Jason Lewis's Blog, page 6

Dark Waters finalist for ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year Awards

March 11, 2013—ForeWord Reviews is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2012 Book of the Year Awards. The finalists were selected from 1300 entries covering 62 categories of books from independent and academic presses. These books represent some of the best books produced by small publishing houses in 2012. For a full list of the finalists, searchable by genre, visit:botya.forewordreviews.com/finalists/2012/.

Over the next two months, a panel of sixty judges, librarians and booksellers only, will determine the winners. Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards, as well as Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction, will be announced at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in Chicago, Friday, June 28th, 6pm at The Pop Top Stage. Winners will also be announced on our website; on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+; and in our weekly email newsletter, ForeWord This Week. The winners of the two Editor’s Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each. ForeWord’s Independent Publisher of the Year will also be announced.

ForeWord’s Book of the Year Awards program was created to highlight the year’s most distinguished books from independent publishers. The awards announcement provides an additional publicity opportunity for publishers long after a book’s initial publication date. After months of perusing the list of submissions, librarians and booksellers eagerly anticipate this announcement of finalists—a valuable resource for discovering obscure titles from the world of indie publishing.

ForeWord Reviews, a quarterly print journal dedicated to reviewing independently published books, was established in 1998 to provide booksellers, librarians, agents, and publishing professionals with reviews of the best titles from small, alternative, and academic presses. ForeWord also provides a myriad of services to publishers, includinginternational trade representation, Book of the Year Awards, Clarion fee-for-review services, and an interactive website for the reading community.

Outside Magazine Q&A

It’s not often the media allows you to scratch below the surface of an expedition. Normally they just want the facts, best and worst moments, quarrels between team members – the usual tabloid drama. This time I got to delve a little deeper, revealing, amongst other things, regret for not valuing time with my late father. He tried introducing me to the wilderness, but as an immature teenager with authority issues I didn’t care.

My loss. My Perfect Adventure >>

BBC News – The Expedition feature goes live

“Jason Lewis was 26, broke and cleaning windows when he and a college friend decided to embark on an adventure around the world using only human power…”

Click here for the BBC featurette.

If you’d like to see the feature length film (an epic feat of endurance itself over many, many years by director/producer Kenny Brown) finally come to fruition, please visit our Indiegogo campaign to help raise the finishing funds. Lots of goodies up for grabs, including private edition copies of the DVD, signed books and photographs, private movie screenings, Associate Producer credits and more!

Big Dreams – The Expedition story

Do you dream big?

Join us on http://www.BBCNews.com/ on Monday 11 February 2013 for a new video series looking at people who dream big and go after their goals.

Check out the trailer by director/producer Kenny Brown and come back Monday for the full story.

BBC News features The Expedition story

Do you dream big?

Join us on http://www.BBCNews.com/ on Monday 11 February 2013 for a new video series looking at people who dream big and go after their goals.

Check out the trailer by director/producer Kenny Brown and come back Monday for the full story.

The Expedition Book 2 – The Tao of Porridge

August 5.  Wind: SE 15-20 knots. Heading: 170M. Position: 13°09’44”S
 151°32’82”E

“What’ve you eaten in the last twenty-four hours, Ms A?”

Eyes sunken and glazed, besieged by dark rings, April nurses a handful of raw oats. She sorts with thumb and forefinger, picking out a few loose grains and placing them in her mouth. The bones in her face protrude as she chews.

“A Cliff Bar,” she replies softly. “A GU energy sachet, and a tangerine.”

I shake my head. “Abso-lutely-useless. That’s not enough to sustain a fly.”

“It sustained me during my last shift,” she says defiantly, snatching at a steering toggle to correct Moksha’s heading.

“Maybe, but you’re losing too much weight, April. Soon we’ll be measuring your pedal rotations in RPC, not RPM.”

My partner stares at me nonplussed.

“Revolutions per century?”

It’s an underhand comment, especially in light of her unremitting seasickness, but it’s one of the few ways I can get her to eat. Becoming a burden to the voyage is still her biggest fear.

I spoon a dollop of cooked porridge onto a tin plate and hand it to her.

“I can’t eat anymore,” she groans. “I tried.”

As well as stubbornness—ironically, one of the reasons I chose her as a crewmate in the first place—things aren’t helped by April’s deep-seated hostility towards porridge. The Breakfast of Champions for the Scots translates to the Breakfast of Privation for Americans, the generally reviled oatmeal, synonymous with the hardships and austerities endured by their gruel-eating forebears in feudal Europe. Unfortunately, this can’t be helped. Following the Great Weevil Infestation of the last voyage when all the pancake mix was heaved overboard, porridge is the only breakfast option we have.

I push the bowl at her. “C’mon, Ms A. Gotta keep those legs turning. Surely it doesn’t taste that bad?”

She contemplates the glob with barely concealed revulsion. “Hmmm, looks delightful. And so much of it.”

“What do you mean? There’s hardly anything there.”

“How about half now, half later?”

“I don’t think so. We had an arrangement, remember?”

The evening before, we’d received word from John Castanha, April’s fellow teacher and personal trainer in Colorado. Monitoring the daily blogs, he, too, is concerned for her health:

April, the email read, if it hasn’t already, your body will start consuming its own muscles for fuel – unless you eat.

Best of luck – Coach John

PS. How many times a day do you vomit? Your fifth graders are looking forward to watching it on video.

Confronted with an opinion she trusts in matters of sports nutrition, April agreed to a deal. For every three square meals she chokes down, I will desalinate an extra litre of freshwater to put towards washing her hair.

“The porridge is getting cold, April. Do you want to wash your hair or not?”

“Yes, of course.”

I hand her a spoon. “Well then. Eat woman. If nothing else, eat for your country!”

She prods the now congealed mass as if it might spring to life. Reluctantly, she takes a tiny bite.

“You eat like a sparrow,” I scoff.

She puts the spoon down—glad of the excuse. “Well, I’ve never seen anyone consume food as fast as you do. You just woof it, woof it!”

Another email, this one from my father, has re-floated the idea of trying to reach Thursday Island instead of Cairns. As he points out, we have to make significant progress south, and soon, or face being wrecked somewhere along the 500-mile stretch of Barrier Reef north of Cooktown. Thursday Island is currently downwind of our position. We could be there in a week, complete customs and immigration formalities, and then continue down the west coast of Cape York to the mining town of Weipa. After making official landfall and the all-important media splash, April could be back in Colorado before school starts, leaving me to get stuck into fundraising for the next leg.

Oh that it were so simple! There is the small matter of navigating without charts through the complex reef systems of the Torres Straits. Captain William Bligh managed it in a twenty-three-foot open dory after being set adrift by the Bounty mutineers in 1789, but he had the benefit of canvas to prevail against the powerful winds and currents.

One possible solution is for Our Man Brown to drop the requisite charts from a light aircraft, like he did the cheese, beer and oranges north of the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Another is for my father to plot a passage through the reefs, and email us the latitude and longitude coordinates to plug into our GPS. Either way, bouncing like a pinball through the Torres Straits doesn’t fill me with the greatest confidence. Just a few hundred yards off course—not inconceivable given our limited horsepower—and we’d be finished.

“Let’s give it another twenty-four hours,” I say to April after we’ve discussed both options. “Decide between Cairns and Thursday Island after our next position fix.”

That evening, I fire up the laptop to type the lesson plan April has prepared in her head. She dictates as she pedals, too sick to look at the screen herself. At least three hours of every day is dedicated to educational outreach: updating the blog, creating a lesson extension for schools, editing photos, a video clip, then uploading it all through the tortuously slow satellite modem. Today’s mathematics lesson is devoted to how many times April pukes in a 24-hour period.

Being kids, they’ll love it.

*   *   *

All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis

>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.

The Expedition Book 2 – A Dodgem Ride in the Twilight Zone

August 2.  Wind: SSE 30 knots. Heading: 210M. Position: 12°48’68”S
 152°35’42”E

The morning of the fifteenth day breaks cold and dreary with relentless rain, the ocean windswept. An eerie blue light penetrates the cabin, revealing a silhouetted form that sways in the half-light. Eyes closed, fist propping up her chin, April dozes as she pedals. A green lava-lava tied across the stern window is ready to catch her head when it falls.

The wind has veered to south-southeast in the night, and freshened to thirty knots with forty-knot gusts. The best we can now manage is 210 degrees magnetic, taking us diagonally over the backs of the sweeping rollers, some of which shape-shift into spitting balls of liquid rage and target the cockpit with laser-like precision. We’re back to being constantly wet and longing for the sun. This voyage is becoming a dodgem ride in the Twilight Zone, I scribble in my journal, with complimentary buckets of water dumped over our heads…

Normally, I prefer the livelier conditions, far preferable to a dull, millpond existence with the sun beating down. But when everything is soaked with no foreseeable prospect of drying out, the ocean wears you down twice as fast.

Our 24-hour fix is predictably disastrous. As well as the by now familiar double-digit west, we’ve been driven two miles north. North! Going backwards dredges up memories of the dreaded countercurrent between Hawaii and Tarawa. Deploying the sea anchor would be pointless. To win back the lost ground, we’ll have to do it the hard way. I’m just hoping beyond hope this is only a temporary weather anomaly, not the seasonal norm.

“I don’t know what day it is,” April suddenly announces, giving voice to an air of disillusionment that has crept into the voyage. “I don’t know the date. I don’t even know the time.” She laughs the hollow laugh of someone who is beyond caring. “I just know this ocean continues to move in the wrong direction for me.”

Increasingly during graveyard shifts, I catch myself turning my ocean ring like a devotional prayer wheel, contemplating the mercurial temperament of the she-ocean I married. Things started out well between us. After tying the knot outside the Golden Gate Bridge, the crossing to Hawaii was idyllic, as harmonious as any honeymooning couple could have hoped for. A slight misunderstanding surfaced in the doldrums mid-Pacific, but by the Solomon Islands, our relationship was back on track. On this voyage especially, I’ve taken great care to remain attentive to her moods in the hope of pre-empting any furious outbursts. Yet, for all the pampering, my thalassic bride appears wholly bent on our destruction, capable of only the briefest glimpses of matrimonial charity.

I wonder. Perhaps she takes exception to having a woman on board?

*   *   *

All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis

>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.

The Expedition Book 2 – Reefs and Cabbages

July 28.  Wind: SSE 25 knots. Heading: 180M. Position: 11°30’13”S
 155°06’78”E

I stare in disbelief at the two-tone screen of the GPS. In the past 24 hours we’ve lost forty-two miles west, and gained only a handful south. Disaster looms once more. To avoid running aground on the reef east of Tagula, we need to make fifteen miles south over the next fifteen hours. The likelihood of this happening is slim given the recent trend.

All we can do different is try to increase our RPMs. April ups hers from forty to forty-five. I aim for fifty-two. We also shorten the daytime shifts from three to two hours, and the night-time ones from four to three to optimize performance.

“It’s like pushing a loaded wagon up a hill,” April remarks, her knees visibly straining.

I nod. “It’s going to take a full-on effort.”

“Better cowboy up then!”

Good old April, I think.

At the next shift change, I power up the GPS. April sits on the passenger seat, anxious to hear whether she’s achieved the all-important one-mile-south-per-hour ratio.

“So what happens if I don’t meet my quota?”

While the GPS is looking for satellites, I fold my sweat towel into thirds, arrange it against the back of the pedal seat, and get cranking. “Then I’m afraid you’ll leave me no choice.”

Her face falls. “No choice?”

“But to get out the cat.”

“The cat?”

“O’nine tails.”

“Ooh! Promise?”

Not exactly the response I was expecting. “Tell you what, Ms April. If we miss this bloody reef, we’ll celebrate with an extra special treat, okay?”

Thirteen hours later…

I read off the latest coordinates, and pencil them onto the Admiralty chart draped over my knees. April stops pedalling to hear the verdict. It’s the first time in three days the cranks have stopped longer than the sixty odd seconds it takes to switch positions.

Pencil wobbling between thumb and forefinger, I smile at my exhausted co-pedaller. “I have some excellent news to report, April. In the last fifteen hours we’ve made eighteen miles south, five of them during your last shift.”

She beams with pleasure.

“Well done.” I rat-tat-tat the pencil triumphantly on the chart. “Extra tot of rum for the crew tonight, boatswain!”

Missing Tagula Reef is huge, putting us back on track to reach Cairns. As promised, I extend to April the honour of being the first to sample The Cabbage, which we’ve been saving as long as possible. She unlashes it from the cabin roof, and delicately peels away the spoiled, outer leaves, revealing a pristine inner membrane that glistens with the polished luminosity of a living brain.

“Jeepers!” she gasps, handling the vegetable like an ancient treasure, turning it slowly between her fingertips. “Just look at the size of it. Beautiful isn’t it?” She tears off a leaf and takes a bite, eyes closing in ecstasy. “This is pure self-indulgence. Forgive me, but I love cabbage. Loved it ever since I was a child.” She takes another bite, the greenery snapping like toast. “Absolutely the best cabbage I’ve ever tasted… been dreaming about it…” She’s rambling now, delirious with pleasure. “So expensive… but so good…”

*   *   *

All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis

>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.

The Expedition Book 2 – Seasickness Takes Hold

July 25.  Wind: ESE 10 knots. Heading: 180M. Position: 10°39’26”S
 156°51’46”E

Hoorah! A lull in the trades has allowed us to claw twenty-five miles south, enough to scrape past Pocklington Reef. If we can next avoid Rossel and Tagula Islands, we’ll have a straight shot to Australia.

I film April as I pedal. She’s sitting wedged across the inside of the cabin, writing her first email.

“Success?” I ask.

“Success.” She sighs heavily, closes the laptop lid, and removes her purple-rimmed glasses. “But now I’m going to have to lie down for just a quick minute.”

“Queasy?”

She nods as she pries off a sodden white sock. “Looking down seems to be my Achilles heel.” The soles of her feet are beginning to rot, the skin white and flaking like spoiled cheddar cheese. Painful lesions mark the straps of her ill-fitting sandals—the reason for the socks.

“Just tell yourself, ‘I’m not going to throw up… I’m not going to throw up…’”

I make it sound easier than it is. Seasickness is one of the most debilitating conditions known to mankind, the marine equivalent of mad cow disease, lobotomizing its victims and reducing them to the competency of a day-old baby.

April makes a face. “God, will it ever, ever get better?”

“It will.”

“I’m really tired of throwing up, though.”

“I know. Keep in there. You’ll be a salty sea bitch by the end of this, gobbling vindaloos for breakfast with a force ten blowing.”

She looks despairingly out over the lumpy blue, holding a hand to her forehead. “You think?”

“Absolutely.”

Privately, however, I’m starting to wonder. We’ve been out a week. If anything her seasickness seems to be getting worse.

“Okay,” she whispers. “It’s just taking longer than I thought.” She works her way feet first into the Rathole, expels another deep sigh, and lowers her head onto a rolled-up fleece that serves as a communal pillow. With her eyes closed and arms crossed over her chest, I can’t help thinking of a corpse ready for burial at sea.

After an hour of sleep, April rallies. Determined to pull her own weight, she insists on cooking the evening meal while I pedal. Balancing the breadboard on her knees, she begins peeling an onion, riding the waves as she would a bronco back in Colorado. Then her eyes glaze and her face turns white. She reels like a drunk, exhaling noisily. Setting the board down and scrambling to her feet, she leans over the side and begins retching violently. Only bile comes up. All she’s been able to hold down in the last 24 hours is a little water.

“It’s like morning sickness only worse,” she groans, slumping back to the passenger seat and covering her face with her hands. To make matters worse, she’s been having lucid nightmares, a side effect of the anti-malarials we’re taking after the mosquito-ridden Solomon Islands.

“Last night it was a rollercoaster. The car I was in climbed higher and higher. As we started downwards, that first swoop in the stomach was terrifying. So real, like it was actually happening! Then I noticed someone standing below the tracks. It was my daughter, Lacey. She was just a toddler, her little arms reaching up to me. Except her hands were gone, sliced at the wrists—”

She halts partway through the sentence, the imagery too disturbing to continue. “I’ve had other dreams, too, where I’ve felt threatened, or overwhelmed by an aura of tremendous evil, the pit of my stomach filled with impending doom…”

The wind strengthens during the night. By the morning of the eighth day, cresting waves are once again pounding our port beam, the boat shuddering with every blow. Despite this, April is determined to carry out something she’s been looking forward to since day one.

Washing her hair.

“I can’t arrive in Cairns looking like the Coral Sea cowgirl with high seas hair now can I?”

“Why not?” I counter. “Better high seas hair than Barbie hair. No one will ever believe we’ve just pedalled a thousand miles through some of the roughest water in the world if you step off the boat wearing hair curlers.”

My objection is overruled. Gathering up her bottles and a flask of vinegar to untangle the knots, April edges gingerly to the stern, and secures the paraphernalia with bungee cords before any of it rolls overboard. She then begins dousing her hair with seawater using a plastic tea mug, at the same time hugging the rear compartment with her thighs to maintain balance. Moksha bucks and heaves, hissing waves collapsing unnervingly close.

With her wetted hair flailing in the wind, April massages a dollop of shampoo into her scalp. A wall of water suddenly explodes, engulfing the stern. My crewmate reappears a second later, hanging on for dear life to the safety line, eyes screwed shut from the stinging shampoo.

“This is a pain!” she gasps, spitting out a gob of seawater. “A real pain in the ass!”

Having a woman aboard, I’m realizing, is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there isn’t the same clash of egos you get with two men. None of the predictable sucking of teeth and “Ooh, you don’t want to do it like that” every time something needs fixing. Women are easier on the eye, too, and in April’s case stronger psychologically. “My ambition is to be like the Energizer Bunny,” she’d declared after refusing to let me pedal her 3:00 am graveyard shift. “Known for going and going.” Woozy with seasickness, she’d clambered out of the warm cocoon of the Rathole into the freezing cockpit, and, without a murmur of complaint, wriggled into her waterlogged socks, and got to work.

On the other hand, April’s long, blonde hair has become an integral part of on-board life. Hairballs lurk in the porridge. Tresses work their way around the cranks. Even the little twelve-volt cooling fan snarls with loose strands and has to be dismantled every few days. And the novelty of being repeatedly smacked in the face by a barrage of soggy underwear while pedalling is fast wearing thin.

Smirking, I stand in the open hatch and watch April do battle with her arsenal of bottles, combs, hairbrushes, and razors. She’s soaked and bedraggled, hair plastered to her skin like a drowned cat. Keeping a firm hold of the safety line, she tries releasing a tangle with her free hand.

“Just like taking a shower back home, eh Ms A?” I pick up the camcorder and press record.

“Oh, just like,” she replies through clenched teeth. “Just like.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Take that camera away for a start, so I can rinse off.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

She scowls at me through sodden locks. “I’ve got nothing on underneath, and I’m freezing. I just wanna rinse off and get dry.”

“Alright, alright, keep your knickers on—or rather off!”

“Yeah, well, sometimes a person can’t always be Mary flippin’ Sunshine.And just remember, your short and curlies are within my reach.”

Back in the central compartment, I enquire as to whether the whole exercise has been worth it. April’s teeth are chattering. Her shoulders are stooped with cold. She clings with grim determination to the port side oar like it’s the last life raft off the Titanic.

“Most definitely. It was a wonderful experience.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Really?”

She looks away. “Well… actually… no, it wasn’t a wonderful experience. It was an awful experience. But it feels good to be clean.” A lone seabird swoops low over the white caps, skimming effortlessly using the deftest of wing movements. “Mentally,” she adds wistfully, following the bird, “I think it’s worth keeping a few routines from land. It’s the little things that make all the difference out here, I’m finding, that help you stay human.”

I’d come to the same conclusion on the Atlantic, adopting pet projects—Created Value tasks I called them—to trigger involvement and sustain interest, making life aboard more bearable.

“But I preferred your hair encrusted with salt,” I joke. “Complemented the swashbuckling look. Rather suited you, I thought.”

“Easy for you to say, Mister Lewis. You’re going bald.”

Touché.

“Talking of which,” I say, reaching for the kitchen utensils in the starboard side netting, “I’ve thought of a way to keep your hair from getting matted in future.” The blue-handled scissors are pockmarked with corrosion and streaked with rust, the edges blunt as hell. They’ve been used for a variety of tasks on the boat, everything from scraping barnacles, to cutting rotten carrots, to pruning toenails. And ever since my brass dividers went missing on Tulagi, I’ve been using them to plot our daily position.

“Come to Freddy!” I snap the blades. “Snip, snip!”

April looks horrified. “Get away from me with that thing.”

The wind slackens late afternoon, the rain peters out, and for a few delightful hours before sunset, the Coral Sea draws breath and turns its malicious eye elsewhere. April emerges reborn after two hours in the Rathole. She sits on the passenger seat, her hair straight and free of knots, looking like a freshly wrapped tamale in her green lava-lava. Her efforts, I admit, have been worthwhile. She stares out across the undulating rollers, and for the first time since Coral Sea Corner the nearest thing to serenity creeps into her face.

“Don’t worry, Mister Lewis,” she murmurs. “I’ll look every bit the pirate princess when I step off this boat in Australia.”

I stop pedalling for a moment to slip Van Morrison’s Moondance into the CD player. The sun sinks smouldering into the sea as the legendary Belfast man’s nasal whine fills the cabin, punctuated by staccato stabs of brass.

We were born before the wind

Also younger than the sun

Ere the bonnie boat was won

As we sailed into the mystic…

April taps out the rhythm on the same oar she was clinging to earlier. Funny, I think, how music can change perspective so dramatically. One minute you’re cursing your gypsy soul for getting you into such a cluster fuck in the first place. Next, you’re celebrating how fortunate you are to be experiencing a truly magical domain few will ever see.

Hark, now hear the sailors cry

Smell the sea and feel the sky

Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic…

The next morning I download email. My parent’s neighbour has just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Richard is otherwise healthy, in his early forties, energetic, funny, intelligent, with a loving wife and now only three weeks to live. Without any warning, it’s all over.

At the core of life, I’m reminded, is transience. The good times, the bad times, they’re all illusions—especially the bad times. “This too shall pass,” as the saying goes. The only thing you can count on is that nothing ever remains the same.

*   *   *

All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis

>> More excerpts from The Seed Buried Deep, part two in The Expedition trilogy, will be posted in the coming weeks prior to US & Canadian publication.

The Expedition Book 2 – One Wild, Wild Night

July 20.  Wind: SE 15-20 knots. Heading: 210M. Position: 09°21’66”S
 158°28’28”E

Torrential rain all morning. The inside of the central compartment resembles a Chinese laundry with sodden bras, knickers, and towels swinging from the emergency oars. In the last twenty-four hours we’ve managed eleven miles south to thirty-three west, a ratio of one to three. This isn’t good enough. Our course over ground marked on the chart now has us on a collision course with the easternmost reef of the Louisiades Archipelago, Pocklington Reef.

April’s seasickness has also worsened. On Tulagi I’d confidently informed her that it would take only a day to acclimatize. “Two tops, then you’ll be a hundred per cent.” I was wrong.

Quivering flashes light up the southern horizon as night draws in. With every stuttering discharge, the blackening sea glistens like a mirrored sheen of crude oil. It’s my turn to take the first stint in the Rathole. I wake to a yelp, and thunderclaps booming all around. The nightlight on my watch reads 00:56. Time to relieve April…

My crewmate looks wide-eyed in the beam of my headlamp, not a trace of tiredness in her chalky face. Not many things unnerve April, but lightning is clearly one of them. “It’s one wild, wild night,” she whispers. “Rain. Lightning. Wind blowing like crazy. Horizontal sheets of water. It’s been really, really black…”

She leans forward and squints at the red compass light. “And all I’ve seen is that 180 to 210. Seems like I’ve been going around in a big circle all night.”

Removing the wooden chock and shifting the pedal seat back for my longer legs, she peels away her sweat-drenched towel and we make the switch, shuffling past each other in the darkness. April makes a beeline for the still warm sleeping bag, while I orient Moksha’s bow due south, and get to work.

*  *  *

All Rights Reserved – © 2012 Jason Lewis