The Great Dismal Swamp was once a thriving refuge for runaways The worse it gets, as I wade and stumble through the Great Dismal Swamp, the better I understand its history as a place of refuge. Each ripping thorn and sucking mudhole makes it clearer. It was the dense, tangled hostility of the swamp and…
Details
The Return of the Great American Jaguar. The jaguar known as El Jefe—The Boss—was almost certainly born in the Sierra Madre of northwest Mexico. Chris Bugbee, a wildlife biologist who knows El Jefe better than anyone, guesses that his birthplace was in the 70-square-mile Northern Jaguar Reserve in the state of Sonora. A team of…
Details
Green coffee beans roast in a revolving white machine on the kitchen counter. Annie Proulx, one of America’s greatest living writers, is upstairs in the shower. She looked startled when she opened the front door and found me there. She was wearing her dressing gown. An idea for a story had kept her awake for…
Details
With two rat terriers trotting at his heels, and a long wooden staff in his hand, J.R. Gavin leads me through the woods to one of the old swamp hide-outs. A tall white man with a deep Southern drawl, Gavin has a stern presence, gracious manners and intense brooding eyes. At first I mistook him…
Details
The snake-catchers of Cocullo were drinking espresso in the village’s only cafe. Photographs on the walls showed famoussnakes and snake-catchers from the past, and a few live serpents lay coiled in pillowcases on the floor. It had been a difficult year, the men said. Spring came late to the mountains, and the snakes were slow…
Details
A loveable mutt with no patience for life at home She had been missing for three days. We had put a reward notice with a photograph and dollar signs in the window of the nearest store, seven miles away across open fields and swampy woods. The local farmers, tractor drivers, and crop-duster pilots had all…
Details
Radio Interview by 104.4 FM London, can be found here https://www.resonancefm.com/schedule/2016-01-10
Details
On visiting the United States, the Tibetan dignitary T T Karma Chophel met with a group of supporters in Utah. He was there to discuss democracy, but his gaze kept travelling out across the high desert to the snowy mountains on the horizon. He thought of yaks and yak-herders, making their endless migrations across a…
Details
It wasn’t until I moved to Mississippi that I started to understand the colloquialisms and cultural nuances in Faulkner. Three decades earlier, studying his books at school in London, England,
The warehouse workers are in no hurry. It doesn’t cost them a dime to keep a trucker waiting. “It’s going to be tough to deliver this load on time without breaking the hours-of-service regulations,” says Harsell. “I’m safe, I’m reliable, I do a good job, and they want to turn me into an outlaw.”