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When the Rivers Started Calling My Name

Man sitting beside a lake at sunset.

 

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, my oldest son, Jeremy, and his church youth group decided they needed a “real adventure” for their annual trip. That’s how I ended up in the Canadian wilderness as a chaperone on a week-long canoe trip down the Ivanhoe River.

Me.

The guy who could count his canoe trips on one hand.
The guy who hadn’t slept in a tent in over a decade.

The first night at the Provincial Park, the mosquitoes were so thick we could barely breathe without swallowing one. Head nets were decorative at best. One of the girls in the group looked like she’d lost a fight with a tomato patch — her legs covered in welts the color of ripe fruit. Jeremy spent what felt like hours smacking mosquitoes off her legs to help her stop itching.

I’m pretty sure we were in our tents by six o’clock.

The next morning, I learned we’d be splitting into three groups. Different guides. Different drop-off points. Separate camps for days at a time.

Jeremy and I would not be in the same group.

I remember saying goodbye to my thirteen-year-old son and watching him paddle away into the Canadian wilderness with someone else, not me, at the stern of his canoe.

My journal entries from those first two days were not inspirational. They were filled with expletives. Why did we bring thirty teenagers into the middle of nowhere? There were rapids. There were bears. There were wolves. Someone could drown. This was irresponsible.

My canoe was the first to dump into the frigid water after my canoe partner turned suddenly in his seat to look back at the rapids we’d just navigated. The weight shift dropped the gunwale. Water poured in. We were swimming before I fully understood what was happening.

Stupid trip.

The portages were brutal. At one point, we had to carry our gear and canoes up a narrow trail along a ridge to avoid a thirty-foot waterfall. I had a canoe on my shoulders, barely able to see the ground in front of me. Later, our guide and another adult decided to “test” a stretch of rapids instead of portaging, which left me responsible for getting ten kids, five canoes, and hundreds of pounds of gear around a mile-long trail. As they pushed off, we were told, “Keep the front of the canoe tipped up so you don’t surprise a bear.”

Stupid trip.

And then something shifted.

On the third evening, we camped on a small bluff overlooking a lake. I wandered away from the group and found a fallen tree that made a perfect bench. The lake was smooth as glass — no, smoother than that. A mirror. The sun was setting off to my right, reflecting in gold across the surface. A mist began to rise, turning everything sepia, then gray.

Somewhere across the water came the mournful wail of a loon.

The problems waiting for me back in Indiana felt distant that night — though I didn’t yet understand how much was already shifting beneath the surface of my life.

I woke the next morning to heavy dew soaking the tent flap and running down the back of my neck. The campfire crackled as our guide built it back up for breakfast. Everything was gray, cold, and quiet. A heavy fog had settled over the lake. I could barely see across camp. Sounds felt muffled, like I was wearing earmuffs.

And then the sun began to pierce the fog.

Light filtered through the mist and glistened across the water as the first canoe pushed off. We delayed our departure to give the other group space, sipping one last cup of coffee before extinguishing our fire.

From that moment, my journal entries changed.

I stopped cursing the trip and started paying attention.

  • Our guide rescuing a seagull tangled in fishing line.
  • The adrenaline rush of navigating rapids that felt more like a roller coaster than a river.
  • A gloomy day of rain that shrank our world to just a few yards and somehow made the forest feel more alive.
  • Even Spam heated over a small fire with a Bowie knife doing triple duty as slicer, grill, and fork tasted better than it had any right to.

The river hadn’t just changed its course.

It had changed mine.

By the time we reunited with the other groups at the end of the trip, I was in love. In love with the graceful lines of a canoe’s hull. In love with reading the water. In love with feeling the pull of a current instead of fighting it.

But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I hadn’t just fallen in love with canoeing.

I had learned to listen.

Over the next thirty years, whenever my life shifted — and there were some significant shifts — I found myself near water.

Rivers became the place where noise quieted. Where scale returned. Where ego softened. Where I could sit still long enough to hear what I was avoiding everywhere else.

They became sacred before I had language for sacred.

Years later, when Carmen came into my life, she didn’t just tolerate the river. She grabbed a paddle. She leaned into the current. Rain? Let’s go. Long drive? Turn up the music. Lewis & Clark event in cold November weather? Of course.

There is something profoundly different about paddling alone versus paddling in rhythm with someone beside you. You feel it in your shoulders. In your timing. In the way the canoe tracks straight instead of wandering.

Confluence isn’t just geography.

It’s what happens when two currents find alignment.

When you read Uncharted Moments, you’ll see rivers everywhere. The Missouri. The Columbia. Quiet backwaters and roaring rapids. Places where explorers once stood. Places where we stood centuries later.

But long before Lewis and Clark, long before confluences became metaphors, there was a foggy morning on a Canadian lake.

A loon calling across still water.

A stubborn, reluctant chaperone realizing he might have been wrong.

That’s when the rivers started calling my name.

And I’ve been returning to the current ever since.

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From Dream Catcher to Compass

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 sounds less like three children and more like thirty.

Tomorrow I turn sixty-eight.

Upstairs, Carmen is trying — with all her heart — to surprise me.

It’s hard to surprise a man who signs for the deliveries, helps buy the party supplies, and manages the calendar. But that was never really the point. The point is the trying. The love poured into effort. The desire to make a moment sacred, even when logistics refuse to cooperate.

This weekend will hold laughter. It will likely hold tears. That, too, is our life. Joy and fragility inhabiting the same room.

 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

And then she gave me the gifts.

Two bracelets — one that reminded her of the woman who watches over us. One tied to the country where my ancestors first learned to endure wind and water.

And then a compass.

 

Sterling Silver Compass Pendant

 

 

A silver compass pendant on a simple chain.

Engraved not with a message, but with a place — the one we’ve chosen as our final camp beside the river.

When she told me what she had engraved, we both cried.

Not dramatically. Not loudly.

Just the quiet kind of tears that come when something true is spoken aloud.

Belonging.

Years ago, Carmen gave me a replica of William Clark’s compass. And a sextant. They sit upstairs now — steady and still — reminders that direction matters.

But once, we stood before Clark’s actual compass. Not a replica. His.

I imagined him under a hard sky, wind pressing against his coat, taking a reading and sketching a line with cold fingers. Beside me, Carmen had gone perfectly still — but not for the compass. She was studying a case of pressed flowers from the journey, the captains’ careful notes beside them. She traced the names as if reading a poem.

Native plants have always been her doorway.

Something shifted that day. She wasn’t simply accompanying me on an adventure anymore. She was inside the story.

Clark’s compass pointed west into conjectural territory.

This one does not.

This one points home.

When we first met, I wore a dream catcher around my neck. I even marked it on my skin. Back then, I was searching. I didn’t have language for it. I only knew there was something I hoped to find.

She was — and is — my dream.

And somehow, I caught it.

Now I wear a compass.

Not because I’m lost.

But because I know where we will one day lay down our packs.

 —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — 

A few minutes ago, my phone buzzed.

“Your meeting is over,” she wrote.

I climbed the stairs and was met by two grandkids nearly vibrating with excitement. They were far more animated about the surprise than I was.

Crepe paper hung crookedly. Balloons leaned against door frames. The house was louder than it needed to be.

And somehow, it felt hallowed.

The compass rests quietly at my throat.

The house is full.

I am exactly where I am meant to be.

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The Story Behind the Cover

blurred image of the cover - Uncharted Moments

The cover will come into focus at the end of the story!

 

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 inside.

I didn’t want a cover that shouted.
 I didn’t want something clever, busy, or loud.

Uncharted Moments lives in quieter places.

It’s a story about love that grows. About rivers, memory, and care. About the way life keeps asking us to listen more closely.

So the question I kept coming back to wasn’t Does this look good?

It was something simpler—and harder:

Would this cover feel like an invitation… or an interruption?

The cover matters deeply to me—but it only works because it grew out of what’s inside the book.

The maps that open each leg of the journey.
The way the story unfolds over time.
The photo gallery—not meant to impress, just to remind.
The space in the layout. Room to breathe. Room for the story to move without being pushed.

Those choices mattered because this journey was never about rushing from one destination to the next. It was about paying attention—to the river, to the land, and to each other.

So when I first saw the final cover design, what struck me most wasn’t what was there.

It was what wasn’t.

There was no urgency. No demand. Just a sense of movement. And calm.

Later, after the cover was finished, my designer, Jennifer Vogel (“JVo”), shared what she had been thinking as she worked on it. What surprised me was how much she named—without me ever having said it out loud.

She wrote:

“The cover of Uncharted Moments was inspired by the powerful Missouri River and its confluence with the mighty Mississippi—they begin quietly, gathering strength along the way. Water teaches that meaning lies not in control but in adaptability, connection, and the courage to flow into the unknown.

When two distinct currents meet, they create something deeper, stronger, and more enduring. In the same way, Jeff and Carmen’s lives come together with both uncertainty and intention, shaping a shared journey neither could have charted alone.

Their love echoes the spirit of Lewis & Clark’s expedition—curious, courageous, and guided by faith in what lies beyond.”

When I read her words, I realized something.

The cover wasn’t just representing the book.

It was reflecting the journey itself.

Not a straight line.
Not a bold declaration.

But a confluence.

Two lives. Two stories. Meeting in motion.

So this isn’t really a cover reveal.

It’s more of a quiet acknowledgment—that the story inside has finally found its home on the outside.

And if this cover feels familiar to you…
 or calming…
 or like something you might want to sit with for a while…

 …then you may already understand what Uncharted Moments is about.

I’m glad you’re here.

 

cover - Uncharted Moments

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The Post I Am Glad I Wrote

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 gently. We anticipated some who read it to reach out. 

We received countless messages of kind, supportive words, of virtual hugs, and of offered prayers. What we didn’t expect was for the post to gather people. Many people shared their own stories of caregiving, of long-held grief and pain watching a loved one struggle, of gratitude for sharing our story so they did not feel so alone. 

The image that kept coming to me was that of a campfire. Let me explain. In Uncharted Moments, I retell the stories of Carmen and me as we traveled the Lewis & Clark Trail. Many days, in fact, most days ended with us sitting beside a campfire. There we would quietly reflect on our day, on trials and the joys. To this day, we still do this at the end of each day. 

I think about Lewis and Clark and the people of the expedition. Every day was filled with toil, challenges, and hardship. But also new sights, sounds, and experiences. Each night, they would build a campfire and gather around. It was more than warmth to dry their wet clothing and warm their tired bodies. They told stories of the day, the fear of facing a grizzly, the pain of prickly pear cactus piercing their moccasins,the wonder of seeing thousands of bison, or the waterfalls, and the mountains. Those who could would journal. 

The river demanded everything by day. The fire gave something back at night. 

That’s what this week felt like. Not progress. Not answers. Just presence. 

 

 

What I thought was a single story became a shared fire.

Caregivers found each other. People told stories they’d been carrying alone. Some grief was new; some was decades old. 

The common thread wasn’t disease. It was love that refuses to leave. 

Resilience isn’t built by powering through. It is build by stopping long enough to be seen. 

Sometimes the bravest thing isn’t paddling harder. It’s sitting by the fire and telling the truth about the day. 

I’m glad I wrote the post. Not because it was easy. But because it reminded me that none of us are meant to carry these stretches alone.

The river keeps moving.

The fires keeps burning. 

For now, that’s enough. 

We proceed on — together. 

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The Post I Never Wanted to Write

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 about disease.

And it’s about love, stubborn as a river, carrying us even now.

 

Carmen and Jeff standing together near Multnomah Falls, surrounded by forest and flowing water.

Carmen and I at Bridal Veil Falls — early in our journey together.

How We Got Here

For a long time, Carmen called it “the fishbowl.” Dizzy spells, balance that wobbled, handwriting that started to lean and stutter. We visited doctors who looked thoughtful and then not. Finally, someone said, “You need to go to the Cleveland Clinic or Mayo.”

We chose Cleveland.

A neurologist pulled up the MRI, leaned toward the screen, and said, “Your cerebellum impresses me.”

I tried to joke. “We don’t think we want her cerebellum to impress you.”

He shook his head. “No. You don’t.”

The words that followed arrived like hail: Multiple System Atrophy, cerebellar type (MSA-C). Degenerative. No treatment. No cure. Average timeline measured in years you can count on one hand, maybe both.

We rode home in silence that wasn’t empty, just heavy. You know the feeling if you’ve been there—the sound the soul makes when the floor drops out.

Since then, we’ve chased second opinions and third confirmations. We’ve learned new vocabulary we never asked for: rollator, autonomic, orthostatic, and anticipatory grief. We’ve learned how bodies can surprise you, even when you love them fiercely. We’ve learned to grieve in real time.

What Daily Looks Like Now

Carmen once crossed a room the way sunlight crosses a wall—quiet, sure, taking everything with her. Now she uses a rollator and footsteps that shuffle. We purchased a powered wheelchair for outings that require more steps than her body can handle. 

Her voice—the one that used to sing through a room without trying—has a tinny edge now, syllables arriving in little bursts, breath paying a toll at every turn. Restaurants are hard. Parties harder. Phone calls require a kind of gymnastics the larynx didn’t sign up for.

She used to be our chef, the hostess who could coax a holiday into happening with nothing but flour, butter, and a list she wrote in that elegant hand I loved so much. Now the kitchen is a maze. The microwave is a mountain.

Then there are the invisible things: blood pressure that drops fifty points when she stands; temperature regulation that forgets its job. These are the quiet alarms we don’t like to talk about. They remind us what’s still to come.

And still—please hear me—she is here. She is Carmen. Grace in a human frame. Humor that keeps showing up. Dignity that refuses to yield the field.

Sacred Ordinary

We’ve always talked about sacred places—how holiness can be a cathedral, yes, but more often it’s a porch. These days, the sacred shows up at 5:30 p.m. on ours, when we drag two chairs into the soft light and call it cocktail hour. Lemonade or tonic for her most nights. It doesn’t matter. The ritual is the sacrament.

Grandkids swarm the house and bend the day toward joy. Carmen can’t chase a ball now, but she can play a rousing game of Uno. She can say yes to makeup sessions and TikTok cookie recipes. They orbit her like she is gravity—because she is. Little Hayden loves to ride “gamma’s car”—her wheelchair. 

We binge-watch shows side-by-side. We sit with squirrels. We read old cards and the little notes couples write when the world still feels endless. We touch what time can’t steal.

Sacred isn’t loud.

Sacred is steady.

The Love Story I Didn’t Know I Was Writing

When I began the book that has become Uncharted Moments, I thought I was writing about Lewis and Clark—rivers, road miles, history’s big arc. Somewhere between Fort Clatsop and the stretch of the Natchez Trace near Hohenwald, Tennessee, I understood: I was writing about us. About the woman beside me with the unflappable kindness and the eyes that see both what is and what could be.

She isn’t my Sacagawea. She is — and always will be — my Lewis. The one with a compass lodged somewhere behind the ribcage, the one who would say “we proceed on” with a half-smile and mean it.

I used to say the river taught me how to listen. Carmen taught me how to arrive.

What I’m Learning as a Caregiver

I closed a business I loved. We traded the retirement we imagined—long flights, new stamps in the passport—for hallways and ramps and a different kind of itinerary. I help her into the car. I rub oil into her legs after a shower. I learn the choreography of pillboxes. I fold laundry at 10 p.m. and feel, strange as it sounds, lucky to be the one folding.

Love keeps changing its job description and then handing me a fresh badge. It is less about grand gestures and more about staying. Less about perfect words and more about the breath you take together on a Tuesday when the kitchen is quiet, and there’s a vase of grocery-store flowers trying their best.

There are hard days. Anger with no clean address. Tears that don’t explain themselves. The fear that comes at 3:17 a.m. and wants to explain everything.

But there is also this: we are here. We are not alone. Family shows up. Friends show up. Neighbors carry casseroles and joke about deer in the tomatoes. Nurses and therapists move through our lives like angels of mercy.

If you’ve been praying for us, texting, calling, bringing soup—thank you. You are holding a corner of the map.

Reading the Story More Fully

Years ago, while we were following the Lewis & Clark Trail, Gerard Baker’s voice at the Filson on Main turned our heads and hearts toward a wider story—one that didn’t erase heroism but insisted on context, cost, and a chorus of voices. That practice—of looking again, listening longer—has become a way of life here, too.

Illness wants to shrink the world to symptoms and schedules. We keep choosing to read the margins. To notice the parts that don’t fit neat lines. To honor the whole of a person, not just the chart.

Carmen is not her diagnosis.

She is the builder of a family that didn’t come by blood but by love.

She is the smile that made holidays ring.

She is the woman who, when I dragged us waist-deep into a stream for citizen-science training, looked up at passing teenagers in waders and said, “Be careful who you fall in love with—this could be you,” and then laughed like she’d just invented sunlight.

What I Ask (and What I Don’t)

I don’t have a list of action items. We’re not fundraising or campaigning. We’re learning to let people love us in practical ways and to say yes more often than our Midwestern instincts allow.

If you want to help, the best gift is presence—notes, stories, photos, a memory of Carmen being Carmen. Tell us the small thing you remember: the casserole she brought, the way she made your child feel seen, the time she quietly fixed something no one else noticed was broken. Those are the strands that braid a life.

And if you’re a caregiver or you love one, I see you. You are doing holy work in grocery aisles and waiting rooms. You are building cathedrals out of Tuesday afternoons. Keep going. Breathe. Ask for help. Say yes.

Confluence

There’s a fifteen-star, fifteen-stripe flag near my desk—the one Carmen gave me that flew over Fort Clatsop on my birthday. I look up at it when the house goes still. It feels like a kind of tenderness, mast and map both. It reminds me that the real expedition was never the miles under our wheels. It was the passenger seat beside me.

MSA-C is the terrain we never wanted to encounter. It is also not the whole country. The map is bigger than the diagnosis. There are porches still, and grandkid giggles, and movie nights where nothing much happens except that we are together and the lamp makes a soft circle on the rug.

We are navigating a stretch of river the charts call conjectural—the old word for places not yet fully known. The Corps of Discovery used it for gaps they’d fill in later. I like that. Not denial, just humility. A willingness to proceed without pretending certainty we don’t have.

So here we are. Proceeding. On.

If you pray, pray. If you remember, share. If you love us, keep doing what you’ve been doing. We’re grateful for every hand on the rope.

And if you’re reading this because you’ve been walking your own uncharted season: you’re not alone. The river knows the way. Love knows the way. Sometimes the bravest thing is to sit on the porch, hold the hand that has held yours, and let the evening light do what it does—turn the ordinary into something hallowed.

We proceed on.

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Grandpa’s Donuts (A Revisit)

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 planned to. Brad, Katrina, and Jeremy offered to help. The intention was there. But the holidays arrived with their usual swirl of schedules, obligations, emotions — and, honestly, fatigue. Carmen and I just didn’t have it in us. Not yet.

And I’m learning that sometimes honoring a tradition doesn’t mean forcing the ritual. Sometimes it means holding the story with care and trusting that the right moment will come — maybe in January, or February — when the kitchen is quieter, and the heart is ready.

So for now, I’m sharing the story itself. Because even when the machine stays unplugged, and the flour remains in the cupboard, the meaning hasn’t gone anywhere.

Grandpa’s Donuts

Some of my fondest memories of my Grandpa Williams revolve around his two magnificent donut machines.

Every time — without fail — when he came to visit, all four of us kids would run out to meet him as he got out of the car. We’d jump up and down with excitement, all asking the same question:

“Did you bring the donut machines?”

Every time — without fail — Grandpa would look at us, scratch his head, and say,
 “Oh my… I think I forgot those back in Milwaukee.”

Then he’d begin digging around in the trunk of his car. And sure enough, tucked way back behind all the luggage, there they were.

The machines.

They were actually called Brown Bobbies — old donut makers from another era. My great-grandmother had given them to Grandpa in the late 1920s.

During the Great Depression, Grandpa made donuts in those machines and sold them at the Post Office where he worked. Five cents for two donuts. He needed the extra nickels to help support his growing family.

As kids, we didn’t know any of that history. We just knew the donuts were magical.

On one of his trips to visit us in Evansville, Grandpa wrote the recipe in the front of my mom’s cookbook. He must have known that trip would be his last.

When Grandpa passed away in 1971, my mother inherited one of the Brown Bobby machines.

For years, it came out only occasionally — maybe for a church bake sale, maybe just to prove it still worked — but over time it fell into disuse. Eventually, it ended up tucked away in the back of a closet.

Then, in the mid-1990s, something unexpected happened.

I was a new manager and wanted to do something special for my team at work during the holidays. I asked my mom if she still had Grandpa’s donut machine.

She rummaged through the closet, pushing aside boxes and coats and forgotten things — and there it was. The Brown Bobby. Waiting.

We plugged it in, fingers crossed it would still heat up.

It did.

I donned Grandpa’s old apron — handmade by my Grandma, with stitching across the front that proudly proclaimed the wearer to be “The Doughnut Man.” As Christmas carols played softly in the background, Mom mixed the batter the way Grandpa had taught her, and we started making donuts.

And something magical happened.

As the donuts baked and the kitchen filled with that familiar smell, Mom began to tell stories about Grandpa. Stories we hadn’t talked about in years. Stories that brought smiles, laughter, and tears.

Gone for nearly twenty-five years, Grandpa was suddenly right there with us — remembered not with silence, but with warmth.

A new tradition was born.

Since then, the Brown Bobby has come out many Decembers. Some years for big batches. Some years for small ones. Sometimes with family gathered close, sometimes with just Carmen and me in the kitchen — moving more slowly now, taking our time, letting the smell do the remembering for us. After my mom passed, and then a few years later, my dad, the ritual changed shape again. What had once been something handed down became something we were now responsible for carrying forward. Carmen has been at the center of that — steady, patient, and quietly determined that the tradition not be lost, even when the pace softened, and the batches grew smaller.

And this year?

This year, we paused.

Not because the tradition no longer matters — but because life asked us to move at a different pace. Because honoring memory also means honoring where you are.

The donuts will be made again. I know that. Maybe when the calendar turns quiet, and winter settles in for real. Maybe when the kitchen feels ready.

Until then, the story still holds.

Because traditions aren’t just what we do on a certain day.
 They’re what we carry forward — gently, honestly, and in our own time.

And sometimes, the most faithful thing you can do…

… is wait until love has the energy to rise again.

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Metamorphosis: The Next Chapter of My Writing Life

Looking back, I can finally see the shape of the river.

 

A sweeping view from above the Columbia River, where several channels bend and merge around forested islands. Rugged mountains rise in the distance under a soft, clouded sky, creating a sense of vastness, reflection, and quiet transformation.

The Columbia River — a reminder that every journey carries bends, convergences, and quiet shifts we only recognize from a higher vantage point.

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.

When I first launched this blog in 2008, I thought I knew what it would be. I wrote about sustainability, energy usage, water conservation, and the triple bottom line. I was earnest, a little intense, and deeply convinced that if we understood our impact on the world, maybe we’d take better care of it. Those posts were full of metrics, light bulbs, gallons saved, and carbon footprints. But even then, beneath the wattage and water usage, there were hints of something more: rivers, memories, my grandmother’s wisdom, and the first murmurings of Lewis & Clark.

I thought I was writing about ecology.

Really, I was writing about responsibility—about what we leave behind.

From CIO to Leadership to Storytelling

As the years went on, my writing followed the arc of my professional life.

I became a CIO, a tech leader, a mentor. I started speaking more, teaching more, writing about careers and culture and teams. Rivers of Thought evolved into a place for leadership insights and IT strategy. Those posts carried frameworks, lessons learned, and the familiar rhythm of someone who had lived through enough change to have something useful to say.

But even then—even in the middle of talking about cloud migration or executive presence—something else kept knocking at the door.

A long drive with the radio up too loud.
A river hike that left me breathless.
A memory of my boys.
A story about Carmen’s quiet strength.
A moment where leadership had less to do with business and more to do with being human.

Little by little, the edges between “work” and “life” blurred. The posts became more reflective, more personal, more rooted in places and people rather than roles and responsibilities.

The Turning Point I Didn’t See Coming

If I had to pinpoint the moment my writing turned, it might be Thanksgiving Day, sometime in the early 90s. The boys were with their mom. I was moping around the house when the phone rang.

“Dad, are you listening?”
“Listening to what?”
“Arlo!”

Before I could reach for anything, Carmen quietly went to the shelf, pulled out her own copy of Alice’s Restaurant, and put it on. No fanfare. No commentary. Just a small act of presence that aligned our lives in a way I didn’t yet understand.

Years later, when I wrote How Arlo Guthrie Saved My Life, I thought it was a one-off story about a song and a holiday. Now I can see that it was more than that. It was the beginning of writing from the inside out.

Not CIO.
Not even “leader.”
Just Jeff.
A man listening to the love, loss, wonder, and serendipity that shape a life.

The Era of Sacred Ground

The last few years have carried their share of joy and grief—losing my father, becoming a caregiver, watching life shift in ways I never imagined, standing in places that felt unexpectedly holy. I found myself writing about:

  • cemeteries and hallowed places

  • family stories passed down through generations

  • the Land of Serendip

  • rivers I’ve walked beside for decades

  • the Lewis & Clark Trail and the long arc of history

  • the quiet, steadfast love of my wife, Carmen

I didn’t set out to write like this.
It happened the way rivers happen—cutting deeper channels over time.

Somewhere along the way, my writing became less about managing change and more about making meaning. Less about leading others and more about listening—for what the land, the past, and the heart have been trying to say all along.

The Next Chapter: Storyteller, Keeper of Legacy

Now, as I move fully into this next chapter of life, I’m no longer trying to separate the strands.

I’m not just a former CIO.
I’m not just a leadership guy.
I’m not even “just” a writer.

I’ve become a storyteller—
of rivers and trails,
of love and serendipity,
of family and legacy,
of what it means to stand on sacred ground.

This blog has always evolved as I’ve evolved.
And I’m grateful you’ve walked with me through every shift—
from ecology to leadership to legacy to these uncharted moments I now write about.

If you’ve been here since the beginning, thank you.
If we’ve lost touch somewhere along the way, I hope this helps you see where I’ve been and where the writing is taking me now.
And if you’re new here, welcome to the river.

I don’t know exactly where the next bend leads.
But I do know I’ll keep telling the truth as I find it—
one story, one moment, one sacred place at a time.

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Hallowed Ground, Unexpected Lessons

Jan & Aagje Ton Farm circa 1855

Ton Family Farm circa 1850

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 in front of a group to tell it out loud, beginning to end.

I walked in with a laptop, a handful of slides, and more nerves than I expected.

I walked out with something else entirely.

Why This Talk Felt Different

Most of the time when I write about my ancestors, I’m alone — at my keyboard, on a trail, or standing near the Little Calumet River where Jan and Aagje Ton lived and worked and quietly helped people seeking freedom. Writing gives you the gift of revision. Space. Distance.

But speaking?

Speaking asks for your whole self.

Speaking means feeling the story in real time — where your voice catches, where the room leans in, where silence does the work words can’t.

As I prepared the talk, I realized I wasn’t simply recounting history. I was carrying something forward. I was giving breath to people who acted with courage in the shadows, never imagining their names would be spoken in a Rotary meeting room in rural Indiana more than 170 years later.

A Small Room, A Big Moment

There were twelve people.

That’s it.

Twelve chairs arranged around a few tables.

And somehow, the room felt full.

People listened — really listened. They asked thoughtful questions. They stayed after to share memories of their own family histories, to reflect on courage, to connect threads I didn’t expect.

“I grew up in that area — never heard those stories. Amazing.” 

“South Holland, huh? I remember going to the department store in South Holland.” 

“There is a house right here in Attica that was involved in the Underground Railroad.”

Small phrases. Stories.

Big impact.

There was no political edge, no tension — even though conversations about the 1850s can easily drift that direction. The room remained grounded in humanity, with its moral decisions, the risks ordinary people faced, and the echoes we still feel today.

In an era when much conversation occurs online, in all caps, with little listening, it was refreshing — even restorative — to be reminded that face-to-face, people are still capable of curiosity, humility, and grace.

The Lesson I Didn’t Expect

Preparing this talk took hours — more than I planned, more than I had, if I’m being honest. And yet, standing in that small room, I felt something shift.

It wasn’t about the PowerPoint.

It wasn’t about the delivery.

It wasn’t even about the applause.

It was the realization that these stories matter because they ground us. They remind us where we come from. They remind us of the ordinary people who made extraordinary choices. And they remind us that history is never as far away as we think it is.

I thought I was giving a talk.

Turns out, I was receiving one.

One Last Connection

A few days before the presentation, I read Sheila Kennedy’s post “Courage and Concession,” a reflection on political conflict in the 1850s surrounding the issue of slavery. The courage of my ancestors — and the courage of the freedom seekers themselves — settled in my gut. Her words stayed with me as I spoke, not because the Rotary talk was political, but because courage looks remarkably similar across centuries.

Sometimes it’s dramatic.

Sometimes it’s quiet.

Most of the time, it’s ordinary people doing the right thing when it counts.

My ancestors didn’t ask to be heroes. They just opened the door.

There’s something in that for all of us.

I ended my talk with these words: 

“And I think that’s what we’re all called to do in our own way — to open doors when we can, to tell the stories that remind us who we are.”

Ton Memorial Garden

 

If You’d Like to Follow Along

If reflections like this resonate with you — stories of history, legacy, and the unexpected ways the past reaches into our lives — I’d love to have you join my newsletter. That’s where I share the behind-the-scenes pieces I don’t post anywhere else. Subscribe in the side panel of this page. 

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Shep at the Bend

Shep - Patiently Waiting for His Master's Return

Shep – Ever Vigilant

 

Fort Benton wears the river like a well-earned badge. The Missouri slides past the levee with that steady, old-timer confidence—no hurry, no apology—shouldering stories you can feel even if you can’t name them. We parked, stretched road miles out of our backs, and did what we always do when we arrive anywhere along the trail: we listened. Not just with our ears, but with that other sense you learn on the water—the one that asks, What happened here, and who’s still holding the memory?

You don’t have to look far in Fort Benton. The brick storefronts, the iron bridge, the museum signs—they all point to lives stacked over lives. And there, near the river, is the town’s quiet heartbeat cast in bronze: Shep. Head lifted, ears set to a frequency I swear you can almost hear if you stand there long enough. The statue is beautiful, yes, but more than that, it’s attentive. It watches the place like a promise.

We learned the story—most visitors do—a dog and a depot. Loyalty stretched across too many days. Waiting that outlived an answer. Even if you only catch it in passing, the story tugs something in you that’s older than words. But that afternoon, the pull landed somewhere personal I hadn’t noticed before.

We read the plaque, circled the statue, and let the river do its slow work. The trick with places like this is to resist the urge to rush. You let your mind walk past the easy facts and settle into the grain. And in that space, Shep became less a legend and more a lens. Who’s keeping watch while we cross? Who’s marking the thresholds we don’t even recognize as thresholds until we’re on the other side?

A Second Shep

Back home, weeks later, I wrote the Fort Benton pages. I tried to capture the light on the water and the way that bronze posture lifted the afternoon into something like prayer. I tucked the scene among the rest of Leg 8—the miles, the small talk, the way a town on a river is never just a town. Then I slid the draft to Carmen.

Hickey Family circa 1909

Hickey Family circa 1909 – Shep Front Right

Carmen proofreads like a cartographer—pencil steady, eyes tuned to terrain. She loves me enough to circle what’s true and underline what needs another pass. She also listens for echoes I miss. She was a few pages in when she looked up, soft smile, head cocked just a hair.

“You know your Granny’s dog was named Shep, too… right?”

The room did that slow-focus thing. I could hear the pencil roll to a stop. “What?”

“Your Granny’s farm dog,” she said, like we were both standing there in the yard already, like we’d just heard the back porch screen door slap. “Shep—it’s in her journals.”

There it was. Two Sheps, one in bronze beside the Missouri and one running fencerows in stories I grew up hearing without really hearing. A simple name becomes a through-line you can trace with your finger across a map of years. You think you’ve written a scene about a statue, and it turns out you’ve been writing about keeping watch your whole life.

I can see him now in the mind’s film—my Granny’s Shep—tan, with a white face blur at the edge of chores, tail sweeping the dust of a long afternoon. Whistle and he comes. Whisper and he hears. That’s what a shepherd does, even on a farm nowhere near a flock: he tends the threshold. He tells you when a stranger is coming up the lane. He walks with you to the barn at dusk and back to the house in the blue wash of evening. He is presence in motion.

Presence

And that’s what Fort Benton’s Shep felt like to me: presence. Not just the story tourists trade on the levee, but the way a place remembers for you when you’ve forgotten. The statue doesn’t just honor a singular dog; it blesses the job all guardians have—human or canine, living or gone—to stand at the crossings and keep an eye on us as we pass.

Carmen has always been the one to catch these threads. She did it in Paris when a bell peal turned “just friends” into something is happening. She did it in Louisville, at Mulberry Hill, when a small chain-link fence around forgotten graves felt louder than the big history down the road. She does it daily in our living room with a pencil poised over my prose. She doesn’t preach; she notices. Then she hands me the noticing like a found coin: This matters. Don’t walk past it.

Her Shep comment sent me back to the manuscript. I didn’t rewrite the scene so much as I recalibrated the listening. The river was still there, the afternoon still shouldered the same light, but the center of gravity had shifted. The statue wasn’t simply a point of interest on a Lewis & Clark-ish road day. It was an icon for a vocation that keeps finding us: stewarding what’s sacred as we move.

Sacred, for me, is not a word trapped in stained glass. It’s the living room where my grandmother’s stories breathe. It’s a town that builds bronze to say, We remember. It’s the Missouri’s hush beside a levee that has seen more arrivals and departures than any ledger can hold. It’s Carmen connecting dots I didn’t connect and, in doing so, knitting past to present so the cloth won’t tear.

If you’ve traveled with us in Uncharted Moments, you know we chase big landscapes and find small mercies. We go looking for history and discover our own hearts leaving breadcrumbs. Fort Benton gave us Shep twice—once in metal and once in memory—and both times as a gentle nudge: Pay attention at the edges. That’s where crossings announce themselves. That’s where love does its quietest, bravest work.

Thresholds

I’ve been thinking about thresholds a lot lately. The obvious ones—weddings, funerals, new jobs, last days—carry rituals we recognize. But the smaller ones shape us just as surely: a pause before you say the hard thing, a glance across a room that says we’re okay, a pencil mark in a margin that turns a “nice detail” into a seam you can pull. Maybe that’s why Shep lands so deep. He stands there without fanfare and makes the ordinary act of going from one place to another feel witnessed.

I don’t know what threshold you’re approaching. A decision you’ve been delaying. A phone call. A goodbye you didn’t choose. If I could hand you anything from Fort Benton, it would be the sense that you don’t have to cross alone. Somewhere nearby, there’s a keeper of the bend—someone or something that will sit within sight and wait until you’re on your way. Sometimes it looks like a bronze dog by a river. Sometimes it looks like a memory you thought you’d misplaced until your person says, Hey, remember? And sometimes it looks like the river itself, patient as breath.

When we left the levee, I turned once more to the statue and gave a small nod, the kind you give to an usher who helped you find your seat. Back in the car, Carmen squeezed my hand and returned to the pages. I drove with the Missouri in the corner of my eye, thinking about Granny, about dogs named Shep, about all the watchers who’ve kept vigil while we figured out our way.

We call them Uncharted Moments, these little collisions of place and past, because you can’t plan them and you can’t force them. You can only be there when they arrive. And when they do, you mark the spot—on a map, in a book, in your bones—and you carry on, shepherded by love toward whatever’s next.

— Jeff

P.S. Over the next few months, I will be sharing more from my upcoming book, Uncharted Moments Along the Lewis and Clark Trail – A Love Story. If you want to be in the know as it proceeds through the publishing process, sign up for my newsletter in the side panel of this page!

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The Question That Stopped Me Cold – How one moment at Skamania Lodge made me rethink my “why”

Jeff Ton - Lewis & Clark Experience: A New Way Forward

 

It happened at the cocktail reception before dinner. The sun was starting to drop behind the trees at Skamania Lodge, the white tablecloths on the garden patio lifting in the breeze, and the smell of dinner drifting across the lawn. One of the participants, beer in hand, approached. 

“So, I have a question for you. This morning, you asked about our “why”  — why we came to this program. What is your why? Why do you travel halfway across the country three or four times a year to guide this program?”

In five years, a dozen cohorts, and over two hundred participants, no one had ever asked me that.

I gave the first answer that came to mind: “I love the story, I love storytelling, I love seeing the lightbulb moments in people’s eyes when something connects.”

True enough. But the question stayed with me—over dinner, around the campfire that night, on the flight home. Why do I really do this? Especially now, when leaving Carmen is harder and harder with each trip.

Why – Deep Learning

I am honored to have been selected by my client, FCCS, to help build this program. What began as Carmen’s and my journey to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail blossomed into an entirely new career when Jean Canty Segal of FCCS read some of my writing about leadership and Lewis and Clark. She invited me to meet with a team of people in Seattle to discuss building the program. I was thrilled to be selected as a part of the team. 

It stretched me. I learned so much in those 18 months of developing the program. Not so much about Lewis and Clark, but about leadership development programs, experiential learning, and the discipline to bring their vision to life. I walked away from every meeting we had with new insights and new perspectives. 

From Sean Murray, I learned how to pace an experience so it flows.

From Matt Walker, I learned how the outdoors can carve a lesson deep into memory.

From Jared Nichols, I learned to stand in the future and imagine beyond the present.

My why? The learning never stops — and I love what we built.

Why – Continuous Learning

We launched the program in 2021, and since then, I’ve had the privilege of leading a dozen cohorts through the key concepts of Vision, Team Building, Overcoming Obstacles, Developing Resilience, and Proceeding On.

It never gets old. It never becomes routine. It never gets mailed in.

Each group arrives ready — hungry to learn, hungry to grow as leaders. They bond quickly and deeply. They are open to new and sometimes uncomfortable experiences. They push themselves. They challenge each other.

It’s a joy to watch it happen. Twenty strangers on the first night become friends, teammates, colleagues by the end of day one. They come from different industries, different parts of the country, different perspectives — yet they share a willingness to listen, to learn, and to support each other.

And I learn from every single one of them. Sometimes it’s an insight shared quietly after the hike or the aerial course. Sometimes it’s a reflection offered around the campfire, or a look across the table that says, Yeah, that makes sense now. Other times it’s a suggestion scribbled on a survey form (yes, we read every one), or a perspective I’d never considered, or a question no one had ever asked me before.

That constant exchange — giving and receiving, teaching and learning — is one of the things that keeps me coming back.

Why – Legacy

One of the leadership lessons we teach in the closing module is about legacy, not necessarily the legacy you leave behind when you leave this earth, but the legacy you leave behind in your team, in your teammates, when you transition to a new role or a new job. What do you hope they carry with them? 

I have grown so much through the program, sometimes taking to heart the very lessons I am teaching, perhaps in a different way. Like celebrating victories. As the facilitator, I too, need to celebrate victories, like the successful conclusion of another cohort. 

I have been thinking a lot about legacy as I approach the end of my career, as I move into the final chapter of life. What do I want to leave in the hearts and minds of others?

Family, of course. My wife Carmen — my partner in all things. Good times — tough times, through it all, I want her to carry my love in her heart. My sons, Jeremy and Brad. I see pieces of me in them — different pieces, similar pieces. Yet, they are their own men, teaching me each and every day. My grandkids  — Braxton, Jordan, Jasper, and Hayden, step grandkids Ari, Avery, and Henry, and step grandkids from a son’s prior marriage, Donny and Charity. Legacy.

The Indiana CIO Network. A group of IT professionals across Central Indiana and beyond. What started as five colleagues having lunch has grown into a group with over 400 members. Each member brings their insights and expertise  —  and their willingness to share and support each other. A new group of leaders have taken the reins and the group is thriving! Legacy. 

The Lewis and Clark Experience: A New Way Forward. There will come a time when I no longer serve as a guide for the program. Having the program on a solid foundation is one of the reasons I have poured my heart and soul into it. It is why we fine-tune it almost every time. That’s why I rehearse until I can forget the script and speak straight from the heart. Legacy.

The Journey

When Carmen and I first set out to follow the Lewis and Clark Trail, we had no idea what we’d discover. It became the theme of our life, the shape of my career, and the heart of my next book — Uncharted Moments Along the Lewis and Clark Trail – A Love Story.

I suppose that’s my real why: to keep the story alive — for the people in the room, for the people I love, and for the people I’ll never meet.

— Jeff

P.S. Over the next few months, I will be sharing more from my upcoming book, Uncharted Moments Along the Lewis and Clark Trail – A Love Story. If you want to be in the know as it proceeds through the publishing process, sign up for my newsletter in the side panel of this page!

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