So this woke me up the other night:

I stood at the urinal about 9:30. I was the only one left in the building, when the door opened. I couldn’t see who it was from my angle, and whoever it was didn’t step more than a few feet in the bathroom, so naturally I thought, This is how it ends, isn’t it? This dude’s going to shoot me in the back and some midnight maintenance guy is going to find my body laying here unzipped on the floor.

It sounded like he/she just stood there. I didn’t hear a move toward a sink, a stall, nothing.

Sometimes I think the more we realize that death is totally random and can occur at the most inappropriate time in the most ironic of situations, the more we appreciate the very nature of life. Like the guy in Buffalo who stayed home from a family vacation because he didn’t like to fly and then died when a plane crashed into his house. Or the student who just after complaining on the phone to a friend that the person in front of him shouldn’t be texting and driving because he keeps swerving, hit a barrier and died. I’m superstitious enough to think about these things. Like when my at-the-time-young son and I were walking once in a parking garage, and there was a rumble and he looked nervous, so I told him it was just some truck nearby. I said that garages don’t crash in on people, but was actually thinking, Shit, I hope this isn’t it. I can see the headline: “Professor dies in freak accident in parking garage.”

I don’t go through the day thinking like this. I’m not paranoid, I’m not a hypochondriac, and I’m generally not afraid of most situations. In fact, I welcome them in a strange sort of way. They remind me I am still here, I am still engaged in the persistent miracle of life, and I have not yet started to coast along.

In fact, when I do feel the ground move beneath me, it usually wakes me up and places me firmly in the moment. Like the time I fell through the ice on a frozen lake in northern Norway. It was two in the morning, twenty below, and I followed two friends across the snowy ice toward a road on the other side. I heard the ice crack and I stood still, a green band of aurora borealis bent just above us, and I stood still like Wile E. Coyote—suspended for just a moment listening to the ice crack—and thought, “oh, wow, shit,” and went through.

I landed just about ten inches below the surface on another ice shelf. I stood just deep enough for frigid water to cover and fill my boots about calf-high. I waited for the next crack when my friend Joe turned and we froze in fear of us both plunging into the lake. Usually for me a walk on thin ice was metaphorical, but there I stood with icy feet; my heart pounded in my chest ready to plunge into my stomach when nothing happened. It turned out to be a layer of day-melt I fell through to the six-feet-thick layer of ice beneath. I sloshed to shore, took off my socks, and stood at the end of a fjord when across a field six moose walked by. To the north lay nothing but wilderness for a thousand miles; the Arctic Circle sat a hundred miles south. I was soaked in below zero temperatures, green bands of borealis bent above my head, and I never felt so awake, like sleep wasn’t part of the Human idea, like caffeine was a tranquilizer. Awake.

That moment, right then, will never go away.

I’ve been lucky to have had many such moments of being blatantly alive—some good and some scary, and none with regrets. None.

I’m not sure who walked in the bathroom, saw me and apparently walked out before the door even closed, but for a few moments I stood on that ice again, waiting for the ground to fall beneath my feet. In fact, I’ve been skating most of my life, and now I find myself by virtue of countless changes watching the cracks widen and waiting to land somewhere. And I’ve never felt so alive, so conscious of each moment and each step.

It seems I feel more secure when I’m least grounded. Or, another way to think of it is this: life has a way of forcing me to be in the moment, to be present, and that is fine with me, even if it comes at a cost.

It is the quiet on a golf course that captivates me. It is the sound of a swinging club and the small smack of the ball. It is the smell of mowed grass and often honeysuckle on the breeze. It is pausing to watch some nearby bird, or to admire the slope of a fairway down to the right toward a pond or some woods. It is the sound of the ball falling into the cup which seals the emotional deal that keeps us going back out there.  

I started playing golf when I was about nine and my father and brother took up the sport. I naturally tagged along and we spent many days over the years teeing up at Timber Point Country Club on the South Shore of Long Island, then the courses around Virginia Beach. At home, we watched golf on weekends, and through the years that sport kept us connected. My brother and I play together when we can when we are in the same state, and my son and I have played consistently since he was a toddler. He, my father and I played together very often throughout the nineties and beyond.  Golf is a family sport, and more often than not it is about fathers and sons, it is the common ground we otherwise might not be able to find.

This week is one of my favorite times of the year; the Masters tournament begins. I think of my father, and I can still hear his quiet sigh of disappointment when someone misses a small putt. He would like watching this year in particular with Tiger being back in the game. He would be rooting for Tiger, especially if the odds were against him. He would love to see him come back to the top after so many years of struggle.

We didn’t have a lot in common, Dad and me. To be clear, we got along very well, and over the years we spent many evenings talking about different television shows we watched or how work was going for me. But beyond that we didn’t have much to say. Part of it was Dad was always a quiet man, and I was always on the go anyway. Oh, we never argued; it wasn’t like that. In fact we were very close; just not very much alike. I simply had different interests, different paths altogether. I was in the arts and Dad was a stockbroker; he was brilliant at history and an avid reader, and I, well, I wasn’t. However, he did feed my flames for some favorite aspects of life; travel and adventure through the books he bought me; sports through his passion for following everything from baseball and football to golf. He even followed tennis for a while when I was involved during my teens.

Once—and, yes, once is a lot in this case—Dad hit a hole-in-one on the 15^th at Broad Bay in Virginia Beach many years ago, and while I was not there, I can visualize every part of that stroke in my mind from the oft times he repeated the story; and well he should have. For a man who loved being on the course, to hit a hole-in-one is a highlight in life. I loved when he talked about it, the way his face lit up.

But golf was the come-together activity. On the course we didn’t really talk about anything but being on the course and what club we used and how I might have “picked my head up” or how my putt “came up short.” But we were together, the two of us, or more often the three of us, early on my brother and in later years my son. It was the ultimate bonding—we didn’t have to talk at all, yet we connected completely. Sometimes when I’m on the course, if I don’t pick my head up I hit a better shot, but I also can imagine I’m ten-years-old standing on the par three on the Great South Bay, knowing I’ll never make it over the small patch of water to the green. Other times I’m on the third hole at Bow Creek in Virginia Beach knowing no matter how hard I try to avoid it, I’m going to hit the damn tree right in the middle of the fairway. The memories on a golf course are thick for fathers and sons. They are of laughter, and of learning to overcome inevitable disappointment. The lessons are laid out like long putts, and we pass them along like old clubs.

One of those lessons went like this: When I was in my late teens Dad and I played nine and an elderly man, an excellent player, joined us. This man was hitting the green on every drive. At some point I clipped a short shot right into the water and slammed my club into the bag. Looking back I’m sure I was embarrassing my father, though being as young as I was I doubted I noticed or cared. Then the man came to me and said, “Can I give you some advice?”

I sighed. “Sure.”

“You’re not good enough to get mad.” I looked at him, a bit surprised at his blunt comment. “Do you practice every day? Do you have new clubs and have you taken lessons? If so, then maybe you’d have earned the right to get disgusted. Otherwise, you’re just wasting energy.”

Cue the sound of angels singing. It was like a light went on, like something obvious which had been foggy suddenly became clear. I relaxed and from then on I played better, had a better time, laughed more, and enjoyed the time with my father so much more. Then I found that lesson translating into life; I became better at understanding those things in life from which I could claim better results and those things I simply had no right to comment about, complain about, do anything about except to try harder.

The summer before my dad passed away he, my son and I stopped at his old country club, Broad Bay, just to use their putting green. It had been awhile since he had the physical stability and presence of mind to commit to a round of golf, so going to the green was a good compromise and he was thrilled. He showed Michael again how to hold the putter, said hello to some golfers who recognized him and stopped to say hello, and smiled the entire time. He putt a few balls and then stood steady as a pro above a putt and let it go for twenty-two feet on a slight bank downhill to the left, and it sank in the hole, that familiar sound echoing in our hearts.

That was his last golf shot. It is strange how you never know when that last shot will be.

Watching the masters is a tradition I’ll always cherish, though sometimes I’m not sure if it is a pleasure or a heartache. All I can do is to keep playing. Michael and I will head out this week; and the next time I see my brother I hope we play. When my close friend Jonmark comes to town we’ll rip up some fairway to be sure. And in every case, Dad will be out there with me, telling me to keep my head down. 

It’s late and I’m a stone’s throw from the ocean listening to the crashing waves. It’s a warm night, and the tide is low so a walk at the water’s edge keeps me far from the busy boardwalk and music-filled cafes. No one else is out here, and the light from the moon makes it easy to see where I’m going. I’ve been walking an hour. Some nights it takes longer than others to slow down my mind and clear my head.

I heard once that if you spend enough time near the ocean you can hear it as far away as Nebraska. This must be true. Even in college, six-hundred miles and thirty-five years away I seemed to sense when the water was like glass or choppy, or, like tonight, smooth with four foot waves coming to shore in sets of three. There’s a light wind.

Over the years it has become for me a safe place to be. Ironic, really, when I stand at night close enough for my feet to get wet and face east, and the dark and distant horizon seems unforgiving. When I was seventeen I stood here looking out toward Spain, thinking about the reach, contemplating the journey. I’m not smart enough, as James Taylor writes, for this life I’ve been living, but I know all I need to know when I’m near water. I don’t have the science to explain the currents and I can’t remember the names of the seabirds. But when a dolphin breaches the surface I have all the information necessary to satisfy why I’m out here to begin with: to slow down my mind and clear my head.

I have just over a month left at the college. It occurred to me tonight that I knew more people when I started thirty years ago than I do now. We used to stand in the hallway or someone’s office between classes and talk, tell stories, or go for coffee. My office mate and I went out for lunch on a regular basis, and sometimes we’d walk to the local grocery store. Over the years some have left, some died, but most simply retreated to their offices to work at their computers. Really, even when you do happen by someone’s office, that person more often than not carries on the conversation without ever looking up from the screen. We always had a sense of growth, of the spark which led to the conversation which led to action; now, it’s as if everyone has hit their pace and decided to coast. I don’t understand that.

I’m ready to go. It’s too lonely there, too isolating. It lacks passion and possibility. Some years ago the best ideas came when hanging out in groups, interrupting each other and building upon each person’s thoughts, and students knew each other’s life stories by the third week of class. Now they don’t even know each other’s names and we have less than a month left in the semester.

It makes no sense to have busy hallways that are as silent as this empty evening along the eastern edge of the continent. In fact, I feel less isolated here than I do on campus. That’s just wrong.

People need to shake hands more, ask each other where they’re from, where they’re going. We need to stand in hallways laughing, building possibilities on the backs of anecdotes. It should take a while to get the room to quiet down. I shouldn’t have to suggest people look up from their laps. We are on the edge of a dangerous change, and I fear if we’re not careful, our efforts to be connected will cut us off completely.

Isolation is killing growth and suffocating ideas. And this great migration toward absolute individualism is rampant. People along the boardwalk take selfies instead of asking someone to take a picture, and in the process talk about where to eat, where to explore. Students sit before class in deep online conversations with friends they’ve known since seventh grade instead of finding out how the people around them might be part of their future, part of changing what’s next and what can be. I have lost interest in this regressive approach to life—I hesitate to call it life.

Life is the way we make eye contact and understand each other; life is the stories we share of the times we laughed so hard it hurt. Life has depth and can’t be communicated in memes or posts. It is about character, not characters; it is about making connections, not being connected.

So I come here and walk in seeming complete contradiction to my disdain for such growing isolation. But out here life is entirely visceral. The sand and the mist and the quiet distant call of a gull is primal and ancient and eternal.  

The waves are gaining strength and the tide has turned. By morning the water will be choppy and the gulls will feed on schools of fish being chased by dolphins, and it will fill my mind with such peace I long to share it, to gather my friends and sit on blankets and watch the daily repetition of miraculous life, but I can’t find a soul.

I watched a hawk sweep down and pulverize a dove. The hawk perched on an oak branch and the dove, distracted by the wind and some seed on the lawn, stopped paying attention. It happens. The hawk isn’t fast as much as he is silent, just a simple cliff dive, stepping off the branch, and, wings out, sweeps in with perfect form with his claws out front to grab the dove at the neck. A sudden puff of feathers busts into the air, and the raptor is gone. So is the dove.

This time the dove simply stood on the grass. She had been facing the direction of the hawk and when she turned around the hawk flew into action. The dove seemed to hunch down like she knew what was about to happen. Gone.

I wondered if she just gave in, like she’d had enough. Sometimes the natural instinct to survive is not as strong as simple resignation.

When I was in high school some friends and I went to the beach on the bay. At some point one friend and I decided to swim out to the end of a very long pier. We made it but we were exhausted and ended up helping each other back, each of us taking a turn at holding the other until we were at the breakers and could ride in. She and I just collapsed on the beach, spent. It isn’t like we weren’t in shape. We had stamina; we just swam too far out. I wonder when it is that people decide to give up? I wonder if we had been another hundred feet would it have been too far or would we have found the strength and determination to push it. I mean, did we collapse on the beach because we couldn’t go another yard or because we didn’t have to?

I wonder how often I’ve given up because I thought I found the shore when the truth was I could have probably held out for more, pushed it a bit, opted to swim a bit further.

It’s cold today, but sunny, and the hawk is around—I can hear him, though the doves are feeding on the porch rail where it is safe and out of sight. Earlier out on the river osprey found food for their new offspring, and the cormorants have returned. Sometimes some river dolphins swim under the Rappahannock Bridge, but not yet this season. I like it here. I find peace here. I think mostly though I like the area because of the water and the sand. Ironically, the first time I was in this area was exactly ten years before I bought the land to build the house. Just across the river is The Tides Inn, a quiet resort right on the Rappahannock. For my parents’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, my father invited us all to stay at the Inn. It was an excellent time, and we went for a river cruise on the Miss Anne, a riverboat which went under the bridge, and we followed the south shore and returned to the Inn along the north shore, turning around at the mouth of the river into the Chesapeake. I had no clue we passed close enough to my eventual home to be able to cast a line to shore and pull us in.

Thirty-one years later I’m watching osprey out across the same bridge feeding their young, while hawks stand watch in oak trees waiting for doves to stand still.

I was born a moving target; I’m not sure I ever learned when was the right time to collapse on the beach. The hawks have for the most part missed me up until now. When I do settle down it is usually to look at a map. Ironically, since I moved into this house I have traveled more than I ever dreamed I would—Russia, Prague, Amsterdam, Spain, France, Norway, and plenty of states. And at night in the darkness we use the telescope to travel through the heavens out across the waters and find planets and meteors. We often joke about one of the meteors ripping through the atmosphere and hitting us in the back of the head while we’re facing the other way.

When I was in college a friend had a poster on his wall promoting Nike. It was a long shot of a winding road through open country with one solitary runner, and the tag line said, “There is no finish line.” I like that. If we didn’t know when to stop I wonder how often we would keep moving. I’m not an advocate of indecision. But I’m a staunch opponent to settling for something when there’s still more options for the ones willing to wander a bit more. It is, to be sure, a delicate balance.

Certainly I get tired as I move forward, especially on the days when I’m not sure where I’m going or how long it will take to get there. But when I think about that swim to the end of the pier and back, I don’t often recall the collapse on the sand; I remember how quiet and peaceful it was taking turns helping each other back to shore. It was hard to tell if we were helping each other or saving ourselves.

The journey doesn’t necessarily end because we found a safe place to rest. Really, there is no finish line.

Last night two things happened:

First, St Bonaventure University beat UCLA in the NCAA Tournament. This was their first win in the tournament since before my older sister attended the college. And during the game I was part of a spontaneous, online reunion with friends I haven’t seen in exactly thirty-five years. I graduated, in fact, 35 years ago May 15^th.

It was fun interacting like college kids, our hearts racing at the turnovers, the excitement growing at the lead, boiling at the missed shots and fouls. The interaction via text and social media was so constant, we could have been all together at the Reilly Center, sitting with our floormates, cheering them on as the band played off to the side not long after “Lou” famously sang the National Anthem.

But we are much older now, closer to ninety than graduation day. Some of us have stayed close to others, some have drifted, and some are, tragically, gone too soon and missed even more on nights like this. These are not people I “kind of” knew; we lived together, ate together, sat in classes and in bars together, hitchhiked together, and, of course, lost our voices together at basketball games behind Coach Jim O’Brien and stars like Mark Jones and Eric Stover. Afterwards we walked together to the skellar and wiped clean our foggy glasses as we ordered three dollar pitchers of beer and talked over the blaring music of Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen.

Last night was a 21^st version of a family reunion. I don’t want to again be the immature, overtly innocent particle I was in the early eighties; but it was fun to hang out again, from Ohio to Florida to Albany to Allegany (and yes, for you non-Bona people and spellcheck ghosts, “Allegany” is spelled correctly).

The second event of the day is desperately more tragic: Stephen Hawking died. One of the books which made a big impression on the population in the late eighties was A Brief History of Time. I remember first understanding who Hawking was when he received an honorary degree at my brother’s graduation from the University of Notre Dame. This man, who could not talk without aids, could not walk or function in just about any traditional manner, and whose diagnosis predicted his death even before that graduation day in 1978, pushed the envelope of possibility, bent time away from him as he made his mark not only on physics but on thought itself for another forty years.

Hawking once wrote, “We are now all connected by the internet, like neurons in a giant brain.” Last night was quite the example of that.

Hawking also implored us to, “Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”

As I walk into my classrooms I am confronted by students with a desperate lack of curiosity, a dangerous lack of eye contact, a pathetically unmotivated group of teens. I don’t remember life this way. When I was my students’ age—and yes this is going to sound like an old man complaining about how things were better—things were better. We interacted, knew each other, laughed OUT LOUD, not LOL, we held each other’s hands and had each other’s backs. We formed bonds so tight they lasted three and a half decades so that for a few brief hours it was as if we were all together again, like neurons in a giant brain. I see the irony; but could we have remained so close, or reignited so quickly online had we only been connected by technology when we were young? I think it is probable the absolute raw interaction of our hearts and souls four decades ago is the only reason our friendships survived. I understand these friends today because we understood the sorrow and joy behind each other’s eyes so long ago, without the border wall of technology, without the ravine dug by platforms and gigabites. 

Hawking wrote, “The past is indefinite and, like the future, exists only as a spectrum of possibilities.” Everything changes. Everything. Even the past as we move forward on this pilgrimage. Things change, of course, and for some all the changes come at once and often unexpectedly, but physics has proven that we keep moving forward, no matter what, and if we are lucky, the best parts of our lives, the deepest roots of our lives, remain. Last night I knew that was true.

And tomorrow night, it happens again, against Florida. Gulp. What a beautiful time to be alive. Yes, 

“What a glorious time to be alive” –Stephen Hawking

This morning a heavy mist settled on the ocean, turning the sky and horizon and breakers right up to the sand all one color, one dimension, like the façade on a movie set or some impressionistic painting. At the water’s edge, I could see maybe thirty or forty feet before the wall of blue blocked my view. A group of pelicans flew by, inches above the calm ocean, not far from where I stood, and about six or so dolphins moved past, their backs rising out; only one, just once, breached the water. Had she been another ten feet beyond I probably wouldn’t have been able to watch.

It is winter, but it is warm, and no one was around, not even the normal runners, not the scattered homeless. It was simply quiet, and I walked at the water’s edge a long time in the salty air enjoying the peace. There is such a difference between the solitude through the day when I go for a walk or sit on a porch, and the peace found in nature where certain sounds, like gentle waves lapping the shore or an occasional call of a gull, remind me of the silence, forces me to focus on what I’m not hearing. It reminds me of John Cage’s, “4’33” which is that length of time of complete silence—a cd with a more-than-four-minute track of absolute nothingness; he makes the listener completely aware of the absence of sound. Walking along an empty coast early before the sun comes up, or, like this morning, when there simply is no sun to speak of, reminds me first of the peace I find there that I can count on, and second of the noise I encounter when I leave the beach.

I am tired. I have been quite tired for a long time now, and some people I could count on to talk about it have disappeared; they formulate their own opinions and vanish, preferring the silence of distance to any peace of mind that comes from conversation. Isn’t there such a disturbing difference between quiet and peace? When I find myself like this, when I catch myself falling into some semblance of depression or confusion, I know I can clear my head. It is empowering to truly understand that when things are not going well I can walk to the water’s edge, to the one spot I have found which has never changed and has never abandoned me, and let the salty air and ocean breezes clear away the confusion.

The problem, of course, is the ocean is not a cure; it is a bandage. After a while, the only remedy would be to abandon society completely and camp out just this side of the high-water mark. No, one must address the cause of the need for escape. Ah, what an easy, Psych 101 response! Yes, the cause—it is an argument, a misunderstanding, a failure, a crossroads, a judgement, a realization, a loss too unbearable to contemplate. Yes, okay, it is one of those or maybe something else, it really doesn’t matter. Because what so many do not understand about “escape” is that the “cause,” no matter how solvable, no matter how seemingly simple, is often a permanent presence in one’s soul created by a sense of abandonment and indifference, and it seems like there is no remedy.

I have known people like this; I have been close to people who found no recourse, could not negotiate the shadows, the parts of life without a clear and obvious path. One friend from high school killed himself (and his dog) in his garage. A close colleague of mine hung herself in her kitchen. We all have a story; we all know some poor soul who never understood a way out.

We should have high school classes designed to help students find peace. We should give college credit for lessons in perspective and escape.

Some people seek therapy to talk it through, some medicate for balance, and some simply live in the middle, safe, where they never experience extremes, where highs and lows all wash out.

And some go for walks, discover the beauty inside which cannot be shrouded by others’ dismissal, by others’ judgments. They put on some John Cage and escape to the water’s edge where they can find themselves at peace somewhere out past the horizon.

“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace”

–Dalai Lama

Note:     Because of the work I’m doing right now, Siberia is very much on my mind; in particular, the ride across by rail my son and I traveled in 2013. I wrote this letter in my journal at the airport in Vladivostok almost four years ago. I just found it while piecing together material from those journals for a book. You know, from the outside, it is easy to judge what life is like for someone else, what he or she is going through and the decisions they make, especially the bad ones. Unfortunately, no one anymore—not even people we’re close to—bothers to ask directly how things are, if everything is okay. I have never had that issue with Michael, and I’m deeply appreciative of that rare character trait in him.

That was on my mind at five in the morning at the airport in far eastern Russia drinking coffee and writing:

Dear Michael,

When you were born, the Soviet Union had just collapsed, Boris Yeltsin was the president of Russia trying to keep his newborn nation alive, and everyone in St. Petersburg and in Moscow was still trying to figure out what to do. The powers-that-be were people not used to asking for help from anyone. Mistakes were common.

That was me in ‘93 when you came into this world. Like all new fathers, I made decisions based on what I needed to know to keep you alive, followed by decisions based on what I remembered from growing up or from watching other young fathers. I don’t recall asking anyone for help but I clearly remember making many mistakes. And the hardest part of parenthood is knowing when to be there for you and when to back off. If I’ve mixed them up from time to time, forgive me.

Yet here we are at the end of one of the greatest journeys in modern travel. The irony is most fathers of twenty-year-old’s only go to the train station to wave goodbye, not to embark on a month-long adventure. Maybe you’d have rather done this alone; maybe with someone your own age. I’m certain either of those is most likely preferable to traveling with your father, but we find ourselves here nonetheless. Consider it your gift to me; my heart is full.

We’ve covered thousands of miles in twenty years. I was thinking last night about the Brio train set we gave you for Christmas when you were just two or three. We spent endless hours on the floor creating scenarios, traveling across the country, over mountains and even oceans. You learned geography; I learned patience. You learned how to turn a few simple wooden trains into a universe; I learned how expensive toys can be.

During your youth you and I did so much together, and luckily for me as the years passed and you grew older, that didn’t change. And now after traveling across Europe and Asia, I can’t imagine taking the journey with anyone else. I don’t think many fathers and sons stay as close as we have all these years later. Your grandfather and I got along fine but the roles were written differently in the sixties and seventies than the contemporary take. While I’m sure there are more than a few fathers and sons these days who have full-blown, knock down, drag-out fights which leave scars too deep to heal, the cause of most conflict is seemingly subtle. And unlike the shaky lines of communication between your grandfather’s generation and mine, the lines of communication between mine and yours is almost always open.

And now we’ve disembarked, left the final station, spent some time in the city, and are ready to return home to head toward whatever’s next. Spain perhaps. We shall see. In the meantime I need you to do something for me: I need you to forgive me for growing older, for someday losing the energy I’ve had until now.  As I write this we’re still at the airport in Vladivostok. You’re looking at maps of Kamchatka planning to come back and possibly do on your own what to this point we did together. I’m looking out at the early morning light revealing itself over the Sea of Japan. At what point you will actually read this is a mystery to me since I’m not sure if I’ll even copy it out of my journals and onto a screen to print and mail. If I do it certainly won’t be anytime soon. Between now and then who is to say what will happen—to me, to you, to us. We’ve done okay together though; we understand each other and maybe that is all a father can ask for. It is probably well more than a son can ever expect. So I believe we’ve done okay so far, you and me.

To use the metaphor of this journey just one more time—I don’t know what’s ahead. At some point we will split off and follow separate tracks. I am lucky we stayed on the same ride as long as we have. Thank you for that. I’m certain your urge to take off has been strong. If our relationship has any scars at all, they are nearly unrecognizable, subtle, mysterious; I think we have come out of these two decades mostly unblemished. But to be honest, I do not know and maybe I never will know just how badly I screwed up as a father. Should I have pushed you out on your own sooner? Should I have encouraged you toward different paths? Maybe I said too much.  I know every father wonders how he could have done things differently, and the best we can hope for is we did the best we could.

But before this trite little letter becomes so predictable you throw it out, you need to know how much like your grandfather you have turned out to be. Maybe that is why I allowed you so much room through the years to make up your own mind on so many issues; because you have the same quiet, contemplative manner. I heard once that when a father dies it is the greatest loss of security a son will ever know. I suppose that only is true if the father was a protector to begin with. I certainly have tried to be, just as I always tried to be a good son. I think that if we pay attention to what we would have done differently as sons, maybe we become better fathers. I don’t know.

Maybe in some inconceivable time from now when you’re well beyond my years and I’m long gone, perhaps you’ll look back to this journey and remember how we laughed so long together, discovered so much of the world together. Maybe, someday, you’ll be sitting somewhere and someone—perhaps a grandson of your own or maybe just two strangers on some bench—will be talking about Siberia or fathers and sons or sunsets on a summer night, and you’ll think of me. If you do, I hope you’ll smile and remember the time when we were both so alive, and we walked the hills near Lake Baikal. I hope you’ll remember when we joined our Russian friends in the dining car for drinks and music, and time didn’t pass us by as much as we left it behind.

Mostly, I hope you will recall how we stood alone together between the cars, you playing harmonica and me watching the passing landscape of birch trees and green fields, just you and me, enjoying this random trip through time.

Love,

Dad

I’m not indifferent to our need to remain up to date on what’s going on in the world, but sometimes it can be a bit overbearing and I feel like the divisiveness is going to swallow me up.

When I listen to the anger, the repulsive name-calling, the indignant attitudes, the horrific threats, the unsubstantiated accusations, the dangerous proposals, the indifference to human life, the lack of concern for consequences, the undermining gossip, the pathetic finger-pointing, I wonder if these people have ever thought with any depth at all about humanity, felt the breezes of compassion, or caressed the soft promise of possibility, felt their eyes well up when a cello comes in at just the right moment.

We have leaders who have never walked through nature cast votes to destroy the environment. We have representatives who have never met people from Mexico who want to build a wall. We have organizations making a mockery of others’ inalienable right to life when they fight tooth and nail for weapons built for the sole purpose of ripping holes through the bodies of as many people as possible.

This nation has misplaced its humanity. It has lost its sense of companionship. It has torn apart any remnant of unity that still existed. Our school system is failing, our environment is losing the battle against population growth, agriculture is losing to major corporations like Monsanto, small businesses are losing to conglomerates, and the post-911 generation is losing to its own lack of experience with hope, its lack of practice in compassion.

In my relatively small and insignificant world, taking a moment to breathe makes all the difference. Sometimes things spiral away from me and I’m not smart enough to understand it all. I don’t think many people are, though they might think differently, which only infuriates my already strained sense of peace.

So no wonder sometimes I like to escape, walk along the bay and understand again that no one has yet figured out how to steal the sunrise. And if there are soft breezes coming off the water and the occasional hawk happens by, I’ll put on some Nick Drake and lose myself in my own blissful ignorance. He’ll sing “and go play the game that you learnt from the morning” and in my mind I’ll be walking again in Spain, away from the deteriorating world.

Right now I’m at my desk working on chapter 18 of the Siberian book and listening to Drake. What a talent; his haunting voice and lyrics along with such subtle guitar work simply fill my soul with such peace; which is ironic since much of his work is filled with sorrow, as was he quite sorrowful until his youthful death. His music has walked me through some fire that’s for sure. I wish I could tell him, write him, but no. Other musicians’ music has done the same—Chapin, Denver, Fogelberg—and I can’t contact a single one to thank them for the perspective, for the right words at the right time—every one of them gone too soon. As for the music, I know most people know what I’m talking about no matter what artist works. It’s just that sometimes we need someone else to say the right thing, someone who values the romance in life and can take us, albeit briefly, somewhere else.

Most people understand this, but not all.

And right now I’m listening to Drake and working on chapter 18 and outside in an oak tree a mother and baby hawk are keeping close to their nest. I’m sure Mom’s the reason for the dove feathers near the birdbath. Near one of the crepe myrtle trees another dove is looking for seed, and I know the hawk sees her. It must be hard sometimes for the dove to survive.

I can hear the baby but Mom is on a different branch keeping one eye on the dove and the other on the young hawk as baby moves back and forth from branch to nest to a different branch to the nest again. Hawks seem to be above it all, disconnected to any concerns. Between the soft breeze coming in the screen, the small calls of the hawk, and Nick Drake’s melodic voice calling “A day once dawned, and it was beautiful,” I’m very much at peace. Then add to that how I’m now somewhere east of Irkutsk in a dining car drinking Baltika Beer and laughing with my son and some new friends. It is what I love about writing; I can at any time come to my desk and slide through that rabbit hole into wherever I want to go again. It seems more than ever we all need some escape, some perspective.

For me that escape is the writing, maybe the music.

Or the hawks; there’s something about the hawks.

It really can be a wilderness, sitting at my desk looking out onto the porch roof where two squirrels are chasing each other. I’m working on a book about Siberia. More specifically, it is about riding the Trans Siberian Rail from St Petersburg to Vladivostok with my son, Michael.

A friend of mine in Arizona just published a very limited edition of my book about the Camino de Santiago. Out of the Way is the same length as my book Penance—very short—and the same form, actually. The reason I went with an edition with only 250 copies and don’t plan on going further than that is simple: I had nothing more to say. Plus, there are hundreds of books and blogs and short films about the Camino. But I had published several pieces about the Camino in various magazines, including two national publications, and they received a lot of positive response. Nothing I write about the pilgrimage will ever reflect the experience, though I suppose I’ll keep trying.

But the Siberian work is different. More specifically it is about fathers and sons, about figuring out what we can keep with us as we move forward. Out of the Way is about 60 pages, the manuscript for the Siberian book is already around 200 pages, and that is after months of editing. It will flip flop for some time still, getting longer and then edited down, longer again and then shorter. Michael points out pretty soon it will be longer than all my other books combined.

But that’s because it is about Siberia. More specifically, it is about history and migration and the disconnection that still exists in some remote areas of the world. Siberia is wild and natural and vast and unlike any other region. Not much has been written about in the popular-culture arena. One of the best is Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, which manages to capture the experience perfectly, but it remains focused on the people and the history without reaching out of itself. David Green’s fine work, Midnight in Siberia is also an excellent book for understanding the experience on the rail, and since NPR fans know his voice so well it is easy to read the book and hear David’s voice at the same time.

But other than those and some Colin Thurbon books about Russia and Siberia in general, there is little else out there.

So I decided to put it together, this book about Siberia; more specifically about exiles and dissidents, about what we leave behind, about the need to be direct with others and oneself instead of passing judgement and deciding without facts, without at the very least asking. It is about hesitating while at the same time jumping off the edge of the world. Of the fourteen sections of the book completed so far, eleven have been published in one form or another in various journals, but the book ties them together.

Which brings me back to Spain, to the Camino and sixty pages.

Two books occupying my mind at the same time is interesting. It really is like having children. One of them needs more attention than the other, more help, more of my resources—for whatever reason—and I need to pay attention to it. But, as van Gogh eloquently wrote, “Art is jealous; she will not let us choose ourselves over her.” That’s so true. These books are siblings, and I want them to get along, especially when one doesn’t understand why I need to pay extra attention to the other. So as it is, they have different needs, and it is time to think about Siberia.

Siberia is an intellectual project; it also has much of my heart since it is framed in letters to my late father, but at its core it is about Siberia. More specifically, it is about the delicate balance between focusing on “now” and focusing on “what’s next.” This work comes out of the journalist in me.

But Out of the Way, which isn’t a story as much as it is a reflection about faith, comes very much from my heart. And I discovered something interesting in these two projects. In the past I have the normal problems writers have; whatever I’ve done is not enough, needs to be expanded, deepened, approached from another angle. Reworking means filling in and trimming down, as I’m doing now with the book about Siberia, which is really about learning to find our way home.

But with Spain everything I wrote always already seemed too much, like I was telling someone else’s secret. I think that’s because it is not a “project,” it is who I am, and writing about it became too personal. I’ll never go back to Siberia. But the Camino beckons every single day, especially lately when I’m finding less and less reason to stay.

A lot has changed in the past year in every single aspect of my life and I sometimes have trouble understanding it all, and I know for certain people I’ve been close to don’t understand and for whatever reason don’t bother to ask. But in Spain I feel my life is completely exposed and everyone there understands each other, like two lovers who can finish each other’s thoughts.

So I’m very pleased Out of the Way is on its own now and I can only pray people find a little of what I was trying to do. But to be completely honest, I wrote it for me; that book is for me.

The two squirrels outside my window on the porch roof ran off. I need to grade papers, and I want to play golf with my brother. I want to go to Starbucks with my sister, take pictures with my son. I want to wander aimlessly amidst the trees running from here to the Rappahannock, and then head out on the water and disappear for awhile. I want to call my mother and thank her, and stop and leave flowers at my father’s headstone. I want to drive west, sail south, and find out the least of my days is still an amazing grace.

Instead, I’m going to sit at this desk and expand my book about Siberia, which, ironically, is also about pilgrimage. I’ll edit and deepen until it finds its way to the publisher.

Unless I go for a walk. I might go for a walk.

When Michael was three he climbed on some bars at a park when his hand slipped and he slammed his head. I grabbed him and held him close until my friend Brian pointed out that my light-blue t-shirt was dark red, all of it. A bolt had penetrated Michael’s skull just above his right eye.

Brian drove us in my jeep to the hospital just a few miles away, but before we had gone very far Michael’s cries changed from the pain in his head to the fact we were leaving the park. At the ER, he walked about holding a cloth to his skull asking everyone what they were in there for while I ate a cookie to bring my blood sugar back up. On the way home after stitches for him and resuscitation for me, he said, “That was fun. Can we stop at the park on the way home?” I told him I didn’t feel well.

Two years later he ran in circles through his grandmother’s house yelling, “Sir Michael the Knight is chasing the dragon! Sir Michael the Knight is going to catch the dragon!! Sir Michael the Knight is going to…” and he ran full speed into the dining room table, clipping his left shoulder so that his legs came completely out and he slammed to the floor. I jumped up from my chair to hear him say, “Sir Michael the Knight hurts himself really bad.” Then he got up and kept running.

He’s still running. Tomorrow he turns twenty-five-years old.

I’m grateful for some obvious events in our lives which have allowed us to spend time together; training across Siberia and walking across Spain to name a few. But more than the grand events are the day to day activities. Over the past twenty years or so we’ve shared thousands of sunsets at the river near our home. It is routine to stand at the water’s edge, my camera pointed toward the clouds, his toward the water. His images of the colors and the beauty of the river surface make him one of the finest artists I’ve known. Sunrises, too, don’t escape us. One of us will be up early and see if the pre-dawn sky warrants waking the other, and if so a bang on the wall is followed by a call of “Okay, coming,” which is followed methodically by a quick stop for coffee, and then both of us wandering the sand at the bay waiting for just the right moment, zooming in on the osprey nests or gulls following the fishing boats. By the time the rest of the village is waking up, we’re heading home.

I didn’t want to spend any time here bragging about my son, so I’ll avoid praising his abstract photography, including one piece which was featured in a show in the Louvre, and I’ll refrain from talking about his work at the library and his volunteering as an ambulance driver; and no one would mind but I’ll not write here about his amazing book, “Across the Wild Land,” featuring a few hundred photographs from Siberia. No, there is no need to spend time writing about any of that.

Instead I’ll write quite proudly about how I have been blessed to have spent the better part of two and a half decades hanging out with my son. Not many fathers have that privilege, and I’ve collected more than a few stories at his expense. Like the drunken chess games on the railway in Russia, or the walking history-guide he became through all the villages in Spain.

I’m most proud of him, however, for a basic, rare human trait he possesses that I wish I had even the smallest portion of: he is the kindest person I’ve ever known. Michael has had a most unconventional life and through it all—I write this as an observer, not as his father—he has never complained about one thing, he has never spoken negatively about a single person. Ever.

I wish I were more like him.

We all have stories about our kids—funny ones, or ones which expose their intelligence or cleverness. Really, we all do. So here’s one of mine:

When he was a toddler he came to work with me a lot, and we both enjoyed it. When I had to teach, however, he would spend time with colleagues. For a while he loved checking books in and out of the library with “Mrs. Mac”; ironic really since he again works at times in a library. Other days he would sit in class while I taught. Once, however, another professor, the late Pat Naulty, offered to let him sit at her desk in her office and make designs with the “paint” program on her computer. My class was across the hall so I agreed. When I came out an hour and a half later, I couldn’t get to the door because of the crowd of people around. And when I worked my way through I heard his small voice finishing a lecture with, “…no no that would have been the Triassic Period, much earlier. I’ll cover that in a minute. Oh, hi Daddy. Don’t you have to teach again?”

What is most amazing to me about my son, however, is how much he is exactly like my father. The two of them spent a lot of time together over the first twenty-three years of Michael’s life, and that included walking through the mall, countless lunches, and dozens of rounds of golf. The similarities in their personalities are obvious: immeasurably kind, mostly quiet, deeply committed to family, and a sharp sense of humor.

These twenty-five years have been the greatest gift any father would dream of, and nothing I have ever written comes close to capturing the joy it has been to be his father. So instead, this:

In his first few years I would sing him to sleep and the song I sang most was “Return to Pooh Corner” by Kenny Loggins; it is an updated version of “House at Pooh Corner.” One day when driving somewhere he looked tired so I started to sing it to him, when from the car seat in the back of the jeep I heard him sing with me, the entire song, not missing a word or a note…

It’s hard to explain how a few precious things

Seem to follow throughout all our lives

After all’s said and done I’m watching my son

Sleeping there with my bear by his side.

So I tucked him in, kissed him, and as I was going

I swear that old bear whispered, “Boy, welcome home.”

Happy Birthday Son.

Buen Camino.

I love you.

–Dad

with our cabinmate, Alexander Ivanovich

with his cousins at their grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary

at Santiago de Compostella

in Russia

with Dad at Mahi Mahs

on the Camino

with me in St Petersburg, Russia

Cover of Michael’s book

with drunk Russians east of Irkutsk

3:30 am, Vlodivostok, waiting for a plane

with Grandma at his booth in the Boardwalk Art Show

at the opening of his art show at the Quick Center for the Arts in New York