Today is my best friend's birthday! Sam Ringo--thank you for being my constant encouragement. We've been through everything together & I love you so much!
We met at "the lunch table" in high school.
The Group.
graduation!
concerts!
Birmingham!
my bridesmaid
porch times.
support.
camping
walks on bardstown road.
coffee
christmas parties.
birthday celebrations.
Charleston South Carolina.
The Smoky Mountains!
Bride & Groom!
BRIDE!
Her bridesmaid.
Skiing in Colorado.
After a long hike.
Thanks for being my sister. Thanks for loving me so well. Thanks for making me laugh. Thanks for understanding me. Thanks for all this time. I LOVE YOU.
The woods around my little clearing are alive, pregnant with the sounds of late summer bugs and night-time birds. The same, I imagine, that met the ears of Civil War platoons; men in ragged wool shirts with hand-rolled cigars, of Indians resting after hunting these hills, of a triceratops and her young, for all I know. I watch a centipede crawl from a wound in one of the logs I broke for the fire. It crawls to the edge of where the heat must be too intense and starts to retreat. I push it onto the coals with a stick, watch it curl into a spiral, and become a molded-glass shell as the fire eats its insides. I remember coming home from school, when it was still cold, and finding the house empty of my children, the smell of their crayons and saliva and shampoo still hanging in the air. I remember walking from room to room expecting to find a note or a treasure map that would lead me to them, but instead finding my wife leaning back against the toilet, legs splayed out like a drunk or a girl playing jacks, weeping with her face in her hands, bloody toilet paper piled beside her smeared legs. She kept saying, "I killed it, I killed it somehow," and I kept wanting to tell her I was glad it was gone if it would have lived to hurt her, but also wanting to hold it, hold it somehow--even small and gray like a clay baby. I watch the shell of the centipede--like a snake or a parasite or some pre-historic terror--glow orange, turn to ash, and disappear. I listen to the ancient hum of late summer bugs and wonder who will hear them when I am gone.
REMEMBER WHENSDAY-Today I am remembering when Ben and I first got married we decided to take a little weekend trip down to Red River Gorge and do our first camping trip as a newly married couple. We had only been married a little over a month (July2007) and we just thought it was the greatest idea to get away and spend some time together in nature. I think this trip inspired something in us because after we did it we decided to really pursue outdoor adventures (backpacking through the smokies, glacier national park, skiing out west, europe, etc). Camping in July isn't always the best idea especially when you're going into a valley, I remember being so hot and laughing a lot. We had so much fun and made the best our of our circumstances. At that moment I was reminded why we chose to spend the rest of our lives together and I was so excited to start our new journey. Wow I love him.
We look like babies!
We are only 19 & 20 in these pictures! What a fun memory.
In an economy like ours--one in which fathers lose jobs that support whole families, companies shut down leaving single mothers on welfare, and community-supporting industries are outsourced to other countries so that sweat-shop labor can make up for falling revenues--it's often hard to imagine a way to make a difference as a consumer. To make matters worse, it is increasingly easier to consume (I bought a text book on my phone this year!) and the addiction that our people have developed for it, as an activity, is a tough nut to crack. Patagonia has come up with a bit of a solution though! By joining (or at least tolerating) the Common Threads Initiative, folks are encouraged to reduce stuff waste, reuse old stuff, repair older worn-out stuff, and recycle the oldest, most worn-out stuff. This kind of thinking will, some day, change the way we consume stuff, and, if we let it, permeate other parts of our lives as well, maybe even the way the world around us looks for our children.
Chicken update: We were recently given a rooster from the sweet Read family! We named our new guy Juicer and he has been a great addition to the roost. He protects all of his ladies and he even gives them an incentive to lay their eggs more efficiently. Most people don't recommend owning a rooster but in our case he has been just what our hens needed. It is pretty nice that he is a late sleeper (he usually won't make a peep until 9) and since we've had him there has been less chicken drama. So far so good--we like him.
