All the moss-covered rocks looked like the cover of a Led Zeppelin album as I clambered out of the river and onto the shore. Another cold plunge in the mountain water by our camp, this time before dawn with the… Read More ›
writing
Summerland (4)
It all started with so much promise. I had the summer off with no work and nothing but time. I found myself back on Mount Rainier for the first time since I’d slipped and almost fallen on that second summit… Read More ›
Summerland (3)
Roughly 10,000 people attempt a summit of Mount Rainier each year and about half succeed. I had it in my head I would summit no matter what. I didn’t know anything about climbing but took the challenge as one to… Read More ›
Summerland (2)
Now more than half of my word-a-day calendar pages were gone as July ran out and the days got squeezed down. The word I picked for the season was Summerland, named after a trail on Mt. Rainier, one of Washington’s… Read More ›
Summerland
The summer collapsed in on itself and the calendar squares lost their edges. Off work for three weeks, July lapsed into a blob of vagueness. I recommitted to my health, to feeling young and strong. I returned to the mountains,… Read More ›
Opening track
So much drama in these clouds it could be late summer, pre-autumn. All the limbs waving and the windmill going, the swoosh of the leaves. I am out with the headphones on a walk and the Moody Blues again, a… Read More ›
Last number for the season
Dozing on the sofa on a Saturday with just the sound of clocks and some far-off engine. Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues and all this rumination on time. The record is draped in the 60s and feels… Read More ›
Everything we have we’ll lose
When you say goodbye to someone you love it’s a knife’s edge between the past and present. They are both with you and not. It can feel like the amputee’s phantom limb or Schrödinger’s cat, the seam between seasons when… Read More ›
Coming Home the First Time after Our Son Died
Someone had taken small rocks and shaped theminto a heart in the center of our driveso when we arrived, we knew we were not alone.At the front door, … Coming Home the First Time after Our Son Died
On the plane to Barcelona
On May 1 I took a one-way flight from JFK to Barcelona but when I landed the airport was closed, the workers on strike for May Day, the only occupants a group of young Spaniards in uniforms with beards and… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 