Archives

“Is that fun?” my mother had asked some years ago. “Is putting a 30-lb backpack on and hiking 10 miles fun?” I answered with a question, perhaps asking myself. “Not exactly, but going amazing [...]

Hunkered at home during the escalating pandemic is not, in fact, a terrible thing for a writer. There are fewer excuses to keep me from the work. So, last month I finished my novel (yes, again!) [...]

The trail is where I have calmed the clenching in my heart these past months. This morning, I ventured out in search of that, in the aftermath of yet another loss this tragic year—that of Ruth [...]

The closed doors (and borders) of the coronavirus pandemic have opened a different door for me–the possibility of “just” being a writer. Most summers, I’m attempting to write while sailing Kagán, [...]

…sailors are, my mentor and friend, Nancy Erley said, when we spoke the other day. Nancy is a two-time circumnavigator, and the logistics of isolating in our homes is not unlike that of crossing [...]

Some of these words have been percolating through my mind for weeks, and I intended to transfer them to paper for Earth Day in April, but I think the time is right, right now. In my last post [...]

Though it doesn’t occur beneath my feet unless I climb long and hard and high (as I did here), it’s my bedrock. The Madera Limestone crowns the rift-flank Sandia Mountains whose shadow I live in. [...]

Aside from the majesty of the land- and seascapes, there are other ways I feel small during the summers on Kagán. Some feel good, some are less comfortable. Like everyone, what feels good to me [...]

A workboat motors east along the base of Estero Peak, a 5,500-foot high mountain with a spectacular rockfall on its upper face that rises from the north shore of Cordero Channel. With AIS [...]

My life as a professional geologist began the week before I turned 24, since then I’ve spent a significant portion of the last 35 years in the air, traveling for work and play. Whether in a [...]