tom dearduff

Back in the day, Dad would take me to Grundy County Speedway to watch old, beat-up junkers take laps around the dirt track until each car...

As the plane descended towards the runway, the yellow streetlights and shadow-strewn snow below me began to take a clearer shape—tiny...

I have never been more pulled in opposite directions than at 15:00 on 2 January 2016. Half of me was desperate for more sleep—an hour...

I only hit the snooze button once, and when the alarm rang again at 08:15, I slipped out of my sleeping bag and tried to make as little...

Emerald serpentine dreams were disturbed by sixteen squeaky mattresses and a drove of drunk Brazilians; but the worst of it was the all...

At the crack of dawn – which wasn’t until a well-rested 09:00 – three phones simultaneously began buzzing, and the three of us clambered...

My mind’s eye panned across a dark and quiet room where the delimiter of a digital clock flashed red through the haze of moonlight. And...

Around 08:00, Joey shook me from a sleep that was just as deep as the glacier about which I was dreaming. My feet stumbled to the...

The wild weather patterns continued all day long. A wall of rain forced us to pull over on the shoulder as we passed into another one of...

When our alarms started ringing at 08:30, the sun was still deep below the horizon; it seemed that the rest of the world was asleep. The...

As with every other early morning in Iceland, I was torn between two very good things: being asleep and being awake. The still blue hue...

Not much can be said about our final morning in Iceland. Our bags were packed and loaded in the hush of wild things caught stirring in...