Rivers of Thought
On Love, Legacy & the Discoveries Along the Way
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
