Dispatches | Page 31

Provincetown

July 17, 2013 Dispatches

I can only assume that Stellwagen Bank is a financial institution. Perhaps a progressive Norwegian firm with a board of directors that is, by law, at least fifty percent women. The kind of bank that would sponsor a football club in Trondheim and a chain of internet cafés in Toronto, as well as a tour of the National Marine Sanctuary from Provincetown’s MacMillan Wharf. A global thought leader. A benevolent presence at Davos.

I Bring My Father News of the Road

July 10, 2013 Dispatches

By AMY KNOX BROWN

Four days a week, I drive the fifty miles between Omaha and Lincoln on Interstate 80, a line of pavement that stretches across the entire country, from Teaneck, New Jersey, to San Francisco. In Nebraska, the interstate follows the old Oregon Trail the early settlers bumped along in their horse-drawn wagons filled with household goods that shifted and creaked as wheels churned over the uneven ground.

SAR Talk

July 3, 2013 Dispatches

By JEFF MUSE

When I arrived for my shift, I heard talk of a search and rescue near the south end of the Ptarmigan Traverse: two climbers, stuck on an 18-inch ledge. They dropped their rope and most of their camping gear while summiting 8,200-foot Spire Point, the remote tail of the route, a spot between Sentinel and Dome peaks that most people reach only after several days of route finding. It’s fearsome, storm-wracked country — the Pacific Crest, where waters spill east toward the Columbia River or west to Puget Sound. And if you get high enough, your cell phone might work, as it did for those climbers this morning. They called 911, who in turn called us, the Park Service.

The Short Summer

June 26, 2013 Dispatches

By AMY MONTICELLO

I knew enough from Facebook to recognize the muddy maroon Jeep with the top off when it ran the long red light at North and Main. I was about to turn right when zoom, straight through with a lead foot. I honked loudly and repeatedly until a freckled arm raised a middle finger through the open roof, so I broke New York’s latest traffic law and thumb-punched a text: “Its me u idiot pull over.”

Bootleg Trout

June 19, 2013 Dispatches

By JOEY DEAN HALE

When I’m there I never think about Mr. Sam O. Dale, an eight term state representative for whom this site was named. Actually, I’ve never heard anyone call this 194 acre lake anything other than Johnsonville Lake, that being the nearest town. I’m not sure if this is because in southern Illinois there seems to be a common disdain for politicians or if it’s just that Johnsonville Lake seems like a more fitting moniker. All I know is this Sam Dale guy never crosses my mind. Usually I’m trying to stay focused on the subject at hand, be that catfishing, building a campfire, or trying to land a nice rainbow at the trout pond. Regardless, when my mind does wander, and it often does, especially while I’m waiting for a fish to bite, I often find myself thinking about my grandpa Dutch Hale who drove down from Clay County to fish here.

How We Stilled the Leaves of Every Alder

June 12, 2013 Dispatches

By BRANDI KATHERINE HERRERA

i am breathless in the unnamed woods.

inspiritus, prana, pneuma, qi.

we carry provisions.

canteens.

one of us carries a gun.

we wait for someone to break the silence.

In the Field behind the Condo Where the Fat Boy Plays

June 5, 2013 Dispatches

By JOHN MCNALLY

In the summer of 1975, in the southwest Chicago suburb of Burbank, my parents finally became homeowners when they bought a condominium unit in a brand-new development comprised of eight buildings. The cost: $25,000. First, however, we had to break our apartment lease and move out in the middle of the night. I was nine years old, carrying my toys down the stairs to my father’s pick-up at three in the morning while everyone else, our friends and enemies, slept soundly. In every apartment building we’d ever lived, we always had friends and we always had enemies, and we never lived in any one place for longer than two years. Things were finally going to be different.

Tailwind

May 22, 2013 Dispatches

By KAITLIN SOLIMINE

To get to Shanghai I take a Boeing 777 airplane to a Buick van to an Airbus 320 airplane to a Bombadier subway car to a Hyundai taxicab to a Shinkansen high-speed train to a Xiali taxi. This is China. This is a country in motion.

Journey to a Place I’ve Never Been

May 15, 2013 Dispatches

By KURT CASWELL

Bending to a high-power telescope trained on the moon at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of west Texas, specifically the terminator line that is the far reach of the sun’s light at this phase—waning Gibbous moon—the contrast of light and dark makes visible the rims and floors of uncountable impact craters. My companion and I can see the crater walls, the striated lines of some long past moment of chaos, the crusted lip of the crater’s edge where the force of that energy lifted and curled into a rift of moon rocks. The sun’s light on the lunar surface is so mesmerizing along that line, so utterly beautiful, that coming away from the eyepiece, all you can see is moon.

Stanley Street

May 9, 2013 Dispatches

By MICHAEL BOURNE

On the walk to Central Station I struggled to obey simple gravity. My limbs felt weightless, my feet didn’t feel at all. With each step, I had to remind myself to touch pavement again, as if in a moment’s forgetfulness I might slip the earth’s magnetic pull and go pinwheeling over Sydney Harbor and out to sea.