi on the upper deck of the big steel ship. Around me, jagged edges of earth’s crust erupt through the surface to create this archipelago of islands, some covered with…
The light perspiration and feeling like the carbon atoms in my cells had transmuted into lead crept up on my awareness. Yeah, my fever was rising again. Time for another palm full of ibuprofen. This would make the third round of flu this year. T’was my usually quip, “The viruses have to eat, too,” but…
From the grassy hillocks, even the most ancient of the Galapagos tortoises would not remember the first time billowing white sails had appeared over the horizon when HMS Beagle brought the young naturalist, Charles Darwin to these shores in 1835. It had been 300 years since the Bishop of Panama had been blown off course…
Who you are lives behind your eyes, depending upon vision far above your other senses, a creature of the light. The biochemical wheels and cogs of our brains want images to process prior to making decisions. This is what we want-it’s what makes us what we are. It is no wonder then that such vivid…
I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not true. With such great numbers of bass in the lake, you might suppose it would be easy to hook them up with virtually any technique. Actually the El Salto fish seem quite sensitive to multiple factors. Clearly they seem to prefer a slow speed to the action…
It was 1963. Bob Dylan recorded his anthem of social change and a 10-year-old boy discovered fishing in the Florida Keys. Truly, the world changed, and a lifelong love affair with the Keys began. What boy’s heart could be left untouched by emerald patches of flats, secreted bays hidden between mangrove islands and blue water falling deep from the edge of the reef?
Wading out on a bottom of fine white sand, it’s important to shuffle the feet and boost out any freshwater stingrays without prompting retaliation. There’s time for a few last casts into the sunset. I can just make out the crackling of ice in my drink above the gentle murmur of water flowing around my…