Stories from the ridgeline
Reflections on fatherhood, faith, healing, leadership, adventure, and the spaces between expectation and reality.
October 3, 2026
Some days, I feel like a crash test dummy. Hit the wall. Reset. Another impact. Another lesson. Another person telling me that someday I’ll understand why I had to go through it. There is an idea I have heard throughout most of my life in the church. To be fair, I have heard versions of […]
October 3, 2026
A few summers ago, I visited Banff National Park and stood at the water’s edge of Lake Louise and Moraine Lake. Frigid, teal water stretched out beneath towering mountains. Both lakes draw water from glacial melt, and standing beside them, I found the beauty breathtaking. Magnificent. But what stayed with me was the thought of […]
September 3, 2026
I spent most of the day cleaning my house. Not the ordinary kind of cleaning where you wipe down the counters, run the vacuum, and feel satisfied because everything smells faintly like lemon. I was purging. I opened drawers I had ignored, pulled boxes from forgotten corners, and decided what still belonged in my life. […]
August 28, 2026
When the Old Trail Still Feels Like Home I’ve hiked trails enough times that I no longer have to think much about them. I know where the roots cross the path, where the rock gets slick near the creek, which switchback steals my breath, and where the trees finally open enough to see the ridge. […]
August 22, 2026
A while back, someone told me they didn’t think I was emotionally intelligent. The comment caught me off guard. Not because I believe I’ve mastered emotional intelligence. Far from it. I still get things wrong. I become overwhelmed. I retreat when I should lean in, and occasionally lean in when I should step back. I […]
May 24, 2026
Somewhere along the trail of growing up, many of us learned how to say, I’m sorry. We learned the words. We learned the posture. We learned how to look down at our shoes, mumble through the moment, and wait for the adult in the room to decide the conflict was over. But very few of […]
May 22, 2026
We were driving home from an unsuccessful shopping trip, my daughter and I, carrying the small disappointment of an errand that did not give us what we hoped it would. It was one of those ordinary moments that somehow becomes more than ordinary while you are still inside it. We had gone looking for something […]
May 20, 2026
The Lesson Hidden in the Pack Today was one of those days that felt like it had been hiding a lesson in its pack the whole time. I took Ben, Ella, and Ben’s friend Tyler hiking just outside of Harpers Ferry. It was warm and humid. The kind of day where the air itself feels […]
May 14, 2026
There is a kind of person who stops on the trail after conflict and looks back. Not because they are weak. Not because they are guilty of everything. Not because they enjoy pain. But because something in them wants to walk honestly. They want to know if they stepped carelessly. They want to know if […]
May 12, 2026
There is a trail most of us are taught to respect: the marked one. The one with blazes painted on trees. The one with mileage signs, switchbacks, elevation gain, and a known destination. The one that tells us where we are going before we ever take the first step. There is comfort in that kind […]
