Tag Archives: Stephen Grace

I left my cabin in the drizzle and dark. Beyond a bluff on the Oregon coast, gulls hovered and wheeled, their cries riding the wind above the waves. I pedaled my bike past pools left behind when the ocean abandoned the land. Haystack Rock stood in the surf like a mountain risen from the sea. On its grassy slope, puffins …

          Three decades ago, while wandering through the Himalayas, I ventured from the Vale of Kashmir to Ladakh, a mountainous realm where some of the planet’s tallest peaks rise above a high plateau. Now, thirty years later, as I gaze into Deception Basin in the Olympic Mountains, the scenery is so reminiscent of Ladakh—green vegetation fringing …

You want to keep moving forward, but shrubs form a wall at the forest’s edge. You see no way in. As you explore the tangled greenery, you push and probe. Two branches swing open like doors—the first with a gentle push, the second with a vigorous shove. The branches close behind your back as you wander into the mansion of …