The Most Important Guest

by N. Chrystine Olson

The firing was quick and not completely unexpected. Bipolar craziness passing for management within the Recreation Services department of semi-posh, time share resort had prevailed. One highly qualified woman had been decapitated six days before, and as...

Okay, I guess my history lessons were incomplete in North Carolina public school. I just found out about the amazing Nellie Bly, a young woman of the Victorian Age who didn't behave at all like a person of her age and gender was expected to. In the late 1880's she broke jounalistic barriers, becoming...

A friend of mine from Vegas asked me if I could ever handle being out of the States in March. You see, I'm a college hoops junkie.  This time of year I am one of those trying to watch every game, have more than a couple bracket sheets going, talk tourney to anyone with an interest.  I'm...

Well...my contributions to the Matador Community helped land me a dream job at a beautiful, tucked away  resort ( one I failed to mention in my musings on the Idaho Panhandle). This summer I'm getting paid to take folks huckleberry picking, whitewater raftiing and mountain...

I have a new deal breaker when it comes to traveling companions...the frequent use of "I was gonna". This happened on a recent road trip on the first truely sunny days in the Intermountain West, wending south with a woman who wanted to see Idaho from my ex-forest ranger perspective. A lovely...

The cover of July's National Geographic in 2007 was all about malaria. Today  (April 25th) .is Malaria Day as declared by the World Health Organization. Over half a billion people contract the disease each year;. a plague especially hard on countries in sub-Saharan Africa,...

In college there was a crew of us who played Risk most Saturday nights, Milton Bradley's game of world domination. I wish I had a set today to compare the world view and country names from the board back then to the geographic deliniations today. I've been pondering politics of late: not the cat...

No, this is not what I say in my time away from the computer mining a few decades of traveling stories into some sort of cognitive narrative. Besides being an election year in the U.S. and the Year of the Rat on the Chinese Lunar calendar, this year is dedicated to a very famous vegetable....

Imbali and the Cheshire Cat Moon

You’d think sitting six feet above a four thousand pound animal was a regular occurrence for this five year old girl. It is. She looks like I did at her age: her once tow headed locks now dishwater blonde. Only difference is the eye color, her’s are deep brown; mine...

A Nod to Marlin Perkins

My Barbies did not marry Ken and move to the Malibu Dream house. Instead my ill proportioned plastic beauties threw ad ladles, roasted pigs on spits and ran around topless, wearing only well placed loin cloths. To this day the photos of "Primitive Barbie" camp are the favorites...

The snow is finally melting in my cozy Northern Idaho home. The moose are no longer cruising in front of my house to nibble on my plum tree. I saw my first robin today, have the windows open; it's a balmy 45 degrees according to the thermometer on the douglas fir by the back porch. I'm home, yet my mind...