For me, sitting around a campfire is a fantastic place to spend hours reading. In anticipation of this luxurious time, throughout the year I set aside a few books that will be ideal for travel. After our time together in Mexico my writer friend Steph Kilen gifted me just such a book – perfect for reading at the fire and contemplating on the next day’s hike through the woods. Contents May Have Shifted: A Novel by Pam Houston has vignettes that have remained with me for miles of hiking, as I have stared into the campfire, and filled the time driving highway 101. As soon as Kyle is done reading it I will begin it again.

From Contents May Have Shifted: A Novel
by Pam Houston

Chapter 45. Lhasa Tibet (pg 98)

“How many statues of how many Buddhas? There are a thousand in one room alone. We enter a chamber that has all of the lessons of compassion on one side, all of the lessons of emptiness on the other. I say, “In America, we have a hard time understanding emptiness, ” and Tserting says, “In Tibet too, only the higher teachers understand emptiness. The common people, no.”

Mile Marker 400, 35x51