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A Red Sky

Two and a half years later, her voice still haunts me. From the other side of the fence, I hear her yell at her children as they play in the backyard. It’s a sunny day, and my wife and I are riding our bikes on a path that runs right beside this family’s home. We are enjoying a weekend vacation in Ashland, four hours south of our own home in Salem, Oregon. A blissful afternoon, we are all unaware that, just two days later, a fire will race up the path we’re riding on. It will level this entire neighborhood to the ground, including the mobile home we just passed, with the door that just clacked shut. Whole communities in several towns will be completely wiped out by just one fire – one of the many fires about to explode across our state. This particular fire, the Almeda fire, will consume 2,600 homes and three lives. Throughout the 2020 wildfire season in Oregon, at least twenty-one fires will each burn more than a thousand acres or cause significant structural damage or death. Over a million acres will burn, 40,000 people will be evacuated, and at least eleven people will be killed.

On Loss (May 2023)

Transcending Borders

“Did you see the letters?” asked the little 7-year-old at my side. I had just returned from a trip overseas and was recounting some of the highlights. Letters?

On Patriotism (January 2014)

I Am A Patriot!

For the past five months, I have been living and working in Berlin, Germany. I went there to live with my cousins and their two young children and to work as a native-English-speaking intern at a Kinderladen called Humpty-Dumpty Berlin, a bilingual daycare which my cousins’ children attend. I also helped out around the house and with the kids at home. As always when I am abroad, I felt embarrassed many times a day by my nationality as a U.S. citizen. 

On Patriotism (January 2014)

How We Came to Ben Lomond

On Sunday morning, August 4th, 2019, Susan Wilson and I left our home in Central Vermont.  We had filled a twenty-foot rental truck with our possessions, hitched our car to the back of the truck, and started driving toward California. We were leaving behind our beloved friends and family, our lovely home, and the magic of the Green Mountains.

On Separation (November 2019)