Astro Alchemy

My Virgo mother disliked camping almost as much as she did gardening. The dirt! The bugs! It was more than her fastidious nature could handle. Each summer, however, she’d put on her tennies and sun hat to accompany us to church camp in the local mountains – but only because

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”  –George Eliot Many years ago, I turned down a job that would have given me an exotic, international life.  I’ve often wondered what things would have been like if I had gone down that path. What fabulous country

Melanie Knecht was born with spina bifida and uses a wheelchair – but she still manages to pursue her life-long love for camping. Trevor Hahn became blind five years ago after contracting glaucoma, but hasn’t let it stop him from scaling tall peaks. The adventurous Fort Collins, Colorado, duo met

An aboriginal tribe had embarked on a long journey. After walking for a few days, they made camp and paused for another couple of days before moving on. When asked why they did this, one of them replied, “We need to stop and rest so that our souls can catch

I have always been a big fan of Liz Gilbert’s. Though I’ve yet to read her latest work, City of Girls, I’ve devoured everything else she has written, from Eat Pray Love to Big Magic. Maybe it’s because we’re both Cancerians, but I resonate strongly with the deeply feminine themes

I moved from L.A. to Sedona, Arizona in the late Eighties, seeking refuge from big city life. But as I soon discovered, the once-charming little town was fast becoming an overcrowded tourist destination. Jeep tours stirred up dust and noise near awe-inspiring red rocks once sacred to the Anasazi. And

Jean Houston often took her dog on after-school walks down Park Avenue in New York City. One day, distracted by grief over her parents’ divorce, the 14-year-old girl accidentally knocked down a frail old gentleman. But he just laughed as she helped him to his feet, and thus began an

After tending to a sick relative for hours, Peggy came home exhausted and fell into bed. At some point in the night, a noise awakened her. Groggy, she stumbled into the hallway to investigate – where she encountered a stranger. “Are you lost?” she inquired, instinctively putting her hand on

It was a beautiful autumn morning in 1996 at Mike Reynolds’ headquarters outside Taos, New Mexico.  I dipped my hands into the rich, brown mud and set a dollop atop a low wall. Smoothing it out with a trowel, I then nestled two soda bottles a few inches apart and

“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again.  It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all

Recently, a friend and I visited Old Town here in San Diego to seek Zoltar’s counsel. He had disappeared from his former location, so a manhunt was required. But at last we found him, in the foyer of the Alamo restaurant. Jumping up and down like kids, we fed our

Born with a cleft lip and eyes of two different colors, seven-year-old Madden Humphreys often came home in tears after bullies at his school called him “ugly” and even worse names. “It broke my heart,” his mother, Christina Humphreys of Tulsa, Oklahoma, told People Magazine. “He had no friends and

One stormy day, a distraught man walked far out onto a jetty, as high waves crashed around him. In deep despair, he thought how all he had to do was take one step forward, and his troubles would be over. At that moment, relates Sophy Burnham in A Book of