I recently attended a virtual writing conference to pitch my debut novel to two agents via Zoom. It reminded me of trying to land a major airline job. Many pilots don’t get their dream job for an assortment of reasons. It’s the same for novelists. They either never publish or they self publish and struggle to break even.

Writers and pilots have a lot in common. They tend to have a good deal of experience under their belts, work on their craft diligently to improve, but still get rejected or ignored. Even when passionate about what they do, there is no guarantee of success.

When I first started flying, I couldn’t imagine not being in the air. I loved it. Once I got my private pilot license, I immediately started working on my commercial rating because I could fly by myself for some of it. I’ll never forget that time in the air all alone. I miss it. Writing is much the same. It requires lots of alone time, cranking out scenes then tearing them apart and putting them back together again, word by word.

Improving one’s skills in both fields never ends. Last week at book club, a famous author, Jamie Ford, talked about how every time he writes a new book, he suffers impostor syndrome. “It isn’t such a bad thing,” he added. It motivates him to be a better writer.

I recently learned a good lesson about how NOT to pitch my book. A reputable agent, who attends writing conferences in search of new talent, patiently listened to me during my ten-minute slot at the conference. Afterwards, she wrote an essay (for Substack) on how most of us lost her attention within the first sentence.

“It’s supposed to be a conversation, not a monologue,” she wrote. I was getting over a horrible cold and worried that I might have a coughing fit at any moment. I had a water bottle next to me and my IPad, with my two-paragraph book description, below my computer screen. I used it like a teleprompter, reading my pitch and glancing up occasionally to make eye contact with her.

When I finished, she asked a curveball question: what are you working on now? I told her about my short stories, then shared that I had two-thirds of my next novel drafted. “Tell me about it,” she said. I was completely unprepared for this question. I described the highlights of my next project and noticed my own excitement bubbling over as I told her.

“I love that story,” she said. “OK. Send me your pages.”

The whole experience threw me off. And then I read her essay. I think what she meant was pitching a book requires some spontaneity, like telling a friend about a great read. When I went off script, I finally piqued her interest. It’s a daunting concept because memorizing a pitch is hard enough, but improvising? The more I thought about it, it made sense. And I have nothing to lose by trying it.

When I got hired at a major airline, I met six people over two days during the interview process. I had a conversation with each of them. Had I given them a bunch of cookie-cutter answers, I never would have gotten hired. I practiced with a former HR professional, keeping the heart of my stories the same but changing the words each time I said them. I suspect that agents and small press editors want to know about the book, but they also want to know about the person who wrote it and whether they can work with them. That’s when a conversation can come in handy.

Just yesterday morning, I got a rejection from that agent. She liked the premise of my book but found it wasn’t right for her. And so it goes. She gave me some rare guidance to tweak it. Sending me off with encouraging words, she wrote that my book “has real promise.”

I’m still waiting to hear from the other agent and hoping for additional feedback. In early September, I plan to attend another writing conference to take a stab at a conversational pitch. It’ll take some practice, but it’s worth a try. Whenever I’m disappointed by an outcome, I try to turn it around, to use it as a motivating moment. I find it unhelpful to turn inward and feel sorry for myself. I’ll tweak the first fifty pages of my debut novel again and pitch some more agents and small press because I want to get to yes.

I flew to Charleston, South Carolina, on Juneteenth National Independence Day. I came for work, but also wanted to visit the Old Slave Mart Museum. It’s ironic that the biggest slave trading city in the states has become one of the best sources of education about worldwide slavery.

Juneteenth marks a critical moment in our U.S. history. Union soldiers marched into Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to enforce President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation to free the slaves. Back then, Charleston was one of the richest cities in the world because of the skills of enslaved African Americans on the rice plantations in the Carolinas.

Last Saturday, I visited Charleston’s Slave Mart Museum when it opened and the place filled up quickly. I asked the staff whether many visitors attended on Freedom Day as Juneteenth is often called. The answer was a resounding yes: it was packed. Part of the exhibit highlights how successful fugitives tended to be more educated, how they published books, poetry and newspapers. Many of them learned to read and write well enough to forge the documents they needed to escape.

On display were the shackles, brands and whips that left brutal marks on slaves. Maya Angelou is also quoted: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” When the city outlawed the sale of slaves on the streets back in 1856, the Slave Mart opened along with several other locations in the area. The business of buying and selling slaves continued for seven more years. Inside the museum walls, there was a jail, a slave pen, a kitchen, and a morgue.

In 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation Act freed slaves in the southern states that were part of the Confederacy, but enforcement was necessary. The Civil War shut down the Slave Mart in Charleston in 1863, but trading in slaves continued in other locations around the city until soldiers evacuated all slaves two years later. It wasn’t until Congress ratified the 13th Amendment (in December 1865), that slavery officially ended throughout the country. Five years ago, Juneteenth became a federal holiday.

In 1938, Miriam B. Wilson, daughter of a decorated Union soldier, bought the Old Slave Mart and turned it into the country’s first African American arts and crafts museum. She named it the Old Slave Mart Museum to honor its grave history. Wilson operated the museum on a shoestring until her death in 1959. It stayed in private hands, continuing as a crafts museum, then closed in 1987. The city of Charleston bought the building. With help from the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission, Charleston transformed the Mart into a slave history museum that opened its door in 2006. It was the first of its kind in the country.

On placards through the two-story museum, the bleak history of slavery unfolds. About 9.5 million enslaved people were brought from western Africa, north of Namibia: Angola, the Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Beginning in the 1400s, there were 50,000 voyages across the Atlantic spanning several hundred years. Nearly twenty percent of the Africans transported in the holds of these ships died or committed suicide on the voyage. Those who survived were delivered to South America (about 50 percent), mostly to Brazil for the production of sugar. Slaves were also sold throughout the Caribbean, Cuba, and America.

About the same number of slaves that went to Barbados came to the states. Tobacco farmers in Virginia and Maryland, rice farmers in the Carolinas, and cotton throughout the south (after the Revolutionary War) were the staples that slaves produced. Roughly forty percent of all African slaves that arrived in the United States disembarked at Charleston’s Gadsden’s Wharf. On my last trip to Charleston, a park ranger guiding a ferry ride out to Fort Sumter (where the Civil War began) talked about the significance of the wharf. He emphasized how Charleston cannot hide from its history.

Juneteenth has evolved into a celebration for African Americans. Family gatherings, community events, singing and prayer are all part of it. James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing is considered the unofficial national anthem for the descendants of enslaved people. Red-colored food reminds celebrants of the blood shed during the centuries of their ancestral enslavement.

Amid the gruesome tale of how slavery unfolded, the museum also highlights the positive strides that were made along the way. Of all the cities along the eastern seaboard, Charleston established the first school for blacks in 1695. New York City opened their school in 1704. And the New York African Free School, established in 1787, trained some of the 19th century’s main black leaders. Lincoln University, the first black college, was founded in 1854. Two decades after the Civil War, a network of black colleges had proliferated for the first generation of free men and women.

The Old Slave Mart Museum was a heartbreaking experience, but one that I will never forget. It brought me closer to understanding the meaning behind Juneteenth National Independence Day and the importance of never forgetting.

As we rounded a bend on a sandy unpaved road in northeast Namibia, we came head to head with a hippo in Bwabwata National Park. Rodeo quickly put the camper in reverse to get out of its way. We were surprised to see one emerging from the bush in broad daylight, since hippos are mostly aquatic creatures.

The name, hippopotamus, is Greek for river horse, but this creature didn’t look anything like a horse. He had short legs, a wide body and an enormous head. He looked more like an awkward oversized pig than an elegant stallion. Hippos are the third largest land mammal in Africa behind the African elephant and the rhinoceros, but by far the most dangerous. They can easily weigh up to three thousand pounds and although like horses, they are herbivores, they have a deadly bite. It was the closest we came to a direct conflict with this awkward giant. When he chose not to charge us, but instead returned to the river, we felt lucky.

Over the next week, we explored the hippo population in two of three rivers we visited: the Kavango and the Kwando, both meandering and relatively slow moving. The Zambezi River was too swollen for the likes of hippos who prefer calmer, more shallow river habitat for grazing. In the other two rivers, dozens of hippos feasted on grasses and water lilies, remaining mostly submerged, only their eyes and noses above water. Namibia has about three thousand hippos in all, but in Zambia to the northeast, there are an estimated thirty-seven thousand hippos vying for territory on its rivers. I pity the subsistence fishermen in those tippy wood canoes as they are most at risk of fatality because of their livelihood. Hippos have been known to knock the fishermen out of their boat to bite them.

We took three separate river tours, two arranged through resorts where we stayed when we needed a break from camping (about every six days), but our favorite was at Ngulu Island campground. Dan Stephens, a river guide who has lived beside the Kwando for over twenty years, spent five hours with us early one morning. He took us on a small pontoon boat to an island where we hiked. Along the way, we saw dozens of little bee eaters, purple martins, eagles and kingfishers, and several harems of hippos. Usually, the hippos consist of one alpha male accompanied by multiple females and young ones. They defend their stretch of river to outsiders. Dan once had a hippo try to climb onto his pontoon boat, but managed to power away from it.

A hippo normally grazes in the river during the day and meanders on shore at night to eat more grass when it’s colder out. During the cold, dry season, when we visited, the outside air temperature fluctuated as much as fifty degrees.

Hippos consume up to eighty pounds of grass per day. Mamas have their babies in the river, where they nurse their young. To suckle, the babies fold their ears closed before sinking beneath the river’s surface to nurse in private. They can hold their breath for up to thirty minutes, so it’s often hard to figure out exactly how many are in each harem.

We followed Dan’s advice the next day and visited a wild camp site where our only neighbors were a hippo family leisurely grazing the full length of the river, a few babies in tow. They kept a close eye on us, but didn’t seem to mind our presence. After dark, they made lots of noise. Rodeo stayed awake for much of it, complaining they were too loud. I wore ear plugs and a noise canceling headset, so I slept like a baby. The next morning, Rodeo played his favorite Doris Day song for the hippos: “Good morning, good morning, it’s great to stay up late, good morning, good morning to you and you and you.” I doubted the hippos appreciated his early morning ritual, but it made him feel better after such a sleepless night.

At a busy campground the next night, we set up our camper on a grassy knoll across a dirt road from the river. A woman with a toddler came up to me: “A hippo was grazing right where you’re parked at eleven o’clock last night.” I thanked her for the warning and told her about the multiple crocodile signs at the other end of the campground. She was in a tent near the water’s edge, so I worried a bit for her safety.

That night, I heard the hippo, right outside our camper. I envisioned her as female. She sounded pleased with herself, grunting as she ate. I felt remarkably at ease inside the hard-sided camper only a few feet from this giant. She was minding her business and I was minding mine, no head-to-head conflict between us. In the morning, I poked my head out the front door and she was gone.

I sometimes come across a book that I never want to end. Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows was that read for me. I crammed it into my overstuffed suitcase last month and took it on a three-week camping trip to Namibia, Africa, because I knew I would regret leaving it on my nightstand at home.

A good book marks time. I remember where I read it, how I felt, and what it cracked open inside me. Renkl’s book revolves around her appreciation for birds and bees and plants and wildlife in her own backyard. She doesn’t travel for her stories, but cultivates her stories through the creation of a pollinator garden. There are fifty-two essays in all, spanning an entire year, reflecting what comes with the change of season.

I limited myself to a chapter per night, reading it right before bed, and carried the hardback book with me on several work trips in early April. Reading about the bluebird nesting box helped settle my busy mind. Rodeo and I dreamed of returning to Namibia at the beginning of the dry season, a less touristy time of year, a different season, and we wanted to do it while the last trip was fresh (see The Waterholes of Etosha; and Saving the Cheetahs). With no vacation time, I applied for a reduced schedule for May and got it. It was a scramble to pull it all together at the last minute, so I leaned into Renkl’s book each night to escape like a kid into Neverland. Thanks to her seemingly effortless prose, I slept quite well each night.

These well-crafted stories reflect Renkl’s own relationship with the environment. The author lives with her husband near Nashville, Tennessee, and pens a weekly column for The New York Times. Each chapter is accompanied with a colorful work of art that her talented brother, Billy Renkl, created. His visual contribution makes the book even more of a treasure.

Her written word was like a tonic for me, it helped me breathe easier and slow down, preparing me, it seemed, for the trip to come. We would explore the Zambezi region, where three major rivers flow down from Angola and Zambia. Over four hundred species of birds feed off the bugs in these grasslands and the fish in the swollen river. I had my camera ready, my battery charged, two new sim cards in place, and a compact camera bag. I felt much better equipped on this second visit to Namibia. Little things like navigating the airport, finding the rental car counter, and driving on the opposite side of the road, seemed much easier this time. We even knew what grocery stores we preferred.

As the sun rose over the Kavango River that first week of the trip, I finished Renkl’s book. It was early in the morning, my favorite time of day, the fast-moving river attracting all kinds of activity. Angola was just across the river to the north, Zambia and Zimbabwe to the east, Botswana to the south. As I relaxed beside Rodeo in our hard-sided camper, the sunshine warmed the riverine grasses around us, inspiring a chorus of birds. Pied kingfishers, little bee eaters, and crimson-breasted shrikes sang their joyous melodies. The screened windows of our camper kept the bugs out, but let the bird song pour in. I marveled at the complexity of their music.

On most trips, I leave a book behind as a gift for the hotel library, the camp host, or the bed and breakfast staff, but I held onto this one. It is tucked in my roller bag beneath our camp bed now, a gift from a good friend who has her own pollinator garden. I will carry it home along with my portable yoga mat and leftover malaria pills, keeping it as a memento to the birds of the Kavango, Kwando, and Zambezi rivers, who delight in their early morning rituals.

When I was five years old, I thought the moon was following me. Sitting in the back of our station wagon, I gazed up at the giant round disk in the sky and noticed how it lit up the lake, the street, the trees, and the fancy homes perched beside Lake Michigan. As Mom drove north to our townhouse in the suburbs, the Moon hung right over my shoulder for the entire ride. Its constant presence scared me a bit.

I didn’t know anything about the Moon’s gravitational pull and how it influences the tidal movement of the Earth’s oceans. I lived far from the sea in the heart of the Midwest, but I knew the Moon was special. Its magnetism captivated me.

This fascination followed me right into adulthood. I was based in Orlando for a month and squeezed in a visit to the Kennedy Space Center at Merritt Island, Florida, between work trips. It broke my heart to realize we were letting Russia transport our astronauts to the Space Station, rather than getting them there ourselves. It seemed that NASA’s sights had shifted toward unmanned exploration. For me, it wasn’t the same without humans involved in the exploration. The golden age of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, the first two men to ever walk on the Moon (1969), seemed a relic from our collective past.

All of that changed earlier this month. Thanks to the Artemis project, we, as a country, are back in the space race. On April 1, four brave astronauts launched in a capsule atop a twenty-five-story rocket to circle the Moon on a ten-day voyage. It is a stepping stone project, where the ultimate mission is a crewed flight to Mars. I’m a news junky, so I read every story published in the national newspaper for updates on Orion’s progress. I wanted to know about the challenges the astronauts faced daily, whether the spacecraft’s toilet got fixed (it was just a sensor) and how long it took for communication to be restored when they glided past the Moon (it was temporary).

The crew traveled two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred and sixty miles, the furthest into space that humans have ever gone. In a narrow body jet, the longest flight I’ve ever flown is three thousand three hundred and thirty-one miles, (Seattle to Liberia, Costa Rica), just a fraction of Orion’s distance.

As the days ticked by on the mission, I worried about the space capsule’s re-entry. A cracked heat shield on the first unmanned voyage of Orion had NASA scrambling for a fix on the second one. And it worked. Scientists opted to bring the capsule directly in through the atmosphere. Artemis II splashed down Friday, April 10, off the San Diego shore. I knew they’d landed because as I flew passengers from Newark, New Jersey, to San Diego, other pilots cheered on the standby radio frequency we all regularly monitor. The parachutes deployed and the capsule glided down for a soft landing in the ocean. It was a green light for the project’s next stage.

Fifty years ago, the Apollo program achieved six flights into space over three years, remarkable for that era. But the Artemis project is equally ambitious. With a tenth of the funding of the Apollo program in today’s dollars, NASA plans to dock the Orion spacecraft with lunar landing equipment in a low-Earth orbit by 2027. The following year (2028), astronauts hope to land on the moon with Artemis IV and Artemis V for scientific exploration.

While Armstrong has long since passed (he died in 2012), astronaut Buzz Aldrin is still alive. He is now 96 years old, living on his own in the San Fernando Valley. I once met him on a flight from Phoenix to Portland, Oregon. He graciously came up to the flight deck to talk to us and complimented me on my landing. He genuinely wanted to know about my path to flying for a major airline, something that struck me as amazing given his background. When we asked if we could let the other passengers know about him being on board, he humbly declined. Buzz was so willing to spend time with us and take photos that it made me feel that much closer to what we’d achieved back then and to what we are achieving now.

I dream of one day flying to the Moon just like him. It’s a thrill to know that our focus as a country is shifting as success in space leads us further away from the Earth’s atmosphere. And the Moon waits patiently for us.

Nestled in the steep Aconcagua Valley near the small town of Panquehue, Chile, Don Maximiano Errazuriz created a hobby vineyard way back in 1870. When the farm passed to his daughter, Leonor, this mother of four turned it into a thriving winemaking phenomenon. With presidents, diplomats, and writers in the family, the lasting legacy of the Errazuriz family can be found in a bottle.

In 2004, Errazuriz took first and second place in an international blind wine tasting competition in Berlin, Germany, beating out the French and Italians. Vintner Eduardo Chadwick, a fifth generation family member, helped put Chilean wines into the international spotlight. He is still the winemaker at Errazuriz and continues to win awards for his flavorful creations.

In late March, Rodeo and I flew to Santiago, rented a car, and headed north toward the smaller city of Los Andes, the beginning of the Chilean wine route to visit Errazuriz. At this time of year, the children are back in school and taxes are due, so hardly any Chileans are traveling. Like Napa and Sonoma Valley in California, the vineyards of Aconcagua, Casablanca and San Antonio are known for their award-winning varietals.

Before our noon tour at this historic vineyard, I walked a winding path past palm trees and wisteria, admiring the tidy rows of purple fruit growing clear up the hillside in every direction. The surrounding mountains provide a protective shelter for the vines. Each night as the fog rolls in, the temperature fluctuates up to thirty degrees forcing the plants to sink deep roots.

Errazuriz’s newer bodega opened to wine tasting in 2010 and serves as the entrance to the family’s vast cellar. It seamlessly connects to the original brick storage vault, where red wine is aged in French oak barrels then bottled and aged for several more years. Samples of the rich soil from five different growing regions are mounted in giant glass cylinders on the cellar wall. Chile is uniquely located on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the oceanic Nazca Plate subducts beneath the South American plate. This rich volcanic soil is a boon for grape growing.

After visiting the cellar, six of us settled down at a long rectangular wooden dining table to taste four full-bodied red wines, including a carmenere, an eight-grape red blend, a syrah, and a full-bodied reserve cabernet. Between tastes, we cleaned our palate with water and sampled hard and soft cheeses, almonds and cashews, salami, and dried cranberries. I never once got a headache despite sipping wine in the middle of the day. Errazuriz is known for its natural techniques with aging the wine so perhaps that made the difference in how I felt afterwards.

On our way to two other grape growing valleys, we visited the port city of Valparaiso for two nights, then drove south along the coast and inland to a spa in the Casablanca Valley for a restful afternoon. I took advantage of the sauna and indoor swimming pool to get some exercise, while Rodeo lifted weights in a small gym downstairs from our room. On our balcony, green-backed firecrowns and austral thrush darted in and out of a weeping willow tree. For dinner, the hotel restaurant offered excellent sea bass paired with local wine, including an organic option, Emiliana. I was thrilled to see an organic wine on the menu.

The following day, we toured Emiliana, a biodynamic vineyard that claims to be the largest of its kind in the world. Here, the resident chickens fertilize the soil while the lamas mow down the grass between harvests. Even the corkscrew willow trees have a job: they help retain moisture so the surrounding plants can thrive. Solar-powered fans scattered throughout the fields prevent the grapes from freezing in this wider valley. After walking around the property, we sampled a dry riesling, a syrah, and a signature cabernet at a long bar with windows facing the vines.

Our final wine tasting occurred at Casa Marin, a winery known as the closest one to the sea. María Luz Marin and her two sons run this delightful small vineyard in San Antonio. The local rabbits love their grapes so the harvest happens in early February, when the fruit isn’t quite ripe. Casa Marin’s sauvignon blanc is considered the best in the country. They have mastered slope planting, a technique that takes full advantage of the varying soil conditions and the orientation of the plants to the sun.

We didn’t bring any wine home, but the following weekend, I traveled to Denver to celebrate my sister’s birthday and found an Errazuriz reserve cabernet in a local wine shop. The world got a little smaller that day as a thrill shot through me. I knew exactly what that wine tasted like.

Whenever I get a handwritten letter from a friend or relative, I slow down to appreciate a rare moment of connection. Letters are like gifts dropped from the heavens, deserving my full attention. Perhaps this is why I’m so fond of Virginia Evans’ debut novel, The Correspondent, released in 2025.

Sybil Van Antwerp, a retired clerk to a circuit court judge in Maryland, is obsessed with writing letters. Every morning, she sits down to draft one. She writes to family members, famous authors, editors of newspapers, even the president of a local university. The written word is her passion, so the entire book is told through her correspondence. When Sybil has a computer problem, she befriends an employee at a software company via email. Eventually, she helps him find a better job.

This protagonist is an unusual bird. Everyone around her either knows this or figures it out quickly. When her repeated requests to audit a literature class at the local university are denied, she goes to the university and confronts the president, who is a woman. Sybil refuses to take no for an answer. The woman realizes that her new policy is ridiculous and she changes her mind on the spot. Sybil recaps the exchange in a letter to a friend, pleased by the results, and excited to begin a new class.

Her tenacity attracts the likes of two widowed men. They both recognize Sybil’s letter writing obsession and pursue her through her preferred medium. Sybil, who is 78, can hardly believe her predicament. Instead of saying no to either one of them, she explores both relationships, while remaining open about it. And why not?

When she receives a menacing letter from someone affected by a court decision Sybil helped craft years ago, a tiny crack in her steely armor widens over time. She mostly ignores her antagonist, but at one point, he comes to the house and snaps all the blooms off the flowers in her garden. Sybil must face a demon from her own past. She begins to craft the one letter she will never send.

This book almost didn’t get published. The author nearly gave up on the project after pitching it so many times and receiving countless rejections. Luckily, it found a home with a traditional publisher and is available by hardback and audiobook. It is a good reminder of how hard it can be to get books published these days, especially when they deviate from expected norms. Evans, who lives in North Carolina, holds a master’s of philosophy in creative writing from Trinity College in Dublin. I savored her unique approach to storytelling, reading it slowly at night over several weeks.

For me, letters are old fashioned, part of a bygone era that I truly miss. Good books like this have a way of triggering memories from our past. This one made me miss the correspondence I had with my grandfather who lived until he was 91. He used to complain about my poor handwriting. I adapted my letter writing, but only for him. I wrote to Gramp on my Apple computer, printed a copy on an old Epson bubble jet, then signed it and mailed it at the post office. Letters take time, something many of us lack, but letters contribute to solid friendships. Reading them will forever warm my heart.

One of the perks of being a commercial flight crew member is the freedom to live wherever you want. I met a flight attendant recently who is based in San Francisco but lives in Manchester, England. She described it as “the easiest commute ever.” I live in northwest Wyoming, a few states away from Seattle where I work, but I wouldn’t describe my commute as easy.

Last week, I had a fourteen-hour delay getting home due to unforecasted freezing fog and low visibility in Billings. The plane returned to Seattle, the flight canceled. It was close to midnight when I got to sleep. Exhausted from flying all day, I was determined to get home. When flights cancel, the later flights tend to fill up, sometimes for days afterwards. I craved my home like a horse to its stable. I had to find another way to get there. I slept three hours that night, caught a five a.m. flight to Denver, then connected to a Billings flight. I still had a two-hour drive on country roads, so I leaned into coffee to stay awake, pulling up to the house around suppertime. I lost an entire day off just to get home.

Last month on another commute, I got lucky. Sort of. The plane diverted to Spokane, Washington, for a maintenance issue. Two gates down a spare plane enabled us to continue on to Billings. We were on the ground for about an hour total, a small miracle, for sure, just two hours delayed.

In November, my company took a two-day trip from me to train someone, so I didn’t fly that day. Instead, I hopped a late flight home. I felt rested because I hadn’t flown, so I drove home in a wind storm. My car felt like tumbleweed jerking this way and that. On a stretch south of Belfry, Montana, a river parallels the road, attracting elk, deer, pronghorn and foxes. A pronghorn darted out between two sage brush, broadsiding my car. It hit my right rear view mirror then bounced down the full length of my Nissan Rogue. I circled back, but like a phantom, he disappeared into the night. I shiver to think what might have happened had I been in my Toyota Corolla, a much smaller car.

Since the accident, I no longer drive at night south of Billings. Getting home isn’t worth killing an animal or sustaining thousands of dollars worth of damage to my car or risking my life on an icy road. Instead, I stay in a hotel off the interstate and wait until daylight to head home. It takes longer, requires patience and discipline, but it’s safer. Just the other day, three pronghorn crossed the road on my morning drive southbound, but I had plenty of time to brake for them.

So why commute? Why not just live in the city where I work? Seattle is a stunning place to fly into. I have a condo I bought years ago when I first got hired at a major airline. It’s even semi affordable. The drawback is there are 3.6 million people living in the Seattle metro area alone. In Wyoming, there are only half a million people spread out across a state 1.5 times larger than Washington. There’s something to be said for that.

Home is the feeling I get the moment I crest a certain pass southbound on Wyoming Highway 120. The valley opens up and my favorite mountain comes into view. Rodeo and I have hiked it several times. I have set rose petals on its peak to honor George, my step dad; a bouquet of wildflowers for my best friend who died too young; and daisies for my cousin’s husband, who suffered colon cancer, leaving his wife and six children behind. Every time I see this mountain, my heart slows in my chest and my shoulders soften.

It is a wilderness area where grizzlies and pronghorn roam freely. It isn’t just the outdoors that draws me back here. It’s coffee get-togethers with good friends on the weekends whenever I’m home. It’s my creaky hundred-year-old house near Main Street with two cats buried in the backyard. It’s the walks I take to the river where bald eagles and muskrats hunt. I have lived all over the country for my flying career, from Bellingham, Washington, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but there is no place that warms my heart like northwestern Wyoming. For me, commuting is a choice I continue to make, despite the on-going challenges of getting to this rural community. I’m lucky to have a job that gives me the freedom to live where I feel right at home.

A band of four giraffes graze on thorn bushes beside the dirt road, their long necks stretched out to nibble the tops of the trees. They are the last we see of large land mammals before heading to a notorious stretch of African coastline. The ocean here is a graveyard of ships, large and small, littering the sea floor.

We are bound for a campsite just shy of the park entrance, hoping it will be open and available. Without a reservation, one never knows, but the smattering of rolling red hills, like a Georgia O’Keefe painting, make this excursion worth it. One hundred and thirty five million years ago a fracture in the earth split the continental shelf in two. As multiple eruptions of basalt lava sculpted this landscape, Africa and South America drifted apart allowing the Atlantic Ocean to fill in the space. Only the most adaptive plants and bugs thrive in this ancient desert. Moisture here is drawn exclusively from the fog that rolls in daily off the coast.

Namibia’s national plant, the welwitschia, is a good example of resilience. Protected for its importance to the landscape, these unique plants thrive by spreading their fine roots along the surface of the soil to soak up moisture. Welwitschia are related to pine trees but look more like battered weeds flung from the earth. Some of them are several thousand years old. They grow only in Namibia and southwest Angola, providing sustenance to zebras, rhinos, and oryx (an African antelope). The plant also serves as habitat for rodents, reptiles, and beetles.

Continuing westward, a rare lone brown hyena crosses the road in front of us. Its shaggy dark brown coat, pointed ears, and striped legs make him easy to identify. Brown hyenas are the trash collectors of nature, eating whatever carrion washes up on shore. Like wolves, they form packs and help rear their young. He keeps moving, never once looking back at us.

Arriving at the campsite just before sunset, Simon, the caretaker, greets us with a toothless grin. I heave a sigh of relief that we can stay here for the night. He lives in a small house across the road. When I offer him biscuits, he gratefully accepts the gift. He locks us into a fenced area for the evening, to keep us safe from large mammals, giving us a key to the restroom, though we are the only ones there.

The last glow of sunshine turns the hills purple as we settle in for the night. A damp chill whips through camp on a coastal breeze, so we bundle up to make dinner then fall asleep early. In the morning, we arrive at the park entrance right as it opens. We fill out paperwork, but pay no fees since we are passing through the park. Much of the Skeleton Coast is closed to visitors, so we visit the southern end, where the road parallels the ocean for many miles.

The pounding surf is a reminder of the wildness of this place. Occasionally, coastal lions are seen roaming the beaches here, but we never catch sight of them. We do spy one of the few remaining shipwrecks still visible on this shore, the South West Seal, a fishing boat that experienced an engine fire back in 1976. The skipper opted to beach the rig to put out the fire, the waves serving as a natural retardant. All eight crew members survived, rescued by another fishing vessel.

Further down the beach are the rusted remains of a drill rig, a business gone bust. The operator, who had first tried diamond mining, switched to oil exploration, then finally abandoned the site in the 1970s. White-breasted cormorants embraced it as a breeding ground, but when the derrick collapsed, they too flew the coop.

Anglers snag cob on fishing lines cast out from the sandy shore. The Benguela Current is right offshore so the ocean is rich with nutrients, drawing the likes of seals. Just to the south is the largest cape fur seal colony in the world, a cacophonous other worldly experience, well worth a visit. There’s an elevated walking platform that enables visitors to get close to the mothers and pups. Mamas only birth one pup per year, nursing them on the beach for nine months. By September, when we arrived, the babies were nearly weaned. After fishing, the mothers return to shore, where they use scent and a unique call to find their pup. It is a raucous reunion.

By the time we roll into the campground in Henties Bay, my hair is a salty mess. The campground is neatly raked and we have our own private bathroom that feels like pure luxury compared to the night before. Still, the Skeleton Coast stays in my memory like a crazy dream I can’t shake.

Munich is a good halfway point on the long journey to Africa. We passed through this gateway city on our way to Namibia in early September, arriving on an all-night flight from Denver. Struggling to navigate the airport’s train station, we stood bleary-eyed in front of the kiosk’s map while several trains departed without us. In the end, Marienplatz, where our hotel was located, is one of the easiest destinations to get to, but it didn’t feel that way at the time.

It was still too early to check in when we finally arrived, so we dropped our bags off in the lobby and explored the bustling pedestrian zone outside the hotel. New Town Hall was only half a block away. A carillon, high in its tower, chimes while figurines come out onto a balcony and spin around a few times a day. Everyone in the square stopped to watch. For us, the fresh air and sunny skies gave us the energy we needed to push through our jet lag and the glockenspiel put us all in a better mood.

We walked several miles that afternoon orienting ourselves and making plans for the following morning when we hoped to be more rested. Once we checked into our hotel, we got a recommendation for a tasty local restaurant. The Ratskeller has outdoor seating in a cozy courtyard right off Marienplatz. While my spouse sampled the local sausages and sauerkraut, I devoured a warm chanterelle mushroom salad. We split a glass of German white wine along with a dessert of crème brûlée. Retreating to our quiet room, we fell fast asleep after staying up for more than twenty-four hours.

In the morning, our hotel, the Schlicker, served an amazing breakfast buffet: fresh figs cut like four-leaf clovers, carrot sticks and sliced cucumbers, made-to-order eggs, pastries, charcuterie, smoked salmon, and delicious coffee. We took our time nibbling nuts and yogurt and berries before heading outdoors. Church hopping in the old city center on a Sunday seemed appropriate.

Munich got its name from the people who settled here first: the monks. Way back in the 11th century, this city center was part of the Salt Road from Salzburg, Austria to Germany. Munich has always been the Catholic hub of Bavaria. Five spectacular churches are clustered within a few blocks of each other: St. Michaels, Frauenkirche, St. Peter’s, Heilig-Geistkirche and Asamkirche. We climbed the tower steps of St. Peter’s, the oldest church in town (1368), for a view of the entire city. Munich awash in the mid morning light felt like a wink. Much of the city has been rebuilt since World War II, including this church tower.

In St. Michael’s, we listened to organ music and bowed our heads in prayer as the sermon began. The church’s white marble interior is breathtaking. We meandered past the local synagogue, Ohal Jakob, with its distinct painted front door, a symbol of the newly revived Jewish quarter. In the 1930s, about ten thousand Jews lived in the city. The old synagogue stood near here. In 1938, Hitler had it torn down. By the end of the war, there were no Jews left in Munich. Germans have since accepted religious refugees from the former Soviet Union, so the population is back to its original size.

Built in 2006, this synagogue has a travertine exterior wall that mimics the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Its front door reveals the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet, symbolizing the Ten Commandments.

We visited the Residenz, a palace of the Wittelsbachs, a merchant family who took over the salt trade after the passing of Henry the Lion, who started it all. The family jewels are on display for all to gawk at and we did. Afterwards, Rodeo and I kicked back in a gazebo at a local park and listened to a solo violinist perform Bach preludes.

On our return from Africa, we stayed near Munich’s English Garden, the largest city park on the continent. It was too cold for bike riding, so we grabbed umbrellas provided by the hotel, and explored this massive park, dining at a beer garden. While celebrants partied at OktoberFest, we retreated to the Alte Pinakothek, an austere museum brimming with religious art. Rubens, Rembrandts, and Strigels graced the walls, along with a fragment from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

We ate Asian fusion that night, ordering far too many dishes, amazed by the variety of flavors. For sweets, Munich has much to offer. The pastries and chocolates were a little too good. I discovered one of my all-time favorite desserts here: a spoon full of vanilla ice cream in a shot of espresso. Maybe that’s why Munich is home to the largest park on the continent: to walk off all that tasty food.

I find myself gravitating toward a couch or bed to curl up with a good book through the dark days of winter. In this look back for 2025, I bounce around genres but remain firmly in the lanes of fiction, historical fiction, essay, and memoir. These books share similar themes that revolve around the family we have or the family we create over the years.

My Friends by Fredrik Backman

From Beartown author Fredrik Backman comes a new novel about a young woman, Louisa, who survives multiple foster homes and is a huge fan of C. Jat, a famous artist. Louisa meets the artist in an alley, where they paint graffiti on a wall together, shortly before he dies. When Louisa is bequeathed the artist’s most precious painting, her journey begins to find a place in the world and a new group of friends.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon

Midwife Martha Ballard lives in a small town in Maine, when the mangled body of an unpopular resident is cut from the frozen river. Loosely based on a midwife from 1789, Ballard believes the man was murdered. Knowing the secrets of so many of the town’s women, Ballard helps solve the murder, but a familial twist is the bitter tonic she must endure.

The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee

Famous for her 1960 novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pulitzer Prize winning author Harper Lee died nine years ago having published only one other book, Go Set a Watchman. In this delightful collection of short stories and essays from years ago, Harper’s distinct southern voice rings through. I plowed through this book over the holidays, wishing I’d met the sassy author who created one of the most memorable characters of the 20th century.

The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson

A mythical adventure awaits readers of this Pulitzer Prize winning author, Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master’s Son, 2012). Set in the 1400s, war and domination are common in French Polynesia. Kōrero, a bold and curious daughter of a fisherman and a tattoo artist, finds a fishhook-shaped pendant in a graveyard that leads to a transformative quest to save her people from starvation. In this epic tale that reads more like a poem than a novel, the wayfinder isn’t who we expect.

LA Weather by María Amparo Escandón

Three-year-old twins narrowly escape drowning in a mucky backyard pool at their grandparents home in the opening scene. Oscar, the patriarch of the family, is obsessed with the Weather Channel, but he doesn’t tell anyone why. He retreats from the family to watch TV, keeping a secret from his wife. After nearly 40 years of marriage, Keila announces she wants a divorce from Oscar, but the daughters make them work on their marriage for one more year. While their three daughters make a mess of their relationships over the next twelve months, a distinct shift in the weather and mood in the family house takes hold pulling them all together in this delightful read.

Knife by Salman Rushdie

Surviving a knife attack proved touch and go, but writing about it seems even harder. Salman Rushdie’s near death experience after sustaining fifteen stab wounds, is a look at life from the point of view of a victim. Rushdie lost the function of his right eye in the attack, but gained a new found appreciation for the loved ones who supported him throughout his tenuous recovery. I tried reading The Satanic Verses twice over the years, but failed to make it through the first chapter, yet this memoir pulled me in tight until its last page. Rushdie’s survival is nothing short of a miracle. His prose is like the beat of a heart: slow and steady.

Wishing you a happy new year filled with great books.

Chameleons in the wild are quick to change their color to keep themselves safe from predators. In the flight deck, a good first officer tends to be adaptive as well. It’s a supportive role in the right seat, one that requires a sharp skill set and the ability to mirror a captain’s style and pace.

I fly a mid-size commercial jet to Alaska, Hawaii, the East Coast, Mexico and Costa Rica as a first officer for a major airline. There are plenty of opportunities for unexpected weather, air traffic delays, and maintenance problems, but I always strive to be standard because it helps the flight go smoothly. The dynamic in the flight deck changes depending on who is setting the tone. That always comes from the captain. While it helps to have flown with them before, since they each have their own idiosyncrasies, it rarely happens these days because our company has grown so much. Instead, I’m forced to channel my inner chameleon.

Captains shoulder the final say in an emergency, but during normal operations, both pilots swap flight duties and work as a team. Backing each other up from the departure city to the destination, some pilots are better team players than others. When personality conflicts arise — it is rare — I treat it like a treasure hunt. I search for something to like about my captain. And when I find it, I focus on that and try to shed the rest.

I have a personal struggle with negative people because they tend to suck the oxygen out of the flight deck. Sometimes my hunt for something positive takes a while. For this storyteller, the flight deck is a ripe environment for learning about what makes people tick. I take full advantage of the hours we spend together to learn about my seatmate. I often can remember their life story better than their last name.

It helps that I’ve served as a captain at my two previous airlines. I know what it’s like to have a weak first officer or someone completely disengaged from their job. I don’t want to be that person. When things happen, I try to formulate a plan in my head that I think will work. If a captain asks for my input, I have a thoughtful answer.

Medical diversions can be stressful. Flying over the northern Rockies bound for Atlanta one recent day, a flight attendant called us to report a passenger in cardiac arrest. We needed to get the plane on the ground as soon as possible. My captain, who was flying, asked for my advice on where we should divert because I knew the area better than he did. We were close to Billings, Montana, a place I regularly commute to. The hospital in Billings is only a mile from the airport, so I suggested we go there. Within fifteen minutes, we were on the ground. Billings paramedics whisked our passenger off the plane on a gurney bound for the local emergency room. I’m pleased to report she survived the ordeal.

A pilot’s prior experience can make a big difference when issues arise. At my previous airline, I often endured unexpected maintenance problems and irregular operations. It conditioned me to keep my cool whenever something out of the ordinary occurred. The things we have no control over can be the most frustrating if we let it get to us. Flying into Costa Rica the other day, the airport closed so the workers could take a scheduled half hour break. My captain nearly blew a gasket. We’d already flown six hours by then, so we were both ready to land.

While he vented, I got busy supporting him. I modified the computer to set us up for a race-track hold in the sky about sixty miles from the airport. I made an announcement to the passengers, talked to the flight attendants, and told our company. After a few laps in the holding pattern, my captain calmed down and we finally landed when the tower reopened. We had plenty of fuel so the delay didn’t force us to divert.

Honing adaptive skills can be the single most powerful tool an aviator has. It’s definitely a mindset to adapt to your seatmate and the circumstances that arise while flying. Having a plan in one’s head, even if it never comes to pass, lowers my blood pressure and helps me provide the kind of support I always hoped to get as a captain. A good first officer can make a difference.

Planning a trip to one of the world’s least populated countries felt a lot like stepping out on a thin limb of a massive tree. I wondered when I’d hear a snap and tumble to the ground. Over the past summer, I read a travel book about Namibia, cover to cover, and studied a map I’d bought online. I was trying to figure out a route from Windhoek, the capital, for our three-week camping adventure, but there were too many choices.

Wedged between South Africa and Angola, Namibia is a vast land with four distinct regions: the Namib Desert, the Central Plateau, the Kalahari Desert, and the Bushveld. When comparing its size to Europe, Namibia could contain all of France, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. It’s huge.

I booked a camper from a South African company, Maui Britz, paid in full, then promptly worried that I’d been swindled. I talked myself off the ledge deciding that as long as my travel buddy, Rodeo, was at my side, we’d be fine.

For two airline pilots beholden to a schedule, traveling at our own pace seemed the only way to go. Namibia is safe and set up for independent travelers. When we arrived in Windhoek, I called the rental car company and talked to the same gal who booked my reservation. Had I known last summer, what I know now, I wouldn’t have worried a bit.

After a day of rest in the city, we got a ride to pick up our camper and watched a safety video about driving in Namibia. It isn’t safe at night because of the big game. Our agent briefed us on the idiosyncrasies of the camper. Finally set free, we were on our way toward the Waterberg Plateau.

The travel book recommended a clockwise route, so naturally I planned the trip in the opposite direction. We skirted the Kalahari, drove up the center of the country, then circled to the far north and then west through the stark Skeleton Coast. Down the Atlantic Coast, we drove through the oldest desert in the world, the Namib.

Of all the camping adventures we’ve had abroad, (Scotland, Australia, and Iceland), the rig in Africa was our best. It was a hard-sided camper mounted on a diesel Hilux pickup truck with four-wheel drive. We had a toilet, fridge, two-burner cook stove, queen bed, and two elevated windows that offered a nice cross breeze. We left the bed extended during the day and ate outdoors for all our meals. A portable table and two remarkably comfortable camp chairs made it easy.

When the wind wasn’t blowing, I could even cook outside. A secondary two-burner stove top popped out from the side of the camper. So cool. On hot days, it was handy. For groceries, we’d stop in various small towns. Rodeo stayed with the camper while I shopped. It’s one of my many quirks: I love grocery shopping in foreign countries. I learn so much about a town and a culture going up and down each aisle. In Rehoboth, for instance, they had an entire aisle dedicated to school supplies.

I created our route based on seeing the most wildlife. It paid off. Within the first fifteen minutes of the drive, Rodeo, who is obsessed with dirt roads, found one where baboons, springbok, and klipspringer were scattered about.

There are private and government campgrounds all over the country. Reservations are encouraged, but not required. I booked six nights in advance at two popular national parks, then left the remaining two weeks up in the air.

Wild camping is illegal in Namibia. We found the private campgrounds, usually on cattle and goat farms, far more comfortable than the government-run ones. All of them had flush toilets, but only the private ones had reliable hot showers. Some even had private toilets for each campsite.

Most of the other campers, many from South Africa, had tents that popped up on top of their trucks. When the wind blew and the desert dirt clouded the sky, I was pleased to be sleeping inside. One day, we got carried away around the salt flats near Walvis Bay. The flamingos there are numerous. To the south are some amazing badlands, but we found ourselves without permits for camping. When night descended, we needed to park our rig but we had miles to go.

We pulled over near the Rostock Ritz Desert Lodge, a private stretch of land owned by a famous guy in Swakopmund, named Kucki. He once crashed a small airplane but managed to survive, so he mounted the wreckage on the wall in his restaurant. We’d eaten there the night before. I hazard a guess that Kucki wild camped all the time, so we settled down for the night right near his privacy fence and far enough off the road to feel safe.

I made Rodeo promise me that he wouldn’t go outdoors after dark in case a spotted hyena or a wayward lion came through camp. Nothing happened and we woke up to another spectacular sunrise in Namibia.

A cheetah’s eyes remind me of jack-o’-lanterns. They glow with a distinct indifference. Black vertical stripes run like tears down the cat’s face. Its smallish head, round ears and spotted fur give cheetahs the perfect camouflage in the African savanna. They are the fastest land mammals on earth, able to sprint up to 75 mph to catch their prey. A quarter of all the cheetahs in the world live in Namibia.

When I read about the Cheetah Conservation Fund outside the town of Otjiwarongo, I knew we had to go there. The world headquarters is about halfway between the country’s capital of Windhoek and Etosha National Park. At the beginning of our three-week camping adventure in Namibia, I didn’t want to miss seeing such a beautiful creature. I worried that we wouldn’t see one in the wild. Their total numbers have dwindled from a hundred thousand to about twelve thousand in the last century.

The morning that Rodeo and I arrived at the nonprofit’s world headquarters, the staff had successfully released a rehabilitated cheetah. Excitement rippled through the place like an electrical current. The Kalahari Desert, prime cheetah habitat, is just to the east offering up a massive territory for roaming with plenty of small antelope to hunt.

American zoologist Laurie Marker founded the cheetah fund with a mission to save these cats from extinction. Since its creation thirty five years ago, Marker has grown the conservancy to 165,000 acres of mixed use land. What began as a research outpost is now a model in conservation and education, all to benefit the cheetah. Scientists believe that two historic events from thousands of years ago limited the number of cheetahs on earth, forcing them to inbreed. Consequently, cheetahs are not as adaptive to habitat loss. Successful reproduction is also a challenge for them. And raising their young can be daunting. Many predators, including lions, hyenas, and male cheetahs prey on young cheetah cubs. Farmers sometimes kill cheetahs thinking they are a threat. And poachers are known to steal the cubs to sell them as exotic pets.

On a guided tour inside a cheetah enclosure, we sat in the back of a safari truck with three other couples and entered a high fenced area, about twenty acres in size. Three female cheetahs are permanent residents here and they are having breakfast. One cheetah in particular, named Nandi, stole my heart. As a cub, Nandi was reared by humans. She used to accompany her owners to town in the car. When owning cheetahs became illegal, she came to the conservation fund to live.

After eating, Nandi plopped down beneath the rear axle of our truck, forcing us to stay longer in her enclosure. She is fourteen years old, ancient compared to wild cheetahs who don’t typically live past ten. This diva doesn’t get along with the other two females. Nandi steals their food whenever she can and seems to prefer the company of humans.

The Cheetah Conservation Fund’s most successful outreach program involves helping local farmers identify predators and devise creative solutions to decrease their livestock losses. After visiting Nandi, we drove into the dog breeding area, where Turkish Anatolian shepherds are bred and sold to local farmers to protect their livestock. The dogs bond with goats or sheep or cattle, and then stand between them and the predators, attacking an intruder only if necessary. Usually, their ferocious bark does the trick.

So far, the fund has placed 650 dogs on farms around Namibia, helping to decrease livestock losses by as much as eighty percent. This success indirectly helps local cheetahs because farmers realize the cats aren’t a threat, so they leave them alone. It’s a program that has expanded into South Africa, Botswana, and Tanzania.

Rodeo and I had already met a massive Turkish Anatolian shepherd at our campsite on a private farm our second night in Namibia. She was huge and let us scratch her belly when we first arrived. That night, she got busy fending off predators. I woke to the howl of jackals and this dog’s loud barks. The next morning, she had a small wound on her forearm, but she seemed fine. It was just another night at work.

At the cheetah headquarters, the permanent residents like Nandi are separated from cheetahs who are being rehabilitated for release into the wild. Males and females are further separated because breeding in captivity isn’t allowed. There is also a veterinary clinic and a research lab with the largest collection of genetic material from more than a thousand cheetahs around Africa. I hated to leave Nandi after the tour, but our camp reservation in Etosha National Park required us to drive halfway into the park by sunset and we had some distance to travel.

That evening within the park boundary, we saw a wild cheetah, its head poking up from the tall grass. A few visitors had pulled over by the side of the road so we joined them. Through binoculars, I spied those vertical black lines that streak down the cat’s face. I couldn’t believe our luck. Seeing a cheetah in the wild lifted my hope for their future.

As we drive through Etosha National Park in Namibia, Africa, two lions cross the gravel road in front of us, stopping all traffic on their way to a private waterhole not on any map. We park a safe distance from the pair, roll down our window and cut the engine. The female crouches down to lap up the water, then drapes herself over the dry mud and spends the next fifteen minutes quenching her thirst. Her mate stands at attention before joining her.

Lions have been heavily hunted throughout Africa, so it feels like a gift to see them so close. With the exception of the national parks, few lions thrive outside protected zones like Etosha. After drinking their fill, they stretch out on the sun-scorched ground in no rush to do anything. When a black-backed jackal trots up in hopes of following them to his next meal, they ignore him. After a few frustrating moments, the jackal moves on. We cherish the next hour as we watch this couple in their natural habitat.

Etosha is the second largest national park in Namibia, and one of the country’s best places to see big game. It is fully fenced to protect the animals from poachers. Black rhinos, African elephants, giraffes, zebras and blue wildebeests abound. There are twelve different varieties of antelope living here, along with leopards, cheetahs, and lions. An assortment of smaller mammals, such as honey badger and spotted hyenas also take up residence, as do plenty of birds.

Natural, manmade, and artesian waterholes sustain these critters through the dry season. September is the best month to view animals when the temperature begins to climb. As we make our way through the park, we notice that every waterhole has a pecking order.

As the matriarch elephant leads the herd to her preferred waterhole, few animals approach as they soak. She is often accompanying one or two babies and stands guard with other adults as the young take a dip. Elephants love to play in water. They are not in a rush to get out, much like children in a bathtub. Once they get back to shore, they use their trunks to spray themselves with dirt. It helps keep them cool and serves as a natural insect repellant. Antelope may take a sip or two while the elephants are frolicking, but no other creatures are at ease until the elephants move along.

At another waterhole, we come upon a single giraffe. There are dozens of kudu nearby, but they wait until the giraffe leaves to take their drink. Giraffes have a powerful kick that can easily kill a large mammal, so the herd is patient. When a rhino approaches a waterhole several springbok jump out of the way. Even the zebras keep a close watch as the rhino rolls in the water to cool off.

At sunset, we retreat to our campground. Halali is a fenced area, so for the first time all day we are finally able to walk outdoors. There are showers and flush toilets, but the best part is a waterhole that is lit up for night viewing. It is a popular stomping ground for black rhinos. Tonight, giraffes share the hole with the rhinos, but when a fight breaks out between two rhinos, the giraffes flee. Rhinos are cantankerous. On another night at this same waterhole, five different rhinos stand at the water’s edge. Two of them start to go at it, when a third one charges the pair at full speed to break up the fight. And it works. The rhinos head off in opposite directions, indignant, but unharmed. An eerie howl announces the arrival of two spotted hyenas. Out of the shadows, these creepy animals take a few sips then disappear into the night.

The next day, I spy a pride of lions, four in all, lounging in high grass. In a blink, they are invisible. A few minutes later, I see a female lion on a hunt in the blazing afternoon heat. She is pure muscle as she makes her way through the tall grass. Rodeo, my spouse, nicknames me the “Lion Spotter.” A lone cheetah, its head poking up from the grass, makes an appearance around sunset. I want so desperately to see a leopard, but it never happens.

After four days in the park, we finally exit through the east gate, knowing our sightings of animals will be less common now because the country is vast and water and grass are scarce commodities. Many miles and a few days later, a solo brown hyena runs at full speed across the gravel road in front of us, most likely afraid of our camper. He is a blur of movement, but we are thrilled to spot him, if only for a moment.

A colorfully beaded Russian MiG-21 graces the floor of the Aviation Pavilion at The Museum of Flight in Tukwila, Washington. South African artist Ralph Ziman has turned a weapon of destruction into a dazzling art sculpture at one of the coolest aviation museums in our country. Tucked amid the B-17 Flying Fortress and Boeing’s 747 and Dreamliner 787, this rainbow-colored supersonic jet is an edgy bright light in the museum’s massive pavilion. Attendees can walk all the way around it to admire the elaborate beading. Even the wheels and the interior control panel are adorned.

Born in Johannesburg, Ziman grew up under Apartheid and his art is defined by it. His repurposing of this supersonic fighter jet into a work of art is remarkable. Its metal skin is now layered with millions of glass beads. Built in 1955, the Russian MiG-21 served as one of the most produced fighter jets of its time (11,000 +), selling to sixty countries over the years.

Artisans from Zimbabwe and South Africa, including women from the Ndebele tribe, strung the beads, while Ziman and his team assembled the strands at the artist’s studio in Los Angeles. The MiG was then transported on three flatbed trucks to Tukwila for its final assembly. Beaded flight suits and helmets are also on display in a separate exhibit hall.

This repurposed jet is the third of a series of works in the Weapons of Mass Production Trilogy, a 12-year art project for Ziman. Last summer, his beaded Casspir armoured vehicle was parked in the pavilion. Ziman’s art spans multiple media. His thriller film, Hearts and Minds, (1995), was the first independent feature film after Apartheid, premiering at festivals in Europe. In 2009, the artist’s Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema, competed in the foreign language category at the Academy Awards.

Ziman’s art has shown all over Europe, South Africa, and the United States. The MiG-21 provides a perfect excuse to spend an afternoon at this amazing aviation museum. It is open daily from ten to five. A cafe on the ground floor offers delicious pre-made salads along with a view of the busy runway at Boeing Field where planes take off and land all day. For an airplane geek like myself, it is quite the live show.

The MiG-21 is on display through January 2026.

I burst into tears the other day showing the sprinkler guy where the cat is buried. He was running new lines in the backyard and I didn’t want him digging the kitty up. “That was a cool cat,” he said. Everyone knew Hawk.

Weighing in at fifteen pounds, kitty wandered into our back yard nine years ago to sleep for hours in the sun. At the end of the day, he would look both ways before crossing the road. In the winter, the temperature plunged to minus sixteen degrees. Rodeo saw him struggling in the snow behind our house and gave him food scraps. A few days later, the cat marched up our shoveled sidewalk crying like a baby. The snow was piled a foot high in the yard. I realized then he was homeless.

My spouse and I both travel for work. We don’t have pets for a reason. It never seemed fair to make an animal endure our constant absence. With the weather so bad and the cat in need, I had no choice but to break from my own rules on pet ownership. I let this tomcat into our house and into my heart. Rodeo was still at work. I gave him fresh water and some canned fish. His fur looked like two long ropey strips down his back. He ate so fast I wondered when he’d had his last meal. His eyes were the color of gold. They reminded me of a bird of prey, so I named him Hawk.

When Rodeo came home that night, Hawk eyed him wearily. The cat was far more suspicious of men than women. As a youngster. I served as a kitty midwife for Maggie, my first cat, who had 82 kittens over ten years. Rodeo had a similar female cat who had multiple litters in the barn when he was a kid. We were cat people. Maybe Hawk sensed that. It took a few days, but he warmed up to both of us. Over the years, he and Rodeo became inseparable.

I waited until spring to clean him up. I cut out the knots down his back and bought him an igloo for the front porch, padding it with blankets. At night, I set out food and water because he liked to patrol the neighborhood like a local sheriff. Every morning, he’d strut inside and head straight to the kitchen cabinet where I kept his brush. He loved our grooming ritual. I would brush his long hair and wipe him down with wet paper towels. He began to groom himself again and his coat got silky.

Hawk followed us around the house like a dog. When we did yoga, he spread out on the mat with us. At dinnertime, he’d plant himself in the middle of the kitchen floor. He liked to taste what we were eating and enjoyed a variety of foods. Feta cheese was his all-time favorite. When Rodeo hurt himself on a dirt bike, Hawk served as a comfort cat, curling up on daddy’s lap for hours on end. Rodeo, who is normally allergic to cats, discovered that Hawk was hypoallergenic.

The cat was a popular fixture in the community. One youngster told me Hawk would walk her home from school each afternoon and sleep on her bed while she did her homework. An older woman dumped wet cat food on our concrete patio. When I confronted her, she said tersely, “Oreo likes this kind of cat food.” I realized she was talking about Hawk. I asked her where she lived and she gestured across the street. She left in a huff. Hawk finally emerged from his igloo looking a bit sheepish. He seemed relieved to get inside the house. I started calling him Lothario.

At Christmas, Hawk was obsessed with all the presents under the tree. He’d chew every bow he could sink his teeth into. I had to flip all the presents over so he’d stop. I put a red bow tie on him for the holiday. He looked pretty dapper for a former homeless kitty.

We discovered he had kidney failure when he needed an incisor pulled. It was infected and he was in agony. We started him on epigone shots and lactated Ringer (an electrolyte cocktail), keeping him alive for a few more years. The vet regularly lectured Hawk about how lucky he was. By the time kitty died, he was old and so sweet. He passed in his sleep two days before the 4th of July on his favorite rug a few feet from where daddy slept. The last four days of Hawk’s life, Rodeo ran a kitty hospice, holding him for hours on end.

It’s hard to come home from work now. The house is so quiet. We turned the back yard into a bird sanctuary, but it’s not the same. A baby robin recently perched on Hawk’s burial mound and spent an entire afternoon learning how to fly in the yard. Tucked between the peonies and the hostas, Hawk is now buried in his favorite sleeping spot, right in the middle of the action.

In southern Spain, I slip into a cafe down the street from my hotel, order up a glass of local white wine, and set up my iPad on an open-air counter facing the narrow cobblestone street. Right then, a grand Andalucían horse struts past, his head high, his gait a rhythmic trot. He proudly pulls three passengers with the ease of an expert. I feel that tingle of being right where I’m meant to be.

The next two hours fly by as I edit my debut novel, The Perfect Pianist. I find that I focus better when I’m away from home, taking full advantage of long flights and solo afternoons to get some work done. And what better place to be than in Córdoba? I don’t normally drink alcohol when I write, but this is Spain and I can’t help myself. The local white wine is phenomenal and the setting, in the old Jewish Quarter, is inviting. During the Middle Ages, this Andalucían city drew the likes of enlightened residents interested in studying philosophy, science, and the arts. Both the Moors and the Romans used Córdoba as a regional capital. It is known for its religious tolerance.

For tourists, the main draw is Mezquita, a well-preserved mosque around the corner from where I am writing. Earlier in the day, Rodeo and I visited the site. It dates back to AD 784 and rivals Granada’s Alhambra, offering up some stunning Moorish architecture. Last minute tickets are usually available, but it’s best to go early, before the crowds descend. Oddly enough, there is an ornate 16th century church built inside the walls of the mosque. It’s difficult to imagine, but once seen, unforgettable because of its integration as if it is meant to be here.

Many visitors to the Iberian Peninsula forgo Córdoba, but it has a joie de vivre that I find refreshing. Built beside the Guadalquivir River, the city’s garden patios, good restaurants, and sizable parks offer plenty of shade during the hot afternoons. Córdoba is lower in elevation than Granada and noticeably warmer. I often find myself hunting out shady spots like this cafe that is open to the street but covered. Within the grounds of the grand mosque, an orange grove serves as a similar comfortable retreat.

After my writing session, I return to the hotel to pick up Rodeo. We are heading to the Patio de Viana, a place recommended by the hostess at our hotel. It happens to be a Wednesday, when the entry fee to these patios is free. The carefully cultivated gardens, part of a fancy home, offer dashes of color and unique design elements. We wander in and out of the house into an assortment of outdoor spaces, including a rose garden, an orange grove, and a garden with potted geraniums mounted up the side of a tall wall. It gives us some creative ideas for our own patio, a three-year work in progress.

For dinner, we head down to the river front for a delicious fish dinner and bountiful salad. The dessert is a delicious flourless chocolate cake with a rich dark chocolate sauce drizzled over it beside a small scoop of vanilla gelato. It tops off my day of indulgence and satiates my gluten-free palate. What a treat it is to eat here.

The next morning, I shop for silver jewelry while Rodeo pays attention to the shopkeeper’s dog, stretched out on the wood floor and happily offering up his belly for a scratch. We are heading back to Madrid on the train in the afternoon, flying home early the next morning. I’m a little sad about it. I feel the need to buy myself a momento, so I purchase two pairs of earrings and a thick silver ring from two different shops before we head to the park for a final lap. After our walk, we sip one more espresso in the park’s cafe before retrieving our luggage and hailing a cab to the train station.

As the train races toward Madrid, I’m pleased that we included Córdoba in our tri-cities visit to southern Spain. Seville and Granada are must-sees, but Córdoba holds its own and rounds out a lovely Spanish adventure.

In the heart of Puget Sound is a thick forest tucked near the northern tip of Bainbridge Island. Walking paths meander through a two-mile circuit of meticulously designed gardens. A neatly trimmed hedgerow towers over an enormous rectangular reflection pool. There are glens of rhododendrons and camellias. The trail spills out into a bee-pollinating meadow where native plants stretch up a hillside and clusters of colorful poppies thrive in the midday sun.

Over the past ten years, I’ve used Bloedel Reserve as a refuge, coming here throughout the seasons for a much needed unwind between work trips. One of my favorite areas in the grove is a Japanese garden with a path that winds through a wooden gate into a sand and stone garden. Beside this meditative space is a guest house with a balcony and sitting area overlooking a brook. Across the paved road is a moss garden. If fairies inhabited the land, they would thrive here amid the fallen logs and stumps.

I rarely come to the island in the summer because the boat ride is crowded and downtown Seattle is often a snarled mess. However, there are exceptions. A performance of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth at Bloedel’s sheep shed seems too much to pass up. The play will start around sunset beside a sprawling meadow with a forest of Douglas fir trees as a backdrop. My mom is visiting from Chicago and up for anything despite her current struggle with mobility. A new shuttle at the reserve (equipped with a ramp) enables us to attend. I can’t wait to see it after hours, so I bring along a picnic dinner and book an afternoon timed entrance to the gardens.

In the 1850s, these woods were clear cut to build the first University of Washington buildings in downtown Seattle. A hundred years later, Virginia and Prentice Bloedel purchased the land from the Collins’ family, expanding the grounds to 150 acres. As the reluctant heir to his father’s timber business, Prentice set out to reforest the area, hiring multiple designers to develop the landscape. He walked the grounds daily believing in the influence of nature on our emotions. The couple planned to eventually open the reserve to the public, establishing the Arbor Fund to manage the property. After the creation of a nonprofit in 1986, Bloedel opened its gate to the first visitors two years later. During the Covid pandemic, the garden hosted a record breaking eighty thousand guests.

As I walk the grounds in late June, it is a balmy seventy-degree day. Yiayia, a consummate shopper, heads to the gift store in the gatehouse. She finds out about a shuttle to the main residence, a French country-style home where the Bloedels once lived, and texts me that she’ll meet me there. When I arrive a half hour later, the front door is flung open and I can see clear through the house to Puget Sound. A bald eagle soars overhead. We sit near our favorite copper beech tree to admire the view.

By the time we return to the car, we are hungry. I set up lawn chairs at the car’s back bumper like a tailgate party. Across the grassy parking area, knee high native grass waves in a light breeze. After we eat an assortment of salads from PCC Community Markets, one of my favorite Seattle grocery stores, I head over to the gift shop myself to browse. The staff is about to open the front gate for the show, so I order the shuttle and scoot back to Yiayia. I want to beat the crowd because seats are first-come, first serve. After a quick ride to the sheep shed, we set our lawn chairs up behind the blankets of picnickers and nibble cherries waiting for the show to begin. The weather is perfect. Thankfully, it is dry and the temperature drops to the mid sixties.

Elizabeth Allum, executive director of Bainbridge Performing Arts, thanks the sponsors and talks about upcoming events. When an actor sneaks up behind her and mock stabs her, Allum falls to the ground and crawls toward backstage, telling us to enjoy the show. And so begins Macbeth. Everyone is laughing. We are ready for Shakespeare’s antics. Throughout the performance, actors and actresses walk up and down the grassy aisles making us feel like we are part of the production. Director Pete Benson, an English, drama, and video production instructor at Kingston High School, leads the group in an impressive performance. Chris Soldevilla plays Macbeth, along with a stunning Rachel Noll James as Lady Macbeth. Their easy chemistry lights up the night.

As the sun dips behind the forest, the plot thickens as Macbeth plots the king’s demise. We settle into our lawn chairs for a memorable evening while the smell of the woods wraps around us like a cozy blanket.

At the mouth of the Charleston Harbor is a national monument worth visiting. Fort Sumter is at the epicenter of Erik Larson’s latest historical nonfiction, The Demon of Unrest. Newly elected President Lincoln, whose disdain for slavery is well known among southerners, inspires locals to take action.

Major Robert Anderson (a Unionist) is the hero of Larson’s tale. A keen observer of the post-election conflict, Anderson decides to protect Fort Sumter at all cost, moving his 85-man garrison to the fort in late December 1860, six days after South Carolina secedes from the Federal Union. Southern states accuse northerners of failing to enforce the Federal Fugitive Slave Act. Antislavery organizations are thriving up north with no signs of a shut down. Lincoln’s win is simply too much of a threat to the south’s way of life.

In Larson’s book, one of the leaders in the Confederate ranks is Edmund Ruffin, who allegedly took the first shot at the fort after a four-month standoff with Unionists. He travels around the south to rile up others in favor of secession. Six weeks after South Carolina secedes, five other states follow suit, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Florida. Southerners create a provisional government, the Confederate States of America, and elect Jefferson Davis as their president. In March, Texas joins the group. Confederates seize nearly all federal forts and navy yards in these seven southern states with the exception of Fort Sumter, still occupied by Anderson and his troops.

Confederate soldiers demand the Unionists evacuate the fort. When Anderson refuses, southerners take up positions in nearby forts and begin blasting Fort Sumter’s fortifications. The officer quarters burn down, the gorge walls sustain damage, and the main gates are obliterated. Two days later, the Unionists finally evacuate, boarding a ship bound for New York. The dreaded Civil War has begun. Over the next four years, an estimated three-quarters of a million Americans die.

After reading Larson’s book, I visited Fort Sumter on a recent work trip to Charleston. I’m a huge fan of Larson’s history books because they read like thrillers and the events are meticulously researched. I wanted to see the place for myself. The fort is now a skeleton of its former self. Reduced to rubble during the war, its rebuild superficially matches what was. With its strategic location, I understand why the fort played such a key role in the beginning of the war. It has the advantage of protecting the harbor from all incoming ships.

Three ferry rides per day provide access from the pier at the Fort Sumter Visitor Center most months of the year. It’s a pleasant half-hour passage to the island while a park ranger talks about South Carolina’s slave history. Porpoises swim by. Pelicans fly in formation low over the water oblivious to the tourists listening to the country’s fractured history. Upon disembarking, I wander the grounds, reading multiple placards that detail the fort’s history where the drama unfolded. There is a light weight mountain howitzer perched on the bluff, the kind used by Confederates against the Unionists during the war. Several cannons are also on display around the property.

A monument erected in memory of Union defenders stands boldly at the base of the flag pole nearby. There is also a plaque that honors the Confederate defenders of the fort, erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s Charleston chapter. I found it interesting that both sides of the conflict are honored here.

After visiting Fort Sumter, I read James by Percival Everett, a retelling of Mark Twain’s book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The story is told from the point of view of Jim, an enslaved man. Jim and Huck are on the run when the Civil War breaks out. Soldiers march southward as the two attempt to escape their captors. Jim is unconvinced that making it to the north will solve his problems. His hope is to find his wife and daughter, recently sold to a farm many miles away.

Everett’s novel explores themes of racial identity and the power of language during fraught times. Like reading Erik Larson’s latest saga, James is worth a read. It helped round out my Civil War themed month. Both books remind me that our country has always been divided and that helps me keep things in perspective.