The Issaquah Alps are a series of mountains in western Washington stretching along Interstate 90 between Lake Washington and the Cascade Range. No peak is higher than 3,500 feet, roughly 1,050 meters. I’ve climbed the Tiger Mountain trails, Cougar Mountain… Read More ›
Reflections on recovery, post punk bands Joy Division and The Fall, the braided nature of the past and present.
The house on the lake road sold and now with it occupied the lights weren’t on 24/7, making it look like a gallery showroom in the dark. Instead just the porch and a room upstairs were lit in what must… Read More ›
This is a hard one. There are the memories you go back to and savor and then the ones you shy away from. Some are non-memories, like moments that could have been memorable but got squandered. It all swirls around… Read More ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
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 ›
Bill Pearse 