It is a Thursday night with live music at nearby Pine Lake we can hear from our house. It is also a full moon, the night before we leave for Alaska, the coffee maker set for 3. I’ve shaved my beard and I’m bare chested, hoping the neighbor won’t see me peeing against our chicken coop. The chicken coop is broken down and abandoned, relegated as a shed, left to spiders and mice. The covered area on the outside, intended for chickens, is overgrown with weeds and dilapidated by winter snow. Weeds so big, they’ve fallen and collapsed in on themselves…a lesson to heed for those in high power.

Brad and I finished our stint on the PCT: 69 miles from Snoqualmie to Chinook Pass. No injuries, no rain. A trail angel at the end of it who goes by Broken Toe gave me a fresh peach, showed Brad the van he lives out of, traded information for possible work.

A full moon is coming and I’m aiming to see it, though the clock is set for 3 and I should be off. I’ve seen more frogs than I have my whole life, one camouflaged against a leaf I happened to notice peeing into the drain rock on the side of the house. They just started croaking, that sound like someone’s using a tool to tighten a bike crank.

I got asked about a job today and got right on it, drawing up the cover letter and polishing up my resumé. It’s a savage instinct but worth something, and real: related to caring for a family. Based on it, in fact.

The clouds look muscular and ribbed, like abs I’d want to have. They’re illuminated on the sides and phosphorescent pink-blue like abalone. It’s either the setting sun or coming moon, that time the two share the sky like changing shifts. It is the middle of August and I am 48, and there is nothing for me to complain about.

Categories: humor, Memoir, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, humor, journal writing, mid-life crisis, pacific northwest, PCT, short form, William Pearse writer