Other Writing

If just once in your life, take a long journey on foot. Nothing gives pleasure and satisfaction like a walking. 

The Grand Canyon's century-old Phantom Ranch is the hardest hotel reservation to snag in the entire U.S. Its snug stone cabins form a rustic oasis, but the best part of all is the path you must follow to get there. 

On savoring the glories of just one future summer. When the covid virus struck, scrambling the future horizon for most humans on Earth, I felt well equipped for the profound uncertainty it unleashed. A bracing bout with cancer had realigned all personal expectations.

The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2020

Argentina’s Patagonia is a bucket-list destination for fly-fishing pros. After a week spent on the remote rivers in this natural Eden, two neophytes are ready to join the cult

The Chestertown Spy

Much of the past year I have spent in a converted barn around the bend from a muddy field where momentous things happened a long time ago. That forgotten field between St. Michaels and Tilghman Island is as interwoven with our nation’s pained past as a disputed statue of Abraham Lincoln that stands blocks from my house in Washington DC. Those two, the field on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the statue in Washington, are themselves potently tied to one another.

What I learned about others--and myself--when I lost my voice. 

In all, Frederick Douglass devoted a total of 41 chapters in his three autobiographies to his childhood and adolescence in Talbot County, in many ways the most pivotal years of his life. Those books helped catapult him to international fame, which in turn made Douglass one of the most recognized and photographed of Americans in the 19th century.

And yet, even today, Douglass’s Talbot County years remain cloaked in mystery and obscurity.