Leigh Ann Henion is a freelance writer and photographer based in Boone, North Carolina. Her essays, articles, and photographs have appeared in publications such as Smithsonian, Oxford American, Preservation, The Washington Post Magazine, and Orion.

She has received a variety of national accolades for her work, including a Lowell Thomas Award, and her stories have twice been cited in The Best American Travel Writing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Leigh Ann is currently writing a book about reclaiming her sense of wonder via the science and mythology that attempt to explain the globe’s most incredible natural phenomena. It is to be published by The Penguin Press.

I’m standing in a narrow alleyway when a stranger approaches to tell me that he can channel the power of the ocean. Crazy? Maybe. But I’m on the island of Vieques with a similarly far-fetched quest: to swim in a celestial sea. I tell the man, who introduces himself as Charlie the Wavemaster, that the Milky Way will soon crackle and shimmer as it slips through my fingers. Bits of stardust will cling to my hair…read more