By Laura Read
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
It’s a school with no computers, no televisions, no cell phones, no light switches, no amenities. If you want food or water, you’re pretty much on your own. The classroom is the great outdoors – and the course is survival.
In today’s tough economic times, when people are contemplating living with [...]

By Laura Read
MIT’s Technology Review Magazine
In the bare-bones warehouse space of CrossFit West Santa Cruz, rock and rap music thrums over the clamor of some very fit people lifting big weights. Cliff Hodges, the 30-year-old MIT grad who co-owns the new gym, starts his day here around 8 a.m. But a few hours later in [...]

By Laura Read 
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
In the black of night on Nov. 1, the cemeteries of Michoacán hum with life. Women in woven shawls bow their heads over lumpy graves; men in cowboy hats flash gold-toothed grins in the dark; children dart through shadows, giggling between bites of sweets. Tourists do their part snapping photos, [...]

By Laura Read
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
On Dec. 20, 1996, Bay Area teenager Harley Augustino and his dad, James, a 48-year-old developer and political activist, lost their way on cross-country skis in a brutal Sierra snowstorm. When darkness fell, they carved out a snow cave and huddled in it. Every half hour they stomped around outside [...]

By Laura Read 
National Geographic Traveler
When 19th century Bohemian immigrants settled in Iowa’s lush Turkey River Valley, they couldn’t have imagined one village would nurture two very different creative passions. The town was called “Spielville,” then, after its German founder, Joseph Spielman. Residents anglicized the name, and quiet Spillville now lures travelers with dueling strains of [...]

By Laura Read
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
The air smelled faintly metallic and echoed with thuds. Before me, five Angami men crouched around bloody mounds of raw meat, each wielding a fin-like blade with a wooden handle. At first, I resisted watching the slaughter, but then remembered that observing this kind of ritual — a neighborhood [...]

By Laura Read
San Francisco Chronicle Magazine
The nectarine’s skin wrinkled into folds, releasing the sweet-tangy flesh underneath. Before the juice could dribble, I sucked it into the pockets of my cheeks and savored its goodness. I ate another. Afterward, I telephoned Twin Peaks Orchard, near Newcastle in Placer County, 75 miles away from my home in [...]