Prisoner of Hopes

Category: Hardships

  • Unexpected Encounters: Travel Goals

    When I was a teenager, I went to the science center IMAX. There, on the giant screen, I experienced scenes from the Andes and heard about a plane crash that left people stranded for 72 days. Through footage of the wreckage, I imagined the horrors of trying to survive on the side of a mountain…

  • The Mother Road: Travel Goals

    Standing under the sign that signals the beginning (or the end) of Route 66 on Santa Monica Pier, I feel the excitement and anticipation that a great road trip always brings. We are in Los Angeles to help my our daughter and son in law make a cross country move to Chicago. So for the…

  • When the Rope Breaks

    After a very long day, I came out to the yard to sit in my hammock. It has been an exhausting day. I sat down and kicked back into the recesses of the netted hammock that is usually a great comfort. Seconds later as I was slamming derrière first into the asphalt, I realized that…

  • Life is hard. God is good.

    The last few weeks have been difficult; not because there is anything wrong in my life, only because I feel unsettled. Call it a physiological response or existential angst. Maybe it is the summer blahs. Perhaps it is living in what I like to call “the age of anxiety.“ It doesn’t really matter what it…

  • Travel Goals: Wildlife Adventures

    It started out as a simple hiking trip, just a few days with a friend to explore a highly rated woodland trail. Nature had other plans. Reviewing the forecast as we packed, we decided that two days on the the at temperatures well over 100 with high humidity was probably not smart. So we decided…

  • Making Do

    There is a game I play on a regular basis. Perhaps challenge is the better word. I look in the pantry and refrigerator to figure out how random and abandoned items can be turned into a meal. This purging of the remnants is cathartic. This Easter we took our first camping trip of the season.…

  • Roots

    The roads are winding and only sometimes paved.  Creeks and man made ponds dapple the landscape, visible between tall stands of oak and pine. Heaven on Earth.  Turkey vultures strut through barren fields.  Rocks are plentiful in the overturned soil.  Cattle call across the hills and hollows. Hauntingly beautiful and impossibly difficult terrain. It is…