Stories & Lit

Musings on the world's oldest friendship in personal essays, memoirs, fiction, classics and, of course, humor.

by Laurie Priest

My friends knew that kayaking the Sea of Cortez was a big entry on my bucket list, so when I turned 50, we planned a February trip to Baja California to do just that. Over the years, this group of women and I had hiked and kayaked in some adventurous places, but little did I know that this trip would change my life and the life of a street dog in ways I never imagined.

Search and Rescue

by Leslie Morris

Mia’s long sleek body arcs over Switchgrass
and Side Oats, Antelope Horns and Butterfly Weed.
Her nose and flews quiver to pull in scent—feral
hogs and gunpowder, cat piss and deer scat.
But more: she tracks the disruption my body
has left in its wake, the displaced molecules
as they swirl through her neural scrollwork,
the air regrouping behind me, the erasure
of shape that still trails my trace
as I wait to be found.

Traveler

by Clay Carpenter

the dog sprawls in a different room
every two hours and I wonder if
each is a small vacation for her, bones
in Barcelona this morning chasing
birds in Istanbul in the afternoon
then digging a hole in Montana to
surface in time for dinner in Shanghai

Greyhounds of Avalon

by Laura Schenone

Set against Ireland’s green and rocky beauty and its harsh economic realities, The Dogs of Avalon is the story of a determined group of women who fight for the well being of ex-racing Greyhounds. Marion Fitzgibbon helped to found the County Galway sanctuary she named Avalon, is a model of compassion in action, and author Laura Schenone journeyed to Ireland to learn more about her work and what motivates her to do it.

Wildlife Researcher Recalls His Backcounty Co-pilot

by L. Jack Lyon

During the mid-1970s, I directed one part of a multi-agency study of the responses of elk to logging in the northern Rockies. My study involved an area in western Montana on which we mapped site-specific annual levels of elk use by counting pellet groups on contour transects. I was always accompanied—and often surprised—by my Norwegian Elkhound, Tigre, who was inclined to herd anything on four legs.

Shelter Stress Can Take Its Toll on Dogs

by Amy Sutherland

Sheila D’Arpino was the first in the country to complete a one-of a-kind program: a three-year postgraduate combined study of shelter medicine and animal behavior at the University of California–Davis’s well-regarded veterinary school. She had wanted to be a veterinarian since she was a child, but once the California native became one, she found it wasn’t enough.

On Responsibility

by Ann Patchett

I am not responsible for much. I do not have children who have to get to school on time and wear matching shoes and be taught the difference between right and wrong. I do not have a job in which the well being of a company or the safety of the nation or the health of anyone at all is resting on my shoulders. I have a couple of plants I must remember to water. I make a point of paying my taxes on time. I take care of myself, but that’s not worth mentioning. I pitch in and help all sorts of people when I can, but they are people who could find the same help elsewhere if I went on vacation.

Letter to Brigit

by Viggo Mortensen

I could not bring myself to take pictures of any of it, to take anything, although I did for a moment consider grabbing my camera to ensure that later on I’d have an image, some tangible visual record of the process of losing you. Maybe that momentary impulse came from fear that the emotional weight of participating in your last days as flesh-and-blood would eventually outweigh or alter the straight facts that photographs might hold.