20 Minute Journal
Routines
Two months. You’d be surprised how much change you can pack into two months. I’ve been fairly quiet on the blogging front since we left Canmore, but actually because of a glut of new material rather than a lack thereof. It’s challenging to distill everything that has happened or that I’ve learned, so I’ve decided…
Read MoreIn Reach
From Dyckknows.com, 2014: The sound of the train permeates most of this valley. Sometimes the air is so hollow you would think you were standing right next to the tracks. Other times its the faint grind of steel on steel that etches it’s way up the mountainside. Over the years your awareness of it begins…
Read MoreGarbage
This is immensely disjointed, but that’s kind of how my thought processes are these days. “Ah, there you are. I thought you might have left, but I knew deep down you hadn’t.” The dogs sleeping in the darkened corners of the trailer, and something unseen stirring in the shadows under the door. “I knew you…
Read MoreIn the Current
Recycled from Dyckknows.com. In my early twenties I drove alone along the road to Elmira often. I was a fly fisherman then, and even beyond that I was a kid so entirely lost in the greatness of life that I couldn’t see straight. Without warning I would be caught with a sense of incomprehensible joy…
Read MoreNo Hurry
This is going to sound out there, but whatever. A number of months ago I realized that I am the agent of joy in my life. While external factors can increase or decrease my momentary happiness, I have the capacity to impact the level of it over the long term. I can raise the bar…
Read MoreOne Week
I do my best to keep things in check, balancing my highs and good times with probable periods of payback, the knowledge that nothing comes for free. I wouldn’t say I expect the worst to happen, but my habits over the years have laid the groundwork to be suspicious when the pendulum swings toward sunny…
Read MoreArrival 2
I’m desperate enough to be part of this land to put myself into financial distress, which has already been done. The lot that is for sale beside ours is a rolling clusterfuck of steep hilly terrain, high dead grasses after the drought and bushy sage that is crisp along the tips of the leaves. I…
Read MoreArrival
Big sagebrush in a field doesn’t just smell like turkey dinner, its got a whole lot more to it than that. When you twist it and crush it in your fingers and you bring it to your nose there’ll be something like eucalyptus, maybe some mint, the citrus of lemon balm. These aren’t faint scents…
Read MoreDoubletrack
Out back of our place is a little piece of trail that leads to some doubletrack. I don’t know what that doubletrack is or used to be, maybe an old mine road, or maybe the town put it in as some kind of service road. Back in the floods they used it after the fact…
Read MoreKill Your Darlings
Much of what I do these days reminds that I’m drawing closer to the last time I’ll do these things. Our move from the Bow Valley is drawing in. We’ve started packing our things, and yesterday we received the building permit and submitted all of our paperwork to the bank for financing. On Monday the…
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