When you read my upcoming book Uncharted Moments, you’ll see pretty quickly that I love rivers. They run through the entire story — literally and metaphorically. Confluences. Currents. Crossing points. Sacred ground near water. But that love didn’t start the way you might expect. It started with mosquitoes. ————————————————————————————————————————— In the summer of 1992, […]
I’m sitting in my basement office while a hurricane of crepe paper and balloons gathers upstairs. Earlier today, I picked up three of my grandkids from school and told them I had a “meeting.” They were instructed to help Grandma with “something.” We would have snacks after my meeting. Based on the thundering overhead, it […]
People often ask about book covers. They want to know about colors, fonts, and design choices—what the cover is “meant” to convey. But for me, this cover was never really about how the book would look. It was about how it would feel to someone who picked it up before they knew the story […]
Last week, I published “The Post I Never Wanted to Write.” As I was preparing to publish it, Carmen and I read through it several times, bawling our eyes out each time. When I hit “publish,” we didn’t know what would happen, but we wanted her story “out there.” We hoped the post would land […]
I always thought this space would hold stories—of life, of music, of family, and the small graces of finding our way together. I thought the hardest posts would be the ones I wrote when each of my parents passed. I was wrong. This is the post I never wanted to write. It’s about Carmen. It’s […]
A note before we begin: I’m sharing this story again because it still matters to me — maybe more now than when I first wrote it. It’s about my grandpa, a pair of old donut machines, and a family tradition that has carried memory forward for decades. This year, we didn’t make the donuts. We […]
Looking back, I can finally see the shape of the river. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how a person changes. Not in the dramatic, overnight sense, but in the slow, river-shaped way—quiet bends, steady currents, the kind of transformation you only notice when you look back and realize the landscape is different. […]
Last week, I stepped into a small Rotary meeting room to give a talk about something that has been quietly reshaping my sense of identity for years: my great-great-grandparents’ role in the Underground Railroad. It’s a story I’ve researched, written about, and carried with me — but this was the first time I’d ever stood […]
How the world changed beneath our wheels. I was sorting through a box of old trip photos the other day — glossy 4×6 time capsules from a different century — when it hit me. Uncharted Moments isn’t just a story about where we went. It’s also about how the world changed beneath our wheels. As […]
I drove east from Skamania Lodge this morning, the Columbia River off my shoulder and the day so clear it almost rang. September-blue sky. Sun bright enough to make the river flash like a blade. My grandson, Jordan, told me Friday with precision: autumn arrives Monday at 2:19 p.m. Eastern. Out here, that’s 11:19 a.m.—still […]