Vanessa Blakeslee | The Smart Set

Tree Knocks and T-Shirts

Vanessa Blakeslee — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:30:00 +0000

“I guess we’re really doing this,” I said, and squinted into the late morning sunlight. Mark, my partner, and I exited the car just outside the Lakeland, Florida convention center. It was mid-July 2021, and we were about to attend our first “Great Florida Bigfoot Conference.” Neither one of us had ever experienced a Bigfoot […]

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The Soul, Afloat

Vanessa Blakeslee — Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:30:00 +0000

I lay in bed. My partner, Mark, was up making espresso, having left an empty space beside me. I stirred, my mind flooded with visions of schoolchildren sitting at desks behind plexiglass shields, their faces shrouded by medical masks. A tsunami of rage overwhelmed me; I tossed and turned but no matter how I lay the rage boiled up and over, along with […]

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Seeking Refuge

Vanessa Blakeslee — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 13:11:02 +0000

The lion, hunched in place, let loose a guttural bellow unlike anything I’d ever heard. “What was that?” I asked the nearby volunteer. “A lion’s roar,” he said. “That’s a lion’s roar?” I replied, incredulous. He held up a hand, said, “Listen.” From across the sanctuary, out of view, the young lion’s mother answered — again, that same peculiar, heaving rasp, more of a retch than a roar. “Not what […]

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Our Permian Paradox

Vanessa Blakeslee — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 13:31:00 +0000

I had read about the Permian Basin but never thought I’d have the chance to go there. Fate, however, works in unexpected ways. Last May, my partner, Mark, and I found ourselves heading south of Roswell, NM, on US Route 285, bound for Fort Stockton, Texas. This wasn’t a route we had intended to take, but a sudden […]

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