The house we live in was probably old already when Grandfather was young. Five-foot-tall field stone basement walls support thirty-foot hand-hewn beams which in turn support the rest of the house. The studs in the wall indicate a time when a two by four actually measured two inches by four

The box with two tiny Jetpacks that arrived from Verizon was supposed to be just what I needed to upgrade my office system to unlimited data. As humans are so prone to do, I had bitten for the offer before I had digested it, instead of digesting first and biting

One man’s opinion of the use of devices and the devices that use us. It was a hot day in July, and the heat was shimmering off the asphalt when we drove by the steakhouse. Eight citizens stood outside, staring at their hands as though wondering what had gone

by Mahlon Zehr As I write, Thanksgiving Day remains more memory than anticipation. We haven’t started planning for this year’s Thanksgiving yet, but gratitude is on my mind, because I was reading to the children last night about the Israelites and their perpetual grumbling. People died because they

Every avid reader is guilty at times of reading without digesting, but every addicted reader will also at times come across a sentence or paragraph which causes him to backtrack and contemplate deeply what he just read. The latter scenario played itself out for me when I read John Krakauer’

The food was fine, the coffee great, and the silence fantastic. Our family typically does not eat out a lot, but once in a while for a birthday or some other significant event, we enjoy eating restaurant food. My wife is an excellent cook in my opinion, so usually when

Staying at home and keeping six feet away in any encounter with humans have a sense of loneliness and isolation that is unsettling at best. When the socially acceptable is to avoid socializing there is a strange feeling of fear of each other, difficult to come to grips with. A

In the mountains east of us, miles and miles off the pavement, I have a place in the dark old-growth timber where I hunt each November. Imagine an open hand. Your fingers are ridges running down into your palm. Between each finger runs a little seep-fed creek, and deep between

He sat across the scarred picnic table, affecting a nonchalant air about his accomplishment and taking a tacit pride in the hardship. He was coming off a double high: the euphoric high of his achievement, and the literal high of the highest mountain in Maine—the 5,267-foot Mt. Khatadin