I haven’t written much the past few weeks. Not because life has been full. More because it hasn’t. Just not in ways that resolve into something clear enough to name. It’s been a stretch of in-between—one of those seasons that doesn’t announce itself but quietly takes...
We were the first vehicle at the trailhead that morning. Snow was falling, not sideways or dramatic, just steady and confident. South Fork Canyon sat in that narrow winter window where the temperature hovers just above indecision: cold enough for clean flakes, warm...
I’ve read too much about sleep lately. And I’m working on it—which seems oxymoronic. Shouldn’t I just be mostly unaware for seven or eight hours? Like so many modern fixations, we assume that if we study something long enough, we can get a handle on it—even when it’s...
In storytelling, a throughline is the line of force that carries a narrative forward. It’s the path a story naturally wants to take—the most direct route from premise to resolution. When it’s sound, everything else can hang from it. When it’s unexamined, the story...
It wasn’t that long ago that a new trail began to appear across a slope that had previously been accessed only by a steeper line. At first, it wasn’t really a trail at all—just deep horse and elk tracks pressed into late-spring mud once the frost finally let go. I...
The other day, I drove up the canyon to “check if it’s still there,” or so I told my daughter on the phone as I accelerated. I didn’t have a question in mind as I drove. There’s always something waiting at home—unfinished work, loose worries—and lately there’s even...
