I LOVE to write and you can follow what I’m exploring here on my journal and over on Substack.
Since June 2025, I’ve been journaling daily for two months, and I’ve come to cherish the clarity it brings.
There’s something about the quiet of the morning, reflecting on the day before, that helps me see what life’s teaching me.
My journal’s a space where I explore how those small, sacred moments shape my thoughts and ideas, along with the mundane details of my life too!
I’ve recently started sharing on Substack, where I’m aiming to write with a bit more structure as I connect with the community there. I hope what I share, both here and on Substack, resonates with you in some way.
Nostalgia and Wisdom: Lessons from Sweet Memories
It's funny how the things we have a lifelong aversion to, return to us as our teacher.
This morning, I set out for my 2 mile walk along an Arkansas county highway that is near my late mother's and stepfather's home.
As I was mid-way into my walk, the early morning humid air carried the scent of ripening muscadines.
A muscadine is a wild grape that grows around here, and as a child, I was repulsed by the smell.
My mother used to make muscadine jelly, and my job was to go out and pick them before the snakes and birds got them.
The smell of a ripe muscadine is singular. It is so sweet and musty that people either love them or hate them.
I'm a hater, usually.
But today, that first whiff of muscadines in the summer hit me like a freight train as memories of my childhood flooded my mind.
As I was walking through the smell and memories, it occurred to me that even back then, my body reacted to too much sweetness violently.
Today, I've gone about 4 years without consuming sugar. I believe that the Guttate psoriasis I struggle with is bacterial and yeast driven.
I'm just one of those people that has to take in sweetness through my other senses than that of taste, or take it in through natural means, like an occasional piece of good fruit like an apple.
What nourishes can also overwhelm, and what delights us, in excess, can make us sick.
I believe life asks us to discern the right dose of anything that we allow into our being.
Sweetness in any form is best if handled with respect, and I have come to believe that our life is our medicine.
It's always teaching and course-correcting if we are awake to its gentle nudges.
If I consume too much sugar, it makes my skin itch, and crowds out what can be beneficial for the other micro-organisms that hitch a ride with me on this journey.
The little gluttons in the bacteria world that consume too much sugar can cause a lot of dysbiosis in our guts!
I think it can also be said that too much sugary sweetness from others can also make our skin crawl, if they are doing it because they are people-pleasers, or fear conflict, when sometimes, a little conflict is warranted when something needs to be corrected.
True relationship with others, and ourselves, requires a balance of sweetness with honesty, depth, and some bitterness, too.
A diet of only sugar, whether from food or from people, is not sustainable, and that's where I come to a cross-roads with any nostalgic experiences that happens as I get older.
I don't want to ever live in the past. I don't want to sugar-coat my past experiences, either, when I'm remembering how things were.
That's a land I can never return to, so I try not to bitch too much about how my now is not like my then.
Like my walk this morning, I'm reminded that when I walk through my past due to a smell or other sensory prompt, to take the sweetness with a dose of bitterness, too, and not just focus on what was good.
Nostalgia can result in an endless loop of wishing you were living in the land of what used to be, instead of transforming those memories into the wisdom that can help you NOW.
As I was walking, I breathed in the sweet smells-- and as I moved forward, I released what wasn't beneficial to me now, and breathed in the new insight that counts as earned wisdom.
A morning walk is becoming one of my essentials in life. You can learn so much as you travel across a landscape.
Random fact about me: One of my favorite animals is the donkey. I don't know why, but I love them and wish I wasn't allergic to farm animals otherwise I would have one.
Life Lessons from the Great Sand Dunes
Yesterday, we stopped by the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Reserve on our way to Amarillo, Texas on the first leg of our trip back home.
The dunes are massive. They are a living geometry of wind, gravity and time. I felt like I was standing in a sine wave, watching the slowed down effects of how we experience our lives in a purely physical way.
With any sine wave, you have peaks and valleys, and the experiences we have in our lives if you were to look at it like a sine wave mirror what I saw out there in the desert.
The valleys we have to walk through hold the seed for the next peak.
But sometimes, when you are in the valley, the view is so limited you feel as if you'll never be able to ascend again.
There is a certain comfort in realizing that this is not how life works.
When the wave touches the floor of the movement, there is only one place to go next, and that is the slow ascension back to the top where the view is more expansive, and the lesson from the seed planted in the valley is realized.
It takes time for all of this to take form. Walking among the dunes, it felt like the exclamation point to my experience over the last 10 days walking through such varied and dynamic landscapes.
So my final thought is this--don't worry so much about your life.
We have our lows so that they can support our next high. And the cycle repeats over and over again over the course of time it takes for us to live this life.
Have faith in the geometry of life...I don't think it lies. In fact, I know that it doesn't.
Random fact about me: My first concert ever was with my mother. We went to see Roy Clark and Buck Owens from the show "Hee Haw".
Goodbye Colorado
I've had a wonderful week in Colorado, and I'm sad to put it in my rear-view mirror, but it's time to get back to my life in Virginia.
The perspective that different landscapes offer me emotionally is why I travel, and I feel more at home with myself now that I've had my fix of big, open country where wild is out your backdoor.
I found out more about my own need for being outdoors and near water, and fly fishing will be happening in my near future. Virginia has some great trout fishing waters, and I intend to begin exploring them as soon as possible.
Yesterday, we spent our day looking at old gold mines on Gold Creek, and I panned for gold in the Gold Creek Campground and on the Quartz river.
I found no gold, though. But lots of pretty rocks!
We then traveled over to Pitkin, a small, modern day mining ghost town that is trying to find a new identity as a four wheeling and motorbike destination.
We drove on some epic forest service roads, enjoying the mountain air and animals that showed their faces for us, and spent a lot of time in lawn chairs just staring at the scenery as the river gurgled past us. What a treat to take half a day and just stare into landscape, letting your mind drift with the clouds.
Here are a couple of videos I made to remember those small moments that call for a pause. I hope they invite you to take a minute wherever you are, and notice the majesty of the small moment.
Random fact about me: I drink a variety of sparkling waters daily, with Nixie being my favorite.
Rethinking the Use of 'Perfect' When Ordering Food
Lately, I’ve noticed how often people, especially waitstaff, answer ‘perfect’ when I order something.
And it drives me nuts.
The conversation is the same...no matter where I go.
"I would like some soda water."
Perfect!
"I'd like the gluten-free pizza with non-dairy cheese and chicken."
Perrrrfect.
I've always had a problem with this word, perfect, and the way it is loosely used, but when I'm ordering food?
Are they saying my choice is perfect? or are they happy they don't have to explain something or make an adjustment in some way?
That’s just one way I hear ‘perfect’ used, and it always makes me pause.
Perfect is a word used in many ways, but mostly it's describing something that is free from fault or defects. Or it's fully realized and whole.
But it is usually fleeting. It's a word that captures an alignment that happens rarely, just to fall apart minutes later.
Ask a musician about how often an instrument needs tuning or how for a photographer, the light is always changing.
Perfect is a word that many people use as if it is final.
It's not final, unless the thing that is perfect is dead.
For all the waitstaff out there, here are some phrases to consider when someone orders and you feel the need to respond to what they ordered.
Got it.
Great choice!
Sounds good.
I'm on it!
I just had this last week and it's really good.
Or, if perfect is your favorite word and you just have to use it, how about this:
"I'll make sure it's perfect for you when I bring it out."
I'm cool with that...because, hopefully, it will be all the way dead before it enters my mouth, and this tells me that you are actually looking at what I ordered and making sure it's without flaws and defects.
And by the way, we had a PERFECT meal of smoked meat and French fries...all the way dead and completely smoked and delicious in Almont, Colorado this week.
If you're in the area, eat at Three Rivers Resort. My waitress never said perfect and the smoked meat is mouthwatering.
Random fact about me: My favorite 70's song is Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. It's what I heard in my head when my father passed.
Why Slow Travel on Forest Roads is Worth It
I prefer to travel where the pavement ends and my phone says, "No Service".
Let me also add, as long as I am in a high clearance 4-Wheel drive vehicle.
For the last four years, my step-father and I have headed out West to explore forest service roads that lead to spectacular ruins and scenery.
Today, four years ago, my mother died.
She loved the West, and we go to remember her and reflect upon her life.
We also go to unhook from our normal day to day life, and we philosophically explore what it means to live a good life.
Forest service roads are a way to feel fully human and tap into your sense of adventure.
You Slow Down...Literally!
You can't drive fast on a service road. They are usually gravel, with a lot of washboard road that makes you slide if you drive too fast.
Since you are going slow, roll down the windows and smell the air. All of your senses are engaged with your environment. It becomes a full-body experience, especially when traversing a high road with a devastating fall to your death if you're not paying attention. My step-father says we could roll several times and my ass would still be glued to the seat. But the view! It's worth the full-body sphincter experience, trust me!
No Service? No GPS.
Where we go, there is no GPS unless we invested in a satellite version. Our phones don't work, so old-fashioned common sense and reading a forest service map are needed skills. Or, just drive down a road for the joy of seeing where it goes. Some of our best experiences have come from taking the road barely traveled, and being rewarded with a view not on any social media accounts.
Nature Is the Show
Yesterday, we saw a marmot, bald eagle, black bear, trout and I found a 350 million year old rugose horn coral that somehow found its way into my gold panning apparatus while I was panning in a remote riverbed.
I mean, what a great day! I didn't find any gold, but somehow I found a fossilized portion of something that was once alive 350 million years ago when the land here was covered with a shallow sea.
Traveling this way connects you to the environment in a way highways and byways can't.
You Feel The Landscape
With windows rolled down, you notice the temperature changes as you drive slowly through the many micro-climates you encounter. I was walking near the waters edge of a high mountain lake yesterday, and the moisture from the lake, the rotting plant matter mixed with dead fish and elk shit was a smell you just can't replicate anywhere else.
I love it, personally. It means I'm in the landscape, not just looking at it from a car window in my air conditioned bubble.
There is a silty dust here that is different from most places I've been. Thousands of years of compacted mountain snow has transformed the dirt into something that is unique here. When it's windy, you really feel it as it enters your eyes and nose. I ate a lot of dust yesterday, and enjoyed commiserating with my step-father about the state of our mucus membranes.
It's About the Journey
When we hit the forest service roads, we have a general idea where we will end up, but it's more about the pull-offs when we see something cool, or the river that beckons us to stop and get our chairs out to soak in the beauty of the place.
We give ourselves over to where the landscape takes us. We discover things that aren't on any TripAdvisor list of things to do or see.
It's not for the faint of heart, and you need to be sure you know how to handle yourself.
There are tools to consider taking with you, like a shovel or a whatever you need to change a flat. I pack extra food and water for a day or so, and a blanket if something happens and we have to sleep in the truck.
Last year, we had a flat and had to wait 14 hours for a tow because the lug nuts were stripped and we had no cell service. But we were prepared, and we actually had a pretty good time waiting. Made me feel alive in a way that gets lost with modern life, and without any tech, we had to rely upon the people that helped us out.
And we always find nice people.
I hope you've enjoyed some of the highlights of this trip. I know I've enjoyed reflecting upon it and sharing it here.
Random fact about me: My favorite meal is Korean Hot Stone Bowl with the little dried fish as an accompaniment.