TRAVELS WITH MATTIE

Well, we sold the little cabin at 19 Fremont Lane.  I woke in the van this morning (we moved the bed months ago) to a rare, oddly cold April rainstorm rolling through Paradise Road. It felt fitting to leave the lane one last time on a rainy day. It has always been my favorite weather in the canyon.  When it rains on Paradise Road, the river rises. If it rises enough, the riverbed gets cleared out and you know there will be more rocky-bottom pools in late summer. When it rains, all of Los Padres breathes a short sigh of relief because the next wildfire doesn't feel quite so imminent. It rains and the toads come out. Drought-stressed oak trees crack and block the road. The green season is extended. Maybe the river will run through the whole year — but probably not.  We packed up the last of our things and I took one last look in the bedroom where we said goodbye to Mattie for the last time. I know she's not there, but it still feels like leaving her behind.  I walked t...

Here I am, showing up years later after swearing I'd write more often. But somehow it's 2025, and we missed an entire year on the blog, because we were too busy out in the beauty of it all.  The TL;DR version (which got kind of long anyway, so maybe this is actually the "too long, read anyway" version), in no meaningful order:  Same job, going strong. Got a promotion. Almost three years out, I can say with certainty that leaving academia was 1000% the right move. Phew. My grandparents died. I don't know how to write about that yet. God, they were both just so cool. We thought they still had a lot of good years left. I miss them. I see them everywhere. I find myself wishing I could tell them about our travels, our life, the mountains. Sometimes when I'm out wandering, I try to anyway. I had forty good years with them, including weeks together backpacking in the high Sierra. More than anything, they just always wanted us around . It sounds so obvious, but it was...