Once upon a Time there was a Voice. This Voice lived in two houses, A House of Noise and A House of Silence. Yet still it had no place to be heard, no place to be. It had no home. And so the day came when the Silence became too great, too deep, and the Noise too shallow and meaningless, and the Voice split itself, becoming a Chorus of Whispers, creating its own depth of Silence and inner noise. Using what it knew to creat...

June 1938 Papio Creek’s crystal clear water moved steadily under the Nebraska midday sun, a gentle wind skimming the surface. The Roma’s brightly painted wagons rolled along the trail and settled into the soft prairie grass near the banks. Buckets and spare harnesses clanked against the wagons’ heavy wooden sides. They stopped in a line along the creek bank. The Roma had made this stretch of land near the Papio their summ...

My next door neighbor used to greet the sun every morning. On summer mornings, I’d see him out on the front lawn of his house, doing this thing with his arms where he looked like he was embracing the sunlight and pulling the sun’s energy into his own body. He’s a sun worshipper. He’s told me this. He’s older than me, but not by much, and more fit. Long floppy gray hair, thin as a rail-post, all the energy in the world, in...

I see it all from my throne atop the canyon. Once, I was just a sapling. Animals would use my limbs as a scratching post and sometimes a litter box. I chuckle at the tourists who marvel at the canyon. They should have seen it five hundred years ago, but that may be a bit of a white lie. I could not see it until I was twenty years old. Sitting here now as the tallest of my breed. I heard one author call me the grandmother...

My dad, younger brother, a family friend, and I had rented two canoes for a week and set off on a weeklong canoe-and-portage journey through the marvelous Killarney Park lake system in central Ontario. It had been hard work, but beautiful, camping by the water, eating freeze-dried food by a campfire, and each having an evening tot of Ballentine’s Scotch whisky as we watched the stars emerge. Gliding along a river or lake...

I decided to take a bus for the last section of the journey. I knew that traffic in the New York City area would be crazed, and no place to try to hitch a ride. I’d had excellent luck hitching so far, perhaps due to the protection of Mishipeshu the cat/dragon, but I was no longer within his sphere of influence. Maybe it was the time to stop tempting fate. I’d heard of New Paltz and knew it was fairly close to New York Cit...

My rides dried up. I’d had pretty good hitching luck up to then, with only a few long stretches of waiting for cars. Now, the situation had changed. I had a big bloody scabby bruise on the side of my face, right up against my nose. It did not seem to be engendering a lot of trust in me with the many cars passing me by. I wasn’t feeling too mythic. It didn’t help that I’d left the comfort of the Trans-Canadian Highway, tra...

I must have been lonely. I have a distinct memory of sitting in a park, in where I think is Sudbury, Ontario, my back against the trunk of a large tree, listening to Bruce Springsteen. Specifically, I was listening to the end of “I’m on Fire” off Springsteen’s Born in the USA, and marveling at the plaintive high lonesome “woo-hoo-ooo” trailing off, as the narrator of the song expresses his longing for the girl, his desire...

Writing that last bit has made me wonder how I handled my cigarette habit, which at the time was a pack a day. I was between towns for days at a time, how would I even buy them? I distinctly remember, mid-trip, buying a pack of Canadian cigarettes, and being shocked at how expensive they were, which tells me I wasn’t walking into town for smokes every night. I suddenly remember that before I left Minneapolis to begin the...

I met some nice folks at the State Park. An older couple (probably about the age I am now) staying in an RV in the next camping spot over shared some of their breakfast with me, and wished me luck. I walked out onto the highway. I got a ride right up to the Canadian border early the next morning. He stopped before we got there. “You aren’t carrying drugs or anything,” he asked me. “No, I promise.” I was being truthful. “O...

Despite the ignominious ending of my previous trip, I was determined to try it again, with a few key differences. One: Note that my Dad was leaving me on the shoulder of I-90, not I-35. I was heading north, not east. I had decided to hitchhike to New York City via Canada, swinging over the top of the Great Lakes before dropping down into the US near Champlain. Two: I would be travelling alone. Three: This was a one-way tr...

My dad dropped me off on the shoulder of an entrance ramp to I-90 on a sunny summer day in 1984 (hitchhiking on the Interstate is illegal, but it’s legal to stick your thumb out for a ride if you do it on the entrance ramp). I slid my oversized, kind-of-goofy yellow backpack out of the back seat of the family VW Rabbit and stuck out my thumb. I wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a hospital scrubs shirt. My hair was cut newly s...

Seeing the twin horse-driven polished box-like carriage heading up the main drive, Jack Wetherley’s heart gave a heave, knowing that this was his new challenge, arriving with two long-coated men sitting up front. Excitedly, he called Alf, his boss and mentor. Alf hobbled out of the stable, becoming much slower on his feet, Jack thought. He was due to retire soon and that was why Jack had been appointed. But this new arriv...

It was the largest department store in the city, with the food department covering most of the ground floor. And it was there that I had taken up a part-time job on the Saturdays of my final year in college. Quite a comfortable little job loading bakery shelves. Then came Christmas! “The Saturday before Christmas will kill you!” George, head porter, gleefully informed me. “Time of year always kills off part-timers.” It wa...

Up, unwilling out of sleep’s sensuous pit. Again, the cry, thin, tentative. Fourth time tonight? Fifth? Cosy-rosy dreams fade. Windows, still winter dark. Time? Late—were there streetlights? Reach blindly for clock on table. Sleep-numb fingers touch but only push. Crash on floor. Shockproof? Hope so—hope so—Heavy eyelids flicker, warm waves drift towards slumber— Again, the cry, louder! So close, the warm, womanly, wifely...