This is the story of native New Yorker Cliff Simon, who goes to New Mexico and experiences, for the first time, the magic of the Milky Way in an entirely Steven Spielberg moment.
An Unexpected 85th Birthday Gift
When a challenging, off-trail hike puts Nancy King’s apprehensions about aging and her physical abilities to the test, she comes out feeling strong and elated.
What Is It Like to Drive Cross-Country Right Now?
As the Delta variant began circulating widely in the U.S., Suzanne LaFlamme, her husband, and adult daughter decided to cancel flights and drive cross-country for a family visit. When they prepared for the trip, it was Covid’s partisan divide and widespread differences in mask wearing that concerned them as much as covid safety and choosing where to stay along the way.
You Mattered
In this essay, hospice worker Sheila Barnes recounts her journey with James, an AIDS patient, during his final days of life, and all she does to convey that even in illness, his life is honored.
My “Breakthrough” Journey with COVID
Seventy-year-old Richard Rossner was fully vaccinated when he went to a Los Angeles club to hear his son’s band play. He was careful to social distance and didn’t think he was vulnerable. That was Tuesday night; by Saturday morning, he couldn’t get out of bed. It was Covid. Then his wife, who was also vaccinated, got it. Now that they no longer test positive, they are grateful, but the after-effects leave Richard tired and cautious.
Chasing the Dragon
Richard Collins traveled to the Brecon Beacons, a mountain range in South Wales not far from where he grew up. Despite spending his childhood there, he’d never felt Welsh until he left Wales. But living in different countries had inspired a retroactive yearning to connect with his heritage. So he returned, determined to chase that dragon. It didn’t go easy.
Do You Know Any Immigrants?
Have you spoken to any immigrants or refugees lately? In this essay, executive editor Judith Fein encourages you to reach out, if you haven’t already, and shares how your heart will be opened by the contact.
For Whom the Bell Tolls
A personal tour of the Monastery of Santa Maria Scala Coeli, the Cartuxa de Évora, provides a rare opportunity for Elyn Aviva to discover, and share, a place of great spiritual and cultural significance, unique in Portugal.
Finding the Perfect Light
When Cliff Simon’s cherished vintage lamp is damaged, his distress leads him to the Japanese art of Kintsugi and the point of view that something can break and still be beautiful, and that, once repaired, it is stronger at the broken places.
Breathe in, Breathe Out — An Expat Adapts
Acquisition and release are a necessary part of moving. For Elyn Aviva, who, together with her husband Gary, has relocated from Iowa to Colorado. Colorado to New Mexico. New Mexico to Spain. Spain to Arizona. and now from Arizona to Portugal, the process of adaption has become an exercise akin to breathing: Breathe in, expand, acquire. Breathe out, contract, detach, release.
Rosebud is Not Just a Sled
In the film Citizen Kane, the viewer learns that the murmured word on his deathbed: “Rosebud” relates to Kane’s last moments of childhood innocence and happiness. Inspired by this flashback effect of memory, in this essay, Cliff Simon investigates the memories he might recall at the very end of his life. What will be that most important thing, moment, person, event of his life?
Omaha Beach
When a group of study-abroad students in France embarks on a spontaneous long-distance walk to Omaha Beach, they discover that though they may have little in common, the walk was the same.
What is Your Heart Made Of?
Regular hikes in nature are an essential component of Nancy King’s well-being. Being in nature helps her to connect to herself and to heal the wounds of childhood trauma. But winter hikes, slogging through deep snow, one foot in front of the other, are exhausting. What kept her going this past winter was finding something she’d never seen before—snow and ice hearts. The more she hiked, the more heart stones she saw, and the more she saw, the more her heart healed.
The travel writer’s dilemma
Travel writer Deborah Gray used the pause in travel of the past year to consider how the tourism industry can move forward more consciously and her role in the bigger post-pandemic picture as a traveler and journalist.
Traveling In A Garden
No one knows when we’ll be traveling again. So for now, while we’re still staying close to home, lifelong gardener BJ Stolbov provides his suggestions for growing a vegetable garden, an exciting adventure right in your own yard.
The Ghosts of Hemingway’s House
During a trip to Cuba, Sandra Horwich resisted a visit to the house Finca Vigia where Ernest Hemingway lived and wrote during the 1940s and 1950s. But when part of the Art Biennial event she had come for included a stop there, the experience took an unexpected turn.
My Mother Lil and Me: Version 2.0
Cliff Simon blamed his mother for much of his discomfort and unhappiness, recounting her faults and his wounds, over and over, and with great humor to hide his sadness. But now, in retrospect, with the insights and compassion of age, he revisits the relationship and his role in it.
A Letter To The Missing
Maureen Magee grew up as an only child. The word ‘family’ had no great, extended meaning for her. But now, after seven decades of life, she finds herself seized with a gripping kind of curiosity about her Dad’s family and has begun writing letters to the uncles she never knew.
Communing With The Dead
For Bobbi Lerman, a visit to a graveyard is an opportunity to stop and sit and listen to the stories of the dead. In this essay, Bobbi shares the experience of communing with the dead at Isola di San Michele, the island just across the water from Venice, Italy, that houses the city’s cemetery.
Time Travel In A Trunk
Buying a piece of furniture rarely reads like a detective story, but when George Bresnick purchased an immigrant trunk in Minneapolis in 1999, he knew that the opening line of a Holmesian saga had been written. Little did he realize that it would take more than 20 years for the tale to unfold.