The sun was shining and the sky blue on the day they left Barter Island.  Jack Mahoney and Charlie Denman sailed east in Billy Patoquak's launch, following Lieutenant Leander Mack to Demarcation Bay near the Canadian border.  The other student workers had gone west with the expedition's chi… Read full post »

Some say Eskimos have twenty-four words for snow, but Jack Mahoney spent a summer on an island in the Arctic Ocean, and when he left he doubted that.  The summer after his freshman year he worked for a survey party on Barter Island, in a camp near the village of Kaktovik,/… Read full post »

One day sitting behind the hill that hid the highway, looking out to sea, Lisa said she heard something coming.  She sat listening then asked if I heard it.

    I said I heard it.

Lisa said she heard it more plainly here, on this side of… Read full post »

IS THE LOVE LIFE  

OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

A LOST CIVILIZATION

Recent archaeological findings have shaken what was perhaps our last and least debatable claim to the top rung of an imagined ladder of living creatures: we now know that man has not always been the… Read full post »