From KCRW.com, this is Here Be Monsters.

I stood in the middle of a dirt road holding two giant Tupperware containers.

Inside the Tupperwares were all of those possessions that signaled my adolescence,

a pair of headphones and alarm clock,

toenail clippers, a roll of duct tape,

the anthology of redwall novels,

and a new pair of winter boots.

I waved goodbye to my parents who had just boarded a yellow school bus piloted by a man who looked

like a caricature of Jesus, but instead of wearing a white robe, he wore carhart coveralls.

The bus trundled back down the dirt road, through the smooth pine forested hills,

down the treacherously steep switchbacks back down to the boat dock where a

ferry would take them to their parked car which would take them back across the state of Washington

back to their home. It was the home that until earlier today I'd called my home as well.

That home was quiet out in the countryside of eastern Washington, punctuated only by sounds of cars

blasting across distant gravel roads and horse winnies and dogs singing hateful

duets with the coyotes at night.

I wondered if I'd made some kind of critical error in my teenage judgment. I'd only ever been here to this village once before and it was under vastly different circumstances. I came up here for a church trip.

And that time it was crawling with other visiting teenagers,

along with their doting adults and loudly charismatic youth pastors

visiting from distant cities.

But now the village was quieter.

The village itself was the relic of a mining town that once boomed and then busted

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