It started inconspicuously—the relationship. It was . . . how to put it? Two atoms, swirling through the universe and then colliding, crashing together accidentally, bumping together anonymously, setting off near-sparks. He was at a dance—specifically, 1968, when all this took place—a mixer in Chicago, with the young women wearing solid-colored sweaters and plaid skirts, and the young gentlemen wearing sports jackets and beige pleated trousers and ties that they purchased at one of the shops on State Street—the kind of shop that sold suits and sportcoats to young men supposedly “on the way up,” the “way up” being in quotation marks because who knew what “way” meant, and “up” was even more uncertain.
A riot of people was going crazy out on the dance floor, and the band was Jackie Broadway and the Soulsters from Gary, Indiana, Jackie being big but agile as hell, catapulting around on the stage like a cannonball and belting out James Brown and Marvin Gaye and all the great soul stuff from the late Sixties, and everybody dancing and jumping and jiving and cavorting and drinking and doing the bugaloo and the mashed potato and the jerk and the wah-watusi and all those fantastic dances from the Sixties.
He saw her. She was fifteen feet away from him, separated from him by dozens of cavorting, swishing, swaying, jumping, inebriated dancers. She was by herself, a calm in the middle of the storm, wearing a leprechaun green sweater and a skirt dipped in the colors of some ancient Irish fiefdom. He saw her standing there. His heart went bumpety-bump like a horse rider in a loose saddle as he began a slow walk toward her, a delicate walk, a nervous walk, a hesitant walk, an absurd existential walk, a walk right up to her, and she looked at him, and her eyes whispered hello. Her hair was short and black and tightly curled, her eyes as blue as the heavens that one hopes to attain after passing into the next world.
She smiled, and they melted wordlessly into a dance, a fast dance, a hectic dance, in unison with the other writhing bodies on the dance floor in that vast ballroom, and they watusied and jerked and bugalooed and twisted to “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “Please Please Please.” She danced smoothly and elegantly and effortlessly but with a weary, empty look worn deeply into her face and her eyes as if she were half there and half not there.
Amidst the chaos and the hubbub and the craziness, he shouted, “What’s your name?”
She smiled like the Cheshire Cat and shouted, “Guess! You have to guess!”
His mind went blank. A slow dance interrupted his blankness. Percy Sledge singing “When a Man Loves a Woman.” He reached out for her, and she closed up the sacred space between them. Jackie Broadway did his best Percy Sledge imitation, and her arms importuned themselves around his neck like snakes, and they floated along to the rhythm of the song like two boats in the calm of a besieged sea. Memory receded. Consciousness receded. They buoyed each other up as they danced, almost unconsciously, without speaking or even looking at each other, strangers bound together for an instant in time, atoms meeting and colliding and finding a moment of synchronicity in this crazy mixed-up universe. The song ended, and they parted from each other but looked at each other with shy embarrassment. “Wine?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. They walked together, but not hand in hand, to the table where the stewards dressed in white vests and black trousers stood behind a legion of alcohol and awaited their pleasure. On their journey to the table, he leaned toward her and said, “We shall get wine, and then I shall guess your name.”
She nodded and smiled at him like a Sphinx frozen in time. Drinks in hand, they stepped away from Jackie Broadway and the Soulsters so that they could hear ourselves think and hear each other utter whatever they thought to say. Drinks in hand, they stared at each other with the embarrassment that hangs between two people who are 20 or 21 and shy and unsure how much to reveal of themselves to each other. They stared at each other like strangers in a lost land. “Now, your name,” he shouted.
“And, as I said, you must guess it,” she shouted back over the music. “You look very intelligent. Sooner or later, I am sure you will guess it.”
He thought for a moment. “Winifred.”
“No,” she laughed.
“Edith.”
“No!” she laughed again.
“Brunhilda.”
“God, no!”
“Mabel.”
“No! No! No!”
“Maybelline,” he said.
“No, silly! You are not even close. Those are old-fashioned names, and I’m a modern young woman. You’re teasing me. I know you are.”
“I’m sorry! I am hopelessly stupid. I cannot begin to think what your name is. I really can’t. I have no idea.” He looked at her, and he felt out of tune with himself. She looked him starkly in the eyes, and her blue eyes emblazoned themselves upon him. He longed to touch her shoulder, her arm, but something held him back. What? He did not know. She stared at him with a look that said, “I know you. I know you are shy.”
She leaned toward him, her lips only a quarter of an inch from my ear. Her lips were generous and forgiving. She whispered in a voice that harkened back to the Egyptians, in a voice that blended satin with fog. “Kathy,” she whispered. “Kathy Armbruster.” Her whisper was like fine whiskey. The sound of her whisper aroused something long dormant in him. She placed her left hand delicately, chastely on his right knee. “Kathy Armbruster,” she whispered once again. Her fingers burned his knee. Every pore of his skin screamed.
She whispered, “And what is your name?” Her fingers on his knee felt like a crisis of inexperience. He pulled slightly away from her. He looked at her and drowned in her blue eyes. “Paul,” he said.
“Paul,” she whispered, in a voice coated in lavender. Still her fingers burned themselves into his knee. He felt the pathos of desire. He did not know what to say. Words would not suffice. Jackie Broadway and the Soulsters faded into oblivion. It was only the two of them, atoms floating through the universe and then colliding. She finished her wine. She asked for another wine. He pulled himself up and found the bar with the stewards dressed in black trousers and white vests and ordered another wine for her and another one for himself. He sat back down, and she tossed the wine back. The music pulsated like a heartbeat.
She pressed herself against him. They kissed. The kiss was chaste and knowing. Even as they kissed, he felt shy, embarrassed, flushed, lost. He felt the misery of desire and of ensuing aloneness. Her kiss was pillow soft and sensuous and invited him into new worlds. Her fingers rested on his knee and snaked their way into his bones. Every pore of his skin screamed. He pressed himself against her, and she held herself as firmly as a wall against him. Jackie Broadway disappeared. The other dancers disappeared. He felt desirous and shy and adrift in a vast and delicious moment of time. Something was alive between them. He felt it, and he felt that she felt it. The atoms had converged, creating their own space between the stars. The moment of the kiss lasted forever. He touched her cheek with his right hand, and her cheek felt like a mask–cool to the touch, as smooth as glass. Still they kissed. They parted. They bent their eyes downward, both sheepish, both shy, both embarrassed that they had given up their puritan selves to the fog of desire. The moment was pure, clean, when two souls open themselves to each other by accident. He looked down into his lap, too diffident to say anything, abashed that pure feeling had captured him so completely and brazenly.
The kiss. That kiss, which had lingered into infinity. He floated on that kiss back to his dormitory room at St. Anthony’s College in Terre Haute, Indiana. She had told him that she was a sophomore at St. Anne’s College in Oak Park, west of Chicago. Desire wrapped itself around him like a hot blanket. He could barely concentrate on his studies. He lay in his bed beneath his prickly blanket and broke out into sweats. He took cold showers to settle himself down. He itched with desire. He fantasized: naked skin against naked skin. He played Roy Orbison on his record player and mouthed the words to “In Dreams.”
He wanted to see her again, but he hesitated to call her. Something held him back. She was a mystery, and he didn’t want to break the mystery. Finally, though, he did call her. A young woman answered the phone—not Kathy Armbruster. Their phone setup was like his in the dormitory—one pay phone serving the entire floor. The young woman who answered the phone screamed, “Kathy Armbruster—ya got a call from some guy! Get a move on before he hangs up!” She picked up the phone, said, “Hello?” Sounded a million miles away.
“This is Paul,” he croaked. “Paul Pendergast. We met at that dance in Chicago last week—the one with Jackie Broadway and the Soulsters. We danced, and we talked. You gave me your phone number. Now I’m calling you.”
Silence. “Oh, hi,” she finally said. Paul’s hands grew damp. In a warmer voice, she said, “Oh. I remember you. You’re the one who guessed my name was Hilda and Mabel and all those crazy old-fashioned names.”
“Yeah, that’s right. But I finally guessed that your name’s Brunhilda.”
“You’re goofy,” she laughed.
“Gee, thanks,” he said. He was unsure what to say next, but the memory of the kiss arose like an antidote to his usual timidity. They made a date. He would take the Greyhound Bus from Terre Haute to Chicago and stay with his parents in LaGrange and borrow their car and pick up Kathy Armbruster at 5:30 at St. Anne’s College, and they would have dinner in Oak Park and go to a movie at the Lake Theater. Her distance on the phone gave him pause, but the memory of the kiss pursued him like a moment of bliss in a dream that one hopes will never end.
He entered the lobby of her dormitory, and she was waiting for his. Her face was as perfect—every hair in place, nose, eyes, mouth like a kabuki mask. She smiled vaguely. He looked at her and said, “Kathy Armbruster! Not Clara! Not Brunhilda!” She laughed. The smile was almost instantaneous . . . but not quite. They were two atoms floating through the universe, and they had come together by accident, catapulted toward each other by the random forces of the universe.
They drove to a restaurant he knew in Oak Park. The movie was at 7:30—Gone with the Wind, which had been rereleased for the umpteenth time. She’d said she wanted to see it when he’d mentioned that it was playing at the theater. Gone with the Wind. Rhett and Scarlett. Melanie and Ashley. To Paul, it seemed weird to be seeing it in this day of Bonnie and Clyde. But that was what she wanted to see.
At the restaurant, he ordered drinks for both of them. They looked at each other. Awkwardness floated between them like a pestilence. They had danced, they had kissed, there had been magic in the air. Now the magic was gone, like a mirage. He felt the weight of his shyness. Their drinks came. “How’s the wine?” he asked.
“Fine,” she said. She tossed it down, and he ordered another. She bent down, reached into her purse, pulled out a pack of Kents, tipped one into her fingers, lit it. She looked at him. “Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want one?”
“Nope,” he said. “I quit when I was born.”
She didn’t laugh or even smile. They were two atoms catapulting through the universe, and they had converged briefly but now they had floated apart. He felt trapped by his tongue-tiedness. “So, how’s school?” he finally asked. He wanted to sink under the table under the weight of the obviousness of his question.
“Oh, it’s okay,” she shrugged. “It’s fine. It is what it is.” While he searched desperately for something else to say, she inhaled smoke from the Kent and blew elegant rings that floated toward the muted lights of the restaurant. They were strangers, but not in paradise. He looked down at his hands. “What are you majoring in?” he murmured.
“English.”
“Do you like it?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s all right.” She lifted the burning Kent to her lips and inhaled and exhaled more elegant smoke rings that rose like dreams toward heaven. The kiss between them was a distant memory, floating toward nothingness.
He said, “Those are the most elegant smoke rings I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s the only thing I do well. Smoke rings. They’ll put me into the Smoke Ring Hall of Fame.”
His heart bent. “Well, you are a good dancer.”
She looked at him. “Really?”
He leaned toward her. “Absolutely! A fantastic dancer!” She looked away from him, embarrassed.
Their dinners came. They ate slowly and carefully and displayed perfect manners as they dove into their burgers and fries. He felt an undercurrent of . . . something. He wanted to talk, to connect with her in some way, but he did not know how. He looked at her and said, “Please excuse me if I’m out of place here, but you have the bluest eyes I have ever seen.”
She looked at him. In her perfect blue eyes, he detected . . . something . . . a speck of imperfection, a spot of unhappiness. “Thank you,” she said, a smidgen of warmth in her voice.
He leaned closer to her. “So, have you ever seen Gone with the Wind before?”
“Many times,” she said. “I love Gone with the Wind. It’s my favorite movie. I get completely swept up by it. When Scarlett says, ‘I’ll always have Tara,’ it . . . I don’t know how to describe it . . . how it makes me feel. Like home. Like I’m at home again.”
They walked to the Lake Theater and purchased tickets and bought popcorn and took their seats, and the grand beautiful monstrosity of Gone with the Wind unrolled with all of its melodrama and histrionics and humor and tragedy and turns and twists and confusions between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara.
But . . . but . . . during the last half-hour of the movie, Paul noticed something. Something that he ignored at first. Something about Kathy Armbruster. As he sat next to her, he heard her . . . sniffling. He turned toward her, and in the brilliant reflection of Rhett and Scarlett on the enormous glowing screen, he saw tears form like tiny gleaming stars in the corners of Kathy Armbruster’s eyes. And . . . and he could see in the reflection of those images from the screen that her eyebrows were curled in the most intense projection of sadness that he had ever seen. He looked at her more closely and felt his heart sink. He was bereft of words and actions. She grasped a tissue from her purse and dabbed at the corners of her eyes, where the gleaming tears had appeared like tiny moon-drops. She wiped the tears, but she could not wipe away the forlornness that curled her eyes. He had no idea what to do, what action to take. He was bereft of instinct. He felt profoundly useless. The two atoms were floating randomly, uselessly, through the universe, she, alone with her sudden sadness, him, alone with his feeling of uselessness, spinning separately through the enormous universe. Paul tentatively reached his left arm to put around her. She pulled away. She wiped away the tears once again but could not wipe away the underlying feeling of . . . something. Paul felt emotionally useless–completely inadequate to the moment. Rhett said, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Scarlett said, “I’ll always have Tara.” The music swelled like a wound, bringing the whole spectacle to a grand crashing finale. Kathy dabbed desperately at the tears clouding her eyes.
They left the theater, walked to the car. Silence screamed between them. Kathy Armbruster slid into the passenger’s seat. She dipped into her purse and withdrew a Kent and, with trembling fingers, lit it, and the sweet fragrance of smoke filled the inside of the car. Paul’s heart rattled like a trapped squirrel. She smoked her Kent, and as he drove her back to her dormitory at St. Anne’s college, tears continued to sprout like ugly vegetables from the corners of her eyes, and she wiped them with a tissue that she grasped tightly in her hand. They were miles apart in the automobile. Hesitantly, he said, “Are you all right?”
She looked at him. “No,” she said, in a voice cracked with forlornness. That was all she said. Nothing more. Her fingers quivered as she brought the Kent to her lips. They reached the parking lot of her dormitory, and he walked her to the front door. They faced each other. Her face was devoid of expression, and she avoided his eyes. The night of their kiss was a distant memory between two different people. They stood awkwardly in front of the door leading into her dormitory. A profound sorrow had stolen into her eyes like a dead child. Afloat in embarrassment, they looked away from each other. Then, instantaneously, she placed her hand lightly on his forearm, as if she suddenly remembered that he was there. Even though it was dark, she managed to find his forearm. Finally, she looked him in the eyes, looking for something. She turned abruptly and opened the door into the dormitory and rushed into the lobby and disappeared.
He returned to Terre Haute, to St. Anthony’s, to the narcolepsy of the daily ritual of going to class, reading, drinking, hanging out with friends. But . . . but . . . he could not erase the thought of Kathy Armbruster. And . . . and he blamed himself for the disastrous evening. Was it something he had said? He could not think of anything. He told his roommate, Billy Bartholomew, what had happened. Billy shrugged and said, “Don’t worry about it. She’s just screwed up. Forget about her. It was nothing you said or did.”
But . . . but . . . he could not forget her. How could he ever, ever know what was going on in the dark recesses of another person? Two atoms, separated by thousands of light-years. How could they ever converge, meet, merge?
One night, Billy dragged a chair over to Paul’s bed, where he lay prone. Billy said, “It’s worrying you, isn’t it? This whole thing. This girl. It’s eating you up, isn’t it? Well, I have an idea. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. Maybe it’s not. But at least it’s an idea.” Billy stared at Paul. “Write her a letter. Be honest. Do it, because otherwise this is grinding you up. Write her a letter. Be honest.”
The more Paul thought about it, the more he thought Billy had a good idea. Why not try it? Maybe it was a way. A way to span the ineffable distance between people. It was a struggle, but he wrote the letter. He wrote it out by hand, in his miserable distinctive scrawl. As he wrote, he felt vaguely as if he were in some Jane Austen novel. He finished the letter and sent it off:
Dear Kathy,
I felt like I needed to write to you. I hope you don’t mind. You know that night when we had dinner and went to Gone with the Wind? It’s just that you seemed very upset after the movie and even during the movie. Ever since then, I’ve been wondering if I said or did something wrong that night. Because you seemed upset with me or maybe something else. Well, if I said something wrong, I’m really sorry. I hope you’re okay. I hope you’ll write back to me.
Yours truly,
Paul Pendergast
He read the letter over and thought it sounded corny and stupid. But Billy read it, and he said it was just right. Paul sent it off. He doubted that he would hear back from Kathy Armbruster. Life went on—going to classes, reading, writing, drinking with buddies, going to football games—all the normal stuff, the stereotypical stuff that you do in college—the stuff everyone does—the stuff that you’re expected to do. But . . . but a hole had emerged . . . a lacuna in Paul’s spirit.
The holidays came. He returned to his parents’ home in LaGrange. The first semester of his junior year ended, and the second semester started. It was February. One day, he checked Bill’s and his mailbox. A letter. From Kathy Armbruster. Postmarked Rockford, Illinois. He ran upstairs to their room and tore open the letter and read it:
Dear Paul,
Thank you for the letter you sent me last fall. My roommate, Marcia, forwarded it to me, and I read it. I have to tell you something. Something important. I’m not at St. Anne’s College right now. I left school. I just up and left. Just like that. I had to, for reasons I won’t go into. I’m at home now, with my parents, in Rockford. Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll go back to school. I have stuff to work out, and I’m working it out. Stuff I can’t tell you about in a letter.
I’m sorry about that night when we saw Gone with the Wind. I was a mess that night. I just suddenly felt this overwhelming sadness. It had to come out. My sadness, I mean. You just happened to be there. It wasn’t you. It wasn’t anything you said or anything like that. But it had to come out. My sadness, I mean.There’s just stuff. The movie made me so sad. I don’t know why. It just did. It made me dream of a home that never was. Anyway, I’m learning about my stuff. Slowly. It’s not easy.
I’ve had time to think about things. I’m feeling a little better these days. So, if you’re ever in Rockford, it would be nice to have coffee or dinner or something like that. Well, it’s just that it would be nice to talk to you.
Sincerely,
Kathy
He was stunned. She had said it was nothing he had said. That. . . that at least was something. But there was this other . . . thing . . . this feeling. He felt something tighten in his chest. She had scrawled her phone number—her parents’ number—on the letter. He called. She answered. She sounded . . . different. He said he wanted to see her. To talk to her. She said that she wanted to see him . . . to talk to him.
They made a date for dinner. It was going to be complicated, but he had to do it. He’d take the Greyhound Bus from Terre Haute to Chicago, take a train to LaGrange, borrow his parents’ car, drive to Rockford.
He rang the bell at Kathy Armbruster’s parents’ house. She answered the door, invited him in, introduced him to her parents. He stared at her. Her mask was gone. She wore no makeup. She wore baggy blue jeans and a loose-fitting black blouse. Her eyes were still stark blue but more naked than before. Her skin was rougher, more honest, more revealing than it had been before. The jeans hung loosely on her, as did the black-as-night blouse. She grabbed a coat from her parents’ closet. She moved differently, more loosely from the way she had when he had picked her up for the date in Oak Park. She moved to the rhythm of a silent song.
They walked out to his parents’ car. She slid into the passenger’s seat, and they drove to the restaurant—a Chinese place. On the way, all she said was, “Thank you for driving all the way out here. Thank you for driving all the way out to beautiful Rockford, Illinois.”
“The heartland of America,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “Indeed. Rockford—the center of the universe.” They both laughed. They reached the restaurant, walked inside, took a booth, ordered wine. Silence blanketed the table. He looked at her. She wore no mascara, no eyeliner, no lipstick. Her skin was rough, the pores and wrinkles undisguised. She returned his look unblinkingly. The blue of her eyes reminded him of a sacred jewel. She stared at me unabashedly, unashamedly.
“Well,” he finally said, “here we are.” He was relying on instinct, on intuition. “It’s good to see you.”
“Thank you. It’s nice to see you.” She paused. “As I said in my letter, I apologize for that night—the night of Gone with the Wind.”
“There’s no need to apologize.”
She took a deep breath. “You know, I don’t really know you very well. But I want to tell you things. I feel that I can tell you things. I want to tell you what happened. It seems important to tell you. But I have no idea how to even start.”
“Maybe just start talking,” he said. “See what comes out.”
She laughed. “Okay. That’s a good idea.” She took another deep breath. “Well, to begin with, that night . . . the night of Gone with the Wind . . . I was just really . . . well, you probably guessed this . . . it was kind of obvious, I guess . . . but I was just really . . . well, I don’t. . . .” She paused, breathed deeply. “I was going through this whole . . . thing, and it just kind of reached its lowest point that night. At school, I’d been feeling so down and empty that I could barely even function.” She paused and looked down at her hands and shook her head slowly. She looked back up at him. “I couldn’t study. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t do a damn thing at school. I felt so guilty about that night . . . somehow . . . that damn movie just set something off in me. Like the way things are supposed to be but aren’t. I felt desperate and really down. That’s a fact. I couldn’t do anything at school. I was gonna flunk out. That’s God’s honest truth. I felt totally alone there, at St. Anne’s. I was out of place there. So, I just went home. I had to go home. I felt so . . . empty. It’s impossible to describe.
“My parents were very worried. You can imagine. They connected me to someone. This woman. This psychologist. This shrink. In Rockford. I started talking to her. I started going to her twice a week. That was what? Three months ago. Twice a week. Trudging to the shrink twice a week.” She paused. “Fun, fun, fun! Digging into the deepest parts of me. Have you ever gone?”
“No. Honestly, I’d be kind of scared to, in a weird way.”
“I know. I know what you mean. I was scared. I really was. I was scared to be going to a shrink. Like what would people say? It’s weird, like you say. They’re supposed to help you, but you’re scared to go. The first time I went, my heart was thumping like it was gonna jump out of my skin. But I went. You talk, and somehow stuff comes up, just by talking. It was strange how it worked.” She stared at me. “I learned something. I learned things.”
She paused and looked down and stared at her hands for a long time. “I hated myself. That’s what I learned.”
She stared at Paul. He stared back at her. She was totally naked to him. “I was never good enough. I wanted to please everyone. That’s all I wanted to do. I never measured up to what they wanted. Whoever they were.” She laughed. “They. They are very bad. They really suck.” She laughed.
He laughed. “Yeah. They are really shitty.” He thought for a moment. “Do you know why . . . like, why you felt that way?”
She looked down at her hands folded in front of her. “I’m working on that. Parents. Teachers. My parents are good people. I love them. But it was like . . . like I just couldn’t ever measure up, if you know what I mean.”
Paul said, “I have felt that way.”
“Really?”
He nodded. He couldn’t think what else to say. Finally, he said, “I’ve never had anyone talk to me like this before.”
“That’s because we don’t. I’ve learned a lot about that. How we hide from each other. We’re taught to put on this act like we’re all perfect and everything and have got our shit together. But we don’t. We don’t have our shit together at all.”
Kathy Armbruster reflected for a moment and said, “There’s something else, too. There’s this tension here at home because I’m learning to say what I think. My parents don’t like it. They’re kind of shocked by some of the stuff I say. I’m making them uncomfortable. But I give them credit. They’re putting up with me. I’m learning to say so what.”
A silence crept between them. “So,” he finally said, “what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. School seems stupid. I was thinking maybe I’d learn how to be a plumber or an electrician—something useful. My parents—they’re taken aback by my honesty, but they’re not putting pressure on me. I appreciate that.”
Paul thought of something. “Why me?” he asked.
“I know. Why you? That’s a good question. You know, at that dance that night, there was something. Then when we went out that night, and I started crying my eyeballs out and making a complete spectacle of myself. You know, you could have just said get me the hell out of here, but you didn’t. You could’ve run the other way. But you didn’t. And then . . . that letter . . . that was . . . .”
Their plates of chop suey had arrived, but they hadn’t taken one bite. They looked at the chop suey and at each other and laughed. Paul said, “Our food has arrived.” They both laughed. They ate in silence. After a few moments, Paul looked at her and said, “Kathy Armbruster, you have guts.”
They finished their meals in silence. There was no need to talk.
He drove Kathy Armbruster back to her parents’ house. The night was cold and dark, but the stars glistened in the bitter winter sky. Paul walked her up to the door of her parents’ house. She turned toward him, and in the reflection of the moon, he studied her face, which was naked and raw and transparent. “Bertha,” he said, “it’s been a wonderful evening.” She laughed at length. Then she looked at him. “Thank you,” she said. She reached her arms around him like an octopus’s tentacles and surrounded him and gathered him in, and they stood on her parents’ stoop, frozen in time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m a writer based in the Chicago area. I’ve done a lot of different stuff in my life. I’ve been a merchant seaman, a high school English teacher, a corporate communications writer, a textbook editor, an educational consultant, and a free-lance writer. I’ve published short stories, articles, and essays in The Progressive, Snowy Egret, Earth Island Journal, Chicago Wilderness, American Forests, and other journals and magazines. In 2006, the University of New Hampshire Press published my first book, This Grand and Magnificent Place: The Wilderness Heritage of the White Mountains. My second book, which I co-authored with a prominent New Hampshire forester named David Govatski, was Forests for the People: The Story of America’s Eastern National Forests, published by Island Press in 2013.
About the Author
