Lightning Lessons in Writing: How to Use the Comma
All too often, inexperienced writers view, or worse, use, the comma as a pause in a sentence. While it’s true that we pause at commas, as we would any mark […]
Potty-mouthed Professors: Why They’re the Best
Trust me. I should know. I’m one of them. And if you are someone easily offended by foul, vulgar, profane language, this essay might not be for you. There is […]
How to Interpret Dreams
Last night I had the strangest dream. I was driving in an SUV, ran over a lovely flower bed on some private land and momentarily got stuck in a man-made […]
Walking Through it All: Reviewing Ben Montgomery’s ‘Grandma Gatewood’s Walk’
In Ben Montgomery’s eye-opening profile, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail, readers encounter the real life folk heroin Emma Gatewood. On the […]
Lightning Lessons in Writing: How to Improve Overnight
This “lightning lesson” in grammar, a super short but very helpful lesson on how to write clearly and correctly, won’t make you the next Shakespeare or Hemingway. It will, however, […]
How to Write Anything (Part III)
In parts one and two of this mini-series on writing I discussed crafting an essay with a particular audience in mind, choosing a genre and writing with purpose, followed by […]
The Stories We Tell Ourselves: A Meditation on Frost’s Two Roads
(A quick note: while the gender of the speaker remains undetermined, I sometimes use the masculine for the sake of simplicity and consistency. It seems easier than having to repeatedly […]
How to Write Anything (Part II)
In part one of this “how-to” mini-series I discussed some of the broader aspects of the initial stages of the writing process. In that essay I covered genre, audience and […]
How to Write Anything (Part I)
Writing is contentious. As someone who works in higher ed., I ought to know. Looking around the country at different universities and colleges it’s easy to notice some interesting structures […]
Dirtbag Dreams: Fantasy vs Reality
(Cover Image: Fred Beckey) Virtually anyone who climbs, has ever picked up a climbing magazine, seen Reel Rock, or any YouTube video on climbing, knows the term “dirtbag”. The general […]
Mountain Buddha: The Origin Story
I never pictured myself as a blogger. After graduate school, most of the writing I did, when I did it, revolved around literary criticism. That was the original plan: get […]
Why Climbing Matters
As a brief note, this article often uses the term climbing in a broad sense to include everything from rock climbing to mountaineering and hiking. As I rediscover climbing in […]
How (Not) to Become a Cyclist
(Photo credit: genuinebyjtyler.com) In or about 2006 or 2007 my baby bro, who was in his twenties at that point, had become interested in cycling—real cycling, the kind with crazy […]
Civilization and its Discontent: Reviewing Michael Finkel’s 2017, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
On the other hand, Finkel does not gloss over the more unsavory aspects of this story: the fact the Knight was a terror to the local population of North Pond. Debbie Baker, one of the person’s interviewed for Finkel’s story and quoted at the top of this piece, perfectly highlights the fact that this is not some romantic narrative about one seeking refuge from the monstrousness of civilization. Rather, Knight was the horror. To Baker’s children Knight was the monster in the closet and under the bed, the boogeyman, the thing that goes bump in the night and every other unsavory beast that children dream up in the deep dark of their minds—except he was real. Knight had become the reason children need night lights. Knight himself acknowledged as much after his arrest in 2013.
