The documents are souvenir receipts for my dad’s multiple emergency tooth extractions at the park’s on-site dental clinic, dated three summers apart. Both are stamped PAID, in 1969 and ’71, respectively. The body of each includes intake notes. One, in bubbly handwriting, says, “#32 Strong and sure. No obvious decay.” Which makes me wonder why it required removal. The other’s fate is noted in all caps with heavy black ink. “#17 DEEP BROWN. 3MM CAVITY, LINGUAL. PUNGENT ODOR.” I read this and clench my jaw.

The attending physician on his first trip, Dr. Lydia Kahn D.D.S., drew a smiley face next to her illegible signature. Dr. Mitch Valento, the doc on the second visit, did the same. The receipts are stapled onto facing pages in my dad’s health history scrapbook. Set together they interrupt the book’s chronological flow. I flip to where the second one should be and find an empty plastic page protector where I assume it once lived. Seems my dad wanted the two bits of ephemera side by side.

A few years back, while killing time in the waiting room during my mom’s knee replacement, my dad and I talked about our family’s dental genetics. “Thanks for nothing,” I joked. My own compulsion for tooth care—all the flossing, the fluorides, the mouthwashes, the regular cleanings, the expensive brushes—and not a damn thing has kept me from regularly investing a small fortune in upkeep or pathological repairs and services. On one of my last visits, the hygienist said, “Wow! You’re no stranger to dental work!” And even though it’s hard to change course from an inherited susceptibility, her words inflamed me. I wanted to bark back, “It’s my ancestors’ fault, lady! All my kin got bad teeth!” Instead I just closed my eyes and let her do her thing. I’m just grateful that in day-to-day life I can just close my mouth and keep my dental truths hidden.

It was also in that waiting room where my dad mentioned his Disneyland emergency. “Yeah, that damn thing started giving me trouble during basic training,” he said. “It wasn’t until years later that things got unmanageable—after my leukemia diagnosis.” With this comment he sat back in the stiff bench. Like he was double-checking the timeline. He then nodded to himself and said, “Teeth are affected by cancer, you know.” Which was when he opened his mouth and leaned towards me. “See these?” he mumbled agape as he pointed past his tongue to a glistening array of silvers and golds. Make sure you get these after they cremate me. It’s your inheritance.”

Over time, the effects of my dad’s leukemia, throat cancer, and other slow-burn maladies took their toll. His gums turned so sensitive that he had to refrain from using floss. Eventually even a toothbrush, even with soft bristles, was too much for his mouth to handle. He ultimately resorted to wiping his teeth with a strip of thin gauze, always keeping a bundle of the little squares in his pocket. The swipe never resulted in a fresh and clean feel. Never fully did the trick. Which was another reason he became reluctant to get physically close to people. The thick and yellow caked-up plaque between his incisors was inevitable. Even he called his breath atrocious. When I’d spend time with him, I’d dab some Bert’s Bees minty lip balm on my mustache to cut the acrid air that escaped him. I shake my head when I think about it now. Me, protecting myself from his reality. Such a damn shame. But in the throes of such moments, it was really hard for me to be compassionate while also being totally grossed out.

My dad kept record of every medical visit, every doctor correspondence, every printed patient name tag and parking garage ticket. Never threw away anything that had to do with his health. There’s even a series of printed out multi-page responses to questions he asked the internet. Like, What does it mean if I have cardiomegaly? What’s the survival rate for heart transplants? Can I still have sex if I have high blood pressure? What are the most common carbs?

On page 1 of his medical scrapbook is his birth certificate, and the last page is an official copy of his death certificate, which lists leukemia, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer complications as his causes of death. The rest of his life is mashed between those bookending documents. Every time I flip through the pages, the book seems bigger than before. Every time I find a new artifact that offers insight to his slow demise.

My dad kept quiet about his issues. He was secretive. Protective of himself and my mom. They didn’t want to get in the way. On any phone call, within minutes of getting on the line, both were always quick to say, “Well, I’ll let you go…I know you’re busy!” Their words would infuriate me. “How do you know I’m busy?” I’d snap back. Still, we’d sign off. And ironically, they’d take forever to say goodbye.

I now wonder if this scrapbook was his way of sharing. He knew it was something we’d eventually find and marvel at. “Jesus Christ! Dad was dealing with some serious shit! I had no idea!” we’d undoubtedly exclaim. Such a passive move on his part. Such commitment to proving to us, even after his death, that his life was hard. That he suffered. That he managed to endure all this medical strife with little to no complaint. As if to say, “Ha! See now! I did it on my own! I’m tough! I can handle it!” I, too, pride myself in being fiercely independent, and it’s obvious who I got it from. But I now question the importance, the value, of such extreme self-reliance. Of such resilience. To be fully free, perhaps, is to also be utterly alone. And I definitely don’t want that.

Together we sat in that waiting room for hours, white-noised by the drone of the soulless television set locked on a news channel. My dad interrupted the boredom. “When those folks at Disneyland pulled my molar, I started thinking differently about things,” he said. Something in his gut told him not to take that moment lightly. That, for some reason, the day was worth remembering. “Even though I didn’t know why. Still don’t,” he said.

For the rest of his life he kept that Disneyland tooth in a baggie in the top drawer of his desk. I remember seeing it there as a kid. Afraid to touch it. Still, it inspired me to keep the first tooth I lost. I wrote a note to the tooth fairy to this effect—Please don’t take my tooth. And when I woke up, five nickels were scotch-taped to my headboard and my small incisor, probably a #24 or 25, was still in the tiny pocket of my tooth-shaped pillow. Saving teeth, however, stopped being a thing after I had lost a few. And before long, the ones I had saved got misplaced in one of my family’s various moves. I no longer have any, but I do sometimes wonder where, or even if, these pieces of me remain. Do these tangible bits of my life still exist? And if so, where are they?

I asked my dad what the medical facility at Disneyland was like, but he was locked onto the overhead screen and paid me no attention. When he finally spoke, he went on about his time as an twenty-nothing airman in Guam and his daily exposure to agent orange, the likely culprit for his laundry list of future ailments. “The bombers were covered in the shit, and we just wiped it off like it was nothing.” As he rambled on about his time in-service, I found my own mind wandering, because I’d already heard that one a thousand times before.

It was then, however, when I became aware that my dad was speaking in his normal voice. The one he had before throat cancer replaced his robust baritone with an effortful squeak. When chemo messed up his vocal chords, I had a hard time hearing him. Sometimes, when I was out of his earshot, I’d mimic his new voice in an effort to entertain my brothers. We’d share a good laugh, even though my impression sounded more like Mickey Mouse than him. It was a mean thing to do, and I knew it. But I did it anyhow. Because making fun of him made me briefly feel good.

“Oh and then that one time…” my dad went on. And by then I was listening. Really listening. Because I hadn’t heard his real voice in years. Never before had I tuned into his words with such acute attention. Never had I heard the musicality of his vocal cadence. His words had a calming quality. His low tenor was like a spell. Big and small at the same time. Inflective and animated. Soft and sharp. His voice was listenable—like perhaps he could have been on the radio. Or a podcaster. Or a voice actor. Over the years, folks have complimented me on my voice, too, noting similar details. It’s relaxing, they’ve said. Easy to hear. Meditative. Which, for reasons I can’t explain, always made me feel like I had something to offer, after all.

My dad caught me staring at him and he paused mid-sentence. He then said something, but the sound coming from him was delayed. When I finally heard it, his mouth was closed. Which made me wonder if the voice was actually in my own head. As my father’s peering eyes focused on me, his word finally landed. It was my name. “Tom.” His voice a notch above a whisper. And then I heard it again. “Tom.” I was still looking at him when he added, “Tom, you are my son.”

Pressure inflated my face before it broke. Then tears rivered down my cheeks as convulsions weighed my body into the ground. I was heavy. Mountainous. Gushing waves of anguish to the sound of my dad’s long lost voice. The echoes lasted for hours. For days. For months. Even now, I can still hear his words.

When I calmed, my head lay atop his bulky scrapbook. I felt comfortable there. Didn’t want to move. Which is when I muttered something incomprehensible and was stirred back to consciousness.

Now, I am awake with my eyes closed. I move my hands to my chest where the morning sun is warm on my arms, my face. Birds chirp just beyond my window. A family of robins, probably. One calls, one responds. Then more singing nearby and far away.

The lingering ring of my dad’s voice fades when I open my eyes, so I quickly close them again. Tightly. But to no avail. It’s gone.

A car speeds past my apartment and I wonder if it’s been raining. I make two fists and reach my legs long. Twist at the hips. I stretch my tight low back. The ceiling fan whirls overhead. I sit up, and I am bothered by the movement of air.

I then run my sleepy tongue over my own mouthful of teeth. The one with a nick in the silver filling. My various porcelain caps. A molar’s slight chip from a roasted chickpea. My eye tooth with a birthmark. And that one empty space far in the back from my own long-ago extraction of #32. It’s smooth there now, soothing to touch. It’s almost like the missing tooth never existed. And though I know it was with me for a long time, I don’t remember what it was like to have it. But also, I don’t miss it. This simple thought, this absence of memory, of interest, presses pins into my chest. I’m sorry, tooth, I say out loud. I’m sorry I can’t come up with any memories of when we were together.

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How this looked, however, was never clear. An endless list of fanciful possibilities. Perhaps I’d build a cabin along a remote Alaskan river. Use the wood I felled to frame it. Live off the land. Or start a walk in Patagonia and head north. Zig and zag through languages and cultures until I could name the trees in the local tongue. Or hike repeatedly up and down the Appalachian Trail. Georgia to Maine, Maine to Georgia. Traverse the planet’s oldest range and learn every hidden water source. Every archaeological site. Every blackberry patch. Get to know all the trail towns where a weary hiker can get a life-altering espresso. These were never just dreams I entertained to appease my penchant for wonder. They were actual options. And as time went on, they narrowed down into one.

Trading my comfortable life for one afoot always had a start date. But it wasn’t until a few months ago that I named it and made a plan. And once those wheels began turning, I fit better into my body, my thoughts, my outlook. I became precisely what I’d been seeking for a lifetime. All those self-help books be damned, I needed only to say yes to fit perfectly in this world.

This moment of choice overcome me with the confidence of certainty. As such, I shined. I couldn’t help it. I was the key to my own unlocking. Life would only grow brighter, I needed only to set out. Or perhaps, better stated, I needed only to set in. Because in accepting this long-known and truest version of myself, I entered the holiest of my internal spaces. I accepted my highest calling and became resonant with the divine.

There’s a part of me who wishes I’d taken this plunge long ago. That I had listened to what I knew was coming. Been more open. Been less afraid. Honored honesty. These thoughts are not regret. They reflect a mortal realizing how things could have shaken out, but didn’t. I fully accept my path. Because I needed this exact amount of time to give myself over to truth. And now, here I am, deep in my third quarter of life, closer to death than birth, and beginning anew. What a thrill it is to let go.

It’s never too late to start a thing. Look at a river—we’re floating along and an eddy pulls us in, which ever so slightly alters our trajectory. We shift our flow, speed, temperature, and our feel. The current skips us off the bottom, skins our knees, then spits us toward a riverside beach where breezy blooms and fallen branches bounce under the airy weights of flitting birds. We rest in cool shadows.

The river is our being. It effortlessly carries us where we’re headed. The path may seem foreign or reinvented, but it has always been the plan. When water slows and briefly spits us out, we wonder, “Is this still the same river?” And yes, it is. “Is it still the same me?” Of course it is, even though the sun feels different on skin.

The catalyst to finally go, to take flight, came without fanfare. I’d been adding one grain of sand at a time to a balance, then one day, an inconsequential bit of minuscule stone set everything in motion. I had been looking closely at a crop of flowers that swayed on long stems in the midday wind, their petals shining metallic red and shy streaks of bright yellow. The colors jolted words in my mind, then my mouth. “I am. I will.” And I knew, right then, it was time.

I’d just been to a street fair where pop-up tents and colorful canvases filled multiple blocks. Where the sound of people was no longer competing with roaring traffic. Human sounds like footsteps and laughter lightened the weight I didn’t even know had been crushing my chest. Made it OK to stand a little closer to a stranger as we both examined a vendor’s basket of crystals. “This one’s nice,” they said as they held a piece up. “There’s a tiny fracture inside—when it catches the light just right, there’s a rainbow. See?” I saw. For a few moments we played with that stone. Turning it this way and that to catch a different angle of light. “Less light is better,” the stranger said. “Too much takes all the colors away.”

I walked away thinking that perhaps I should get back to painting. Break out my brushes and acrylics and make a fine mess of things. Go through the day with swatches of dried colors on my hands and clothing. Oh the joy of a stray brushstroke on my shoulder, my knee! Oh the joy of being weary from making art! How I enjoyed those days. How I loved spending hours turning a blank page into a feeling.

I stood over those dancing flowers as they cheered me on. Pointing that way. My body jerked from my belly, my throat choked up. I was suddenly overcome by an urge to lay down with my cheek in the grass. I imagined removing my clothes, peeling my skin away, becoming air.

My chest pounded, my spine elongated, and everything shimmered and hummed. Everyone I passed smiled wider than usual, and I reflexively mirrored their enthusiasm. My footsteps were a metronome. A prelude to this new start.

I knew precisely what would come next, and as soon as I arrived home, I looked at the calendar, circled a date a few months away, and began forming a plan of approach. My life needed untying. Or, perhaps better stated, it felt right to move into this new space thoughtfully. I then flooded myself with questions. What will I carry? What should I do with my singing bowl? Who will caretake my barnacled conch? Where will I put the remaining boxes of family photos? And what to do with my dad’s old journals whose words helped me finally and truly love him? What do I do with all these things? For a quick second I felt stifled. But relief came quickly. Because, who cares. This is all just stuff. None of it really matters. None of it compares to the weight of a heart revealed. None compares to the heft of finding nourishment within ourselves. She glow of sunrise, of sunset, on my fingernails. The sweat. My ancestors’ secrets in the lines of my palms. The soreness. The crunch of gravel underfoot. The crunch of gravel underfoot. The crunch of gravel underfoot.

I had been waiting for this day my whole life. And when it came, I was ready.

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Back then I leaned on Dr. Rice’s words as an excuse for my lack of discipline. I hadn’t yet accepted my fate as a creative, and reserved my measly efforts for the weekend. Come Saturday mornings between my weekday nine-to-fives, I’d lug a spiral notebook to a hip cafe—which, back then anyhow, were few. I’d perch myself at a dark table as I imagined my Beat heroes might have done, order a cappuccino or something equally smart, then fill my looseleaf with indecipherable scribbles until my hand hurt.

I enjoyed sitting quietly, occasionally looking up to watch patrons come and go. I reveled in their forgettable moments, witnessing some, imagining others, and turned their gestures into fodder for my next few lines. Ink filled my paper, and my notebook softened as it grew thicker. When it was full, I’d put it on the bookshelf with others. On occasion I’d peruse its pages, and was rarely able to make out the table-shaking scrawl of my own handwriting.

But still, I was a hobbyist at best. The prospect of ever turning my work into something sharable, let alone profitable, never seriously crossed my mind. I wrote for the sake of writing, something for which I give my past self a lot of credit. Writing was an act unburdened like my other industries. I worked jobs to make money, sought intimate relationships for companionship, read books to boost my self worth, ran to push my personal boundaries, and so on. Everything I did had a reason. But I wrote because I simply couldn’t not write.

Dr. Rice’s words about writing still live with me, yet these days I feel them differently. I interpret them as an acceptance, of sorts. An intentional collaboration with life’s inevitable routine.

Writing while not writing is a way for me to manage life’s responsibilities while still honoring my creative side. I’ve grown convinced that I work better with such agreement. I may think I want a life of less obligation, of more free time and autonomy, but empty space often throws me off. Writing doubles as a solid foundation, a grounding space, that helps me keep my internal peace.

Living is my creative process, and frankly, I need a mundane rigamarole in order to find anything worthwhile to say. Like, right now I need this coffee shop’s wobbly table, the barking dog leashed outside to a light post, the muted overhead music, and some dude’s blobby black-green tattoo of who-knows-what, for a fire to ignite in my belly an urgent sense of wonderment. I need these disparate cues to inspire new characters, new storylines, new ways of looking at the world. Arbitrary particulars to remind me of something my grandfather told me about his near-death experience. Prompts to recall what it felt like to wake up to the whispers of a river.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of writing. Which is to say, life has been coming at me fast. I haven’t been generating output as I intend, but I trust this is part of the necessity of making true art. Cycles of life will eventually slow, and at some point I’ll know it’s time to get at it.

I’ll rush to my laptop, flip it open, mis-type my password a couple times before nailing it, and scramble to open a new document. Perhaps I’ll recall the morning skyline as I witnessed it today. Maybe imagine painting an undulating solid line across a large canvas to depict the cascading edges of building peaks and troughs. Then I’ll sit back, as I’m doing right now, and admire this dreamed-up work. I’ll think of mountains. Or bodies in motion. Or perhaps I’ll liken the horizon to a heartbeat pattern on an EKG screen. Which will make me think of my father. Of his long-lingering illnesses and silent strife. Of his unexpected death. Of the last text he wrote.

The day before my father’s last day, he messaged my mom a request for the next night’s dinner. “Chile no beans,” is what he typed, misspelling and all. These aren’t his last words, but they are his last documented words. It’s curious that a cityscape enlivened this memory. Sent me deep into a state of reflection.

I believe an artful life demands a close looking, inward and out. It requires honest introspection. What ultimately comes out is always what needs to come out.

So yeah, I’m writing now, like, at this very second, and that’s great. It feels good to let my mind wander a bit. But it may be a while before I can again keep a schedule that generates a bunch of words per day, let alone a finished essay each week. I know that my day is coming, though. And I trust that life, busy and scattered and distracted though it may be, is setting the stage for it. And perfectly so.

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My reflections since that day have also underlined things that I, as a son, could have done differently. Things that might have made my relationship with my dad more father-son-like. Had I only been more open-minded, less self-centered and proud, maybe we would have laughed more. Known more about each other’s lives. Shared feelings and anecdotes to willingly give glimpses into who we genuinely were as people.

But I didn’t do these things. None of them. I never stopped silently putting the impetus on him to make the first move. Never expressed my wishes for us, my hopes. Never humbled myself to the healing power of time. So, as years went by, the psychic distance between us increased. And when he died, our disunion, though amicable, was what remained.

There are so many lingering could haves. I could have done this, could have done that. Exploring them is an ever-present way for me to feed my guilt for having done little to improve our connection while he was still alive. Could haves guarantee heartache. But sometimes it feels good to feel bad.

But I don’t want to live with regret. I don’t want the remainder of my days to be themed by remorse. So I’ve worked to accept the choices I made back then, and given myself grace for my headstrong decisions.

Now, I honor my father, and myself for that matter, by using our relationship as a template for what not to do with people I aim to love. These days, I reach out more. Share my feelings more. Make known my intentions more. These are not attributes I learned directly from my dad, but he damn sure played an integral role in teaching me the value of such human intimacies.

A couple weeks back, while checking out some new music, I had an overwhelming desire to sit with my father. To sit and listen together. I had no context for doing anything like this with him, but still I knew it was the right thing to do. It needed to happen.

So I made myself a cup of coffee, pulled out one of his photos—one from the month I was born, from back when he was still a young parent, when our differences hadn’t yet become hindrances—and opened Apple Music.

“Check this out,” I said. “You ever heard of math rock?”

The Canadian duo, Angine de Poitrine, went viral earlier this year (and their name means “angina/strangling of the chest”). But before they filled my social media feeds, I caught wind of them on a private Facebook music group where someone posted a link and wrote, “I have no idea where they’re from. A two-piece band and some rather excellent jazzy stuff presented in an unusual way. Anyone else heard of them?”

I clicked and was unimpressed. Days later, a friend who’s not even on social media texted about the same band. “Really hard to listen to,” I wrote back. “A musical mess.”

Within days, I couldn’t go online without getting inundated by Angine de Poitrine’s “math rock.” That’s right, math rock. It’s characterized by complex, unpredictable time signatures, angular melodies, polyrhythms, and use of loop pedals. Details that make sounds, but not necessarily the sort to tap a foot to. Though there are melodies, their inconsistencies make them really hard to settle into. Like listening to a string of endless crises. Ears concurrently captivated and traumatized.

In Angine de Poitrine’s case, the unusual combination of sounds is made more bewitching by their absurdist costumes and atypical instruments. They wear black and white polka-dotted attire and over-sized papier-mâché masks.

Between songs, the anonymous twosome performs ritualistic gestures (their hands in the shape of a triangle, for one, waving outstretched arms in unison, another), and never speak coherently. Their “language” consists of distorted vocalizations of something-sounding gibberish.

As for the members, Klek plays drums, expertly maintaining oddly-stamped tempos and starts, while Khn plays a double-necked hybrid guitar/bass where both instruments have additional microtonal frets which glow phosphorescent to help compensate for Khn’s inability to fully see through the mask (the eye holes are impeded by bejeweled dollar signs).

Khn also nimbly works a loop station with bare feet. One internet meme jokes that there are actually three people in the band: Klek, Khn, and Khn’s deft toes that work like fast fingers over the various knobs.

The band came at me sideways and I initially loathed them. But the more my algorithm fed them to me, the more I learned precisely what they were doing. And what they were doing fascinated me. Their rule-breaking choices appealed to my artistic nature, and my hate quickly turned to an irrational love. I suddenly wanted everyone I knew to hear them and feel the glorious agitation that I was also feeling.

Angine de Poitrine sidelined my previous obsession (IDLES) and I was soon listening to them exclusively. Filling my day with their two albums, Vol. 1 and Vol. II, live excerpts from past shows, and the KEXP performance that introduced the Montreal virtuosos to the world at large and made them abruptly famous.

Now, a couple months later, I am still not yet convinced that Angine de Poitrine’s music isn’t some sort of spell. Like maybe it’s a portal to a different dimension or plane of being. Perhaps somewhere in that microtonal math is a subconscious voice, a commanding message, meant to influence my next move. But whatever. Because I don’t care. Given the state of the world, a transformative artistic wormhole is pretty doggone appealing right now.

After a second listen of “Fabienk,” but a live version this time, I read the look on my dad’s face. Pretty sure he didn’t like it, nor any of Angine’s other stuff I played for him. Which wasn’t a surprise, since his record collection had always been as vanilla as it comes. Manfred Mann, Herb Alpert, Roger Williams, and more recently, anything by Cher.

“So, what do you think?” I asked him.

He squinted and smiled—gave me a look like his answer to my question should be obvious. Then he did what he always did while deep in thought and ran his fingers through his perfect head of auburn hair and closed his eyes for an extended blink. Then he reopened his eyes, laughed a little, and cleared his throat.

“I think you and I have very different tastes in music,” he said.

“So diplomatic,” I said, cracking up.

I took my last sip of coffee and picked up his photo. Bright it closer to my face.

“Let’s do this again,” I said.

“I’d like that,” he said. “Maybe I’ll bring something next time.”

“Cool,” I said.

Then I tucked his photo away.

*

There is no poetry in stagnation. No ingenuity in sameness. When my dad died, I found a new way to breathe. And frankly, I believe he did, too.

It took death to open my eyes to what could be with my dad. And since he’s been gone, I have felt surrounded by more love than ever. I assume it’s always been there, but I can see it now. Feel it now.

Such is the beauty, the magic, the necessity of our most transformative moments. Tragic or joyous, cadenced or arrhythmic, we need these moments in order to evolve.

To become better at being alive.

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I’m not much of a car person, but still I watch closely as the sleek vehicle passes. Not in admiration, but because it sucks me into its thunderous wake. The Porsche’s heavy discord envelops the nearby world. Booming bass vibrates a sheen of yellow pollen on its aging red body, treble rattles loose its galvanized panels, and the drumming tempo bellows my middle-aged heart ventricles into a false arrhythmia which, after last week’s visit to the cardiologist, makes me wonder if the doctor’s all-good was, perhaps, delivered prematurely.

The cacophony is accompanied by a broken orchestra of under-the-hood juddering. From beneath the oxidized bonnet comes an agitated din of clunking metallic violence. A racket, I assume, remedied from the driver’s seat by fully cranking up the speakers. I know that move—upturn the volume and delay the inevitable trip to the mechanic. That Porsche, like so many of my own vehicles, is repaired by a mere shift in focus from what’s bad to what’s good. Perspective plus hope sometimes makes miracles.

The thumping song is J-Kwon’s “Tipsy,” which hurls me back to 2004 when my brother suggested the same muscular tune as the soundtrack for my end-of-year class video. I mouth the lyrics as they take flight. One, here comes the two to the three to the four, everybody drunk out on the dance floor, baby girl ass jiggle like she wanting’ more, like she a groupie and I ain’t even on tour. The catchy number, misogynistic as all get up, floods me with a wave of nostalgia.

“Tipsy’s” suggestive content was wildly inappropriate for my middle school special ed students, and surely a questionable choice for the project. The principal would have made me change it if I hadn’t outright excluded her from the video’s making. Frankly, I didn’t want to deal. And by deal I mean I didn’t want to subject myself (or my kids) to her predominance. Her first words uttered at me that September set the tone for our relationship. “Keep your students out of my office and you and I will do just fine,” she said. Her statement took me by surprise. Because why kind of leader says that? Still, I took heed.

Every day of class, the one thing I could count on was chaos. Sometimes it would move through the room like a bullet, at other times it carried on through the day, then into the week like a slow and brutal virus. I grew so accustomed to uncertainty and strife that I distrusted the easy days. Perhaps even created conflict when it didn’t find me first.

My students were a challenging mixed bag of diagnoses and circumstances. “Emotionally Disturbed” was the state’s language, an umbrella term for kids who were on the autism spectrum, bipolar, prone to psychotic episodes, schizophrenic, managing ADHD, or simply misunderstood and banished from regular ed by previous teachers who might have, for example, misinterpreted a loud voice as an outburst. It wasn’t uncommon for kids to be heard discussing their various pharmaceutical cocktails.

Regardless, schools were so poorly resourced in accommodations, cultural understanding, and compassion that many plopped portables on their back 40 and assigned them to special ed, which only served to further increase the physical and psychic distance between the student body. Kids were othered. And, to some degree, on display.

So of course they pushed buttons, broke rules, disrespected peers and faculty. Of course they catalyzed physical discord and outrage. They reacted, lost their cool, freaked out. They instigated fights. Many fights. And not the sort of shoulder-pushing schoolyard scuffles I grew up with. No. They incited actual throw-downs that left people bloody, torn, broken, and often suspended or expelled.

My students were proud. They claimed daily to be grown. Twelve years old be damned, they were men, they exclaimed. But then they’d piss or shit themselves in the fit of a tantrum, or get busted during P.E. for bragging about drug use or showing someone their penis.

They were loud, abrasive, commonly unpleasant, and they generally had poor hygiene. They distracted classroom academics with chatter of guns, and assured me that some gang-affiliated uncle would kill me dead if they simply asked him to. “Don’t make me,” they’d say. Their comfort with hate and manipulation was alarming, while their ability to emotionally regulate was nonexistent. Even benign situations had potential to escalate into a terrifying hellish tornado in the time it took to put a cap back on a marker. Eggshells and panic, all day long.

Such children, such people, are really hard to love.

Rather than ever include the administration in my class’s myriad issues, rather than do a write-up, call campus security, or add life-changing lines to their IEPs, we handled everything as the principal demanded—internally.

And in those moments, no matter whether it was inspired by tumult or necessity, I’d ask the class to stop what they were doing and please clear their desks. Then I’d draw the blinds, cut the lights, lock the door, and together we’d go headlong into the murky weeds.

We endured tough conversations about anything and everything. From campus flare-ups to family issues, anger control to lunchroom racism. And, in a couple less-turbulent moments, we dived deep into the nitty gritty details of the birds and the bees. We never once involved the principal in our process. We defused bullshit exactly where the bullshit began.

That Porsche, now stopped at a red light, commands the attention of all passersby. “Tipsy’s” twang echoes off the Drakeford ahead and Walt’s Fish Shack behind. Two, here comes the three to the four to the five, now I’m lookin’ at shorty right in her eyes. The messy clang in the engine makes me cringe. Because it’s just a matter of time.

Perhaps it’s cliche to say that year of teaching taught me a lot about myself, but it did. Among other things, it underlined the value of social risk-taking. I learned that hazards involved in making genuine human connections are rarely as tricky as they seem. It’s like the adage I often spout while backpacking—Everything is scarier from far away. But like an incline, a waterless stretch, or a daring traverse seen from afar, making an effort to connect with another human being is most always worth the undertaking. When we soften the false paradigm of hardness and power, the value of each other’s presence swiftly illuminates.

Teaching was also a reminder to externalize my gaze. I didn’t have the luxury of showing up to class in a bad mood. And if I gave into my ego or my own driving need for attention, I’d lose. I had to keep a keen eye on others’ needs before they became needs. I had to largely forget myself for eight hours, while also remembering to precisely be myself for those same eight hours.

Social navigation, which in my case was a play between a classroom of young, Black males, and me, their white teacher, had potential to perseverate deeply-grooved barriers among us. Between our beliefs. Between our possibilities. Between any sort of understanding that we might have of each other. My choices could either edge us toward trust, or pull the rug out from beneath it. The line was often unclear.

Any storytelling we’d ever do demanded I regularly model vulnerability. To carve out the space for it, then initiate it. Kids goofed on me for talking about feelings, which was precisely when I knew we were making headway.

More than anything else, my job was to consistently display authentic care. The sort that proved, I see you, I got you. Then never stop giving a damn even when those knucklehead kids angrily launched dictionaries in my general direction, shouted “Fuck you, Mr. Griffen!” or sought to belittle, emasculate, or injure me with words that had once injured them.

There were days when I despised my students. Absolutely hated them. My challenge every day was to find new ways to love them.

When the principal passed through to do occasional assessments, I’d get dinged. I didn’t write standards on the board or teach according to the plan outlined in the handbook. After one such visit, I found myself explaining myself in the principal’s office after her pass-through turned into a shitshow. All starting with one kid saying the F-word, “Fuck math, man!” and me doing nothing about it.

Truth be told, I never docked anyone for cussing during the school day. I discouraged such language, and encouraged students to use archaic expletives instead. Llike scobberlotcher and dunderhead. There were caveats, however. If they wanted to berate others in the old language, they had to 1) Use the term correctly, and 2) Be able to spell the obscenity. Slubberdegullion, for example, became a class favorite. Students readily replaced stupid motherfucker with slubberdegullion, then promptly halted their explosive tirades to spell it correctly for all to hear. Never have I been so proud then when they got it right.

Language, I attempted to convey, was a powerful tool. Its impact determined by timing, frequency, and elocution. Fuck was simply a sharp word that, when overused, lost its desired impact. “Diversify and differentiate,” I’d insist. “Played-out profanity is borrrrring.” I would regularly reward someone who cussed less in a given day than they did the day before. Only ten times today compared to yesterday’s twenty? Cool, more free time for you! High five!

“How’s it feel to make some progress?” I might ask afterwards, which was as much a reveal of my own internal dialogue as it was me trying to spark their own introspection. “How’s success actually feel in your head, your chest, your belly, your arms?” Our bodies have all the answers we need. Bodies more than books, brains, guts, and certainly more than fists and triggers.

But ol’ principal keep ‘em outta my office didn’t much like my explanation. So Something went into my file.

I stop on the street and do a quick Google search. Turns out the 944 doesn’t have a VW engine, after all. No surprise there—my dad was often full of answers that were full of shit. It was the 924 that ran with a motor similar to a Beetle. The 944 was pure Porsche.

The search also taught me, and this is super random, that the plate on the passenger side footwell is made out of plywood. I find this interesting, even though I’m not even sure what a footwell is. Is it a floorboard? The prospect of a fancy car with a plywood part is the curiosity. Calls into question the idea of value. What makes a thing good, after all? What makes something stand out? Or have value?

What makes something worth remembering?

As for J-Kwon, Wikipedia doesn’t have much to say. Seems that “Tipsy” was pretty much a one hit wonder. It peaked in 2004 at #2 on the Billboard Top 100, and not much has happened in J-Kwon’s musical life since.

Often, after students had left for the day, I’d sit in one of their desks and give myself over to the strange feel of peace. I’d take a few deep breaths, then fire curses at my students’ ghosts. I’d thrash their pasts and current influences, and spew vitriol on their fucked up trajectories and aspirations. I’d do this until I got it all out. Until nothing more could escape my heated chest and mouth. Only then would I know that I’d made space in my heart for love. More love. Then I’d get up, give the room a good wipe-down, and head home.

I was their teacher, but I was also their student. All of us were loping together towards the same simple things: Daily safety, a semblance of community, and very occasionally a familial session of deep belly laughter that left our abs sore. I didn’t know it at the time, but the years with those goddamned kids offered more lessons about true love than anything ever had before. It was both the worst and best thing I ever did.

On that last day of school, when together we watched the end-of-year video for the first time, my students leaped from their chairs and lost their ever-loving shit. Seeing themselves moving on the screen to the J-Kwon backdrop sent books and backpacks jubilantly flying across the room. Desks toppled and bodies flailed in cosmic merriment. We screamed joyously together.

Our classroom became a house party, and the ecstatic wails were so loud that the lead teacher next door stomped over to see about the commotion. As she pounded on the door, one student said, “Oooh! You’re busted, Mr. G!” which caused the class to giggle with unadulterated delight. They hushed as I answered the door.

Suddenly, roles were reversed. For once it was me, not them, who was in a predicament. Me who was possibly in trouble. But whatever. No biggie. Because whatever came our way, we’d sort it all out together.

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I knew nothing yet about the river.

I didn’t do any research, didn’t weigh my pros and cons, and I didn’t ask D- much about what I’d be doing with them at Dansey’s Pass. All I knew was that one of their friends had bought a holiday park on the south island and could use some help with ongoing operations—basic landscaping, general maintenance, that sort of stuff.

For five hours of work per day, I’d be compensated with food, rustic quarters, and full use of the campground. The prospect of hard labor piqued my interest. I love using my body in this way. To move and sweat, to hear birdsong as I swing an axe, to smell the must of wet leaves, of dirt. To ache afterward, to feel the strain of repetitive raking. The smell of fresh cut grass. The wet green on my shoes. To bear witness to a renewed patch of earth. To a cleanness. A fresh start. A way from which I know peace.

D- sent emails with more specific information, including a note reminding me that the stars looked different down there. That there were Antarctic penguins on the beaches. But I was too busy managing my mom’s sudden upheaval from one assisted living facility to another to give anything they sent much more than a glance.

In one email they wrote, “This place is special.” I remember the moment I read it—I was at Fuego, my favorite coffee shop in downtown Rochester. Their words stopped me, and I paused my frenetic rush of chores to take a seat at the cafe’s long bar. I set my phone aside and watched as baristas made playful banter with patrons.

I gazed at the foamy art on my oat cortado. A heart. There was laughter. The smell of toasting bagels. The creaks of an old wooden floor. “Oh! My love!” someone said over the scream of the steamer. My attention drifted to a wall-sized painting of a road disappearing into the horizon. Warm rays prickled my back as the sun’s sudden peek through clouds, through the massive cafe windows, put my shadow on the countertop before me. I watched my shape appear. I watched it fade.

This place is special. Such a simple statement. I’d been to special places before, but rarely had I referred to them so simply. I typically described such destinations in great detail. Show don’t tell, is the writer’s cliche. Depict images to suggest the feelings you might otherwise want to name. But D- refrained from specifics. They let the words hang to swim in my imagination.

All the while, the river did what it does.

Practical logistics followed my impulsive yes, and it wasn’t long before I questioned my rash decision. It was, without a doubt, economically foolish. Free accommodations aside, flying to the southern hemisphere would officially drain what was left of my nest egg. I’d be broke. And even a short stay would hurl me deeper into loathsome debt. Gah. I hate owing anything. Crushed by the heaviness of obligation.

When I was young, I traveled the world with barely any money. Yet I somehow managed to get to and from obscure destinations with relative ease. Things always worked out. In fact, my memories of those days are themed by an abundance. The people, the friends, the myriad experiences—all asked little of my pocketbook. Looking back now, my worries seemed fewer when I had less.

With age, however, I’ve grown more prudent. More fearful of being without. Just last year I declined an adventure of a lifetime—an all-expenses paid paddle-pack trip across Greenland’s remote southern fiords. My gut said yes, but my brain said no.

I regret my refusal, but I am also quick to give myself grace. At the time it was the right decision. My life loomed with big question marks and peripheral responsibilities, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the magnitude of the opportunity—neither the destination nor my friend’s immense generosity. It was all too much to navigate, and I breached the biggest lesson from my walk across America—always say yes to kindness. Yes to myself, and yes to others. I said no to both.

This time around, and under somewhat similar personal circumstances, I listened to my intuition and fully acknowledged, then disregarded, my trepidation. I plugged into my daily affirmation practice, when every morning I wake up and say aloud, I trust everything is working out just fine. I linger on that word, trust, since I’ve had a lifelong struggle with it. Then I repeat this and various other declarations meant to help me let go of control. To say yes more. To widen the life I’ve narrowed with fear as I’ve “matured.” I speak the prayerful words like a spell. I speak them knowing they will soon be true.

To river is to move with flow. To river is to trust the path is working out precisely as it needs to.

I purchased a round trip ticket to Dunedin, NZ. Then, and perhaps irresponsibly, or maybe even wisely, I upgraded my seat to business class for the 14-hour leg from San Francisco to Christchurch—an unapologetic, pricy move that addressed my penchant for certain indulgences (and my lingering back problems) more than anything. Hasty decisions, in many cases, have been my most poignant ones. I entered my card number and uttered fuck it as it processed.

When I sent my flight information to D-, they wrote back, “I want to greet you, Tom. If by chance I’m late, just hang about.” I chuckled at just hang about because I could hear their accented voice saying this simple phrase. I pictured their face while typing these lines—a subtle, yet intentional reminder to simply be. D- knew me. They knew my chart really, really well (sun sign Leo, moon in Aquarius). They understood my born tendencies, and I wonder now if they were intuitively offering me words they knew I’d benefit from. I interpreted just hang about as a stark reminder. That hanging about is enough. That I am enough. Just me. Not a contrived or sculpted or projected version of me.

D- then sent a video of two ducks swimming against river current. The high water raced through the still frame as the creatures frantically paddled atop it like a watery treadmill. Then they stopped whirling and together gave themselves over to the current. They floated sideways past eddies, past small branches and buoyant scree, as the river swept them opposite, eventually carrying them out of sight.

For an extra second D- kept the camera trained on the river. I heard the sound of water blanketing rocks. Of the smooth rolling stream maneuvering effortlessly around long-jammed logs. Each ripple held blinks of light. Fragmented flashes, quick glimpses. More than ever I felt ready for what I’d soon find in the inverse sky.

“See you soon,” I wrote back to D-. “I’m looking forward to arriving, and happy to wait.” Which was, perhaps, the most honest thing I’d written to anyone in a long, long time.

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The temps made me wonder if getting a Lyft this late would be a hassle, and the crickets on my mom’s end had me scratching my head. Last week we’d talked about my upcoming visit. “Just a quick one, mom,” I said. “And I’ll have to work a bunch, too.” She was fine with that. She only cared that she’d have some company. That someone would be there to remember what the doctors said. Maybe go for a drive to the lake. Hit a restaurant and take a break from her tablemates who never stop complaining about how much they dislike the food.

Within minutes of our recent phone call, my mom sent a text. She’s never been good at expressing herself, and her words, though heartfelt, are usually stale and uninspiring. “I love you so so very much.” She peppers sentiments with emojis which, in that particular note, were an army of smiling giraffes interspersed with snowflakes, balloons, and leaping dolphins. I recently watched Adolescence on Netflix and learned that the younger generation deploys emojis as code. I wondered what her litany of otherwise benign symbols might also mean.

Over the next few days, my mom sent me multiple anticipatory notes each day (and more emojis, too—butterflies, houses, teddy bear heads, and all sorts of hearts). Then yesterday they abruptly stopped. My subsequent texts received no response. I even called a few times and got her voicemail. The only consolation to her sudden silence was that I knew she’d put my arrival on her calendar. And since looking at her calendar is how she starts every day, I was confident she knew I was on my way. But no chatter was atypical. As I waited at the baggage claim, I typed her another text, “Flight delayed! Grabbing a Lyft and will be there soon!” Still no response.

I got my bags off the carousel, ordered a ride, then went outside to the designated waiting area. I set my duffels down atop a dusting of dry snow. With a sudden shiver I pocketed my hands. The sharp pops of ice chunks crushed under car tires echoed through curbside as airport police blew whistles at idling vehicles. “Get going!” they shouted. “You can’t wait here!”

My knees bounced as I peered over my nose and watched an exhale leave my body. My warm breath moved in slow motion as it joined the bitter air. The cold felt good. Relaxed my shoulders some. As traffic picked up, I considered what it would be like to be on a trail and camping in these conditions. Do I have a sleeping bag that’s warm enough? Good gloves? A jacket? I think I do. The bigger question is when I’ll be able to put this gear to the test. With my newish job and these frequent visits to New York, it’ll probably be a while.

A blasting horn yanked me from a snowy wilderness and I squinched my face. I thought about waiting inside where it was warm, but I ignored the impulse and stood with my back to the driving wind. The app said my ride was finishing another ride. My wait would be longer than usual.

After my dad died, I traveled to Rochester a lot. And for a stretch of four or five Lyft rides, my drivers were all Cuban immigrants. My Spanish has never been awesome, but it’s usually good enough for small talk. But never was it as bad as it was when I tried to speak with these drivers. They understood me fine, but my ear heard nothing familiar in their dialects. No matter how much I leaned in to listen, I couldn’t understand a doggone thing. The more frustrated I got, the more I stopped engaging. And before long I’d get in the car and acknowledge them kindly, then sit back quietly as they drove me to my destination. I’d rather them think I couldn’t speak a lick of their language than suffer through numerous requests for them to repeat themselves (which, in at least two previous instances, made their eyes roll). Still, I hated being that close to another human being and not interacting. It made me feel absent. Like I was afraid of something. And I suppose I was.

When my ride rolled up, the car came to a stop and the passenger window rolled half-way down. “Tom?” the driver said. “Hi Denisha,” I said back. She popped the trunk and I loaded my bags amidst a broken box of diapers. Then I got in the back seat and was at once smitten by the blasting heat. “Cold out there, huh? she said. “Oh my Lord!” I said. “It feels like the winters I remember as a kid.” Denisha asked if I grew up in Rochester. I told her I sorta had, and that kicked things off. She shared details of her past then listened to mine as she cautiously navigated the icy highway. I glanced occasionally at my phone—still nothing from my mom.

Upon our arrival at the assisted living community, Denisha and I sat in the car for a few warm minutes to wrap up our chat. “I appreciate this time with you,” I said. She turned to face me and, after an extra pause, said, “Thank you, me too.” As I watched her drive away, it struck me that this is the extent of the majority of my relationships these days. Immediate, brief, and fleeting. Though I yearn for lasting connections, my life makes this tricky. Perhaps someday I’ll feel a tighter circle. A closer community. Maybe someday my most meaningful interactions will extend beyond drivers, baristas, and wait staff. In the meantime, I’ll accept these unplanned heartbursts as validation that I’m receiving that which I’m giving. Which is enough. It is for now, anyway.

I braced myself as I walked into my mom’s building. This visit would be benign compared to others. Just a few appointments and a household check-in. Lately I’ve described my mom’s situation as “thriving.” Often preceded by “finally.” Still, the lingering trauma from her past circumstances—her multiple falls, utter confusion, bodily fluid messes, and the ensuing abundance of my self-imposed responsibilities—always comes rushing back in a jolt. My posture stiffens, my focus narrows, and I get to work. I step into her space as more manger than son. I joke that my visits to see her are a business trip. Because the only context I have that resembles my involvement in her life comes from when I owned a retail business that demanded my attention 24/7. My mom is my business now. And just like my little retail shop, she and I are growing fast.

I’m getting better at meeting my mom where she’s at, getting better at relaxing during visits and actually enjoying my time with her. But it’s all still partly a facade. I go through the motions of a pleasant visit while scrutinizing minutiae of her life with disastrous potential. I review her glucose numbers. Watch her water intake. I gently chide her about staying active, about how, if the body stops moving, it starts dying.

I inventory her toiletries and organize items she regularly needs to make sure they’re easy to access. I order her pull-ups, her daytime and nighttime pads, her prescribed sugar-free protein drinks. I contact her doctors. Monitor her medications. Take note of any mobility changes or new slips in cognition. I keep tabs on her finances. Log into her accounts to make sure everything looks right. I trash her junk mail and remind her not to respond to texts saying there’s an undeliverable package for her at UPS. Or an unpaid toll ticket that’s pending collections.

I remind my mom that she has plenty of money. That she needn’t worry about paying for field trips or hosting a lunch guest. I seek out any chance to remind her that she has agency. That if she wants new bathroom towels, she can get some. I tell her she is obligated to nobody. That her whining neighbor is not her responsibility. That her voice matters.

Together we review her calendar. We add appointment dates and birthdays and other notable reminders so she doesn’t miss a chance to send someone a note in the mail. “Can you buy me more stamps?” she says. “The fancy kind?” And of course I can, so I add it to the list.

I feel like I have a stronger grip on my mom’s life than I do on my own. I tell myself this is OK. Because surely it won’t always be this way. In one way or another, time will ease the burden of care. And care, though burdensome, it is also a privilege. Which is to say, someday I will no longer be needed in this capacity. And I will miss it.

I expected my mom to be waiting for me in the lobby. But the spacious room was dim and vacant. I set my baggage down and took the stairs to my mom’s unit. Her apartment door was closed, also atypical, so I gave it a couple soft knocks. Nothing. I tried to turn the knob. Locked. I knocked again, harder this time, and heard rustling. Then a soft voice said, “I’ll be right there.” The words sounded far away.

A minute passed before I heard the familiar shuffle of bare feet and walker. Step, slide. Step, slide. The doorknob turned and the door cracked open. My mom’s sleepy eyes squinted from the hallway light. “Hi mom,” I said in a low voice. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” Her mouth dropped as she let go of the walker and extended her arms towards me. “Oh my gosh!” she said over and over. “I didn’t…I wasn’t sure…I can’t believe you’re here! What a surprise!”

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Whenever I reflect on that journey, I feel like I’m completely out of touch with my emotions. Those two weeks in the southern hemisphere left me spiraling and speechless, and in all the right ways. And now, more than a month distant from it, I remain unable to name the impact it had on me. I am profoundly changed, is an accurate statement, but it says nothing. One of the best trips I’ve ever taken, leaves me with the same thing. It was a living echo of what I want in life—community, beauty, purpose, and a lot of fucking laughter. This, perhaps, sums it up best of all, but it’s absent of detail and, frankly, feels like a vague platitude.

I’m rarely at a loss for depth in written words. Even when I am, time is often all I need to gather pivotal moments together in a cohesive and coherent way to convey my truth. But my attempts to write about New Zealand have only lead to more and more deletions, and any creativity becomes promptly shrouded in frustration. So lately I’ve stopped trying in an effort to give it more time. Speaking of time, twenty minutes to go.

When I recall my stay in New Zealand, I think about the river that flowed adjacent to the rustic cabin that housed me. The river that all the property’s water pipes were connected to. The water I drank until my blood was, quite literally, 90% river. Until 80% of my brain was river. Until 75% of my entire being was river. Until I was basically the river.

From where I’m standing, the machine’s round window across the room affords a mesmerizing view of my sloshing clothes thrashing in soapy bubbles. The churning pulls me in, and I type some more on my computer.

“The river is simple in its everythingness,” I write. “What else is there to understand besides this?” I then type “Siddhartha” in the body of my paragraph, then pause to ponder the detail I remember most about that book—how simply sitting alongside a river and watching it pass will offer answers to any questions I could possibly ask it. I do a Google search to fact-check my memory since I often remember memories that aren’t actually memories. They are simply thoughts. I find this line from the original text: “It knows everything, the river, everything can be learned from it.” This springboards me to Toni Morrison’s line: “All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.” Then David R. Brower’s words: “There are many ways to salvation, and one of them is to follow a river.” There was a time I figured these lines were all metaphoric. I now believe them to be factual. I wonder which long river I can walk alongside. Then I look at my watch. Fifteen minutes more.

The river nourishes. It gives life. It moves in communion with the earth, twisting and turning perfectly. It flows slowly and quickly, and from afar it seems to not be moving at all. The river’s cyclical journey never begins or ends—it merely transforms, evolving in shape and place. The river is soft. It soothes. The river is also hard. Strong enough to wear stone into glass. Strong enough to turn a landscape into a canyon and expose strata. It leaves behind stories. The stories are teachers. Twelve minutes now.

A ruddy-faced, middle-aged man in a faded green Carhartt beanie lugs his heaping laundry basket through the heavy front door, while a tall Black man with a European accent chats with the lady working the counter. She keeps her glasses on the tip of her nose and her hands folded at her heart while he speaks at nearly a whisper. From my spot near the magazines I overhear him say a few French words, each of which elicits a soft, rousing oooooo from the woman. She seems a bit dazzled, and her stance suggests she is in no rush to get back to the task that busied her when I first walked in.

The tall man leaves after assuring her he’ll be back in a few, and she returns to her mountain of colored towels. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Scar Tissue plays over the intercom speaker. The volume is low, but loud enough to lure me into the era of life to which it’s forever attached. I am thirtyish years old and finally considering college. Take a job at a Starbucks and quit after one day. I cohabitate with a long-time partner with whom I revel in a few months of dreaming about our future family before an ectopic egg ruptures in her uterus and sends her to the ER.

The spin cycle starts. Eight minutes of whirling left.

My memory is a time machine. This sudden musical trigger launches my entire being into the late 90s. I am still here at Westside Laundry in Olympia, Washington, but I coexist as a younger man in Huntington Beach, too. The smell of laundry soap turns into acrid sanitizer. The wheeled carts piled high with dirty clothes become gurneys. I walk into my partner’s hospital room after her emergency surgery. She’s resting. “It was close,” the nurses tell me. I stand at the foot of he bed and wonder what will happen next. What should I say to her when she wakes? What will she say to me? This pregnancy is all we’ve been spending our days talking about. Considering where we should live. What we want for the baby’s room. Possible shifts in our roles at home. Our jobs. Meaningful names. The future has become our present. And now both are empty.

Four minutes.

I snap out of my trance when the guy in the green hat fills the laundromat with a booming guffaw. “Ha! Holy shit!” he shouts. I crane my neck to see over the row of industrial washers. He holds two cans of something in the air. “You gotta be kidding me!” he belts. I follow the top of his head as he lopes jovially towards the front of the place. Then he stops at the front desk where the woman looks at him like, What?

Less than two more.

“You ain’t going to believe this, but I just found these unopened cans of beer in my laundry basket,” he says. “Two cans! I gotta blame the ballgame yesterday—I was getting my laundry ready during the ‘Hawks blowout and I must have dropped ‘em. Shoot, I wasn’t even drunk yet!”

The woman shakes her head. “Least it wasn’t a wine bottle,” she says. “Someone last week ran the cycle with an empty bottle in the machine.” She watches for a response, but he says nothing. He’s still too caught up in his unexpected find. “It’s my lucky day,” he says. “I’ll have two extras for today’s games.” She gives him a tight-lipped thumbs up and he walks out. After a few seconds she mutters a delayed punchline, “You got the wrong kind of suds, buddy.” And though I find her words mildly amusing, I check my wash timer—down to less than a minute—and type a few more thoughts on my screen.

I write a bit from Destiny Hemphill’s poem, “apocalypso song #8.” I don’t know it by heart, but I remember this line. “There is no my water over there, no their water over there; the water is the water is the water.”

My alarm goes off. Time is up.

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Four hundred inches of precipitation fall annually on the great mountain’s slopes. On the side of sunrise, the melt travels into glacial lakes where it glows impossibly blue. It then courses through incurvated valleys peppered with erratics, past craggy stacks of moraine, then into and beyond an assortment of hydroelectric dams, until it braids with the unruly Waitaki River. Waitaki in Māori means weeping waters. The river’s pathway is a culmination of Aoraki’s tears.

Near the farming town of Duntroon, the Maerewhenua River (which means the special place), a lesser waterway originating in the Kakanui Mountains, joins the flow. Then together they blend with countless other tributaries and advance eastward, eventually narrowing, increasing in velocity and vigor, until finally slowing and reshaping to become ocean near Oamaru.

The water, in all its forms, never fully stops. It expands and joins, races and swirls. It gives and takes. Nourishes and erodes. The water has no true beginning or end. It simply is.

For two weeks in December I awoke adjacent to a winding ribbon of the Maerewhenua. It twines through the depths of Dansey’s Pass just as it has for aeons, slowly carving a yawning rut into the earth and leaving behind an extraordinary, albeit miniature, lush canyon.

From the river’s sandy banks, walls of assorted brush and yellow gorse shoot skyward, forming a pitch that makes me wonder if it’s too steep to scale afoot. I often watch sheep as they make their way down the face, their bleats echoing over the whispers of small rapids. I squint my eyes and trace the lines of their approach. Their to-and-from routes from rim to shore, it seems, are never the same. Different every day, but always just right.

Each morning of my stay, and nearly every afternoon, I brave a precipitous set of broken cement steps to a rocky and muddy beach at the river’s edge. I remove my shoes, then walk gingerly on my soft feet to a squat boulder. While standing there, I catch a fleeting glimpse of the solitary trout that regularly paces the shimmering bowl. I warn it and the nearby migratory birds of my intentions, then undress to my swimsuit and stuff my clothing into a bag. I inhale deeply, raise my arms overhead, and gently dive into the shallow. My body instantly collapses into the squeeze of the river’s frigid water.

Sometimes I resurface quickly. I make my way back to shore for a few minutes of severe shivering before heading back to my rustic cabin. There I make a pour-over carafe of strong coffee and eat my small breakfast at a bench outside. Birdsong I’ve never heard before threads color into the morning silence. Departing campers wave goodbye as they inch past in their caravans while I consider which chores will kick off my day. Mowing? Clipper snip? Prune tree branches? Weed common areas? My hands and feet still tingle. They will for hours yet.

At other times I enter the river and stay submerged. I let go of all efforts to swim, or float, or endure. Beneath the surface I widen my legs and arms and wiggle my face to increase my body’s contact with the icy water. When I do, my skin comes alive with a delightful and invigorating pain. The cold feels hot. Then, with my body stretched like a sail, I give myself over to the flow. I tumble in slow motion, fully at the mercy of the river’s natural drift.

When I can hold my breath no longer, I set my feet on the river bottom and steady myself before reemerging. In doing so, I unintentionally upend a pinkish, palm-sized stone that, perhaps until today, has not moved in decades. Now, as before, it’s exactly where it needs to be. It is not a rock in the river, it is the river.

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I chipped away at the otherworldly book, My Share of Night while helping my mom navigate multiple hospital and rehab stays. Two pages here and there made the book take forever, but it also offered the best sort of (brief) escape from months of tumult.

I read very little while moving my mom from independent living into assisted living. And then the same when she was forced to move again, barely six months later, into another ALC. Her facility’s email to me said, “We’re closing in six weeks and need all residents out by then.” It was absolute madness, but also turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Here and there I peppered in multiple Barry Lopez books, some of them crucial re-reads, in an attempt to find some emotional levity. His work is always a stark reminder of the beauty that’s readily available in the throes of chaos and despair.

I refrained from reading anything but maps while I hiked another 600 miles on the Appalachian Trail, and then again endured another literary dry spell during my pivotal visit to New Zealand where I read nothing but flows and eddies of the Maerewheunua River.

A few titles, including Tim O’Brien’s In a Lake In the Woods, appeared in various free libraries during the long-term work stints I did for new job. I even found a first edition of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (which, out of fear of it losing its collectibility, I did not read). I did, however, read a handful of books about leadership, customer service, and foot anatomy, but since there were all work-related I didn’t include them here.

And also, I started a spiritual guidance program that threw me back into a student mindset. My focus shifted from leisurely reading to a more academic perusal of assigned material. It’s been a great program, but I also fear I’ve take on more than I can chew. I think I’m juggling too many things to truly focus on any (but that’s a completely different story).

So yeah, my list is way shorter this year than it’s been since I started keeping track. But whatever, because more isn’t better. It can’t be. This year reaffirmed that simplicity is where it’s at. And frankly, reading anything this year felt luxurious. Which, frankly, was a nice reset.

NOTE: This list is in the order I read them. The five titles preceded by an asterisk (*) were my favorites.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Barry Lopez, About This Life (NF essays, 1998)

The perfect sort of book to kick off the year with. The connections Lopez makes, the never-ending metaphors that surround us, the way he describes the tundra, “There is no walking on level, open ground as arduous as walking across wet tundra in the summer.” So true, all of it. The first few pages I wrote down words he used that I’d never before seen: jitney, militate, katabatibc, ventifacts, exculpation, tenterhooks, kerfs, runnels, salvific, laminar. But then I stopped since the list was getting to be too long.

There’s a bit in one of the essays when Barry is traveling nonstop as he writes a story about the massive movement of goods around the planet. “I was starting to behave as if the present were only a preparation for the future.” He then called his wife to say that his travel breaks and stops leave him bewildered. As if the rests, the pauses have become threats. She said, quite brilliantly, “It’s because you’re not going anywhere, you’re just going.” Which resonates with me. Because are we not all just going? Gah. I love this guy.

*Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night (F novel, 2019)

My friend Sam C. always shares great books on his social media, and I poached this one from him. And wow, what a read! All of my favorite things wrapped into one: the occult, androgyny, travel, the arts, and fantastic otherworldly adventures into unknown lands. Magical realism in its best form. Could very well end up being one of the best this year.

Robert Adams, Beauty In Photography (NF essays, 1996)

In Barry Lopez’s About This Life, he describes this book as, “one of the clearest statements of artistic responsibility by a photographer…Robert Adams is able to photograph the air itself…” The book explores the idea of form and beauty. Of art taking liberties to reveal shape and form (similar to Barry Lopez’s discussion of patterns). Artists look for overall form—shape in life beyond the limits of immediate social or economic or political conditions. And form is independent of stories.

“Making photos has to be a personal matter,” Adams says. “When it is not, the results are not persuasive.” Form is as much about the intentions of the artist as it is about the content. I really dig this.

As I wrote this recap, I randomly turned to page 57 and found this line, which I also like. “Maybe on occasion then we do not need to fear bad work as much as we had thought. Perhaps we can sometimes just let it do itself in.” More of this, please.

Barry Lopez, Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren (F stories, 1994)

Found this gem in a library sale and scooped it up. I read it without realizing the stories were fictional. I even sent one (“Pearyland”)to my friend, Kent, (the guy I went to the Arctic with) after being struck by the starkness of its words: a man goes to Greenland to deeply explore places where large animals go to die (specifically, to better understand how the remains of the dead give back to the soil). What he found instead was a purgatory for animals. Ghostly caribou, wolverines, musk oxen, snow geese. He also met an indigenous man, a caretaker who met him with wonder and caution. The stories all contain so much. And whether they are true or not, they are real.

Haruki Murakami, The City and its Uncertain Walls (F novel, 2023)

The history of this book is cool—Murakami wrote it (as a long, short story) 40 years ago right after he published his first book and was still operating a jazz bar in Japan. He published it in a journal, but always wanted to go back to it and rewrite. He did just that during covid and, coincidentally, it contains metaphor and details that eerily relate to the realities of being sequestered and quarantined (the “walls” in the title being the most obvious). There’s also this notion of othering—of losing ourselves for reasons known and unknown. And in Murakami’s world, this is the losing of one’s shadow. Our shadows exist here, and our “real” selves over there. But what’s real if both (the self and shadow) are experiencing things? I enjoyed this read—plowed through it—but I didn’t much like the ending. Still, it’s another Murakami win. And as always, reading his stuff makes me want to write more. And write better.

Eve Babitz, Eve’s Hollywood (NF essays, 1972)

I love reading Eve’s work. So fresh, even though it’s decades old. So doggone LA, too, which brings back a lot of great memories. I found this copy in a free library (the best local on on Main Street in Carrboro) and it had a 2015 receipt in it from the Fukuoka Hilton in Japan that named Dr. M. Castillo as the guest. Along with this book, he bought a sandwich and a Coke.

I loved a handful of lines in this book: “Power is the quality of knowing what you like.” (p.69) “I don’t believe in facing pain unless it’s the kind you like” (p.94). “Packaging is all heaven is” (p.124). “No one tells you anything unless you already know it” (p.125). “I gave him a cane with an ivory wolf head atop and he developed a limp without any further ado” (p.182). And the bit about man who watches another put a match out with his fingers and asks, “What’s the trick?” The answer: Not minding that it hurts. Right! Not minding the pain is important! There’s so much good stuff in here. I was sad for it to end.

*Margie Sarsfield, Beta Vulgaris (F novel, 2025)

Super fun read about a couple who take a seasonal job at a beet farm and people start disappearing. Then Elise starts seeing beets in everything she looks at. It’s a weird book, but the story has powerful layers. It’s about battling depression and self-acceptance, about feeling like an imposter, about not really fitting in. And though the metaphor is outlandish, it’s fresh, and it all plays out in a believable narrative. A top read so far.

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers (NF philosophy, 1976)

I found this book lauded on a friend’s Instagram page and immediately ordered it on eBay. When it arrived I crushed it in an hour. It’s the sort of book all makers ought to own for quick reference. It highlights the idea of atypical beauty. The gorgeousness of rust, of a trash heap, of a rotten log. Of the natural/consequential outcomes of everyday life. It reminds me of the paper I wrote for a college class back in 2000—Chinese Philosophy—for which I drank a bottle of wine and wrote a steam of consciousness account of an abundance of whatevers. I took photos of weird things at my grandma’s house, and purposely kept all the typos in the finished draft. I titled it “Zenfandel” (which I thought was clever). Anyhow, I recall the idea of wabi-sabi from back then. And my heaping collection of rusty metal things proves it left a mark.

George Ohsawa, Zen Macro-biotics (NF self help, 1965)

I read this book back in the mid-90s and was struck by a few things that continue to hit hard this time around. First, there’s the idea that any human malady can be cured with any food, and that all social issues, political and otherwise, are food-related. Second, the idea that your body, given the proper intentions, can change any food into nutrition. Don’t get me wrong here, I don’t fully subscribe to these concepts, but the prospect of them being true, and the rationale behind HOW they could be true, make interesting sense.

I’m not keen, however, to go big with a 100% brown rice diet, but I am happy to have read this book again, nonetheless. Mostly because, though it mostly talks about food, it also stresses the basic concept/importance of being a good human (and applies THAT to food). I liked this bit: “Give up everything that is not absolutely necessary to your life for at least a week—You will catch a glimpse of freedom, happiness, justice.” A big, fat YES to this!

Dean Spade, Love In a F*cked Up World (NF self help, 2025)

Really liked this, even though it was loaded with typos (it was an ARC, but still!). Here are a few excerpts to summarize where this spoke to me: “Many people struggle with anxiety because they grew up in stressful conditions where fretting over doing things right was essential to survival. These folks can’t stop anxious thoughts from intruding. The goal is to choose a new, more deliberate practice that will lead to our flourishing.” ALSO: “How might our lives and relationships change if we thought we could bring curiosity and intention to areas that seem hard wired? To roles we feel stuck in.” AND MORE: “We are what we practice.”

This book was, strangely, a fine compliment to the Macrobiotics book in that both are working on finding a clearer path to survival/life/love. It was, however, built like a self-help book and had a lot of worksheets and questions. They were good worksheets and questions, but this sort of format always trips me up and makes me want to glaze over them.

Constantina “Connie” Munda, Mother’s Day In the Empire State (F historical, 2023)

A few years back, I published a review of The Worming of America, Or, An Answer to the Arraignment of Women in Heavy Feather Review. The publisher reached out to ask me to review Mother’s Day, their newer title, and I accepted. It’s one of those dense and artful works that may seem confusing at first. But once you get into it, you witness a brilliance beyond the typical book. I appreciated the immensity of this work, and subsequently published my review of it in April in Compulsive Reader.

Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World (NF essays, 2022)

Fantastic book of essays published posthumously. A few of the pieces make me wonder if maybe Barry never really finished them, but they were all still amazing. Loved this line regarding his life as a writer: “I simply found a different shape to the passion I felt as a child…” It’s always a pleasure to read Barry Lopez.

Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son (F stories, 1992)

I’ve been hearing about this book since I was in my MFA. A “must read” that I never gave credence to until now, and nI think the timing was just right. Short stories about a terrifically downtrodden main character (name: Fuckhead) who, I assume, is actually the author. But whatever, because the stories make the tragic lovable, and that’s not easy to do.

Johnson’s writing is real. It’s raw. It’s hard. I like the style and content. Probably why I also like Willy Vlautin and Melissa Anne Peterson’s writing so much, too. In a recent podcast I learned that Denis Johnson often said that a spoken story should never be written—but when his health failed, this is precisely what he did. He wrote the stories he was known for telling aloud. The result—Jesus’ Son, which is likely the book he’s most known for.

Werner Herzog, On Walking On Ice (NF memoir, 1978)

This was a reread, because of how I remembered it made me feel. I love Herzog’s wonky journey afoot between Munich and Paris to visit a dying friend. His descriptions of the mundane, the harsh wintry landscapes, the relatable concern regarding where he’d sleep—it all brought my own cross country journey back in a rush. It also was a stark reminder that small details are all that really matter. That everything is a story. No arc, plot, twist, or whatever is necessary to be compelling. I appreciate how Herzog looks at life. And though he’s a bit neurotic, and I get it. And I love him for it.

*Torrey Peters, Stag Dance (F short novel and stories, 2025)

What a fantastic book about queerness, transness, and ultimately, love. I started with one of the interior stories per my best favorite buddy Katie’s suggestion—“The Chaser”—then read “Stag Dance,” the mini-novel within. Both were relentlessly amazing, so of course I read the rest. It’s so fresh to read stories about things we often experience universally but never talk about. Also, there was a keen portrayal of how similar we all are even though we often normalize the separation of “the other” for reasons based in fear and ignorance. I loved this read.

Clemence Michallon, Our Last Resort (F novel, 2025)

A compelling read by the author of my favorite book from 2024, The Quiet Tenant (which, by the way, is still one of the most captivating books I’ve read in a long time). This book, her second published novel, is really good, but it’s a far, far cry from her first work. Cults, secret societies, kidnapping, and murder—all make for a fine story, but dang, when someone crushes it with a first novel, it’s really tough to outdo it with the next one (or so I would assume!).

*Willy Vlautin, Lean On Pete (F novel, 2010)

I fucking love this guy. Besides writing amazing books that tap into my penchant for melancholy and tragic characters, Willy Vlautin is also the lead singer for Richmond Fontaine, a band in a similar musical genre. I can’t get enough of either. In this book, a young kid from a broken home runs away to help an abusive alcoholic man care for a horse named Pete. A love story ensues between the boy and the beast (and arguably others, too, including the alcoholic), and the rest of the story takes shape in a can-put-this-book-down fashion as Vlautin consistently does so well. Top read for sure.

Tim O’Brien, In a Lake In the Woods (F novel, 1994)

I found this book in a free library while away on a business trip in Santa Rosa and quickly nosed in. I liked it, though not as much as another of his works, The Things They Carried. Basically a woman goes missing and her husband, a recently defeated politician, is the key suspect. That sounds sort of boring, but O’Brien turned it into a nail-biter.

Atul Gawande, Being Mortal (NF self help, 2014)

I read this book when it first came out, and this year I listened to the author chat with Krista Tippet on her podcast, On Being. The interview made me want more of his take on death, dying, mortality, and love. This book inspires deep thought. And after experiencing my dad’s death in 2023, and my mom’s subsequent journey through the elder “care” system (which, side note, is a system that has NOTHING to do with actual “care”), this year’s reading of Being Mortal was much more impactful than my previous reading of it.

*Barry Lopez (with Julia Martin), Syntax of a River: The Pattern Which Connects (NF interview, 2022)

After returning from New Zealand earlier this month and meditating on all the things that made my experience there so profound, I pulled this book from my shelf. First off, anything by Barry Lopez has potential to be a life-changer, and second, his descriptions of a river, metaphoric and otherwise, resonate strongly with what I experienced on the Maerewhenua at Dansey’s Pass on New Zealand’s south island. Lopez speaks of patterns and the interconnectivity of everything. He speaks of presence, of seeing, of being. He likens this patterning, this syntax, to a river. This (posthumous) classic is a must-read for anyone who believes there’s wisdom to be found in the mundane. That watching a river has potential to deliver all the answers we’ll ever need. He also has this to say about the craft of writing: “If I’m going to sit down and really work hard on it, I want it to be useful. I want someone to read it and have an elevated sense of self-worth or possibility when they’ve finished the story.” I like this a lot.

Hilton Als, My Pinup: A Paean to Prince (NF memoir, 2022)

Als uses the artist Prince to explore love, desire, race, and sexuality. It opens with a comedic scene told by Jamie Foxx during a standup bit. While telling a story of his path crossing with Prince, he says, “But I mean, he’s cute. He pretty…I ain’t never seen no man look like that. Just dainty and shit.” Then goes on to assure the crowd he’s not gay, even though looking into Prince’s eyes had him, “feeling some kind of shit.” The anecdote ends with Foxx having an exchange with one of Prince’s security guards. Foxx asks the guard he’s ever looked into Prince’s eyes. He has. Foxx asks what happened after that. “And the guard—another brother in love, but unlike Foxx, okay with it—says, as if the whole thing is the most natural exchange in the world: I’ve been fucking him for two years now.” Als then goes on to use Prince as the springboard for his musings on desire, infatuation, and love. This prose, whether you’re a Prince fan or not (and you know you are), is beautiful, and hard to put down.

David Wojnarowicz, Memories That Smell Like Gasoline (NF art/memoir, 2025)

This was originally published in 1992, and reprinted this year with a foreword by the acclaimed writer, Ocean Vuong. It’s a work of visceral prose and artworks that courses though four autobiographical stories. Each shares profound depth, including the author’s sexual experiences and raw lament for his foreseeable and all-too-soon death. There’s also reflections of childhood, a violent life on the streets, a life with AIDS, and so much more. Wojnarowicz stares directly at his queerness without any shame or filter, and in doing so he gives readers context for doing the same.

This book is as much a necessary work of activism as it is an artful read. And though the story at large ends tragically (because don’t they all?), there’s stunning beauty in the telling. Cheers to Nightboat Books for their modern reproduction! Read it for its truth, its honesty. Read it because books like this cause necessary revolutions.

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In the two times I’ve hiked the grueling stretch from one rim of the Grand Canyon to the other, I carried a much lighter pack than I’m wearing on the PCT. And yet still the final climb out squashed me to an inching crawl, forcing me to tap into energy stores otherwise reserved for basic survival. Each step was a monumental effort of exertion and breath, and the eventual parking lot and souvenir shops offered such desperate and immediate relief that, upon arrival, I dropped to my knees and suddenly turned religious.

Today’s haul on the PCT is going to be extra gnarly, which, truth be told, is a standard detail of the my most memorable hikes. Still, I need to take good care not to run out of gas before we reach today’s destination—the turnoff to the Palm Springs tram—just shy of 24 trail miles ahead. The technical trail conditions, the unseasonably warm weather, and the downhill detour to the wasp-ridden and sulfurous Apache Spring, our final water source, would make for a beyond epic final day.

But we are up for it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned while doing big hikes, it’s that it doesn’t pay to think too far ahead. Of course I need a plan that’s tuned into the specifics of what’s coming up, but there’s no sense worrying about how far or steep or dry a stretch is until I’m in the thick of it. And just like most things in life, nothing is ever as bad up close as it might seem from afar. I believe that the more compelling attribute of any unknown is simply accepting that it’s unknown, and then moving forward.

I’m a worrier. I’ve struggled with the acceptance of unknowns for my entire life. Whether it’s acceptance of self, others, jobs, relationships, my financial status, life choices, life situations, you name it. I’ve consistently found reasons to question the validity, value, and coherence of things. This tendency, at times, has turned me utterly inside out.

This challenge is most alive back home. At home there’s an abundance of never-ending stimuli that finds me weighing myself against it all. Am I properly equipped? Am I well-suited? Do I have enough know-how? Are my words correct? Am I seen in the right light? I compulsively compare my intrinsic value to all the other things. And though I know this leads to nowhere but disappointment, discontentment, my long held fears of not being accepted forces me to seek edges. I’ve historically strived to relentlessly stay interesting. Fought to stay ahead of the game (even though the more grounded version of me knows there is no fucking game, only my competitive insecurities).

But the trail, and as such, a life of walking and solitude, is my sure-fire portal to peace. It’s my quick-fix to witnessing life in the clearest and most perfectly real way. There’s no pretense, no pissing contest, no need or desire or desperate attempt to prove who I am or what I am able to do. Just me and the winding single track, moving at my body’s pace, taking in the season’s blooms and cool pools, devouring glimpses of nature that I’d never see if I weren’t here.

The best part is that I am able to love it in the moment. It’s not uncommon for me to hold a rock and listen to what it has to say. Or mutter directly to a leaf, “Goddamn you’re beautiful.” Or, and this may sound cliche, extend my arms while approaching a massive tree trunk, then wrap my body around it in an intimate embrace. “I love you,” I will say. Or smoothing like that. The most important part—I mean it.

The harder the trail conditions, the deeper inward I go. The harder the trail, the more I realize how unnecessary so many things are. Then harder the trail, the less I want to go home to cars and traffic and airports and strip malls and parking lots and grocery store aisles. Yes, these things are all part of my life. But time after time, existence on a trail is a jarring and critical reminder—proof perhaps—that so much of this stuff is wildly unnecessary. Doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it does mean there are alternatives to what’s regularly perceived to be “normal.” In this case, I prefer the abnormal. No showers or phone service or Jake Paul boxing matches. In this case, I prefer the fullness in my being that comes with having to filter less noise.

With each punishing ascent, Katie and I near the end of our section. We stick to our hourly packs-off routine—100 calories and half a liter of electrolytes—and never, never rush things. We close our eyes to take in views, admire the extreme size differences in fallen pinecones, and, well, one time anyhow, we watch intently as a yellow jacket musically buzzes while eating the ooze from a dead potato bug’s exoskeleton.

Also, we stop mid-stride, on the inhumane uphills, to take endless photos. And though most of them turn out forgettable, the outcome doesn’t matter. Because it’s not. About the outcome. Never is. It only matters that we stop to look closely. To behold worlds within worlds. Each one a reminder that it’s the small things that matter most. That gazing at a leaf has potential to teach me everything I need to know. And boy oh boy, have I got a lot to learn.

By 8:00 p.m. we reach the sign marking Annie’s Junction (el. 9020’) and our entrance to the Mt. San Jacinto Wilderness. Within an hour we pitch camp on a flat patch, eat our final trail dinner, and layer up for a chilly night. Usually by sundown we’re in the tent, somewhere between awake and dreaming. Usually we only see stars when getting out for a pee in the middle of the night. But tonight we stay outside—lay our bodies on the ground and stare skyward as constellations appear. “I remember when it was rare to see satellites,” Katie says. Which is when we start counting them. Five. Ten. Twenty. “Too many,” I say. “They’re getting in the way of the stars.”

We shiver on the cool dirt in the pitch black until we can’t bear it any longer. Once in the tent, we talk about tomorrow. There will likely be more hikers than usual, maybe even crowds. Then there will be an Uber, a hotel, a comfy bed, and probably a beer or two. All are things I want. But also, all are things that the trail reminded me are unnecessary.

The wind picks up and sings through conifer treetops. Biting air snakes into the tent, (moving with ease over difficult terrain), and we tuck deeper into our sleeping bags. Departure is always wrought with conflicting feelings. I want to stay. I want to go. Which is a visceral reminder of the push-pull theme of my life. Won’t be long before the hubbub of my day-to-day wisps away the trail’s delicious clarity, strain, and solitude. Won’t be long before I stop feeling the feeling that’s filling me right now. Before I can only remember it. Won’t be long before I start yearning for more of this, then start making plans for what’s next.

I start nodding off while we’re sharing the things we’re grateful for. Per usual, and especially after a hard day where we’re too tired to remember, we default to our mantra: Healthy bodies, good decisions, appreciation of small things, acceptance of all things. We say goodnight, and for a while I think about all the shooting stars I am missing and consider going back out to watch the sky again. But my idea never materializes because I fall asleep. And though I am sure I had dreams, I don’t recall them. But that’s OK, because I trust they will still make a difference.

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My incessant fear of scarcity, of being without, is likely an ancestral ripple from my father’s aversion to the same. His consternation ensured my family was ever-ready for an apocalypse. We always had a basement full of of boltless shelving stacked with endless cans of meaty soups and stews, deep freezers piled with years-old frozen veggies and meats, floor to ceiling piles of bulk TP and paper towels, and a hoard of restaurant-sized ranch dressings and other luxurious condiments (because when the world falls apart, spicy ketchup and horseradish is fucking necessary).

The Griffen family always had an arsenal of extra. Then extras of the extra. Because, you never know, and, just in case, and better safe than sorry. My dad, and by association, the rest of us, would surely not be the ones going hungry when the cataclysm hit. And thanks to his lifelong mission inspired by his commitment to the Boy Scouts, we were prepared. And for whatever.

When I am on trail, I live with constant anxiety about not having enough water. To counter it, I always carry way too much. I’d rather haul additional weight than come close to being empty. I don’t want to ration. I don’t want to share. I don’t want to roll the dice. And, given the dearth of water on the PCT, I definitely don’t want to regularly detour for long miles off trail just to stay hydrated. My back and legs take a beating from hauling more hydration than I need, but my mind is at ease, and frankly I need that more than I need anything.

Ten miles of hiking will take us just over three hours. I generally budget one liter of water per hour, but always have 2-3 more liters than necessary. Because what if something happens? What if the known water sources are dry? What if me our Katie gets injured and can’t go on? What if a bottle springs a leak? Katie teases me about my aberrant caution, but she also knows me well enough to understand its root and kindly rolls with it.

I shake my head at this compulsive tendency of mine, but I also try to offer myself some grace for these inherited fears. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve consciously tried to counter the foibles of my lineage with acceptance, understanding, attention, and love. And if it’s true that time is nonlinear—that there are no before pasts or after futures—then it’s possible for this softness to heal not only my propensities but my father’s, too.

I swipe out of FarOut to read my texts. There’s one from my brother Joel in Los Angeles. “I saw the sunrise over El Sereno this morning,” he writes, “and thought of you doing the same on the trail.” He also includes a voice text asking if I recall having a bench press in our backyard when we were kids. I write back. “We sure did have a bench press in the backyard. Brown metal and flimsy, with airy pads that expelled a fast whistle of air when someone sat on it.” He also mentions that we are passing near Lost Valley Boy Scout Camp, a crucial landscape of his coming of age. He laments that the camp is soon closing so the Scouts national organization can cover a massive sexual assault settlement. This news, he says, feels like hearing a friend has died. “So sorry you have to endure this loss,” I text, “I know how pivotal that place was for you.”

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Katie and I follow a hand-painted sign—a bright red squiggly line sided with blue caps that say all are welcome—to Mike’s Place. Not far off trail, and just down a dirt drive, sits a few massive stainless tanks etched with scribbled warnings to hikers (Water must be filtered!). Across from their bulk are a couple picnic tables in a delicious patch of rare shade. It’s a weird, yet welcome interruption to trail.

I knock on the tanks and immediately become concerned. They ring like a singing bowl. Their resonance sounds empty. But the one with a working spigot miraculously fills, albeit slowly, all of our bottles with a frightening trickle. We wonder about the trailers in the distance. FarOut notes that some hikers have camped up the road, but the space between us and wherever is around the bend feels vast. I’m a bit creeped out. Like maybe we’d better not do too much sniffing around. Just get water and high tail it. Which is fine because we still have a couple hours before a planned stop near Anza. We thank Mike’s tanks and get back to walking.

When we rejoin the trail, some movement on the single track catches our attention. The wiggle and squirm of a greenish purple critter brings us to a halt. Never has either off us seen such a thing. Whatever it is expends a lot of energy to work itself into, or maybe out of, a hole. Is it digging? Is it stuck? Has it evolved to look like an agave plant, because it certainly looks like one? We don’t know anything about this mysterious creature, but agree it is, by far, our best wildlife encounter on the PCT so far.

We cowboy camp until the mosquitoes get too bad, then escape into the tent we’d set up as refuge, just in case. We wake before sunrise to get a jump on some big miles. The morning sky illuminates violet stacks of mountains. We count them together—a total of nine layers. “That’s the most we’ve ever seen,” I say. For the next half hour we walk in intentional silence. A morning practice we started as a way to mindfully connect with the trail before filing it with chatter. Every day starts with this mindful slowness, and I’ve come to really, really appreciate it.

After our meditation, we reflected on this very day—Halloween—back in 2022. Exactly three years ago today, while hiking the Arizona Trail, Katie and I took turns privately dressing into our secret costumes. Her getup was a punny ceiling fan, and I was the masked country singer, Orville Peck. That day on the trail marked 30 days and 500 miles in our rearview. It hinted to the completion of our first end-to-end, extra-long walking journey together.

This year we didn’t lug along any holiday getups for our section of the PCT, and not doing so feels kind of like a miss. But also, given the water situation, neither of us are supper willing to sacrifice any room or weight in our packs. Neglecting a little trail fun for trail logic is fine since we have memories of the AZT to revel in.

Our ponderings nudge my tendency towards nostalgia. Stirs up some melancholy, too. Which together makes the next couple of hours quieter than usual. To the tempo of footstrikes, I mentally take note of various things I don’t want to forget on this hike: the small green squashes we’ve seen trailside, the solitary boulders big as VW Bugs, that one desolate stretch of long and winding trail that emptied across plateaued flats, the alien-like potato bugs we’ve seen here and there, the trickster teddybear chollas, the sketchy water sources, Katie’s never-ending optimism, and more. So many of these details, right now fresh in my mind, will soon be lost forever. And yet, it’s precisely these minutiae, these mundane bits and pieces of our brief walking adventure that make it so rich. So important and indelible. Small things, more than anything, make living at a walking pace so consequential.

We exit the PCT at a power line road just south of the Pine to Palms scenic way that links Hemet and Palm Desert (Highway 74), and kick up a speedy could of dust as we briskly walk an anxious mile to Paradise Valley Cafe, a popular hiker-friendly stop. A song has been on repeat in my head—a Depeche Mode number this time—and for the first time all morning I blurt it out. “I’m taking a ride with my best friend.” It’s funny how random, yet apropos songs weave into consciousness at the right times.

Our resupply is stacked on the cafe’s hallway bench and sits adjacent to an overflowing hiker box. We do a thorough repack before sitting down for a bite. I order the BMW burger whose menu description is, “Served on an original Bavarian pretzel bun with sliced kosher pickles, melted imported Muenster cheese, and an original spicy German mustard.” Only thing missing is sauerkraut, so I get some on the side. Katie scores a veggie burger and fries, and we’re equally thrilled with our choices. The prospect of hiking another four hours suddenly seems like way too much, but we languidly march away, motivated to knock out nine or so more tough miles.

At day’s end I still have four liters of water to spare. More than enough for dinner, night time, breakfast, and a few hours’ worth of hiking tomorrow. I laugh to myself at the extra weight—8.8 lbs. total, sheesh—then I take a moment to find some compassion for my overly-cautious self. My dad’s voice rings loud in my head. Better safe than sorry. And though he’s right, it’s a repetitive conflict, a fear, that will likely always course through the details of my life.

Over a cold-soaked dinner, while perched on soft balds of granite overlooking igneous quartz, Katie and I dreamily discuss the otherworldly landscape before us. Crags of an ancient volcano? An aeons old seabed? Perhaps this is where earth’s mouth will swallow the desert when the inevitable big one hits?

We reflect on Penrod Canyon, some miles back, and revel in its surreal and dizzying maze of monolithic boulders and skull-sized pinecones. Silence ensues as we consider a nightly question, “How have we managed to get this far?,” which is as much metaphor as anything.

Because every day is a riddle. Every step persuaded by an unknown outcome. Which, frankly, is the main impetus for us getting up in the morning, day after day, to do it all over again. And also the reason why we are so compelled to return.

We make our nests and get comfortable. “How you doing?” I ask Katie once we’re laying down. I don’t have to look at her to know her answer. Then together we laugh so loud that our echoes join us until all goes silent again.

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We met D’artagnan after a particularly long uphill. He was surprised when I knew his name’s original reference. “Three Musketeers,” I said, perhaps too enthusiastically, and immediately thought of my dad’s untouched copy of Alexandre Dumas’s book on a shelf in his den. The artistic cover regularly caught my eye and imagination, but the minuscule text within made me put it right back.

My dad, the eldest son to a headstrong Québécois mother, was always happy to put on display his two years of high school French. “Je ne sais quoi,” he’d say, then look at me out of the corner of his eye, hoping I’d respond with confusion. Or he’d pretend to slip up when saying a number, and accidentally use a French word instead of English. “Quatre á suit,” he’d say while beating me in driveway hoops, then promptly correct himself, “Oh. I’m sorry, I mean eight to four…your ball.” His self-satisfaction drove me nuts. And it was made worse, in this example anyhow, if his winning points came from a stupid sky hook. “Game,” he’d say, then spend the rest of the day reveling in having crushed me, barely ten years old, in a front yard scrap to twelve.

My dad lived out his life desperately trying to grasp the power his mom denied him. And as time went on, his annoying mannerisms made it hard for me to want to be around him. Only now, nearly three years after his death, am I able to feel compassion towards his lifelong internal struggle to be seen. And frankly, my compassion comes from relatability. I, too, have spent my entire life wanting the exact same thing.

The trailside conversation with D’artagnan lasted longer than most. Katie asked about his long hike, and he said he’s been waiting a long time for things to get easier, but they never have. I asked about his tattered shirt—“I’ve been wearing it since day one,” he said. “And what about the map?” I said. “I’m using it to navigate.” I wondered aloud how I could follow him on social media. “You can’t,” he said with a laugh, “I’m not on any of that.” His words flushed me with a pang of envy. I wanted off that shit, too.

Our experience on long trails came up, and he asked about my walk across America. I told him that if it weren’t for the roadside saints I met, the walk would have been a grind. This comment lit him up, and he asked me to share a story about one of them. I told the story of my encounter with Lion—one of the most memorable and life-changing people I met between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans (and hey, if you’ve been reading my stuff for any length of time, you’ve probably heard this one already—but it definitely deserves a retelling):

On a cool, February morning in 2018, a Phoenix local told me I could get off the sprawling sidewalks and instead follow the reservoir canals to the eastern city limits. I followed his instructions, and as soon as I did, my shoulders relaxed and I evened out my stride. The crushed granite walkway was a dream—the crunch beneath my feet, friendly nods to passersby, smartly placed benches where I could take a load off. The route was a respite from my battle with endless stoplights, traffic noise, exhaust fumes, and the stifling pace of commuter life. Being in the thick of urban chaos validated my yearning to exist on its periphery.

A tall man approached me quickly from behind, loudly waving at me to hold up a sec. He had a power forward’s build, wore a baggy hat that contained his long dreadlocks, and, as he got closer, the silver beads strung through his long beard glimmered like jewels. I stopped, and he breathlessly introduced himself. “I’m Lion,” he said. Then, pointing to the Walk USA signage on my baby jogger, he said, “Are you actually doing that.” I told him I was, and we began chatting about my journey thus far.

Lion told me he always thought he’d do something big. “Not necessarily walk across America, but something important. Something memorable,” he said. “But I am homeless—I’ve been sitting over there for the past fifteen years and always figured someday I’d get my life together and move along.” But as one year led into the next, his hope dimmed. All those dreams of something bigger have slowly faded into daily survival. “Until now!” Lion said. “You’re making me think about what I could do—and, at the very least, I want to somehow be a part of this journey you’re taking.” He then asked me if he could give me some money.

Lion’s question threw me. I didn’t need anything, really—not money or food or resources—I’d dialed all that in before I started and would be all set until the end of the walk. Plus, there was no way I was going to accept cash from a person who was living on the streets. So, after profusely thanking him for his generosity offer, I declined. “Thank you, Lion,” I said. “But I don’t need anything. I am good. But thank you…really.”

At my response, Lion stood up tall and crossed his arms in front of his chest. His eyes locked on mine and he took a deep breath. “Tom,” he said, “if you say no to kindness today, odds are you’ll say no to it again tomorrow. And eventually kindness will come around and you won’t even see it because you’ve been saying no to it for so long. Then one day, you’ll be the sort of old man who believes kindness doesn’t exist anywhere. But here’s there the thing—it does. In fact, it’s everywhere. But you stopped seeing it long ago.” Lion paused as I took this all in, then continued speaking. “So,” he said, “let me ask you again—can I give you some money?”

Lion’s words were exactly what I needed to hear. I’d been saying no to folks’ kindness ever since I started this walk—no to dinner invites, no to homestays, no to suggestions of what to see as I passed through town. And surely my life has similarly been themed with this eschewing of care and assistance. My utter need for independence, autonomy, and a life where I depended on nobody has always taken precedence over availing myself to care. Never have I trusted that others really gave a damn about me—yet Lion’s words were a reminder that they do. He underlined the indispensability of genuine human connection. Taught me that our serendipitous coming together is not, and cannot be, transactional. That, more than anything, it’s moral support from people that keeps us upright.

So when Lion asked me the second time if he could give some money, I humbly accepted. And when I did, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a one dollar bill. He held it up for me to see, and said, “Someone gave me this out of the kindness of their heart, and I am giving it to you for the same reason.” And before it was even fully in my hand, Lion embraced me like a father might. As he squeezed me, he told me he was proud of me. That what I was doing was good, and that I needed to remember the impact I might be having on others.

After two, maybe three hugs later, we parted ways. I silently walked away atop the crispy gravel to a nearby bench where I sat down and cried my eyes out. Lion’s words, and his dollar, restructured my DNA. They stripped away a layer of fearful armor that had, until that moment, defined my personal narrative. Lion’s words, his profound wisdom, elevated me into a different realm of existence. One where I readily accept kindness, both in its giving and receiving, because it best activates the most sought after and universal human longing—our need for love.

“Wow,” D’artagnan said, “thank you for that story.” We fist bumped, bid each other good luck, and returned to the trail in our respective directions. Him southbound, and us north. The next half hour we walked in silence. Just the jazzy sound of our stepping and breathing. The trail began climbing again, then zigged and zagged between car-sized boulders. We stopped for an extended moment in the shade of one of them, removed our packs, and ate extra snacks.

We both gazed over the winding trail below that tailed off into a flat expanse. We reckoned we’d be there within the hour, and likely at the road crossing toward Julian with time to spare before sundown. “Some hitches take hours,” I said, and Katie nodded. “You think we’ll see any snakes out here?” I said. “Or animals?”

From our spot we could see two hikers in the distance heading the same direction as us. “Hey—let’s catch up to them,” I said. “You think we can?” Katie knew we could, but her face asked me why we’d bother. “I always want to catch everyone,” I said. Again, her look told me that she already knew this. Which made me internally wonder why this is, and always has been, so important to me.

My dad entered my thoughts again. Nothing in particular, just a generic image of his face and an echo of his voice before cancer messed it up. I’ve stopped wondering why he pops up so much while I’m packing. I think it happens because I suddenly have extra space in my otherwise busy mind. Walking twenty miles a day leaves ample room to ponder all sorts of things, and my dad is simply one of them. But there’s so much else, too. And also, there’s nothing.

As I stared out toward the far-off road where we’d try to hitch the fifteen miles into town, I was suddenly overcome by this idea of nothing, of emptiness, of spaciousness I told Katie as much. She nodded, because she knew exactly what I was talking about. Then she asked me what my favorite part of this day is so far. I thought about all that’s happened since 7:00 a.m. and said, “This. Exactly this.”

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You don’t just happen upon Campo, you get there with intention. It’s situated just south of a forgettable exit on a quiet stretch of the 8, in a landscape that could just as easily be Mexico as California. A minor shift in the wind hints the air with smoke from garbage fires that burn just across the border—a smell I’ll always fondly associate with my travels through Baja California.

My reason for being in Campo is a common reason other folks end up here, too. Along with Katie, my best favorite buddy, I’m headed to the near outskirts to find the four-tiered wooden marker at the southern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. I’ve seen it featured in countless Instagram photos marking other hikers’ beginnings and ends, and I can’t wait to lay my own eyes on it.

The Pacific Crest Trail, better known as the PCT, is a 2650-mile contiguous footpath that connects Mexico and Canada. It relentlessly climbs and descends ten mountain ranges while passing through nearly every sort of ecosystem, human habitation, and hiking gauntlets before ending at a similar monument in the Pasayten Wilderness of Okanogan County, Washington.

My preference would be to cover the PCT’s entire length without stopping, but my life cannot afford such a luxury of time. So I’m doing the next best thing and knocking out a section. Hereafter I’ll hike the trail one chunk at a time, always picking up where I previously left off, just as I’ve been doing on the Appalachian Trail (AT). I’ve found this cadence creates a special sort of intimacy that makes each return feel like a relief. A longing, satisfied.

The Lyft driver who picked us up in San Diego’s Gaslamp District was a successful journalist in Ukraine before the war began. She fled her country shortly after the bombs began falling, and hasn’t been home since. She says her credentials here feel worthless—after submitting 1500 job resumes, she’s resorted to driving to make ends meet. She thanks us for getting her outside the city limits. Says she loves the mountains and desert. That she finds the American landscape breathtaking. She wishes she could drop everything and go on a long hike, too. “Maybe someday,” she says. “God willing.”

The last time she drove this close to Mexico, she was ordered into a secondary inspection at a routine checkpoint. She knew she’d be OK because she had papers. “But papers don’t really matter anymore,” she says. The stress of the inquisition isn’t something she wants to deal with ever again, but still she agrees to drive us an extra mile beyond our destination—which lands us close enough to the PCT’s start to see the southern border wall towering behind it. “I will stop here,” she says as the road turns unpaved. We apologize for the uncertainty of her return trip and give her an extra large tip for the inconvenience. She leaves in a cloud of dust, and we watch her car grow smaller and smaller until she’s out of sight.

We walk to the trailhead, where I immediately put my hands on the wooden trail marker. It’s warm and sturdy, and its worn grain is both sharp and dull beneath my fingertips. I strategize a commemorative photo, and have to be creative with my framing to avoid the endless steel wall looming adjacent—the eyesore, the idiotic and wasteful monument of American fear that grossly stretches across the desolate horizon. My stomach stirs with rumbles of anger, of complicity and guilt, as I snap a few token shots. I then purposely face north for a different view as I situate my pack for our departure. “Proper repack?” I say to Katie, echoing a mantra-like refrain from our previous long hauls through Arizona and Colorado. She nods, then turns my words into song.

Up until a few weeks ago, we didn’t have a hiking plan. I threw around a few ideas during a busy multi-week work event: The Ouchita Trail, The Superior Hiking Trail, a jaunt through Texas’ Big Bend. But none of my proposals stuck until I suggested the PCT. Really, I didn’t want to start walking it before I officially wrapped up the AT, but I was also willing to compromise if it meant a few glorious weeks on a trail.

The southern portion of the PCT is semi-familiar ground. The weather, landscape, and geography is all familiar since I lived and hiked a bunch here as a young adult and she’s done her fair share of travel out this way. But any long hike requires some planning, and since my schedule didn’t afford me much time for trail prep, Katie did 99% of the recon. And though I have an excuse for not pulling my weight, this is sort of how I roll anyhow. I’ve never really been a planner. I see the value of it, I really do, but I also, and perhaps foolishly, trust that I’ll be able to manage whatever might come my way. So far I’ve been right. Fingers crossed my lucky streak lasts for at least another 200 miles. Or better yet, indefinitely.

Even still, I knew I’d show up to Campo largely untrained to pull off the sort of mileage Katie and I historically do. We’ll need to gradually increase the mileage in order to avoid the overuse syndromes that forced me off the AT this past spring. Too much too soon leads for problems. Last thing I want to do is be holed up in some nowhere town trying to nurse an issue I could have avoided by practicing a little patience.

Once our packs were squared away and ready to go, we do a look-ahead on FarOut to determine where we’ll be able to refill our water bottles. The hiker notes on every natural source for the next fifty miles are a flurry of synonyms for dry, so we put our faith in the occasional spigots en route that may or may not still be on.

A few comments mention caches left by Trail Angels, but they, too, are a roll of the dice. So, to be safe, we begin our northbound path completely camel’d up. Katie’s carrying four liters of water, and I’ve got eight. That’s an extra 8.8 and 17.6 pounds, respectively. For comparison, while I hiked the AT this past spring, I never carried more than two liters (4.4 lbs.) at a time. But even two liters on the AT is too much since there’s a crystal clear running stream around every bend. Water on the PCT is scarce, rainy season or not. And since October hike is definitely not in the rainy season, we’re anticipating extra-heavy water hauls.

Our first northbound steps cross a series of dirt roads, then parallel the secondary road we took in the Lyft. After about 15 minutes we reach the end of mile 1 and stop to take a few photos. The afternoon sun beats down and reflects colorful bursts of light on our clean sunglasses. “It’s gonna be a hot one,” I say. “Thank God we’re starting with just a half day.”

The plan is to walk until 5:00 p.m. or so. Beat the sunset by an hour and have ample time to set up camp. Granite boulders mark the trail’s mellow turns, and the minor ridge line ahead revs us up for what’s to come. As a lizard races into the brush, Katie asks if I think we’ll see any animals. Which reminds me of the first and only time I’ve ever seen a mountain lion.

Back in 2007 I was training for the Western States Endurance Run. My training buddies, all old school ultra folks, told me that to be good at hundred milers I needed to get good at hiking. I lived close enough to the race route to grow intimately acquainted with its nuances, and one early spring morning I set out for a few solo hours on a stretch that included a lot of climbing. “If you try to run every step, the trail will pull your card,” my buddies said. So I regularly sought out steep ascents and did repeats until my legs turned to oatmeal. Which was precisely the plan for this particular spring morning.

The day also marked only the second time I’d ever used a heart rate monitor. My part time status at Fleet Feet Sports in Sacramento, coupled with the fact that I was a budding ultra runner, scored me a seeded HR watch from the generous Polar rep. Before this morning’s run, I’d messed with it but once to establish my maximum heart rate. A series of sprints at the Sac State track got me up to 160 bpm. I looked forward to experiencing how 20 miles in zone 2 felt.

The dark sky pressed its fist into the forest. Rain was imminent, and a severe thunderstorm already cancelled the group runs that would have otherwise busied the single track. I laced up anyhow. I’ve always believed it doesn’t make sense to train only when the weather is agreeable.

I flew through Auburn’s misty trails. Cool patches of low clouds might have otherwise slowed me down, but that day they did the opposite. And though I worried my shoe might catch a hidden stone or root, I remained sure-footed and increased my turnover when I probably should have been focused on a more mellow approach. By the time I got to the climbing hill, I was already winded. But I saw this as a plus. Training hard while fatigued sharpens the edge. Nobody else was out here in this shit doing what I was doing. Such leveling up would surely leave my competition in the dust.

The first handful of climbs felt fine. I paced accordingly, keeping my watch from beeping, summited and descended two, three, four times before it finally screamed at me. I adjusted my cadence down, took advantage of the hill’s decline for breathers, then found another sweet spot where I lost count of my round trips as the weather got nastier. My mind wandered where it always wanders—into emptiness—and my body moved on autopilot. My energy peaked as I hooted and hollered, cheering for my fortitude. But soon I began to fade, and my clip evolved into a stepping stride. Then a walk. Then a plod. It was time to wrap up the workout and get back to my car, but first I wanted to knock out and even two more ups and downs with intention. I wanted to finish with gusto, with focus, fully imagining that this was the final stretch of my coming race. Visualizing my inevitable success would shape my desired outcome.

On the final ascent, I saw an animal’s body ahead. A heap of sandy muscle, stealthily sliding from one side of the trail to the other. I caught its golden eyes, too, just add they also caught mine. For a moment it seemed we both moved knowing we were seen—and just like that, it was gone. Disappeared. No hint of its form or shine. It was lost in a sky of drenched treeline.

I stopped and took inventory of my four corners. Mountain lions are keen hunters. Tricksters. Expert stalkers. I fully expected it to tackle me from the back and I briefly lost my bearings. Which way was up? Down? I needed to go. To flee. Because to stand there was to make myself certain prey.

So I ran. Hard as I could. Hard as I ever have. All the way up the grueling hill and beyond, retracing my steps on the slippery rocks and turns, as my watch begged me to slow down, slow down! Louder and louder it beeped and chimed, while faster and faster I ran and ran. I didn’t stop until I got back to my van where I fumbled my keys then. locked myself inside. The storm pummeled the roof with sheets of rain while thunder shook the earth’s corners. I hid on the floor of my vehicle, eyes pressed shut, then reluctantly peeked out the window. My entire body shook like it did years ago after I was involved in a car accident. Everything felt wrong and out of place. I laid down on the bench seat, imagined all that didn’t, but could have happened. I must have fallen asleep, and when I woke up the rain had stopped.

I was chilled, so I changed out of my swampy clothes. Before driving away, I checked my HR monitor. I had an alert—I’d reached a new max. 195 bpm. No sprints, no hills, no tempo runs ever even got me close to that number. The lion was to thank for me getting better acquainted with my body.

After a half hour of bypassing less-deal campsites, Katie and I land on a perfect spot and are set up before sunset. We sit on rocky slabs and eat our cold-soaked dinners while the desert sky turns orange, then red, then pink, and eventually fills black with a scattering of stars to remind us of our insignificance.

The air chills, and by 7:30 we are in our sleeping bags. “Ready to call it?” I ask. “Heck yeah,” she says. “It’s way past hiker midnight.” And she’s right. The sun’s been down for more than an hour, and it’s all we can do to stay awake.

Day one on the PCT is in the books. Low mileage on a short day under a cloudless sky. The only life we encountered after Campo—endless lizards, a chipmunk, and a sobo thru hiker named Pisses in the Wind (no mountain lions, thank God). I’m dirty and hungry, scratched up and sore, and I’ve already started yearning for a life of less. These are the kinds of details I dream about when I’m not out here, so I mindfully appreciate their sudden presence and fall asleep feeling utterly and fully alive.

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While I am out there, I sometimes think about specific things—work and life and all that’s waiting for me back home. And there’s always something waiting for me back home. But mostly when I’m hiking I just let my mind wander into nothingness. Hours pass with few ponderings besides whatever the trail inspires. I open myself to it and always seem to receive what I need.

Occasionally, random songs scoot into my consciousness, and suddenly I’m humming a tune I didn’t even know I knew. Steep uphill climbs always trigger the Beatles’ I am the Walrus. My footstrike evidently matches the song’s tempo, and suddenly I find myself mouthing lyrics between gasps for air. Sittin’ on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come…

Other songs materialize for less obvious reasons. They may be one I don’t particularly like, or even know very well. Or one connected to an era which my solitude calls forth. Oh the curious whims of a fatigued subconscious!

When this happens, I’m briefly immersed in long lost faces and forgotten landscapes. My senses pique with imagined smells and feels. Old voices replace the whispers of wind and birdsong as my walking unlocks things, shakes them loose, and sets them free. They become the yellowing leaves of changing oaks, the sharp rock that catches my toe, the countless lizards that race across the dusty path. And when someone is nearby to listen, which, in the case of my recent twelve-day stint on the PCT, was my old and dear friend, Katie, I anxiously share whatever came up.

Around maybe midday, on day three or four, after we started the morning with 30-minutes of silent walking, a meditation of sorts, followed by both of us naming the things in our lives we are grateful for—health, friends, this—I abruptly interrupted the peaceful ambling that followed. “Hey,” I said. “I just suddenly remembered the dog my family had when we lived in Livermore. “Oh yeah?” Katie said, even though I surely told her about Jenny at some point. In all the years we’ve known each other, and with all the long hikes we’d done together, Katie surely knew all my stories by now. But she played along nonetheless.

Jenny was her name—short for Janine. A big and fluffy Great Pyrenees dog. She lived in our backyard, and spent most of the day in the sliver of shade against sliding door, which is where my siblings and I would interact with her through the smudged glass.

Nobody ever walked her. We never went outside and played with her. Frankly, I don’t recall ever even going into the backyard at all—the lawn was too riddled with her shit. But she was our dog, part of the family, even if from a distance.

When my dad’s job planned to move us to upstate New York, my parents arranged to give Jenny back to her original breeders. On the very last day we had her, my dad asked if I’d like to take her for a walk around the block. A walk? He handed me a leash—which was weird because I didn’t even know we had a leash for her. Then, panting and pulling, Jenny dragged me down the length of Colusa Lane. I was just a little guy, eight years old, and barely in control of this giant beast suddenly freed from suburban captivity for the first time in as long as we’d had her.

I struggled to keep hold. But I enjoyed the struggle. The semblance of authority over a living thing was both unfamiliar and enchanting. I’d grown up hearing stories about how Great Pyrenees’ were bred to run up and down alpine slopes helping people in need. She’s a mountain dog, my dad used to say. I imagined her, a mystical savior, offering the miniature barrel around her neck to a fallen skier who needed a snort before rescue. I imagined my dog as a hero. “Good dog, Jenny. Good dog,” I repeated, jerking the lead as we heaved together along the broken sidewalk. I didn’t know this fully alive version of her. Her incessant choking and coughing as I yanked the leash, her insistence to stop and smell everything then hurl herself away as I roiled behind. I didn’t have any context for how to take a dog, my dog, out for a walk.

But that half hour walk was the closest I’d ever been to Jenny. Her strength fought my small hands as I gripped in pain, feeling, for the first time, a hint of dominion. Of power. I recall being struck by the stiff rope that tightly bound us, and wishing, with all my heart, that we’d done this before. I recall a sense of impending loss. Of regret. Of anger and resentment. I recall Jenny passing gas every few steps, which made me turn my head to avoid the cloud of pungent sulfur that marked her unbridled excitement. Her sudden absence of boundaries.

I recall tears welling up, then crying aloud as neighbors waved freely from their porches. You OK Tommy?, they hollered. I assured them I was. But really, I was just a boy in tightly laced tennies that barely held the hardtop as I scarcely piloted a lunging and heaving bear. I imagine the newlyweds Matt and Martha, a recent addition to our neighborhood, chuckling as I passed by their living room window. Goddamn boy’s holding on for dear life.

The next day Jenny was gone. And the day after that we left California. There’s more to that story but that’s all I want to say for now, I told Katie.

A few minutes later I added an afterthought: My family was never good with pets. Never good with the sort of intimacy or commitment necessary for proper care. Never good with the sort of tenderness I am trying to get good at now. OK, now I am done, I said. And went back to walking.

For the next hour or so, the crunch of our feet drummed in unison against the coursing single track. As the trail ascended, my heavy breathing turned audible. We had no particular end goal for the day, but we wanted to stop before sundown. On trail we walked and walked to nowhere in particular, even though the nowhere was always a somewhere that marked another day’s ending.

We had nearly four hours to go before we’d set up camp, and the app confirmed another 1500 feet to climb. “This trail is more scenic than I expected,” I said. And my words cracked me up, because, truthfully, I had no expectations. I’d been too busy to do any research on these first 200 miles of the PCT—the southern terminus at Campo, CA to Mt. San Jacinto—yet still I was wildly committed to a couple weeks of walking. I started the trail less than 48 hours after I returned from a week-long, on-site residency in Racine, WI where, along with six other folks, I kicked off a 16-month Spiritual Guidance program. My head was still spinning from it, and it would likely take our entire two weeks out here for my untrained body to catch up to the demands of the terrain. The hitch in my lower back told me as much, anyhow.

We stopped for a snack, per usual, at the top of the hour. Took off our packs and sat on a perfectly situated log. “Where do you think that story came from?” Katie asked. I wasn’t sure. Maybe it started with the song that had been echoing in my head all morning. A song that, I was pretty sure, hailed from the Jenny era. “Do you know, Let Your Love Flow,” I asked. Then I sang the few lines I knew. She couldn’t place it, which wasn’t a surprise, but it did leave me wondering if perhaps I had invented it. The opaque memories of my adolescence are so piecemeal that I often have a hard time determining what’s real and what’s imagined. I find my past truths easy to question and impossible to confirm. But Let Your Love Flow is, without a doubt, a real song. I even just now Google’d it to double check. It’s a Bellamy Brothers country hit from 1976. A real 70s banger.

“So what’s on the menu?” I asked Katie. She held up a pouch of fruit snacks and her never-ending Ziplock of homemade trail mix. Envious, I quietly wished I’d chosen similarly at the Julian Market instead of opting for overpriced protein bars. “I’ve got this delicious cardboard here,” I said, then added, “Food is nothing more than fuel.” Katie crunched her nose as a sudden cool breeze made me yearn again for the sun. For more walking. More miles. I couldn’t wait to see what other forgotten stories the trail would dredge up from us. They’re all in there, just waiting to come out.

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How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. 
			—Annie Dillard

The idea of work has always felt important to me. But don’t misunderstand, I’m not talking about the American standard nine-to-five, nor the kill yourself to live sort of grind. When I consider work, this isn’t what I’m thinking about.

That sort of traditional work, that j-o-b, might make me a nice stack of green paper, but I’ve come to wholeheartedly believe it’s not worth it. Because such an effort swallows away precious time. Status is earned by forfeiting, or at least delaying, dreams and aspirations. And though there was a time when I sought this out—a time when I believed my purpose in life was defined by the burdens of my professional role—those days are long gone. Thank God.

I’ve since come to know precisely what brings out the best in me. Things like autonomy, creative space, a lively circle of supportive and self-reflective people. Things like kindness, adventure, empty time, and genuine human connection. I now protect and cherish these personal prerequisites. I insist they all are factored into my endeavors.

When I started writing this essay I was three weeks into my the first gig of my new professional position. The asks of me had stretched beyond that which I’d been hired to do, and my anticipated free time was waning. I’d done nothing but work. Hadn’t made any effort to see the local sights or visit nearby friends. One morning, after a burst of clarity, I sat for an extra hour at my favorite Santa Rosa cafe, Land and Water, to reflect on what work means to me. I sensed that I needed to reestablish my rationale for being there in the first place.

It’s now three weeks later and I haven’t since touched that essay. I can’t even remember what I’d planned to write about. Work, obviously, but why? What was I trying to say, to process, to give attention to? Maybe I was writing my way towards a better understanding. Or perhaps simply trying to lighten my emotional load.

Right now I’m sitting at San Francisco Airport with two hours left before my flight boards for home. Which leaves me plenty of time to mess with the words I wrote forever ago. Plenty of time to (re)consider this idea of work and what it means to me today.

Today wraps up a six-week foray in Santa Rosa. The first project of what will be an ongoing series of similar long-term, on-site outings. My role in a nutshell—I am tasked to help people get better at what they do. I am a trainer. A mentor. An educator. I affect cultural and personal change through thoughtful words, actions, and guidance. I offer incessant reminders and deliver context about why certain things are done, then relentlessly give cues to the folks involved about how they fit into the big picture. I help people identify, and hold fast to, their purpose.

I know enough about this industry to smartly speak to every facet of it, but more than anything else, I hold myself accountable to truly see the unique individuals navigating its throes. My goal—to breathe life into their daily efforts. Both at work and beyond.

Every day I show up ready for whatever, and with energy to spare. I affect changes that have potential to be far bigger than the job at hand. And frankly, if this wasn’t true, or at least possible, I’d be doing something else to make my living. I can’t imagine ever again working a job that doesn’t have life-changing promise.

My presence here and anywhere is temporary, but it’s stirring. Because I am a flurry of knowledge, support, and uplift. I casually use words like care, tenderness, and love so that folks might grow more comfortable with the power and necessity of softness. I want nothing more than to give, give, give. And by the time I leave, which happens to be today, if I’ve done all I intended to do, I am both full and empty.

For various reasons, my time during this stint asked me to perform an adjacent role. I had to shelve my training hat for that of a retail store manager, which forced my attention to shift to the operational and customer service-related minutiae. My desire and impetus to actively train, unfortunately, took second billing.

The ensuing culmination of arduous weekly hours triggered rumblings of a long-shelved persona—that of a workaholic—one of my least-desired paternal inheritances. My dad never actually sat me down to discuss the value of hard work, nor did he take much time to positively counsel me on such things. But he did regularly belittle the people around him who, from his perspective, gave less than he did. He talked a lot of mess about the slackers, his lazy coworkers, and people who didn’t pull their weight. My dad’s perspective on work suggests his belief in the importance of power. Of control. He desperately wanted both of these things. But, as far as I can tell, he died without having filled these empty buckets.

As a young man I desperately wanted my dad to see me, so I internalized his gripes and subconsciously committed to overachievement. Coming in second wasn’t an option. Average never good enough. A so-so existence not an option. I went big in everything. Not because I necessarily wanted to, but because I believed this was the only way I could ensure my dad would respect me. Maybe he’d love me more if I could more readily display my own power. My own control.

The result—I worked massive hours, filled heavy plates, and accepted an abundance of endless struggles. Each herculean labor added another feather to my cap. The more I suffered at my job, the more rich my professional currency became (or so I thought). I suddenly had things to discuss with my dad, and even I heard his voice in mine. I’d brag about my uncanny ability to effectively function all day without food, water, or even a break. I’d denigrate coworker who didn’t meet my expectations, disparage folks without a work ethic like mine. He and I found common purchase in anger. In resentment. But I never gave it a second thought because it availed quality time with my dad.

Over time my efforts became the me I knew. They stopped being directly about bonding with my old man, and my ability to go all day without food, water, or even a break was less gloat than truth. I grew addicted to work and was eternally dissatisfied. My abilities to function in chaos were equivalent to an alcoholic’s ability to put away a fifth then ask for more, and more still. Unhealthy work tendencies live inside of me still. And if I am not careful, I become a lost and needy version of my truest self.

My weeks in Santa Rosa reminded me that this version of me is still a blink away. And in the thick of my sudden slip into professional imbalance, and while walking back to my Airbnb after another extended day, I suddenly and inexplicably began gasping for air. It was as if my lungs turned into stones and weighted my chest like an anchor. I abruptly and sat on a creekside bench. The pink glow in the sunset sky glowed overhead and a white egret hunted fish in the oily shallows of the waterway. My breathing calmed, my heart returned to its normal cadence, and the cool breeze reminded me to get back to walking. I stood up and walked peacefully into the dusk towards my apartment.

The moment nudged me back towards that from which I’d strayed—myself. I pulled out my cell and called a dear friend back home in North Carolina. I needed a touchstone—something, someone, to help me remember what I had intended to do with my time here in Santa Rosa. “Tom,” she said, “You’re there just to be you—and that’s enough.” Her words vibrated my brain and my eyes welled up. I don’t remember what else we talked about for the duration of my walk home, but I do remember laughing.

What a delight it is to have someone who is willing to remind me who I am. Someone to help me remember that I’ve got nothing to prove. Nobody to answer to. Someone to help me keep a healthy distance between the endless demands of a job and the work I am meant to do.

I believe my daily work is to love—to seek out chances to nourish my own and others’ growth. Whether I am getting paid out not, this is what I do. How doggone lucky I am to find myself being sought after, professionally, for this very reason. I wish my dad was around so we could talk about this. Because I am pretty sure I needed his influence to reach this deeper understanding.

Unlike the old days, status is no longer my driver. I now align my money-making efforts with sort of person I aspire to become. I practice betterment every day, and not just in my free time. Not just an occasional yoga or meditation class. Not just a long weekend walk. I schedule self care like a morning cup of coffee—because I know damn well that if I miss it, I’ll start losing sight of life’s joy.

I’ve stopped living according to the belief that more is better. Or that my personal value is determined by my pile of green paper. If anything, I desire less. Much less. I own nothing, I owe nothing, was what I recently told a new friend when we met for the first time. I then admitted, “I don’t even have a retirement nest egg.” And even though her face showed surprise, perhaps even an inkling of judgment, I didn’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed. I trust that the work I do is enough—this work of love. And it will be enough to sustain me until my time here is done.

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These discoveries are physical evidence of my adventures. Of me, pedaling about on the hardtop, faithfully exhuming evidence of less obvious worlds. I roam, usually alone and deep in my imagination, aloof to neighbors’ station wagon honks that only briefly snap me from squinting intently under the cloudless California sky.

I wander about, spellbound by junked curios and forsaken remnants, ascribing meaning and, at times, power, to the found relics. Bits of cerulean glass, for example, bring good luck. Spotting a shard is proof that what I’m doing matters. That the seeking is worthwhile, and that things are going to be OK. Also, the prospect of passing of such fragments onto others gives me butterflies. “Here,” I’ll say. “I found this for you.”

As I enliven these vestiges, they give back an energy that’s commensurate to my belief in them. This practice has continued into my adulthood. And these days, whether it’s a found feather, a marble (because it’s so often marbles), or a stray and random playing card, whether it’s my pull from a tarot deck, a morning prayer, or an eclipse ritual, I ascribe meaning to their essence. They are my oracles.

In one way or another, these tokens help me live a more deeply connected existence. These miniature Gods remind me to embrace the unknown. The unplanned. To make room for spontaneous innovation. To note the reciprocal influence between things that don’t often exist together. I allow this bounty to guide me. To help me witness elements of hope and possibility in unlikely places. And when I take conscious time to look for them, I find them. Every single time.

Next month I am beginning a 16-month training program at the Spiritual Guidance Institute in Racine, Wisconsin. As the start date nears, I’m meditating on my own spiritual resume. A background which includes, but is not limited to, the influence of religion on my life.

Organized catechism plays a part in how I interpret and understand the divine, but it’s only one small piece of the complicated puzzle. My foundation of traditional learnings is less poignant than the heartrending and esoteric lessons I’ve had good fortune to bear. Moments that have stolen my breath. That have turned my skin inside-out.

My spirituality lives in my body. It’s ever-present and always available—I need only look inward for any evidence of God. Of the divine. My spirituality, I’ve come to believe, is galvanized when my body is overcome by things not easily explained with language. When I am a tearful beholder of the clusters of the Milky Way. When I am enraptured by a lengthy trail’s enchanted tree tunnel. When I am enveloped at altitude by a lightning blizzard, walking a tightrope of near death. When I am smitten by an old dog’s eyelashes. Or speechless. Or emotionally explosive. Or wholly taken over by the sudden racing of my inconsolable heart. The body—my body—responds fiercely to these grave and sacred moments. They inspire me to become more than I know myself to be. They become like God.

This spirituality, this God, the divine, or whatever we might call it, is anchored within me. Within us. We are its poetry. And poetry, in all its allegory and metaphor, its weighty imagery and magical turns of phrase, is as close to the language of the divine as we can ever get. The most moving poems often make us feel more than understand.

Poetry is the expression of in-between spaces. Of silence. Its speaks in fullness from its very emptiness. It’s when we describe grief by proclaiming calamitous beauty. When speech is only a sound. Or how we can only see certain stars when looking away. Such things, I’m pretty sure, are the infinite scatterings of God. And our own godliness is mirrored in our effort to seek them out and collect them for our jars.

I become more alive when I accept equality with this smallness. I am no more than that which I tuck into my little blue trunk. Just me, otherwise hidden under a windswept pile of suburban scree, living a muted existence beneath a protective wall of dried leaves, of garage blown wood shavings, of various webs of detritus connecting me to a million heavens. My hanging on, our hanging on, is a collective miracle.

Spirituality, I think, is us never forgetting how minuscule, and yet how crucial we are to and for each other. It reminds that we exist for the good of each other. That we all are here to endure the dramatic odyssey of love. To spend each day loving every weird and curious and flattening detail of the journey.

Spirituality is us taking time to stop. To pick up those extraordinary relics that catch our eye. To look closely at them. Maybe bring them home for safe keeping in our sun-catching jars on the sill. So that one day we may look at them and remember how we paid close attention and, in the midst of our cluttered and fitful lives, found a scattered collection of tiny Gods in the street gutter right outside our house.

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That morning got me thinking a lot about running. About why I love it so much—as sport, and as metaphor. About my own history as a runner and where I first came in contact with the indescribable magnetism that continues to draw me in. It was a delightful meditation.

This essay tells part of that story. Thank you for allowing me to share it here with you.

-Tom

When First Sergeant told us he had free entries to the tenth running of the Frankfurt Marathon, I immediately raised my hand. “Seriously, Griffen?” he said. “Jesus Christ, son. You ever even run that far?” And when I told him no, he shook his head chuckling, then told me to stop by his office later in the day to pick up the paperwork. He then wide-eyed the rest of the company ranks, waiting to see if another soldier would claim an entry. “Didn’t think so,” he said under his breath as he gave the formation back to Sergeant Martin who broke us into PT ability groups. First Sergeant joined the slow group, who promptly set out for a jog through the dark forest behind our kaserne.

I had no idea what a marathon was, not really anyhow. I didn’t know it was 26.2 miles long, I was clueless about what to expect on the course, and I definitely had no idea how to train for it in a way that prepared me for the mileage. What I did know, however, was that RUN A MARATHON was in all caps on my dad’s list of life goals. I figured running one was a way for us to come together. A way for me to capture his attention.

Back in the early 90s I ran nearly every day. And twice, usually, since the morning PT session always included some sort of running component bit. I’d do my evening jaunt wearing the heather gray GI-issued gear I’d worn that morning. Set out for another workout as the sun began to set, then return in time to join my knucklehead friends for a night at a bar.

Out on the trails I’d open my strides, churning them as fast as possible down the old German logging roads behind my barracks until I reached the fenceline. Opposite the barrier was an ordnance railhead where, during WWII, the German Army held stores of Lugers an other weaponry. Last winter, Sergeant Dale and Specialist Eberly found a case of consecutively numbered pistols while digging the foundation for a new storage shed. They smartly relinquished the lot to Captain Dunham who took little interest in the find. She passed them to the base MPs, and who knows what happened to them after that. “We should have kept ‘em,” Dale said. “They’re definitely worth a lot of money.”

Running through the silent woods freed my body and my imagination. I’d turn sharply into burmed curves and imagine I was a BMX racer, cutting sharp corners to leave someone in my dust. I’d lean my body parallel to the ground while I leveraged the clip, then get an excited rollercoaster belly as I flew through the air, whipping past fallen trees, splashing puddles, and gliding over piles of scree. It was the sort of freedom I needed to balance my utter disdain for the military. I still had three years left in my Army enlistment, and running endless miles, even on a base infused with infamy, eased the daily pain of homesickness and enlistment regrets.

I had just over two months to prepare for the race—which didn’t leave me enough training time. My focus, strangely, was less on finishing the race and more on how I’d look doing it. I scoured a buddy’s dogeared Eastbay catalog and mail-ordered a pair of dayglow racing flats—a lightweight and fashion forward pair of Brooks’ King Kongquests. I matched their pink accents with an expensive Nike half zip and some bright shorty shorts I found at a German sporting goods store. Fully trained or not, I was going to show up coordinated. I wanted folks to see me and know I knew what the heck I was doing (even though I was completely clueless).

Master Sergeant Gilpin assured me, “If you can run ten, you can run twenty, and a marathon is barely longer than that.” PFC Burke barked his own advice: “If you’re truly hardcore, you don’t even need to train at all.” I was hardcore, or at least I thought I was. Top on the PT roster—the most pushups and sit-ups in two minutes—and the fastest soldier in the company. Still, my gut told me that not training was foolish. But I was at a loss since I had no idea where to start.

I took nobody’s words to heart, just thanked then for their input and kept on with my habitual regimen of a ninety minute run, seven days a week. I always ran fast, and I always ran hard. Early in my training, I clocked my fastest ever 2-miler during a standard PT test, surprising myself with a 10:13. Afterwards, while feeling extra cocky, I figured the marathon would be a cakewalk.

Quite likely, youth was the only thing that kept me from getting injured by all the effortful and break-free running. Nineteen year old bodies are ridiculously pliable, resilient, and utterly forgiving. A similar effort today would surely find me busted up on the sidelines. All-in should never mean always-in.

When event day rolled around, I borrowed a friend’s car for the hour commute to Frankfurt. I found a questionable parking spot and prayed I wouldn’t get towed, then double-timed to the start line just as everyone was queuing up. Once there, I mirrored countless other runners and contorted my body into stretching positions. But unlike many of them, I did all mine while standing—my toe touches and side bends and high knees. I didn’t want to get my new pink shorts all dirty.

Minutes later, the buzz of the crowd feverishly increased as the announcer counted down ten seconds to start. The gun went off, and though we all were chomping at the bit, we didn’t actually move forward for a good twenty or more seconds. It didn’t matter though. I’d started what I came here for. I was going to make my dad proud.

I’ve since run more than twenty subsequent marathons, but never since have I witnessed what surrounded me during Frankfurt 1991’s first mile. As the crowd slowly crept forward and runners began strategically vying for position, no less than a dozen participants peeled off the pack to the adjacent grassy hill. There they dropped their shorts, then squatted and shamelessly shit in full view of the pack. Nobody but me seemed to pay this any mind, which made me wonder, was this kind of thing normal? Because if so, this running thing was kind of disgusting.

Besides these starting moments, the only other clear recollection I have from the race is from when the paved road turned into a lumpy, ankle-twisting cobblestone path as we neared a bridge over the Main River. Someone shouted, “Bier!” and suddenly the crowd was a thousand extended arms holding open brown bottles. Beer while running? What? Runners ahead of me chugged, causing the crowd to erupt into a joyful fit of screaming and high-fives. “Bier! Bier!” the masses shouted louder, inspiring more to slam down a pint through this swilling tunnel as the crowd turned even more raucous. The escalated energy and ear crushing decibels of these beers and cheers still gives me chills.

In the thick of it all, I reached for one, too, then downed it faster than any before. Then suddenly, like magic or a marathon miracle, I was no longer tired or sore. I felt fresh in both legs and spirit, and even considered nabbing a second bottle for a double dose. But something made me refrain, and instead I powered through the echoing tube of spectators, picking up my pace to a near sprint until the crowd grew thinner. Quieter.

Soon the sound of the course returned to normal. A tapping cadence of sneakered feet hitting pavement, interspersed with an occasional hard cough, sniff, or snot-rocket. My legs urgently turned into logs, and as I crossed the bridge I contemplated the mileage I’d covered so far. Thirteenish miles, or twenty one Ks. I held tightly to that twenty one since it made me feel like I’d run longer, like I had less yet to go.

But no matter the number, I was still only half way. Which was miles longer than I’d ever gone. Every step a new milestone. Every mile a bigger brag hereafter. Would I make it to the dreaded wall at mile 20? And if I did, would I still have anything left? Because so many people had warned me about the wall. So many told me that’s where many runners drop. I never imagined I might be one of the mid-race quitters, but at that exact moment, I wasn’t sure I had it in me complete the thing.

At some point I fell into a flow state. If I turned my brain off I might make it to the end. Just keep moving, I thought. Almost there, man. Keep on, you got this.

Inexplicably, and through various debilitating cramps that hopped from my calves to my back to my hamstrings to my neck and back to my calves, my body kept plodding. Perhaps because I was determined to finish, but also perhaps I was terrified not to. There was no way in hell I was going to return to base without a finisher’s medal. No way I was going to show up empty handed, wasting First Sergeant’s comped entry on a DNF. I wanted to return a hero. A bright spot. I wanted to be seen, to be different than the rest of the company. I wanted to be recognized for my uniqueness. Called out in tomorrow morning’s formation. Shoot, maybe they’d even let me sit out the morning run. God, I sure hoped so. Because I could already tell I was going to be a mess.

Besides a few additional minor moments, I’m unable to readily recall much else from those last thirteen miles. The weather turned rainy, the crowds thinned, and I just kept plugging along. I don’t recall the wall, the home stretch, or even crossing the finish line. But some point I was done, wearing a space blanket, and had a ceramic finisher’s medal around my neck and another beer in my hand. I’d made it. And I had proof. I’d later send the medal to my dad with a note saying, “I ran this one for you.” It hung in his office until he died in 2023.

I lingered under a large circus tent where I indulged in warm cups of noodles and refills of instant Nescafe in a styrofoam cup. Surely I was proud of myself, but all I can say with certainty is that it took me a while to succinctly recall where I had parked my friend’s car. And in the time between finishing and getting back to my senses, I leaned on the sponsor banners, watched the other finishers approach the end of their own races, and bawled my eyes out.

I could blame my rawness on the fact that I was depleted. Blame my unabashed emotional breakdown on the relief of having endured such a feat. But since that day I’ve watched many, many other races with similar responses. There’s something about all that loud music, the announcer calling in the names of people as they cross the finish line, the cheering and applause and screams of tremendous jubilation. The scene always gets me. Always puts me on my knees. Always sends me fully enveloped in the animated bliss of relief and repose. I cheer and clap and cry, and feel an overwhelming sense of fullness as I witness others achieving their own magnificent goals.

That morning, wet and shivering, I stood as a finisher/spectator and screamed fiercely for folks as they bounded in on wobbly legs, resembling more a newborn deer than a human. Hour four came and went, then five, then six. The longer the race took, the louder the finish line crowd hollered for each straggling runner and walker as they crawled in. I joined in the collective emotional embrace of runners on the absolute verge of accomplishing the biggest effort of their lives. Never before had I been a part of such a spectacle. Never before had I felt so intimately connected to strangers. The most memorable takeaway from my first marathon was watching others revel in the achievement of their own goals. Witnessing their sudden belief that they, in fact, did it.

When I trace back my love for the sport of running, I’m really tracing back my incessant yearning for authentic connection. The sense of personal accomplishment keeps me putting in the miles, but more than that is the resulting community that comes with having done so. The possibility of playing a tiny little part of someone else’s moment of severe joy, to clap and cheer for them, to fist bump and high five, to shout, even in a language I don’t know, to make contact with a runner whose life is changing before my very eyes. This is why I run. Because what a treat. What an absolute honor.

There are only so many opportunities in life where we get to spectate excellence, and this sort of witness, in my experience anyhow, is about as good as it gets. My satisfaction, however, is no comparison to that of the person who just completed the distance. Whether it’s a couple miles or a hundred plus, the journey to the finish culminates in a profound arrival. It is, inevitably, a journey home. May we all be so lucky to arrive into the beckoning arms of others who love us for simply being.

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And though my experiences have mostly been opportunistic, there’s a common thread in all of my life’s line items—curiosity and love. Most everything I’ve ever done, both personally and professionally, has asked me to dabble in landscape that is best served by these two tenets. The passage of time affords a deeper understanding of how the joyful, adventurous, and terrible alike all weave perfectly together. Such confluence, at times, feels like magic. And since I like the idea of enchantment, I honor it as such. But in reality, the magic of life is simply the result of living. We are, at times, marveled by our beingness, and that strikes me as just fine.

What follows is a brief recollection of a pivotal moment in my spiritual life. I’ll lead into the essay with a statement that guides my life today, because its significance now links inextricably to when I was just a knucklehead kid, desperately scrambling to figure things out.

Here goes: To love is to actively extend oneself for the purpose of nourishing my, or someone else’s life (paraphrased quote about love from bell hooks’ book all about love). Thanks for reading.

Enjoy!

For three years I attended an all boys, suit coat and tie wearing, Jesuit high school in upstate New York. The sort of school led by old priests with bulbous noses and veiny cheeks. Their clothing reeked of stale cigarettes, their breath of coffee, and though their rote refrains did little to inspire, they taught me so much about how to appease adults seeking certain compliance. Learning how to fit in, how to draw as little attention as possible, is often a core lesson. It sure was for me.

One morning, when the day’s schedule of classes was thrown off by a morning mass, my Latin teacher, Mr. Finn, hurriedly ushered us into the classroom, shut the door with a bang, then centered his tall, well-worn stool before our neat rows of desks. His movements were foreign enough for us to take more interest than usual. His diminutive stature, his short and groomed beard, his high forehead and beady eyes, his chapped, pursed lips—everything seemed to contort tighter than ever as he leaned against the stool and exhaled a mighty huff. Then his eyes went up and down the rows, briefly holding each of our gazes. I, for one, swear that at some point he started tearing up, but I can’t be sure.

“Gentlemen,” he said quietly but with an edge (he always called us gentlemen), “we will not be learning any Latin today.” Which was music to my ears, and surely my classmates’, too. For the first time in my academic life, I was truly challenged by a subject. Barely passing and madly resenting the mandatory eighth grade requirement to learn a dead language. Also, I had not done my homework, because I never did my Latin homework. But not because I shirked it, but because I simply couldn’t make sense of it all. I honestly didn’t know how to start, let alone complete, each assignment. With each failure I felt dumber. With each failure, Mr. Finn grew more frustrated with me. Who could blame him?

The idea of verb conjugation remained an impossibility. I hadn’t managed to grasp the first or second or third person, the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, or ablative cases, or how a word like farmer, a first declension noun, was translated to agricola in Latin, and, somehow, deemed masculine in gender. I hated the lot of it. I hated witnessing others gradually understand it while I remained stuck on the so-called easy stuff. And by association, I determinedly hated Mr. Finn, too.

Not talking about Latin was the best possible news I could have heard that morning. “Today, instead,” he said, “we’re going to talk about something far more important. Something I hope you’ll carry with you for a lifetime. Today, gentlemen, we’re going to talk about God—but not just God, God as a metaphor.”

For context, I should say that I grew up believing that somehow, long ago, in an era that either predated or paralleled the time of the dinosaurs, two naked people lived in a paradisiacal setting, location unknown, until a snake made the woman eat an apple, after which everything changed. I grew up believing, wholeheartedly, there was an actual flood that covered the planet’s entirety, and that someone built a boat so big that pairs of every exiting animal somehow fit in its hold. I grew up believing these stories, and so many more, without question. I understood them all to be part of history. One that chronologically tracked as readily as the thirteen colonies and two world wars I’d been ingesting repeatedly since primary school.

But that morning in Latin class, Mr. Finn told us to stop believing everything. He told us to question all we know. All we’d ever learned. “Because whatever you think you know about God is likely wrong,” he said. “All you ever learned, all you were ever told, all those stories of the Bible you grew up hearing in church or around your dinner table—they are just stories. Digestible bits of information meant to teach you a thing.” I remember his words stopped my breathing. And when he paused between thoughts, the room remained silent, as if we all greedily awaited more. Mr Finn continued, “All you’ve learned may not be true at all. Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t serve a purpose, but it’s up to you to figure out exactly what that purpose is.” Finn said that God doesn’t give away wisdom. That it’s for us to find. “And perhaps somewhere in that wisdom,” Finn said, “you’ll find yourself. And perhaps God, too. ”

Mr. Finn said the only pathway to God is a life of inquiry. We must question everything. Stay honest. Stay curious. Finn advised us not to believe in a thing simply because we were told to believe. “Blind faith is a problem,” he said. “You have to be smart and open with the divine. Because the divine doesn’t want yes-men. The divine prefers the thoughtful, the probing, the contrarians. God wants you to find a balance of knowledge and peace so you might give yourself over to it.” I distinctly remember Mr. Finn saying that true goodness simply can not be the result of being ordered to be good. Goodness, he stressed, must be a self-driven choice, or else it is not goodness at all.

As I recall this moment today, more than forty years after the fact, I realize that I am putting words into Mr. Finn’s mouth. But I do this with the utmost faith that his declarations, though varied from my own recollection here, offered the seeds for my ultimate remembrances. My words are the matured and evolved version of what landed that day in his Latin classroom. The pivotal day I expected more failure, and instead was entrusted with a sentiment that altered my personal trajectory.

Mr. Finn catalyzed a sudden understanding that God insists I partake in inquisitive moments that might otherwise cause me shame and guilt. That I am to do this inward-looking with abandon in an attempt to better know myself. Which is to say, to better set the stage for knowing something bigger than myself. Finn’s words were perhaps the first moment the world stopped revolving around me. The first artifact discovered in my life of digging for answers.

Mr. Finn maintained we take religion with a grain of salt. And for me, he was the first adult to confirm that it was OK, if not preferred, to think for myself about things. That it was OK to question religion, to question God, the Bible, heaven, goodness, and even authority. It was OK to wonder deeply about and critique the ethereal He who lives up there in the clouds and whose rules supposedly grant access (or refusal) to a life of eternal joy and sweet reward.

Mr. Finn sparked a personal empowerment that propelled me to recognize my own small, yet magnificent role in a collective holiness. He made it OK for me to find God on my own terms.

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My context for Santa Rosa runs deep. Back in 2002 I started up as a harvest intern at Matanzas Creek Winery, an idyllic pastoral landscape set a couple miles out of town on Bennett Valley Road. The position was meant to be temporary, but my tenure lasted beyond the picking season and into the next. In a blink, my three month stint turned into a demanding and memorable two years.

During my stay, I lived in a minuscule room with a rough, concrete floor in a rickety garage refurbished as a bunk house. I shared the cozy space with international wine students from France, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, and one from Georgia (Eastern Europe) named George. “I’m George from Georgia,” he’s spout with a grin, enamored by his own bilingual dexterity.

What we lacked in a common language was made up for by the gluttonous feasts we regularly cooked for each other, which, true to our roles and locale, were always accompanied by way too many bottles of wine. If anything, laughter was our shared dialect for this brief time together. Our intimacy deeply rooted in our late nights of raucous roaring.

From my room, a wall of madonna lilies hampered my view of the backyard creek crawling with crawdads, and a mere crack of my window ushered in flowy breezes of sweet lavender as it endlessly emanated from the surrounding purple fields. Back then, the winery was as famous for its aromatherapy products as it was for Journey, its high end, small batch merlot.

There are reasons wineries welcome harvest interns. They provide cheap labor during a time of heavy production, they’re generally agreeable, and the interns’ future prospects motivate them to do a ridiculous abundance of menial work. Though I genuinely enjoyed hoisting full wine barrels with a forklift, sometimes for more than twelve hours per day, sometimes for more than one hundred hours per week, I was never in love with the whole of the work. Mostly, it was my coworkers who made the job and long hours worthwhile.

One lasting memory is of a group of us, fatigued and bedraggled, belting out a parodied chorus to songs pumping over the cellar speaker. Specifically, Bruce Springsteen’s “Nothing Man” from his 2002 album, The Rising. With inordinate gusto we’d change the titular words of this catchy tune to “muffin man.” Then, a couple album songs later, we swapped the refrain of “Empty Sky” to “hairy guy.” Hairy guy, hairy guy, woke up this morning to a hairy guy. Our goal was to get a rise out of Brett, our beloved cellar master, who was a huge Bruce fan. And we always did. Such teasing was our sleep-deprived and juvenile way of telling him, simply, how much we loved him.

But I have additional context for Santa Rosa, too. My grandparents lived less than an hour away, at the base of an ancient volcano called Konocti, on Saddle Road in the quiet, California country town of Kelseyville. I’d pay them a visit any time I could steal away from the demands of the grapes. From their patio they’d greet me like a prodigal son, after which my grandfather would inevitably comment on my wine-stained hands, then retell the same old stories he always told while my grandma refilled the snack tray with crackers and cheese and sweet pickles until my habitual munching spoiled my dinner appetite. Then, no matter the season, I’d sleep on the lumpy pullout on the screened patio. This was my grandma’s way of keeping the cats from cuddling up to me and triggering my allergies. But I always woke up puffy-faced and congested anyhow.

When it was time to leave, I’d swipe a piece of the sharp, black obsidian that peppered their property, and stash it in my Jeep's glove. Then I’d drive extra slow down unpaved Wildcat Road and reflect on our visit. How fortunate I was to develop a relationship, as an adult, with my mom’s parents. To share mundane memories and insides jokes with them. I never left their place without telling them how much our time meant to me. “You’re always welcome to come back,” they’d say, and I’d silently hope, albeit dispiritedly, that there would be a next time.

My coming stay in Santa Rosa expounds on the culmination of twenty years in a niche of the run specialty retail industry. And though I’ll hereafter be given, of course, specific marching orders, the scope of my new position asks me, quite simply, to bring what I always bring. Me. Which doesn’t mean this new position will be easy, or fun, or without challenge. But it does convey a certain level of earned trust I damn sure don’t take for granted.

There’s that saying—how we do one thing is how we do everything—and though I don’t fully subscribe to it, it applies here. The me I bring to my work is the same me I bring to a twelve-hour haul on a kick ass, gnarly trail with a heavy pack on my back. I crush it, I rest up, then I crush it again. I really like living in accordance with this sort of effortful cadence. I don’t concern myself with where it’s taking me, but I definitely trust it’s taking me somewhere I need to be.

So, tomorrow my life changes. Again. And, like all the best changes that come along, this moment is the culmination of my entire life thus far. All my teaching and training and mentoring, all my failures and accomplishments, all my miles walked and run, all my choices, my hammerings, my gripes, my loves. Which is to say, more than anything else, this particular moment of newness is the logical outcome of all my living. My work, my play, my connections, my foibles, my everythings, all wrapped up into one spruce bundle asking me to be my most natural self. I know I am up for it.

On one of my last visits to my grandparent’s place, just before my gramps slipped into an Alzheimer’s haze, he told me that one of his first jobs out of the Navy was driving a flatbed truck delivering fire hydrants. He knew the job would never make him rich, but he chose, he said, to perform the job as if it was doing exactly that.

This perspective, he assured me, was what helped him manage the grind of it. “Hauling hydrants ain’t no joke,” he said. “I had to do something to keep my sanity.” Gramps was convinced he was the one person responsible for making the most of things. He was convinced his framework made him better. At everything. At life.

Plus, he assured me, and perhaps long before I could possibly even understand the magnitude of his words, elevating the work he was doing, no matter what it happened to be, was, above all else, a meditation. It was like exercise. A sketchbook for what would eventually be his future masterpiece.

So yeah, Santa Rosa is loaded with memories for me. And yet today, as I walk the Courthouse Square, a section of town I’ve visited many, many times through the fifty or so years that I’ve been passing through this town, it all seems so fresh and new. Like a place I’m visiting for the first time. And maybe that’s because it looks a bit different—it surely has, as things do, morphed through the decades. But also, maybe this newness stems from me. Maybe I am why the spirit of this place feels more welcoming than ever.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to understand what my gramps said to me those many years ago. That what I choose to bring to a moment is what allows for newness in a place that isn’t new at all. That this life, this work, is all just a meditation. A focus. A doing. A being. I need only show up with uplift and intention to activate it in a way that makes it all worthwhile. All beautiful.

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