My birthday in Boulder: blue skies, bald eagles, and flat country roads where the Great Plains butt against the Front Range mountains. The alluring alliteration is mesmerizing as sentences form in my mind as I pedal, circles without end, along barely ice-cleared roads on this first bicycle ride of spring here in Boulder County. What …
Boulder Reservoir from Dakota Ridge, November 2014 We all have nicknames, official ones to which we respond, some lovingly bestowed, some happenstance, some fleeting. The transitory names are forgotten as quickly as they are created. We don’t bother much about them. At least, that’s what I try to convince myself. My earliest memories are of …
The house has always been our retreat, our safety net, and our childhood. The sturdy red and white-shingled walls seem barely to contain the memories accumulated during fifty years of our family’s history. I imagine them bursting out at any moment, ready to spring forth and clutter our present. The chronicles change depending on the …
Rabbit Exhibit, Singapore July 2013 My husband just finished his first month at a new job. He’s based in San Francisco but the company is headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. Years ago the four of us (Doug, the two boys and me) to the South Island of New Zealand, encountering snow in Christchurch (yes, it was …
Cross-training in spring includes the “forced” opportunity to ride my bicycle on the country roads in Sonoma and Napa counties. Today I road about 25 miles: from our house, out Denmark Road to Burndale Road, to Dale Road, to Ramal Road across the Napa County line (clearly delineated in large white letters on the road …
Blue Mountains, Walla Walla, WA My memoir, “First Friends, Love, Loss and Life in Humboldt County” is now available on Amazon. My real first friends, when they weren’t making me eat mud pies or convincing me that my doll WOULD swallow the oatmeal that I spooned into her hollow cavity, were my sisters. Still friends …
Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, February 2015 A summer day in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. Meanwhile, back in Pennsylvania, the temperature hovers between -14 (with wind chill) and maybe 14 (balmy, as Christopher would say)—not a great week for Alex to visit Christopher and Kate from weather perspective (he was hoping on taking some long runs) …
View fullsize Pat and Christopher (age 3) Sacramento, CA We are close to publication launch of “First Friends: Love, Loss and Life in Humboldt County.” The last few months have been collaborative: working with Mason McCann Smith (www.madscavenger.com) on structural editing and interior design; Jim Whiting on final detailed editing (grammar and style); my sons, Christopher …
I started running when I was twenty-five years old. I was self-taught. I wore baggy cotton shorts, tee shirt and Keds™ shoes. I was often the only woman in the male bastion of joggers at the Polo Field at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Regardless, I loved running, the freedom, the ease of movement, …
Ramal Road, Sonoma, CA mustard fields February 2015 Saturday bicycle ride near the southern borders of Sonoma and Napa Counties. The fields were alive with workers pruning the still-dormant vines, mustards flowering at full bloom, and Acacia trees lining the roadways. We encountered early spring riders, from the weekend tourist with townie bike and guide …