Photo: Drea Knufken Seattle. October. Eight months since we left our home in Denver and moved into the Airstream. I’m walking down a steep slope, past a golf course and a soggy Twix wrapper, moss growing in sidewalk cracks. I am walking to a place of indulgence: a group class at the local YMCA, […]
Category: Travel
Lately I’ve been writing about a friend’s dad, let’s call him Mr. Roberts, who claimed that we don’t exist. Mr. Roberts had a PhD in chemistry, worked at a major consumer goods manufacturer and had the fortitude to sail solo around the entire U.K. He was, in two words, no dummy. But I was 12 […]
(Image: Drea Knufken) Have you heard of that Amtrak Residency for Writers? It’s pretty cool. You sit on a train and write for 2-5 days. The constant movement of the train lulls your mind into a writerly state. You’re free of that metaphysical silly string of daily life: sticky obligations, sticky family, sticky friends, […]
Picture: Seth K. Hughes Technomad (n): A person who foresakes full-time habitation in favor of frequent movement to new places, possibly but not necessarily in an RV. Like a retiree (n), but with a job (n). Characteristically accompanied by devices like the MiFi, signal boosters, ranging devices and other nefarious-sounding implements that are essential to […]
Photo: Seth K. Hughes There are two ways to look at the world when you’re a permanent traveler. (Yes, I know that in a sense we are all permanent travelers, through time and life, but I’m not going there until I hit an existentialist moment. Which should be any day now.) The road is my […]
Memphis We got into Memphis about the time we were supposed to have arrived in New Orleans, mid-afternoon. It was the first time I’d been outside in 24 hours, since Chicago, even if just for a smoke stop. It was as if the train had pulled new backdrops across the stage: the sky had gone […]
Chicago One of my first interactions was a simple request and response. I’d been eight hours on a bus from Minneapolis, sitting in the front seat, watching the snow fall and a total of five cars spin off the highway. By Chicago I was eager to move my legs. I headed down Jackson Street […]
THE HOW PROJECT blogged March 2014 By Mari Carlson After a recent pottery class, I gave away all the pots I made. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; I intended them as gifts. What I kept for myself was the pleasure of crafting them. I enjoyed most of all the preparation. First, I got […]
Recently, I read a blog post written by a friend, a writer and a mother–a person I admire. She stays in the moment in her writing with all of her senses, where I tend to summarize and caricature. She has the patience to outline the shape of her surroundings and meditate on how those shapes provide […]
Wendy Darling sat in a bedroom on the top floor of an old farmhouse in the middle of Nebraska, where the sky cups the edges of eyesight and fields rustle en masse to imitate the sounds of the sea that used to be here 65 million years ago. She texted Lost Boy: “Do you want […]
nola studiola 