The dog Ginger, car camping for two nights, trying to break the food addiction she picked up in Germany with the 24/7 on-demand treating and feeding, so hungry she’s licking a patch of dirt in the gravel road, licking what… Read More ›
pacific northwest
Night falls on Teanaway
Ginger licks the sleep out of my eye, licks the insides of the rain fly for condensation, doesn’t understand tent etiquette or the idea of personal space, steals my sleeping bag each time I get up, looks like Kermit the… Read More ›
First person singular
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 ›
Through the Portal-lands, camping with Charlotte
The boil-in-bag wild salmon backcountry meal didn’t have a date on it and I assumed no shelf life to speak of, no lot code, I got it at least a year ago, possibly two, probably still safe to eat. It… Read More ›
Lost in the Funhouse with Barth: on meta, Brecht, and what’s behind The Fourth Wall
With social media and technology what they are, metafiction has become more a part of our lives than ever: we’re constantly stepping outside the frame to capture ourselves in it, and our story of documenting our life story is as much a story as the story itself. But as we step outside the frame, we’re straddling two worlds and cease to exist fully in either — like tourists on an Alaskan whale-watching cruise with our cameras out trying to catch the breaching whales as proof we were there, we miss the reality just beyond our lens and I wonder, did we really see anything at all?
The trees could be characters if we only gave them names
A row of arborvitae intended to screen an unseemly RV strip at the edge of our property died; it was really the only thing we lost in the yard but it bothered Dawn to look at: there were seven, in… Read More ›
That one year in Europe
And just like that, it was over. Beth asked the kids if they wanted some eggs for breakfast with toast and jam and they did, and we made small talk, and I reminded them of the time, and they were… Read More ›
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 ›
Sunday’s solemn features
We got back to our vitamins, raw almonds, coconut milk — shopping for the best price on gas, how the clouds cling to the hills on a Sunday morning, the treetops tucked in, gone back to sleep. Even though it’s… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 