• Fiction

    Finding the Russian Masters

    by L.J. Bosela The wind whipped around him as the individual snowflakes landed about his shoulders, dropping as if they’d much rather be somewhere else rather than falling from the sky and turning the autumn landscape into a winter one. The leaves formed a brilliant carpet along the road, and the bare branches overhead sang low like ghosts moaning in the breeze. He didn’t notice, and wrapped his arms tighter around his abdomen to keep from shivering. His mother would have reminded him to have put on a heavier coat, but his father, in his perpetual stupor, hadn’t and so the next gust of wind washed his face in place…

  • Poetry

    Anagama

    by Nick Treinen There are galaxies in these pots, Says Tom and we watch sparks Cluster with stars as they whirl From the chimney with abandon. Front stoke, side stoke, damper shut And let elm, cottonwood and pine brew In a whispering bed of coals that tremble In wait; the plotting volcanic bowels. Or is she a dragon? Anagama, Her gut gorged with pots, breathes out. Tumbleweeds wither and ashes rustle away. As the sun rises on the fourth day, The world stops to let light fill Chino’s plain. Crickets hold their notes; in their dens The coyotes are still. No smoke rises. A lone darkling beetle crawls into sight,…

  • Nonfiction

    Intro to Trad Climbing

    by William Day The ground is flat beneath my inflated pad – no lumpy rocks or sticks or tussocks of tundra to disrupt my sleep. Compared to last fall, trekking through the Talkeetnas with Expedition Leadership, this feels luxurious. Alice Lake is a well-groomed campground just north of downtown Squamish, British Columbia. The roads are paved, the sites graded, trails regulated… there’s a shower house. You can even swim in the lake if you’d like. After spending last fall block camping here and there in the alpine tundra of Alaska, and all of May on the Chugach glaciers, it’s hard to believe this is an APU block course… Usually, during…

  • Nonfiction

    The Deconstruction of a Hypochondriacal Ego

    by Hillary Hafner Our world revolves around time and money. I believe a person’s moral standing is determined by how one chooses to spend one’s time and money, and that the most ethical way to spend time and money is benevolently. An individual’s responsibility is proportionate to their ability to affect. For example, corporations can influence multitudes of people and are now considered under law to be individuals. Thus, they ought to be affecting people positively and serving as examples of benevolence. However, we live in an egoist world and according to Hobbes, our egoism is innate. We are presented daily with choices-large and small- that give us the power…