Living Above the Fold

I went camping for the first time two years ago with three friends in Lassen Volcanic National Park near Redding. We intended to enjoy a weekend roughing it in the wilderness, but the trip didn’t go as smoothly as planned.

The Path Less Traveled (The East Bay Monthly, June 2010)

In this desert landscape, a scraggly group of spectators gathers around wooden picnic tables and plastic lawn furniture. A lone kid runs in circles around the group, desperately dragging a kite behind him. A few feet away, a ragged pink windsock dangles limply in the breeze. For miles around, the dry, scrubby hills of Horseshoe Bend Recreation Park, near the edge of Yosemite, seem abandoned — a vast wilderness of sagebrush and rattlesnakes, baking in the summer sun.

Free as a Bird Now (East Bay Express, June 21, 2006)

Sometimes you need to get away from it all, and Vegas and Disneyland just aren’t far enough away. That’s when you reach for your passport and your travelers’ checks and head for some distant paradise. Nothing compares to the giddy thrill of trekking through uncharted jungle or lying on a tropical beach.

The Agony and the Odyssey (East Bay Express, May 24, 2004)