Standing with my son at the edge of Sarajevo’s Latin Bridge, where two bullets set the 20th century on fire, I could almost smell the gunpowder. Part 1 of a five-part series on bridges — what they join, what breaks them, and why we must keep building them.

“Don’t get happy!” came the thundering voice from the sidelines. It was a classic saying of the late Norm Walker, my football coach, English teacher, poet, wisdom-giver, and wonderful man in high school at Holderness School. It sounded strange at first blush, but made sense the longer one played for Coach Walker: he hated cockiness, […]

The flakes stung my cheeks, wind whipped, swirling through pines swaying in the gale. It was only 25 degrees or so, not cold for this valley this time of year, but cold enough to feel icy tendrils snaking up my extremities. I wanted to go, to move, to get warm. But not yet. I came […]

Years ago, I was wandering with Pete McBride through trash piles on the outskirts of Rishikesh, India. We were filming the final bits of our film Holy (un)Holy River, and had come to the local dump to document the effluvia seeping from it into the nearby, sacred Ganges River. We knew what to expect: a […]