2019 was the year of quirky, raw, haunting, and lyrical novels for me. Of the fiction list noted below, Family of Origin by CJ Hauser was the most notable novel of the year for me – the writing was fresh and gorgeous, and the main characters, with all of their flaws, were spirited and empathetic. A close second was Rushdie’s…
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Javelina Jundred 100 – Time & Place
In writing fiction, characters bloom at the intersection of time and place. Situate a character at the end of his or her rope, and what happens next is the story. The same holds true in large part for our lives, and perhaps in ultra-marathons, it’s the expedited version. The Sonoran Desert. Late October. Halloween looming. Costumed runners and crew all…
Risk and Reward: Tahoe 200
Pre-Race 24-hours before the start of Tahoe 200, a 205.5-mile endurance run that circumnavigates the magnificent and dazzlingly blue Lake Tahoe, by way of the Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT), with occasional detours through aspen meadows, rock gardens, canopied forests, and ridge lines, I was petrified. It wasn’t the course and its substantial climbs and descents that frightened me by that…
ULTRA TRAINING: lessons in commitment, hard work, and daring greatly.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best…
INDIA: Finding My Religion
It was 2005 and my life was all over the place. I had my apartment in Manhattan but was living in Truman Annex in Key West with my husband. Each morning, the roosters greeted us with their spirited cries as a warm breeze floated in through our balcony terrace. I felt as if I had found my own private paradise.…
Keys 100 – 2019: Reflections from a Movable Feast
Aside from being all things Hemingway, Key West is where I lived for a few years, it’s where I studied writing for many more years, it’s where I reflected for endless days and nights of my life and made some key decisions, and for the past eight years, it’s the destination that I have run to each May, during the…
The Other Side of the World
Koh Tao, Gulf of Thailand On a Thursday night in mid-April, I embarked on a 30-something hour journey to Koh Tao, an island that is part of the Chumphon Archipelago on the western shore of the Gulf of Thailand, with a population under 1500, to take part in an Arrow Retreat led by founder, Dani Yarusso. Along the way, I intercepted three of…
New Year, New Career
As the new year approaches, many of us reflect on what was, with a goal of determining what we wish to adapt and accomplish in the next calendar year. The great thing about 2019 is that it’s a blank slate in which we get to plot our future. If you aim to make a career transition in the new year,…
The One Life
Early on in life, we tend to become aware of the dichotomy of our public and personal selves. We realize that who we are in our homes, amid our families, is not always the same self we bring to school or to a friend’s house. We become self-conscious when we realize that we may think or feel or do things…
Best Books of 2018
Powerful stories do great things to our psyche and spirit. They enable us to grow and dream and know and experience; they induce awareness and empathy. From Scot Jurek’s journey across the Appalachian Trail to Barry Cohen’s jaunt across America via Greyhound in Shteyngart’s Lake Success, I am grateful for the expeditions written words afford me and obliged to these…