Maggie Downs

Description
Newly married and established in her career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, Maggie Downs quits her job, sells her belongings, and embarks on the solo trip of a lifetime: Her mother's.
As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. You are braver than you think, her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through ...

Ten mothers define motherhood

How Films Helped Me Through Postpartum Depression

I Went to the Hospital to Give Birth…And Tested Pos...

I do not want much this Christmas time
There is but one thing I need.
It is not a gift that can be placed beneath the holiday tree,
The house is fill’d with merriment, I breathe the fragrance of the festivities,
I invite my soul to celebrate.
I do not require to hang my stocking
Thereupon the fireplace
My hair, my tongue, every atom in my body form’d from this air
feeds the Yuletide fire
and the very spread of my thighs proclaims noel.
I would only like for my own—more than you could ever kno...

THE VOLCANOES IN FILM and literature are powerful, muscular, often in the process of erupting.
It makes sense. That’s where the drama is.
I like the other kind. The empty ones. The craters. A volcano open as a throat.
That’s why I traveled 100 miles from where I live to hike into an extinct volcano. I needed to go somewhere, and I chose a place that felt both resilient and vulnerable. I needed to go somewhere, and nowhere was the loneliest place I could find.
¤
California was under strict loc...

The high desert wind carries a tune that Joshua Tree musicians have played for a long time.

At This Unique Flower Show, Weeds Are the Stars | T...

Reading alone, together, at a table for introverts.

When I moved to California a decade ago, a colleague drove me from one end of the Coachella Valley to the other.
We started in Palm Springs, the stylish desert town known for its sleek modernist architecture and pool party vibe, and drove east. We rambled past Indio’s manicured polo fields, home to the Coachella music festival, all the way to Mecca, a community embedded in one of the most prolific agricultural regions in the nation.
That’s where my colleague stopped the car at a roadside prod...

At a sleek house in the Historic Tennis Club neighborhood of Palm Springs, the chefs are introduced through other senses instead. It’s all about scent and sound. Walk up the driveway, and you already know who’s inside.
There’s the discordant clang of pans pulled from shelves. The shimmy and whistle of a simmering pot. Knives making contact with cutting boards. A cork’s deep sigh as it’s released from the wine bottle.
The air is laced with intoxicating smells. It’s an enchanting mix of renderi...

Vows column: Contributor credit: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/fashion/weddings/ricky-phung-sharon-zhen-marriage.html?action=click&contentCollection=Weddings&pgtype=imageslideshow&module=RelatedArticleList&region=CaptionArea&version=SlideCard-1

Greetings from Your Bathroom, your destination for a quick, rejuvenating getaway!
Never again spend loads of money on an all-inclusive in Cancun. Say “Buoy, bye” to expensive cruises. Ditch the stay-cation in your hometown, and forget the obli-cation of visiting relatives. When daily life becomes too chaotic, Your Bathroom is a must-visit locale for every parent.
This is a preorder. Orders placed now will ship July, 2019. Get this issue, plus our next three—Issue 57 (our mammoth twenty-first ...

In winter, a different kind of snowbird flocks to the desert. Find out what drives them.

That time I was mistaken for Prince's girlfriend.