Up before the birds, walking in the dark. They say you shouldn’t be alone at the state park when it’s low light with the cougars so I walk in the neighborhood instead. It’s no fun worrying about cougars anyway, looking… Read More ›
recovery
Was
I’d finally become that guy you see walking around the neighborhood at odd hours wearing a fluorescent high-visibility vest. Sure it made sense as a safety measure but people in those vests always irked me, their look-at-me-I’m-so-responsible attitude, the way… Read More ›
Pink champagne on ice
How could we live differently? We asked ourselves the same question every year but didn’t get far with the answer. I went back up Tiger Mountain on New Year’s Eve, a few hours before sunset. I wanted to go with… Read More ›
From the getting clean vignettes
Bob had a beard before any of us. And I never saw him without his baseball cap. Bob drove a pickup truck, chewed tobacco and could always be counted on for having weed. Bob had a canoe too, so one… Read More ›
Relapse dream replay
In that dream where I was drinking I could smell it, juicy red wine, and the smell was so real it’s like a part of me was actually drinking again and another part was thinking stop! but my whole face… Read More ›
My prayer for you
Patches of snow in the foothills on a bleak morning in March. It is your first week sober. You’ve been a daily drinker for 20 years now and this is the longest you’ve gone since you can remember. It is… Read More ›
Source code and origin stories
Maybe it’s just the light but in that first picture of me I don’t look born as much as I do unearthed, the way dad’s holding me out like some product of an archaeological dig. Dad’s so young his beard… Read More ›
Turn your back on Mother Nature
The first time I tried sobriety we were in England and it was January, a cruel time of the year to sober up. But something about the landscape and season reflected the inner peace I needed. Long muddy walks in… Read More ›
Giving it up
Flipping through the photos on my phone it’s upsetting to see all these pictures of me drinking. Why I felt the need to photograph myself doing that, and how stupid I look. It’s kind of funny to see myself like… Read More ›
Pictures of you
In the den on the bookshelf he keeps a framed set of photos of himself. Starting at 10 o’clock and moving clockwise, he is a grade school student in a striped red turtleneck, the late 1970s. The picture has the… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 