Mom and I walked the trails by the häckselplatz and went to Berne’s at the top of the hill for an alkoholfrei Hefe. I said this is sublime, and then realized with horror the beer was not alkoholfrei (!) though… Read More ›
writing
The back of love
I made a figure-four of my legs, and lay in bed longing for rest. This mattress, the same my mom and stepdad slept on for years. But after he died my mom moved to another room and the mattress remained… Read More ›
That last Friday in August
What I must have looked like, running through the airport trying to get to Border Control. Trying to get as close as I could to the front of the line so I could get to the other side and make… Read More ›
First night sober in Germany
It was a really strong cup of coffee, the first one I made back at my mom’s house. It had been four years now, three since we’d last seen each other. She was worried she’d look a lot older to… Read More ›
Sunrise over Cutthroat Pass
The moon was waxing gibbous over the ridge line coming into the North Cascades. I drove past the sad town of Oso where they had the mudslide, past the town of Darrington where I lived one summer. Past a mountain… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Bill Pearse 