"Some Who Wander" is a short, but not sweet, piece of micro-nonfiction that appears at Instrinsick m_agazine._

What does micro-nonfiction mean? It means this creative work is less than a hundred words long, and it is an account of one of my many adventures while taking a walk. It turned out slightly better than the time I fell into a blackberry thicket and ended up with poison oak for weeks . . .

Because this tale is so swift, I'm not going to share a lead-in quote. Instead, I'll explain the story's title.

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Now, Tolkien is writing about Strider here, a ranger in Middle Earth who wanders purposefully through the wilds. Strider, of course, will soon be revealed to be Aragon, the rightful king of Gondor. It is one of my favorite bits from the Lord of the Rings series. But while "not all who wander are lost," my title, "Some Who Wander," is meant to imply that some who wander are, indeed, quite lost, as you'll learn when you read what happened to me.

I will also give you some photographic inspiration to set the mood:

You can read "Some Who Wander" here.

Now that those pesky recent publications have stopped getting in the way (yes, yes, I wish I could complain about more of them!), I can return to my pattern of posting oldest to newest credits in this self-promotion series. Next up is a short little guest blog post I did back in the fall of 2009 on the Muffin Blog. It was written as a way to vent my frustration after losing years of creative writing due to a hard drive failure.More importantly, it was an ode to all the characters I lost from the crash. Here's your lead-in:

I lost six years of my life. Okay, I’m being a tad dramatic. I lost six years’ worth of word processor documents. They’re gone. They left for the great recycling bin icon in the sky and some jerk emptied it. I’m the jerk.

A few years ago, I decided the old college laptop had to go. It had been wacky since my roommate borrowed it for a night of feverish essay typing and spilled a mug of coffee on it. The keys sank down like molasses when you pressed them and came up 1. . . 2 . . .3 seconds later with a loud click. The down arrow key would possess the cursor, sending it on a race down the monitor, which no control-alt-delete combination could halt.

If your interest is peaked, read the rest at the Muffin Blog! And for your visual pleasure, I give you kitten Verdandi expressing the same rage at dirty laundry as I felt when I realized the files were gone forever.