Welcome to the Feature Essay Section
Here we feature a selection of essays from past issues.
The Crisis of Education by Theodore Richards
Appears in The Wayfarer, Autumn/Winter Issue 2022 | Visit Store» Crisis of Education: Childhood in the Age of Loneliness Contemplative Column by Theodore Richards From the melting polar caps to violence in our cities to the rise of fascist governments, ours is an...
A Posthumous Conversation with Wayfarer Rachel Carson
by Iris Graville, from the Spring/Summer issue which is available now. Nearly every issue of this journal includes interviews with wayfarers, described as those whose inner compass is ever-oriented to truth, wisdom, healing, and beauty in their own wandering. These...
LIVING IN THE DARK: The Lineage of the National Park Service
A Travel Column by L.M. Browning from the Spring 2021 Special Double Issue Sequoia National Park,Sierra Nevada Mountains, California The sun was setting and the misty blanket of night was rising at the base of the towering Sequoia grove. I’d wandered off the beaten...
Our Angel of the Get Through | An Interview with Andrea Gibson
From our Autumn 2019 Edition | Visit our store to treat yourself to the full issue in either print or digital format. | Browse the Store› The Wayfarer of our Autumn 2019 Issue | Shop Now All Rights Reserved. Our Angel of the Get Through A Conversation...
Going Home Again | Wild Silence Travel Column
From our Autumn 2019 Edition | Visit our store to treat yourself to the full issue in either print or digital format. | Browse the Store› Going Home Again By L.M. Browning “What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in...
Smoking on My Deathbed by Theodore Richards
The Wayfarer of our Spring 2019 Issue Look for the Print and eEdition on: Amazon - B&N - Our Store “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” —Dylan Thomas My five-year-old is, in many ways, my easiest child, overall. She’s the kind of child that teachers love,...
The Forest for the Trees by William Huggins
The Wayfarer of our Spring 2019 Issue Look for the Print and eEdition on: Amazon – B&N – Our Store Three nights in a row coyotes wake me. In our tent, the thin membrane that allegedly protects us from the wild outside, my wife and daughter and three rescue dogs...
Lunans and the Grace of Gravity by Gail Collins-Ranadive
From our Spring 2019 Edition | Visit our store to treat yourself to the full issue in either print or digital format. | Browse the Store› The Wayfarer of our Spring 2019 Issue Look for the Print and eEdition on: Amazon – B&N – Our Store “...the universe, by...
Attentive Idling by Iris Graville
Attentive Idling by Staff Writer Iris Graville My compulsion to accomplish is fueled by a computer the size of the pack of cigarettes my mom used to slide into her purse. Portable devices allow us to learn foreign languages, listen to books, and attend...
Writer in a Bulletproof Vest by Iris Graville
Writer in a Bulletproof Vest by Iris Graville Almost ten years ago, I got hooked on “Castle,” a television series about New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives. Cop shows don’t usually appeal to me, but in this one, main character Rick Castle was a...
Light-time by Gail Collins-Ranadive
The Enviromental Column (Photo Above my Issue Feature Photographer, James Scott Smith) Binge reading back issues of The Wayfarer for this essay, I sit out on my Southern Nevada patio in light that is so vivid I can almost believe that it is just now...
Life & the Arts | A New Column by Eric D. Lehman
A New Column by Eric D. Lehman Recently, I was wandering through a vaulted museum hall, steel and concrete and glass packed with abstract sculptures that look vaguely like intestines, paintings resembling organized vomit, and lines of bored...
A Something Less than Nothing by Joseph Little
by Joseph Little An excerpt from Letters from the Other Side of Silence Appears in The Wayfarer, Spring 2017 Issue (Vol 6. Issue 6) | Visit the Store» Here’s the truth: Something happened on that volcano in Guatemala. I’m just not sure what. Steve was in the lead,...
The Meadow by Francesca G. Varela
by Francesca G. Varela ♦ Photography by Duncan George Appears in the Spring 2016 Issue of The Wayfarer. Order a print or the full e-edition here» I remember the night we heard the coyotes. It was summer, or almost summer, and I was still a teenager. Although long past...
A Light Inside the Mountain by Jason Kirkey
Rewilding Column by staff writer Jason Kirkey • Feature Photographer: Duncan George Appears in the Spring 2016 Issue of The Wayfarer. Order a print or the full e-edition here» There is a glen in Ireland. The entrance is difficult to find—you have to know what you’re...
The Wine in the Brine: Walking Cape Cod with Thoreau by Eric D. Lehman
This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2) Visit our bookstore to purchase an e-edition or print edition. Go to the Store» After days of planning and packing, I forgot the boots. My wife Amy and I had driven out to Cape...
Body Prayer
by Mary Petiet This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2) Visit our bookstore to purchase an e-edition or print edition. Go to the Store» All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well....
Anam Cara
by Benjamin DeVos This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2) Visit our bookstore to purchase an e-edition or print edition. Go to the Store» When my eighty-five year old grandmother arrived at our house for a belated...
The Role of the Trickster in a Time of Change
From Rigid Religion to Fluid Interspirituality; From Industrial Capitalism to Earth Community Contemplative Column by Staff Writer Theodore Richards The following article contains experts from, The Great Re-imagining: Spirituality in an Age of Apocalypse available...
In the Narrows: Lascaux II and the Geography of Hope
by Leslie Van Gelder This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2) Visit our bookstore to purchase an e-edition or print edition. Go to the Store» When the replica of Lascaux was built into a low hillside near the original...
Altruistic Hiking
by L.M. Browning Featuring field photos by the author. This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2) Visit our bookstore to purchase an e-edition or print edition. Go to the Store» May 4, 2015 | Napatree Point, Rhode...
Pointed Reminders: Revolutionary Obelisks by David K. Leff
Featured in Vol.4 Issue 1 | The Spring 2015 Edition Narrative is an important means by which to gain access to the meanings of the obelisk. —Grant Parker, Stanford University It needled the sky like a stone rocket aimed for the clouds. As I gazed heavenward along the...
Building a Temple of the Heart by Perle Besserman
Featured in Vol.4 Issue 1 | The Spring 2015 Edition Photo by Ryan Upp, Feature Photographer of the Issue Building a Temple of the Heart by Perle Besserman When my husband and I first met as residents in a Honolulu Zen center, we were each holding fast to some very...
Listening to Our Listening by Gary Whited
Featured in Vol.4 Issue 1 | The Spring 2015 Edition Last summer I sat on top of Hurricane Point overlooking Silver Lake in central New Hampshire. Wind sounded through scant trees on the steep little hill mingled with the hum of a distant motorboat, then two of...
Summer People by Gail Collins-Ranadive
Featured in Vol.4 Issue 1 | The Spring 2015 Edition Abandoned!! I felt utterly abandoned, stranded in front of the neighborhood ice cream stand, reading the ‘closed for the season’ sign. It was after Labor Day, the official end of summer, and 25,000 copies of...
Independent Books, Independent Minds
Our Indie Bookstore Spotlight: Bank Square Books, Mystic Connecticut
The River and its Way
Article Appears in The Wayfarer Vol 3 Iss 4 | Winter 2014 | Visit our Shop to Order» Image by Duncan George | Feature Artist for the Issue Essay by Jason Kirkey When I was very young my family lived on a ridge that divides two watersheds. On the eastern side of...
The Last Hermit in New England
The Last Hermit in New England by Eric D. Lehman, Autumn 2014
It’s Complicated: Living the Simple Life in Rural New England
It’s Complicated: Living the Simple Life in Rural New England by Gail Collins-Ranadive
The Lake by Shannon Viola
Featured in Vol. 3 Issue 3, Autumn 2014 Header Image by © Leslie M. Browning I. Videnda My cousins, Corey, Lindsey, Hailey, and I call our grandmother Nanny, and our Nanny lives in a log cabin in Litchfield, Maine. Across from her street, there is a lake. We spend our...
The Men Died First
Appeared in Vol 2 Issue 3 (Summer 2014) Header: © Kate Mereand-Sinha by Sharlene Cochrane In my family, the men died first; the women carried on. Women in three consecutive generations faced the death of their husbands from early, unexpected illness. Necessity shaped...
Being the Lone Bannerman: Advice for New Writers on Getting Published
Edited by L.M. Browning Appeared in Vol 2 Issue 3 Each week Homebound Publications receives numerous phone calls and emails from unpublished writers who are looking for guidance as they desperately try to break into the industry. Each person usually asks...
Loneliest Beach In The Megalopolis
Walking And Dreaming On A City’s Wild Shore by David K. Leff Appeared in The Wayfarer Vol 2 Issue 1 Header photo by Jacquie Roecker It’s a breezy, cloud studded summer day on Connecticut’s longest undeveloped and unprotected barrier beach less than an hour’s drive...
