“He Sets Me in the Stream” by David James Duncan
September/October 2007 issue

The old storytellers of India, according to my brother Peter, said that when you reached the end of even the longest story you should still be able to remember all the way back to the beginning. I have to work to remember what I had for lunch yesterday. Read more. 

1. If you shake hands with an evergreen tree and the branch bites you, that’s a spruce.
2. Insects rule the world, but they don’t talk about it.
3. The reason the ocean is salty is because all the animals have been peeing right in it since before there was even time. Read more. 

“To the Dairy Queen and Back” by John Landretti
January/February 2009 issue

My two boys, ages three and six, love a good bike ride and I take them out often. We travel on a single vehicle that includes a bicycle, a tag-along, and a trailer. My boys call this elaborate rig the “Burley Train.” Come Friday evenings, if the weather is fair, we board in the garage and make the long trip north to a Dairy Queen. Read more. 

“The Trumpet of the Swan” by Kim Todd
July/August 2009 issue

When I was five and my sister was two, my father started to lose his balance. He stumbled down the sidewalk, tripped up the stairs. Clumsiness became extreme. Newspapers were reporting that children who had radiation to reduce their tonsils were developing thyroid cancer as adults. He went in for a thyroid examination, only to have the doctor note his swaying and order a CT scan of his head instead. It showed a tumor on his brain stem. Read more. 

“Gaze Upon This World” by Amy Weldon
Spring 2018 issue

I’m biking through the dark in the smoky chill of October. Overhead, a great-horned owl gathers itself and lands on a snag, its swiveling, feather-crowned head wider than my palm. I stop the bike and stand still. For a while, the owl and I watch each other. Then, hearing some creaturely snap in the brush, it ungrips its branch and springs into the dark. Read more.