My mother could not sing, never hit one right note, never had any musical training whatsoever. But still, she sang with all of her heart and soul and with any improvised microphone laying around within reach. A spatula, a large spoon, a baton, a borrowed cane. It didn’t matter. She just needed a prop for…
The view from High Knob Fire Tower is worth the hike—with or without fires. Miles and miles of horizon, hills, and heaven, all under a canopy of clouds that drift in and out of relevance. I hiked this trail with my sister and her family in May this year. The verdant brush with hopeful buds…
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder. J. Richard Lessor, author, social worker (often attributed to Henry David Thoreau) There I am in my five-year-old glory, having already captured…
One of my favorite quotes by a writer trying to explain the drive to write is from Flannery O’Connor: “I write to discover what I know.” I love this quote for its optimism, especially whenever I have writer’s block. I’ll let this quote guide me through a meandering trail of thought about what I might…
I am so grateful for this photo of the moon setting over Moloka’I, taken from the western shores of Maui as I hiked to a sunrise yoga class a few years ago. A Hawaiian beach is not the image typically used to express gratitude at Thanksgiving. I realize, as we approach my favorite holiday, that…
If you’re a man in the early 1970s with a baby blue VW bus, you’re going places. If that baby blue VW bus has calico curtains with gingham trim, you’re going in style (or you have a wife who thinks it’s stylish). If the back of that blue van is covered in stickers from camping…
