Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Carry the zero
27th July 2022—WHITEFISH, MT Took a down day on our week in Montana, what PCT through-hikers would call a zero. Everyone left for the lake but I insisted on staying behind to read. Soon regretted my decision. Dabbled in Philip… Read More ›
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Silent lucidity
The sun fell on the hills again, the same way it falls every night. Falling off myself, a stranger passing through another town, another rented room. Taking stock of all we’ve taken in and everywhere we’ve been. We are in… Read More ›
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The world of clocks and mirrors
We dropped Lily off at her new school, a “step-down school,” just 40 students with half coming from a residential treatment center and the others a wilderness therapy program like Lily. The town is in somewhere Utah, a town like… Read More ›
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Song for Moab dreamers and rocks
Here the soil is red, the color of blasted brick, the grass gone mostly gold with tufts of green. It is all tough in fact, the earth, the look of sheer resilience. For though it implies permanence we know what… Read More ›
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For the other parents at the wilderness therapy graduation ceremony
In a lather of memory, in the coffee shop, I splashed the faces of the people I had known for a small time onto my face and thought, how intermingled we all are in this dance, how unnatural it must… Read More ›
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On a flight into Durango with Billy Collins
It is not enough for the boy on the plane to get his mom to give her pillow to him He needs her to sacrifice her comfort for him, to prove her love this way And so it is never… Read More ›
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Out the other end
I came out the Enchanted Valley the day after I got in, 27 miles (43.4 km) round trip. My phone said I hadn’t gone that far in step count since my last trip to the Hoh River. I ached in… Read More ›
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Up the enchanted valley
I sat there by the bees in the lupine with my knees muddy and the birds singing and the sound of some far-away traffic like a low tide going out. I chewed on an apple in a nonthinking way and… Read More ›
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Future letters to our former selves
We came down to the end of June and I hung the flag for the Fourth. I had the summer off from work, and wouldn’t accept any new contracts until September. That gave us the flexibility to see Lily whenever… Read More ›
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The past imperfect
Most nights Lily would leave the bedroom window open and I’d look up to it in the mornings when I let the dog out. I’d look up to her window and consider her inside, Christmas lights on the ceiling, glimpses… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 