Essays
The reader fanned the deck of cards on the table and invited me to touch them. With my right hand, I moved them in a circle, counterclockwise and confessed that I was considering abandoning my career. I worried I was making an irresponsible and potentially harmful decision that I might later regret. The air felt soft and warm, and the ocean exhaled rhythmically against the sand. The reader nodded and gathered the cards; she asked me to pick a card from anywhere in the pile using my left hand. I turned it over with great anticipation.
The Write Launch, October 2024
I went to find the headwaters of Hangman Creek because I wanted to know what Hangman Creek looked like in the beginning, before it went off course. I spread a map of the watershed on the dining room table and traced the creek with my finger from its confluence with the Spokane River, upstream through agricultural land, over the Idaho state line, and toward the St. Joe National Forest. I lost it in the foothills, where the line faded and disappeared. Still, I felt a pressing need to find the headwaters, and so, lacking a precise destination, I got in my truck and drove sixty miles upstream.
Prairie Schooner, Vol 97, No 3 (print only), Fall 2023
On the first day of swim lessons, four-year-old Robert sat on the top step with his hands folded in prayer against his dry chest. His eyes followed the braver children who slipped indifferently underwater, splashing, jumping up and down, and inching their way into deeper waters along the pool edge. Day after day, Robert refused my entreaties to go under...
Cream City Review, Issue 47.1 (print only), Spring/Summer 2023
Some days ago, our young dog, an energetic hunting breed who likes to dig up ground squirrels and field mice, brought home a baby bird. The bird was curled up in his mouth, and when I pried the dog’s jaws open, it cheeped. Startled, I fished out the small wet critter and held it in my hand. It looked just born. Its pink skin and sparse feathers were wet with dog saliva, revealing a tiny head and beak hunched over a small round belly that beat like a drum. I inspected it for damage, but it seemed fully intact. I didn't know what to do with it, where its nest was hidden, or whether it would survive human contact. I doubted it would. But then it stood in my palm and made a run for it. I covered it with one hand and brought it inside to show my 12-year-old son and his two friends...
Cagibi, January 2021 The Print Issue (print only)
Pee trickled down my leg as I stood on tiptoe, gripping my shaking palms to the oars of our 14-foot inflatable raft, and tried to get a glimpse of Snowhole, a rapid named for an enormous boulder on the right side of the river that lifts the water up and then drops it into a billowing white cloud of chaos called a hole. If you can line up your boat in the correct spot it’s an easy run. But if you get caught too far right, if you drop into the hole, you are in serious danger. Although Snowhole is only a class IV rapid (class V is the most dangerous rating for rapids that are considered “runnable”), it still packs a punch. This particular hole, in the right conditions, could flip a fully-loaded boat and guzzle its passengers. People die in lesser whitewater.
Hyperaware of everything that could go wrong, I took a quick, conscious breath, wondering if I was up to the task...
Griffel Literary Magazine #7, Spring 2021 (online, FREE)
The Spokane River slinks away from the northern tip of Coeur d’Alene lake like an introverted guest at a party. Until I looked for it on a map, I hadn’t known exactly where it began. From shore, standing at the northwest corner of Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho, there is no perceptible difference in how the water moves on the lake versus the river: it’s all flat and still. The only indication of change is a subtle narrowing of the shore on both sides, squeezing the lake into a lane the size of a suburban street. In this way, the river travels west for thirteen miles, reaching a cul de sac at Post Falls Dam. Only once it is past the dam does the Spokane assume the likeness of a river...
Litro Magazine USA, Editor's Pick, Nature Issue 2021 (online, FREE)