Stories from the ridgeline
Reflections on fatherhood, faith, healing, leadership, adventure, and the spaces between expectation and reality.
February 20, 2026
The Choice Some journeys look perfect on paper. Wide. Well-marked. Affordable. Efficient. They promise predictable footing and a gentle grade. No technical scrambles. No exposure. No risk of sudden storms rolling over the ridgeline. And yet, when your boots finally touch the dirt, something in your body hesitates. Your breathing is shallow.Your shoulders don’t drop.The […]
February 2, 2026
Some days, when someone tells me they want me to be happy, I have to pause. Not because I don’t appreciate the sentiment, but because the word doesn’t quite fit the terrain I’m walking. Happiness feels like a summit word.Joy, maybe.Relief, perhaps. But happiness assumes ease, or at least resolution. There are seasons of life; […]
January 30, 2026
The Question Some questions don’t feel like questions at all.They feel like a pause in the trail. The kind where you stop mid-stride; not because you’re tired, but because the ground beneath you just changed. A co-worker asked me one of those questions recently:What is the between passion and compassion? At first, it sounded like […]
January 18, 2026
Deep Questions Yesterday in my sixth-grade English class, we were talking about emotions. Not the tidy, laminated-chart versions that live on classroom walls and get trotted out during advisory periods; but the real ones. Anxiety. Fear. The feelings that arrive without asking, settle into the body, and refuse to leave quietly. The kind that tighten […]
January 11, 2026
Some stories don’t stay where you leave them. They don’t fade when the chapter ends or quiet down when the trail curves away from the past. They linger; like fog in a low valley, like footsteps you swear you hear long after the campsite has gone still. I’ve started to believe that ghost stories aren’t […]
January 7, 2026
Several years ago, I wrote my eulogy. Not because I was morbid.Not because I was giving up.But because I wanted a compass. I wasn’t trying to predict how my life would turn out. I was trying to decide (before the fog rolled in) who I wanted to be when the trail got hard, the weather […]
January 5, 2026
The Silver Screen Movies speak to me.They always have, and I suspect they always will. Stories find us when we stand at the edge of something costly. They slip past our defenses and give us language for courage before we know how to live it. They remind us of truths we already carry but haven’t […]
January 3, 2026
A Different Kind of New Year’s Resolution Every January, the trailheads fill up. Gym parking lots overflow. New shoes hit the pavement. Promises are made under fluorescent lights and hopeful headlines: This is the year. Lose weight.Get disciplined.Become better. But no one asks the quieter question. The one that matters far more on a long […]
November 4, 2025
Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t a finish line you cross; it’s a trail that never really ends.It winds, it doubles back, it disappears in fog, and just when you think you’ve reached the top, the clouds shift and you see another ridge rising in the distance. For years, I thought healing meant arrival. That if I […]
October 23, 2025
The Weight of the Pack Every long hike begins the same way: with a pack heavy enough to question your judgment.We start with everything we might need. Extra socks, backup batteries, snacks for every craving. There’s comfort in carrying abundance, in believing we’re prepared for every twist in the trail. But somewhere along the way, […]
