“Why would you want one?” The words emerge from an hour’s silence. “One what?” I ask. “An unconscious,” she responds. We’re lying, belly down, on a flat sheet of warm rock, watching the waders in the hot springs. A poorly maintained dirt road winds its way to this site from…

It’s early afternoon as I hike into this high meadow and see the glacier. I’ve been alone on the trail for days but now, suddenly, there are carnival tents! She never said anything about this! A barker sits in his cage and eyes me cautiously. “What is this place?” I ask. He points to red lettering on a bright yellow banner that announces: “The Only Real House of Mirrors.” Smaller, black letters say, “Enter at your own risk.” “How much?” I ask.

“I’m having trouble putting all of this together,” I say to the couple behind me. “Us too,” they laugh. We’re standing in a shallow basin of rock above permanent snowfields — the entire sky open to us on a cloudless, windless night. In the Southwest I see Sagittarius approach the…

I’ve been traveling cross country for almost three days, away from the well-marked trails. My days are filled with the sounds of buzzing insects, wind, and the purling of the stream that I have been following. I have neither visitors nor visions as companions. The world seems quite ordinary. …

I’ve hunched down in a shallow depression, above tree line, on one side of the ridge of rock I have been traversing. There’s no time for me to move lower — the thunderheads are only moments away, above and below me, spanning my entire field of view. …

The mountain is in cloud this morning and I wake in a mist that, having deposited a fine layer of dew on the outer skin of my sleeping bag, now stands sentinel in patches throughout the clearing. I brace myself to the cold, dress, and walk stiffly down to the…

“That psychologist you mentioned earlier. What was his name?” I look over to see my friend emptying soup powder into a cup of hot water held by his wife. She stirs it and sips a bit before passing it back to him. It is late afternoon and we have been…

“This is nice!” I tell myself. I am sitting on a narrow rock ledge, secured to a thousand foot wall of granite by a climber’s harness, several lengths of one-inch tubular nylon, and three carefully placed wedges of metal alloy known to rock climbers as chocks. My feet dangle over…

“Are you a Christian?” It is a windless night and the only other sound is the hiss of butane from my small camp stove. “No,” I answer. “I’m a scientist. I left my superstitions behind me long ago.” I surprise myself with the bitterness in my words. I arrived at…