Another six months have slid by since my last post. I feel like so much of it has been occupied by simply trying to stay above water, attending to the mundane necessities of life. Paying bills, fixing widgets, putting food in the fridge, nudging small corners of life forward toward some ephemeral future.  How do other people do it? Are there really people who come home from work and just have hours to fill doing whatever they please?  If you know of any, please introduce me – I want to know their secret!

Somewhere I once read that life is constantly moving toward entropy – everything around us, maybe within us, is spreading out into the universe into some form of chaos, if chaos has a form.  If that’s the truth – it makes sense to me.  So of my life seems focused on grabbing onto all those things before they are lost and pulling them back into my orbit – trying to find nooks and crannies to stow it away before the next jarring motion sends them out again, whether a material object or an ephemeral responsibility or thought.

Some efforts were made, and luck had, in 2025 with reigning in the entropy for some good hikes, runs, sails, camping trips, crewing ‘Raven’ from North Carolina to the Bahamas,  a family reunion in Ohio on my mother’s side, my niece Kate getting married to Nick,  meeting my grand-niece Delaney for the first time,  a slightly more serious foray into escaping academia by being a canvas worker, and the occasionally adulting task.  Yada yada. I feel privileged and fortunate in life.  And tempted to fill this page with highlights. But they would be a photographic brag and a skewed view of the year. And yet neither do I want to wallow in the depths.

And so I share some sub-3 minute  ‘glurgetastic’ (thanks Tim Sharks) paddling videos that I made in a failed attempt to become a YouTube influencer.  I thought I had the right click bait titles – but I may need to rethink things.

First up is from a scouting trip in June in the Adirondacks. I wanted to check out a potential route to do later in the summer when visiting with Bryony for my niece Kate’s wedding (see third video below).

The summer pretty much blurred by – a couple fun bike-packing trips with Bryony. I hauled a sea kayak out of her garage one weekend, wheeled it over to the Swinomish channel, and paddled up the north end of Puget Sound to visit my friend Rick on his boat.

Bryony and I made our way to northern NY to see family, attend my niece Kate’s wedding to her guy Nick, and to fit in a little paddling trip. All went well – the wedding was beautiful, everyone in good cheer, the mosquitoes left us alone, and the canoe trip went off without a hitch.

And a farewell to my uncle Carl who transcended this world yesterday after a short illness.  I’m so glad it was peaceful and he was surrounded by his wife Ruth and loving family. I am grateful for the monthly family meetings on zoom (thanks cousin Danny) that we’ve held since the pandemic – so many opportunities to connect and catch up. And I’m grateful for the time I got to spend with him during an impromptu family reunion in Squamish BC that my cousin Eli organized a few years back  and for an unforgettable trek in Nepal that we were able to do together in 2013.

Carl truly was an amazing person, the kind that you rarely get to meet. He inspired me to think about organic living, to understand who my father was and was not,  to question the dominant paradigm, and to live life as fully as possible mentally and physically.  And it wasn’t just me. Carl  touched so many people as a life long pacifist, counsellor, friend, and father. He was the most self-actualized and kindest person I have ever met. Sending love now to him, my aunt Ruth, and my cousins Rebecca, Eli and David.