Wishing Well Part 1 When you wish for something hard enough, you just might get it. Then comes the part about how hard you thought about what happens next, as in being careful what you wish for. Jiminy Cricket says nothing about which star you should wish upon, nor about possible evil consequences of choosing…

“For your service to our country,” I might have said in response to the, “Thanks for the ride,” he did not say. I find a sort of wide spot in the road to park and spend another sleepless night. I’m close enough to the highway that I can anticipate cars coming from either direction by…

Part 1 When you wish for something hard enough, you just might get it. Then comes the part about how hard you thought about what happens next, as in being careful what you wish for. Jiminy Cricket says nothing about which star you should wish upon, nor about possible evil consequences of choosing poorly. How…

“Get his/her act together,” a statement containing the seeds of its own refutation and rebuttal. Or seed: the word “act”. What seems to give the statement credibility is the assumed notion that we are all playing roles we are presumed to shape and that some of us are more skillful shapers. At this point, I…

To help me choose my route, I’ve got a magazine-sized Rand-McNally road atlas as my ready reference, though so far I’ve used it more to tell me where I’ve been than to suggest where I might go. The beach where I almost got swept out to sea may have been Cannon Beach, but I wonder…

“So what’re you guys up to?” I ask the two tee-shirt-and-jeans teen-agers who wander into my camp and stop twenty yards in front of me with my hood up. The taller one carries a .22 caliber rifle, pointed sanely at the ground. It’s early in the morning. My car won’t start. Cranking it any more…

I’m headed south on this fading afternoon of my very first, quite eventful, day on the road. I’ve travelled a couple hundred miles, seen some country, got a haircut, probably destroyed my cherry Chevy. Maybe the smartest thing I could do right now is to find the quickest way back to I-5 and head north…

Part One When you wish for something hard enough, you just might get it. Then comes the part about how hard you thought about what happens next, as in being careful what you wish for. Jiminy Cricket says nothing about which star you should wish upon, nor about possible evil consequences of choosing poorly. How…

A small-town SAFEWAY invites me in for Dutch-lunch picnic supplies — Blitz Weinhard beer, Tillamook cheddar, saltine crackers. I fall in love with the checkout gamin’s tan, competent-looking hands. Should I be jokey? How does she like my new beard? When she says what beard, I’ll say the one I just started. “Eighteen, nineteen, and…

This gunmetal Chevrolet was already old in 1963 when I willingly paid too much for its low miles, perfect paint and glass, and total lack of dents or dings — virtually a new car, though technologically out-of-date, a plus in my view. Across the Skokomish River and past the Skokomish Indian Reservation, I glide south…