Travel
Love Traveling with this Girl
She doesn’t like being on camera, but sometimes Melissa gives me permission to share her happiest moments. For most of our marriage, or at least the last half of it, since the midnight of social media, we’ve had a spoken…
The Birthday Trifecta
Today is Melissa’s birthday. She’ll never announce it and she’ll never ask for recognition. But that’s part of what makes her perfect. She can be beautiful, brilliant, and beloved without ever seeking praise. The world would be more gentle, more…
After the Fires
For all that my west coast friends endured last year, through the endless, relentless fires that ravaged towns and forests from California to Washington, it’s worth noting all the new and continuing life that surrounds the black trees and the…
Inyo National Forest
On our way into Yosemite, the most well-known national park in California, we passed through ten miles of Inyo National Park on the front end, which for whatever reason, still felt like the more beautiful, more calming park by comparison.…
The Gentleman of Yosemite
After three hours of driving south from Lake Tahoe, through black trees and grassless hills, singed by the recent fires, we started to see signs that insisted no one could enter Yosemite without a reservation. But we had already come…
After 21 Years Apart
When you move around a lot as a kid, you don’t build a lot of lasting relationships. From 1995-1999, when I was living in Oregon, Joel Williams was the closest thing I had to a best friend, someone to hold…
After the Quakes @ Eagle Falls
Before we left for Lake Tahoe, a family member mentioned to me that there had been a number of quakes in eastern California, particularly close to the lake itself, which seemed like a fitting risk to our vacation, seeing as…
Celebrating 19 Years @ Lake Tahoe
There’s no question that life itself has been and continues to be complicated, for us and for everyone, for so many reasons. But love, for us, has never been like life. It’s never been complicated. It’s never been a challenge…
Soft Sand, Calm Seas
Day trips can be a little unsettling for me, at times, mostly because I find myself wondering if the day should have been used to read or write, if the time would have better spent stationary, at home. It’s a…
Rolling in their Graves
On the day we arrived in Virginia, last Saturday, the Richmond cemetery that houses Jefferson Davis, two presidential graves, and thousands of confederate soldiers had been roped off as a crime scene. Aging and irreplaceable crosses and headstones had been…
