Backpacking

On a recent backpacking trip in Northern California, I encountered this dead tree and the flowers around it. My digital camera isn't the best, but it's lightweight and did a pretty good job of capturing the scene, I think.



This second shot, though, is a bit better--most of the landscape is lost, but I like the emphasis on tree and flowers.

Scribble, Scribble

I decided to be a writer when I was 14 or so. The problem with deciding on such a thing at such a young age is that I never got good anything else. (Many people would suggest that I should've been a welder, that maybe my writing skills aren't that good.) I remember a family vacation about that time, and my aunt asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. "A writer," I said. She kind of looked at me and replied, "Why."

It was a good question, one that I'm not sure I've ever answered.

What have I written? Many things, really. I actually write for a living, though it's rather--no, very--drab corporate writing of the technical nature. No one really reads it, of course, but I figure it's a living. The same thing goes for blogs, I think--not many people actually read them. I mean, how much can you read in a day?

I have also written three novels: The Good; The Bad; and The Ugly. Well, those aren't really the titles, but that's how I've come to think of them. I started another novel a couple years ago, but I got to about 20-thousand words and realized I had nothing to say. I've also written several short stories, some of which do not embarrass me, as well as many poems. In fact, let's be brave--here's a poem.

Wanderlust

for Daniel

There were years when I was all motion.
Dust settled one day and grew excited the next.
Age changed me, of course, much as it will change you.
This is how life works, what my father and grandfathers
tried to articulate from behind whiskey glasses and cigarettes.
I didn’t hear them, just as you don’t hear me—this, too, is how life works.
Some things, though, you should remember: your mother’s birthday;
how we gather at Christmas; your brothers’ voices on Saturday morning.
Hear these if nothing else.

Sometimes, You Just Start Something

You reach a certain age, I guess, and you figure it's time to start something. All too often this happens too late in life--I've seen it. My father, for example. I always figured he died before he got around to even half the things he wanted to start. I never held that against him, though, because he was the kind of man who just did what he had to do. Then, though, I think he forgot that he could do anything but work and raise children.

Me? I've started many things--novels, bookshelves, irrigation systems in my backyard....

Now, any of us can start something like this. I've seen this, too: trying to find a good name for this site, I found that my first two choices were in use, but neither of those sites had any content. Only things like "here's my first entry," and "this is a test post." And someone began those sites several years ago. I think about them as I type this, thinking that maybe they had something better to say than I do, that something must have gotten between them and their enthusiasm. Or, maybe they simply forgot they'd begun something. That happens to me, especially when it comes to writing: I'll come up with great first lines for poems when I'm driving home from work, then I'll forget everything by the time I pull into the garage, pet the dog on his head, and sit down to dinner.

This is another start; we'll see if I forget about it.