I forgot one of the things I like most about camping is getting dirt under your nails, that way your hands look like you’ve really done something when you haven’t, it makes your hands look honest, like they’ve got character…. Read More ›
hiking
Canyon Road bookends
I unrolled the gravity-fed water filter bladder that still smelled like campfire from a year ago, collected a few liters of stream water and hung it from a tree by our camp while Brad finished a cigarette and started a… Read More ›
Deceiver Trail to Far Country Lookout
I took the Deceiver Trail, the S3, past the Licorice Fern cul-de-sac to a crumpled-up viewpoint where there wasn’t much to see but it sounded nice with the water collecting in a dark pool by a leaning sign, Far Country… Read More ›
Not just another drop in the ocean
I took the trail to Shy Bear Pass, the same one in the Issaquah Alps I walked with Ginger last spring, before we moved to Germany. I looked down at my legs, the zip-off trekking pants and poles Eberhard had… Read More ›
The logic of the bells
I turn like a rotisserie chicken every quarter hour in bed, with a window angled open toward the church up the street and the bells tolling every 15 minutes, and I wonder if they’re live bells or triggered by some… Read More ›
Say goodbye to the Hoh
The sea spills its guts out to anyone who will listen, just hurls itself up and forgets it’s told the same story before: two black heads in the water floating that could be humans staring at us but they are seals,… Read More ›
Three Girl Rhumba
I’ve been experimenting with drugs for our pets, for a 14-hour international flight next week where they’ll sit in the cargo hold while I read a first draft of my memoir on the plane. I crush the drugs, dilute them… Read More ›
Shy bear lookout
The forest has grown in now, this time in spring the green darkens and I am inside a giant’s beard hacking my way through fronds and fallen limbs, unsure where I’m going or why, just that I need to be… Read More ›
Climbing cocks, steep peaks, dry tools (2)
Brad and I camp in the snow by an abandoned hunter’s cabin up Black Canyon with my dog Ginger, who puts her nose in Brad’s eye and causes it to swell up like a walnut because Brad’s convinced there’s foreign… Read More ›
On faith and football and dreams
Ginger and I have been out corkscrewing hillsides in the Issaquah Alps, trying to lose track of time and find ourselves in the woods. I carry my notepad with me and stop to write, and she comes to collect me…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 