One year ago, I had just finished grad school. My planner was sitting unused. I’d just left Ann Arbor and gone to Granby, CO for my Wilderness First Responder class, with Brother and Corinna and Mike R and a bunch of other cool kids and horses we could hear on the horizon. And then almost a year ago, I moved into my new home on the red rocky ridge in Colorado National Monument, and I pinned my Isle Royale maps to the white walls, and met a wild new friend on an overlook where you could just catch the top end of Independence Monument, and I walked around on dusty red sand, looking for lizards. My first post in this blog was then, almost exactly one year ago.

So here’s what’s happened in that year. Half of it was in Colorado, and most of that was living in my little duplex in COLM, adventuring on the weekends, staring at the stars, clambering on rocks and wading in streams and drinking beers by the basketball hoop, falling hopelessly in love. Some of it was Colorado-winter, and drinking and dancing and skiing knee-deep in the good stuff. There was three months of unemployment and growing gradually poorer. I drove to St. Louis and to New Jersey and all around Lake Michigan. I went to the UP twice. I got a job and I moved to Minnesota. I dug my toes into cold Lake Michigan sand. I joined my mom for her first ever tequila shot. I drank black coffee on a lopsided wooden porch with my brother. I built a screech owl house with my dad. I lost my good, dear friend Levi, and I have that loss to carry with me always now.

I am afraid that I don’t hold onto things hard enough. By things I mean people, mostly. I think in my reluctance to give up on having it all, I lack the ability to fully commit to one thing. It’s sometimes only in retrospect that I realize what I had and what I squandered. I’m hoping this is something I get better at in my old age. This is an ambiguous paragraph but it’s all you get.

These photos are from last weekend’s sojourn north.

Hey, you? I miss you. Will you hold my feet? Will you climb after me into the boughs of a pine?

There are many more years to fill, and I await the pouring of time eagerly; the trepidation is only there when I wake up too early and the world seems muddy. Come with?