My mother collects photographs. She has more than I could ever count stored in antiquated albums and now in a nebulous electronic cloud somewhere in the sky. She says they remind her of people long gone or perhaps just far away. Memories that she holds dear. Flies in amber, frozen in that precise moment when the button is triggered and the lens opens, turning life into hundreds of little pixels. I once asked her if she kn...

I stood, looking out at an untouched ocean of blue and white, comfortable in my heavy parka and knit tuque. It was peaceful on top of the mountain. And lonely, although I wondered if I’d brought that with me, cloaked in a silence that was too loud at times and too quiet at others; those times when I hoped it might drown out the howling storm within me. Breathless, I stared out over the natural beauty, ignoring the cold th...

His eyes were curious, his ears inquisitive. I wondered if he was a fan of Taylor Swift or if the sound of the ukulele touched at some primal memory. Or, maybe like me, he just liked the sound of the small waterfall that cascaded down the smooth time-worn granite on the other side of the creek. Maybe this was where he, like me, came to be alone with his thoughts. It had been a fluke discovering this place. One of the last...