I’ve been thinking, and writing, a lot about what it means to be a man. Popular culture sends many messages, often mixed and contradictory. A rite of passage that...

Nearing the top of Dimple Hill, the 1,000+ foot elevation gain of this McDonald Forest trail run speaks to me in the language of legs and lungs, and pulse...

As a writer, words are my bread and butter, my bricks and mortar, the stuff from which I make stories. I’ve been thinking about the word “good” a lot...

As a fiction writer, it is not unusual for me to throw so much adversity at my characters that at least one (usually the protagonist) breaks under the strain...

Winter Solstice: the darkest day of the year, especially here in Oregon after a storm moved in. Solution, in my humble opinion, is twofold: 1) Literal: light candles 2)...

When something improbable happened on his Kentucky dairy farm, my friend Rube Kubale used to say, “Well, that’s a who’d-a-thought-it.” 2020, it seems to me, has been an entire...

Another example of human creativity in the midst of trying times.  

Last week while backpacking a section of the Pacific Crest Trail in Oregon (76 miles from Willamette Pass to McKenzie Pass) I met 12-year-old Tin Tin (his trail name),...

Literature takes many forms, and feeds the reader in a wide variety of ways. But there is one category, I feel, that rises above the rest. Not because it’s...

Leslie Nielsen said, “Doing nothing is very hard to do . . . you never know when you’re finished.” Which I find funny, at least on a surface level....