Europe 2026, Part II: Pulled East and West

This is Part Two of a seven-part series. Part One is here.

The Ottomans are still the dominant force in Istanbul, a 500-year empire founded by Turks who came out of the east and, under Mehmed the Conqueror, deposed Eastern Rome for good in 1453. The Blue Mosque is the first mosque I have ever entered, and it is not a bad place to start, given its grandeur and intricacy; at the same time, there is a simplicity of form to these Ottoman mosques absent in great Christian churches, with no side chapels or grand altarpieces or recessed saints. The Blue Mosque is more a destination than a place of worship, though: the line of entering tourists is endless, dwarfing the handful who head to the front for prayer, and unprepared nonbelievers are forced into hijabs of shame labeled “Property of Sultanahmet Mosque,” using its official name. I am more contented after my visit to the equally massive but somewhat less intricate Süleymaniye Mosque: here I can observe a dome modeled on the Hagia Sofia and a massive space in relative peace, appreciate the leafy grounds in a concrete-filled city and pause to peak into the tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan at the empire’s apogee.

My rainy day at Topkapi Palace has me wondering about the origins of the gutter as a means to channel water and why one of the world’s most splendid empires did not bother to install them. (Later, in Prague, I gaze up at gargoyle waterspouts and wonder if they would violate Muslim bans on idolatry.) But the Ottoman palace for their first 400 years of rulership from Istanbul is a magnificent abode. Topkapi is a blend of glamour and grace, clinging to the hillside and unfolding as an acropolis worthy of Islam’s greatest empire, commanding it while still in the clear shadow of the Hagia Sofia and Blue Mosque, the earthly power nestling below God. Here and there the various sultans have left their own marks, adding on tasteful terraces and antechambers and a library, all of it conceivably master planned even though it evolved slowly over centuries. Here is a cloister for the eunuchs and there are the endless kitchens; in the harem there are spaces for everyone in the ever-evolving royal family. It is an airy space, open to catch Bosphorus breezes and give glimpses in all directions; on a cold, wet day it has a chill feel, but it doesn’t take a crazy imagination to picture fires roaring and luxurious baths filling and the sultan and his harem settling in for comfort. If I were to be gifted an empire, give me Topkapi as my palace.

By the 1800s, the fascinating east-west fusion that is Istanbul starts to thin into outright copying. Topkapi’s successor, Dolmabahçe Palace, is stunning, yes, a sprawling complex with graceful gates on to the Bosphorus, and its greatest trait is its embrace of the strait that gives Istanbul its lifeblood. “If the city speaks of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy, and poverty,” writes Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, “the Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure, and happiness.” But Dolmabahçe’s sequence of gilded chambers reaches levels of exhaustion in time; its attempt at a Versailles left the Ottomans broke. By the 1800s the sultans had their eyes firmly fixed on Europe, and their failures to hold up in that century’s intricate dance between great powers opened the door for intrigue in the Balkans, and, fundamentally, the First World War and its echoes for the next 100 years. Out went the Ottomans in the imperial collapse at the end of the war, and in came the Republic of Turkey.

Taksim Square is the heart of Republican Istanbul, a giant, modernist, and rather austere square (meydan, in Turkish) still somehow overshadowed by the requisite mosque. But even in this monumental state it feels like a center in retreat, a relic of the era when Ataturk swept in with his staunch secular republicanism. Homages to him are still everywhere, but the Islamic populist Erdogan likely has the father of the Turkish Republic turning in his grave. And yet these two Turkish statesmen are two sides of the same coin: there is still an air of imperial grandeur, an all-consuming national project in everything Turkish since 1923.

Since the abolition of the sultanate, Istanbul has grown clearer in its identity and diminished in its global stature all at once. Pamuk, as he beheld his city after Ottoman decline and a series of fires that burned through the old city and the Turkish nationalism that purged the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, called Istanbul more Western but less cosmopolitan. Perhaps it is only natural that, stripped of its diversity and in the thralls of a lost imperium, Turkey now drifts into a more Muslim state under a strongman undertaking a pale imitation of the sultanate.

This distinctly Turkish reality is most on display in Fatih, the oldest part of the city, where a monumental mosque lurks around just about every corner. Even though it is tourism central, it is also dipped in amber, holding on to a certain identity Turkey wants to project outward. To snake through the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar is to shrug off a thousand vendors, admire myriad carpets and Turkish delight, jewelry and shawls, soccer jerseys and leather goods, and endless supplies of handicrafts. Twinned scents of spice and cigarette smoke hang over the narrow corridors, and for someone who is somewhat exhausted by a trip to Target, the claustrophobia sets in before long. My guide around the bazaars is a book by a Grand Marais resident named Ann Marie Mershon, though I can’t bring myself to pull out the guidebook every few blocks and settle for a general meander past stalls and mosques and the hans that form the trellis upon which contemporary Istanbul grows.

With such tight quarters all around, I look for little escapes. In Istanbul, meydans have fewer defined lines than European plazas, edges blurred and little in the way of the bars or even cafes one might expect. Instead, they are dominated by mosques, whose grounds offer sanctuary from the frenetic activity beyond their shadows, and free bathrooms to boot. After several days of wandering Istanbul I see how these houses of worship give the city a chance to breathe. The logic of Islam is never really subtext; everything is part of a project, a belief in a path for harnessing life amid chaos and marching toward greater glory. Regular calls to prayer echoing from competing minarets make sure even a relatively secularized city like Istanbul can’t forget these demands.

Pamuk is my Istanbul whisperer, but his city is a narrow slice of its existence: the Beyoglu district, settled by the Genoese in Byzantine days and a cosmopolitan hub basically ever since. Both Pamuk’s Istanbul and his Museum of Innocence, a physical accompaniment to his novel of the same name with 83 little displays matching the book’s chapters, are homages to life for the midcentury Beyoglu upper middle class of an emerging nation-state, the people who could best hold together a compound reality of Turkish nationalism and Euro-curious cosmopolitanism. The museum is a delightful collection of little vignettes that encapsulate one little place at one specific time, Pamuk’s statement on the stories worth telling in a museum. Since that midcentury era he captured Beyoglu has decayed and now rebounded, a gentrifying and cool landing spot that feels most comfortable to a Western outsider. In these districts the hijabs disappear and the complexions grow lighter; the liquor flows more easily, and no one is trying to sell me a rug. Most of my fellow guests at the Museum of Innocence are stylish twenty-something Turkish upper-class girls listening raptly to the audio tour, some clutching Pamuk’s novels. Now here is a culture I could enjoy.

Unlike Europeans, the Turks punched relatively few grand avenues through narrow alleyways of their central districts, and there is an endless allure of going around corners to find a relic of Byzantium or the sultanate or another themed shopping street (here some power tools, there some electronics) or a few quiet stretches with creaking old wooden buildings barely clinging to their verticality, the ubiquitous stray cats slithering about. The exception is on Beyoglu’s Istikal Caddesi, a (mostly) pedestrian shopping street with a cable car that meanders along the top of the hill. Istikal has some of the inevitable glitz and global brand sameness that always comes with any such destination street, but it also pulses with the European-oriented beat of the city, a through line since its founding.

The Istanbul craft beer scene is a work in progress, seemingly confined to expat operations, but a Turkish wine bar just off Istikal showcases a fine art off limits to much of this nation’s population that nonetheless well exceeds expectations. Perhaps my favorite site in the modern city is along the dessert-serving street below the Galata Tower, lit up and full of life like a good nightlife corridor of any great city but still authentically Turkish in its focus. At a bar recommended by an Istanbul-savvy friend I watch the Turks edge Kosovo for a berth in this summer’s World Cup, and frankly expected more flag-waving and honking horns than I got. Latin America this is not.

No, this is Istanbul: forever its own thing, perhaps the city that, more than any earth, captures all of humanity’s competing interests and hungers. Toward faith and worldly power, between natural beauty and centuries of accumulated urban form, a national culture and a home in the world. It may tip one way or another with the times, but it will go on, because it is a monument built both to and upon those grey zones we all occupy. After plowing through all its sites over four days, I sink to a rest my aching legs at a fountain beneath the Galata Tower and grin at the pace I’ve set so far. On to the next stop.

Europe 2026, Part I: A Byzantine Quest

This is part one of a seven-part series.

My charge to myself over two weeks across late March and early April 2026: travel in through the Sublime Porte and out through the Brandenburg Gate. Meander across Europe (with an Asian cameo) for two weeks. Istanbul, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin, all in quick succession. This trip is a push outward, away from languages I speak and the now beloved comforts of the western Mediterranean, to the very borderlands of the West itself. I undertake the venture alone, to better gauge where this thing I call myself is right now.

I can impose certain narratives on why I go on this journey, but in the end my destinations are a bunch of cities that are reasonably close to each other that may be able to meet my appetite in the spring of 2026. This trip idea survived the cut as others proved difficult for one logistical reason or another. I could say this stems from a unique restlessness; the past year has been an unspeakably weird one, professionally and personally, and it invites certain questions. But it’s just as much the case that I have more of the means to scratch an eternal itch now, and so I do.

I start on the east end, against the grain of old Orient Express fantasies; somehow it was dramatically cheaper to go this direction, but as the trip goes on, my ordering grows on me. I dive right in to the most radical destination first, settle into comfort and an easier pace as I tire. This journey follows a line through the history of Europe, from its pivot eastward after the fall of Rome on through Habsburg Austria and then into modern Germany, ground zero for the twentieth century’s greatest and grisliest dramas. Each stage tells a different tale.

I whet my appetite during an eight-hour layover in Amsterdam. A seamless trip through customs, a 15-minute train ride to Centraal station; walk out the doors and, suddenly, it’s Europe. I saunter along bustling shopping streets on a brisk spring day and then an afternoon strolling the canals. I was last here twenty years ago, as a teenager, and found Amsterdam edgy with its legal weed and red light district. Now it seems the edge has caught and surpassed the Dutch capital, and it is just a charming European city. It’s time to venture out to a different edge.

No city has straddled the line between East and West as much as Istanbul. It sits astride two continents, has been one of the great seats of both Christian and Muslim power. It was arguably the center of world for 1,500 years between the christening of Constantinople and the Ottoman Empire’s decline; even in late-stage Byzantium, after its sacking by fellow Christian crusaders in 1204, it remained a golden relic, the ultimate prize for the Turks as they tightened their vise. Today it tips between the first and third worlds, a bustling metropolis of 16 million, the capital in all but name for a state that is trying, stumbling, to understand how a glorious past can fit with a respectable but uncertain present.

I stay at the south end of the Beyoglu district in the Hotel Nordstern Galata, a grand old thing from the Ottoman gilded age. My room has a vaulted ceiling and extensive filigrees, and a rooftop terrace for breakfasts overlooks the Galata Bridge across the Golden Horn and the old city beyond it. Lively restaurants are up the hill by the Galata Tower, ferry docks are a two-minute walk away, and a tramway that heads straight for the Fatih district, home to the city’s greatest Byzantine and Ottoman wonders, is across the street. It is the ideal launch point for someone prone to wander, and for all Istanbul’s great sites, some of my favorite parts of this visit come from simply strolling about.

I begin my tours of Istanbul on a very wet day, which gives a character to the “melancholy of the ruins” Orhan Pamuk describes in his own wanderings of back alleys in Istanbul: Memories and the City, the Nobel laureate’s biography of his hometown. This is a city that has suffered a great fall from grace, and out of that picturesque ruin, writes Pamuk, “history has endowed it with an accidental beauty.” I gaze up at crumbling terraces, smile at the cats perched atop cars, peek down damp, chill side streets at Turks who gaze back, wondering if this white boy is lost. (He is not.) Istanbul is short on squalid poverty and has quality public transit; nowhere in my wanderings, which at times stray off the designated tourist routes, do I ever feel unsafe. But it also has that layer of chaos absent in the West, encumbered by both its deep historical trappings and the more recent puttering pace of development, spared the worst of the instability consuming its southern, eastern, and even northern neighbors but still understandably pulled toward the realms of its religious and ethnic roots as much as it is toward that cultured European dream it has sometimes sought out as well.

Now and then melancholy fades away, though: Istanbul can be resplendent, and never more so than when on the waters that feed its eternal power. I cruise the Bosphorus on ferries that snake their way through the steady traffic between the Mediterranean and Black Seas. By the second afternoon the rain and clouds have faded away, and the strait shimmers in the sun; a soft sea haze looms over the great mosques and gifts them a silvery sheen, and as the sun heads downward, the Golden Horn lives up to its name. I set foot in Asia for the first time and agree that it is, in fact, very crowded, though if I lived here I too would crowd down on a waterfront promenade on an afternoon like this.

I’ll take my tour through Istanbul chronologically. The Byzantines have, somehow, become the lost empire that most allures me. It is a fascination born on a hot summer day in Ravenna with a visit to the mosaics of San Vitale, and from there I have found myself diving down Wikipedia pages on the empire that is Western history’s forgotten bridge, the tie that binds between the Greeks and the Romans and on to the Ottomans and the Russians. For a thousand years after the fall of Western Rome, the eastern empire lived on, its line effectively unbroken in these Greek-speaking Christians. Their power waxed and waned but their imperial longevity was remarkable; perhaps the longest ever in years after Christ, depending on how one counts one’s Chinese dynasties. On their way out the door they planted the seeds of the Renaissance in Western Europe and the rise of a Slavic identity in the east, and even Mehmed the Conqueror, after vanquishing them in 1453, assumed the title of kayser-i rum, as did every Ottoman sultan thereafter. They deserve a bit more love.

The Byzantines’ great architectural triumph is the Hagia Sofia, Emperor Justinian’s temple that aimed to outdo Solomon. Today, I mutter, it is the Hagia Scaffoldia, its great floating dome and two of four minarets surrounded by supports, a massive temporary support structure extending up the central nave to the blocked off dome. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-designation of the great house of worship as a mosque after a period as a museum consigns us tourists to the second level, where we make a slow circuit of the gallery and gaze up at what we can see of the ceiling. Mosaics and brilliant frescoes, part lost to time and anti-iconoclasm of both Christian and Muslim varieties, peek forth and hint at past reaches toward heaven. Even in this constrained state it groans with the weight of history, the accumulated ascensions of emperors and sultans and holy wars launched from this site, the world’s largest house of worship for 600 years. Awe is the only appropriate response.

Look around elsewhere in Istanbul and the Byzantines linger. Below the acropolis sits the Basilica Cistern, an echoing cavern of columns over a dimly lit pool. Further west, the Theodosian Walls are arguably the greatest defensive structure in history, never breached even by the monstrous Ottoman cannons. (The only conquests of Constantinople were mustered by the Fourth Crusaders breaking the otherwise effective defensive chain drawn across the Golden Horn, and the Ottomans undertaking an arduous haul of ships over land to drop them into the Golden Horn behind the chain.) Even now much of these great defenses remains intact, still separating the original Constantinople from its later additions. A snippet of the old Byzantine palace complex along the walls at Blachernae, the Palace of the Porphyrogenitus, has only recently been restored. On a whim, I stroll in and climb the Theodosian Walls for a commanding view of the old and new cities, and learn how these ruins turned to kilns for pottery and fine craftsmanship in the Ottoman years.

In the shadow of the Theodosian Walls is the Chora Church, identifiable as Byzantine by its red brick walls and buttresses, and its wealth of frescoes can be measured both in volume and in intimacy. Like the Hagia Sofia, the Chora has been converted by Erdogan and is now the Kariye Mosque, but here us nonbelievers are still allowed into the back of the nave, and I can sit on the carpet and look up at the handful of frescoes (with screens that come down to cover the icons during services) and pet the stray cat that wanders up and purrs in my lap. Perhaps my favorite day on this entire trip is this one, where I spontaneously wander Istanbul’s back alleys to find these old Byzantine gems.

Byzantine Constantinople is not fully dead, either. A block behind the thoroughfare along the Golden Horn in the Fener district, easily missed by the unfamiliar, is the Patriarchal Church of St. George, home to the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the nominal head of the Orthodox church. The current structure is only 200 years old but oozes history, has the feel of living, breathing space that hides secrets, some mysterious truth deep within its liturgy. Here presides Bartholomew I, head of the third-largest church in the world, though his defense of Ukraine has caused a schism with his Russian counterparts. I saw Bartholomew speak when I was an undergraduate, and the gravity of his remarks has lingered, even after 15 years. The Patriarch is a throwback leader who remembers the postwar years, knows loss and the value of fragile cooperation across cultures. Now that I have seen Istanbul, I understand why the Patriarch holds such things so deeply.

Yes, my Istanbul post is so long it had to be split into two. Part Two is here.

Hints

Another Duluth East season has come and gone, this one watching the curtains come down in an agonizing 5-4 double overtime loss to Rock Ridge in the 7AA semifinals. It was a season of both hope and struggle, a few steps forward and a few steps back, flashes of talent and stretches of absolute aggravation. The final game encapsulated it all, and while the end result stung, it was also a hint of what may be to come.

Toward the end of the season, the Hounds showed signs of making good on their promise. The 4-0 win over Duluth Marshall was an authoritative statement: a Hilltopper core built on the backbone of the East youth program failed to beat the Hounds across its three-season window, and was relegated to a quarterfinal road game in a season they had State Tournament aspirations. East nabbed a 3-seed that it frankly did not deserve, but I appreciated the tenacity to fight for it. The Hounds took care of business against Denfeld in the quarterfinals, applying the gas and showing some puck movement that wasn’t always there previously. Their forecheck in the first period against Rock Ridge harassed the Wolverine defense, and their decision to run three pretty even lines—one that had me raising my eyebrows a few weeks earlier—looked like it might be the secret to wearing down some thinner section opponents. Some whispers crept into my feed, friends and friendly foes alike wondering if Duluth East was back.

They didn’t quite keep it up. The later stages of the game had a few too many lapses into the selfish play that was so often their undoing, a few too many overcommitments and sloppy breakouts. An injury to leading scorer Zane Medlin certainly did not help the cause, either. The penalty that was their ultimate undoing was an entirely defensible one, denying Rock Ridge star Caz Carlson a breakaway. We could quibble about this or that decision, but in the end the team poured out its hearts across five periods of hockey against a slightly better team, and that, as a fan, is all I can really ask for.

This was often a frustrating team. My December hype was a high point until the run at the end, and I was irked enough by their inconsistent effort that I did not feel too bad about a rare midseason vacation. (Yes, Twitter followers, I apologize for my dereliction.) The final record, an unpleasant 9-16-2, does not really reflect the talent level. I thought they could be a .500 team this season, and I don’t think I was wrong about their ability. There were so many winnable games that slipped away, frustrating efforts against very beatable mid-tier opponents like Roseville and East Ridge and Holy Family and Totino-Grace and Champlin Park and Mounds View (ugh, that Mounds View game). Win half of those and I think the vibes around this team would have been very different, to say nothing of some of the games against better teams in which they put up a good fight. Any high school team will have its highs and lows, but the resilience was not always there for this group, and one had the sense they have to learn how to believe they can win. Maybe at the end they found some sense of it again, but it was an arduous process, a slow trod up a very tall mountain.

As always, I thank our seniors: workhorse Marcus Anttila, defensive stalwarts Landon Pierce and Henrik Spenningsby, reliable and steady goalie Nolan Nygaard, and additional contributors in Zach Vallie, Jackson Spoden, and Breck Burns. They endured a valley in East hockey and started the push to climb back out, and while they may not get to enjoy the rewards that I hope this effort will eventually produce, they were an important part of the rebuild.

The future, meanwhile, looks bright. This modern era of sports free agency of course guarantees nothing; while I hope the young guns are willing to build on this season, they may have opportunities dangled in front of them. But I would encourage them not to forget the bitter feeling of this double overtime loss and recognize they have an opportunity to atone for it and be the players who rebuilt East hockey. The bantam team is strong, and more talent is coming in. Everyone else in 7AA is likely to take a step backward next season: the rest are all senior-heavy, with lots of holes to fill and not a lot of obvious reinforcements on the way. This program is primed for something big, and as someone who has watched this movie many times now, I will politely submit that making at least one more run of it as a group would be a memory for a lifetime, and that it will not hold back any long-term development. But I respect the decisions people make, and even if there is a departure or two, this team will still probably be the 7AA favorite next season.

So let’s enjoy these final few weeks of high school hockey and get to work in the summer. This season gave hints of how great high school hockey can be, and a US gold medal at the Olympics is another healthy reminder of what it can mean to represent the place you’re from on a grand stage. Let’s go see if those hints can turn into something more.

Island Vignettes

I. Peregrinations

Climb aboard a plane. Shoot over a snow-dusted heartland, over the brain coral of the Appalachian hills and the long, aged spines of its mountains, over the Carolina coastal plain with its tidewater veins and then a long, sun-kissed expanse of ocean spackled by the shadows of clouds. I am off to St. Thomas again, hosted by Uncle Chuck and Aunt Monica at L’Esperance and joined by my mom and her partner and cousin David.

The actuarial tables of travel catch up with me again. Do it enough and things will go wrong, and this time, bad winds for landing cause a diversion to San Juan. Sun Country hotel vouchers are a fiasco and we wind up in a gated ground floor of a spare apartment in the city, a few blocks from a street shut off by police cars and a canine unit. It’s enough to sketch out most travelers.

A few ladies hold a casual party at the apartment next door, and it pulls at something deep within. I am eleven years old at a compound in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where a group of Minnesota college students study abroad and I am in the room next to the kitchen where I wake every morning to that same pitter-patter of Spanish chatter and laughter, those clattering dishes, those nourishing smells of baking food. Later, as a college student myself, I stumble down cobbled Mexican streets with an eclectic crew of kids from around the world, in search of a hostel and hear those same giggles, that same gentle teasing; later again they are reborn along the narrow lanes of an old Spanish city core. This easy soundtrack echoes through memory, puts me at peace. I am in good hands, perhaps only ever truly content as an object in motion.

II. Big Boats

From a perch at L’Esperance above the harbor, we watch the traffic come and go. Somewhere between one and five cruise ships visit Charlotte Amalie every day. They have grown in size over the years, disgorging ever more tourists, the islands left in a strange lurch of activity that settles down each evening. The long-term visitors go out for dinner and the locals party the night away. The carnivals of leisure cycle through, less the fresh joy of discovery in a European port of call and more of a drift through bars and shops that could, with some choice exceptions, be anywhere. Paradise, Incorporated.

On the Thursday of my week on St. Thomas, the USS Stockdale powers into port. This AEGIS destroyer has spent recent years guarding commerce on the Red Sea from Houthi rebels, though it recently joined the Caribbean buildup that accompanied the ouster of Venezuelan despot Nicolás Maduro. It sits in Crown Bay next to Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, dwarfed by the pleasure cruise craft. The twin faces of empire, a reminder of the force that makes possible the leisure on St. Thomas, and the reason the U.S. collected these islands from the Danish during World War I. That treaty forsook an American claim to Greenland, and while I cannot comment on the relative value of any rare earth metals, I will say the beaches that treaty brought beneath the stars and stripes are much better than the alternative down the road not taken.

III. Billionaires

Laurance Rockefeller purchased most of St. John, the third-largest of the Virgins, in 1952. He later donated nearly all of his holdings for the creation of Virgin Islands National Park, and he developed a hotel on Caneel Bay on land leased from the National Park Service. The Caneel Bay Resort was a world-class gem design to be one with the coastline, an eco-conscious masterpiece that shunned technology and rightly revolved on one of the most beautiful stretches of sand in the world.

Hurricane Irma demolished the resort in 2017. Ever since it has been trapped in development hell, swiftly swallowed by fast-growing trees and gnarled vines just like St. John’s old slave plantations before. Myriad questions from the NPS lease to cleanup from 60s-era building materials loom over its future.

Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little St. James, an islet off Pillsbury Sound between St. Thomas and St. John, in 1998. For over 20 years it was the base of his most lurid operations, a steady procession of gilded elites and underage girls funneled through, his crimes an open secret among the islanders. In 2016, he added Great St. James to his collection.

Since Epstein’s death and disgrace, another billionaire, Stephen Deckoff, has purchased the islands from Epstein’s estate for $60 million. A proposed luxury hotel is trapped in development hell, unable to get off the ground despite its backer’s resources.

Some of the Virgin Islands’ billionaires aspire to preserve a natural and human heritage for posterity; some use its covers to hide the greatest depravities they can engineer. Others, like Deckoff, just try to profit from it, a money man doing what a money man does. But in the end, it seems the islands always win.

IV. Rituals

We enter the battle with the islands for a day of brush clearing on St. John, as we always do on Tuesdays here. Uncle Chuck is in his element with the Friends of the National Park, chatting botany and pointing out the monkey-no-climb he told fellow volunteers to spare several years back that has now shot up and become a healthy tree.

On this day we clear out the Reef Bay Great House, a sugar plantation relic now enveloped by a scourge known variously as coral vine and Mexican creeper. We hack back the jungle and restore some of its complex grandeur. Such as we can: a lintel along the portico now dangles in the breeze, its threat to pull down one side of the façade held only by a single strand of rebar. There is little chance of any stabilization from NPS, and a tragic fate for the Great House’s tragic legacy. But for now there is an easy satisfaction in passing on this privilege I enjoy, to cut out windows on to memory and beauty in a place where people come for joy and escape.

Later in the week, David and I return to St. John. We hike around Lind Point and up Caneel Hill, achieve commanding views of Cruz Bay and a descent to the ruins of Caneel and a splash into the ocean at Salomon Beach, a slice of white sand accessible only by trail or boat. Along the whole way the trail shows the fruits of the volunteer labor. A few cuts from catch-and-keep are a small price to pay, a little blood left to feed that lifeblood.

The other routines are less taxing: open up the villa, let in the breeze, wake to the sun’s long fingers creeping over the hill and in through the glass door to the balcony. Lay in sand and play in waves: Lindquist Bay, Hull Bay, a stroll down the streets of Charlotte Amalie. Make the circuit through the bars, order a Booty Call and get lei’d at Duffy’s, meet the same Minnesota waitress at two establishments, encounter the Islands’ finest purveyor of hose.

After long days on St. John we return to L’Esperance, where happy hour is a sacred rite. The sun plunges to the horizon and bathes Charlotte Amalie in a hazy sheen. The bell dings, the bottles pop open, ice tipped into glasses and drinks mixed. We set aside our books and our phones and hold forth: the day’s details, adventures past and future, the vagaries of island life. That happy hour bell is a call to drink, but it also breaks down that retreat into self, separates spaces for quiet and for community, both necessary in a well-rounded life. Pour me another, please, and again find that ease.

V. Inflection Points

My last time in the Virgin Islands my work life was in the process of blowing up as a regime change reoriented how things could be done. The previous time was deep in a pandemic. This time there are fewer lingering worries, easier roads to bliss.

It is thus to my great annoyance that I find myself facing writer’s block on the Hull Bay beach. I should be basking and letting my pen flow and yet the block nags, irks, makes one wonder if this is maybe too perfect or if I am just too easily knocked off my game. Things should flow naturally but they do not. I cannot absorb what the beach offers, assume that oneness that comes with the territory here. Distractions too easy, desires too fierce? Paralysis in the face of challenge? Nah. I just have to remember what the islands have already taught me.

I think back to my pandemic era escape here. I recognize now that it was a line in the canyon for me, a moment in which, when isolation anomie threatened to grind me down, I chose not to let it and instead struck outward. That journey put me on path toward being the world wanderer I long wanted to be, began infusing within me the self-assurance I always wished to have. In recent years I have looked at times for other lines in the canyon—a work life shift here, a memorable trip there; even that ultimate canyon line, a long-term relationship—and realized that all of those things, while attainable, are found somewhere along this rugged, sweaty, hunger-fueling hike on St. John. I embody the pursuit. Follow the path and the rest will come.

On that trip I read Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet. For reasons unclear to me I had previously thought I was not ready to read it. (These deep intuitions, I have learned, are things I should trust: even if they do not work out, I do not regret them, and they have delivered for me more than ever in the past year.) By that trip, I was indeed ready.

True it is I have climbed great hills and walked in remote places.

How could I have seen you save from a great height or great distance?

How can one be indeed near unless he be far?

At the end of The Prophet the poem’s namesake sails on from the city where he preached, on to the next adventure. I pick up a book on Byzantium and get ready for my next journey, too.

7AA Soup

Call it a rock fight, call it mid, call it the weakest Section 7AA since the two-class split, doomed to slaughter in the first round of the State Tournament at the hands of Minnetonka or Moorhead. Objectively, it’s all true. It’s also great theater. Five teams have a legitimate shot at a section title, making for as wide open a race as you’ll ever see in AA Minnesota high boys’ school hockey, promising a great last two rounds of playoffs at Amsoil Arena in Duluth in late February. Here is a breakdown of the five contenders, none of whom will go down in history as a great team, but all of whom nonetheless have some chance at a section title.

Grand Rapids

Overall record: 7-11-1

PageStat rating: 19.52 (#25)

Record among 7AA contenders: 1-1-1 (win over Duluth East; loss to Forest Lake; tie against Duluth East)

Games vs. 7AA contenders remaining: at Duluth Marshall, Jan 27; at Rock Ridge, Jan. 30

The good: Wins over Elk River, Andover, and Lakeville South are some of the best non-section results anyone here can claim; also just suffered a final minute loss to Hill-Murray

The bad: The loss to Forest Lake; no individual results here are really that bad, but there is the question of the accumulated weight of their poor record.

Why they could win it: They’re the most proven commodity here. This senior class has played in a State Tournament, and while neither the depth nor the high-end talent are exceptional, the top unit, with Jacob Garski, Seth Carlson, Ander Rajala, Will Shermoen, and Alexander Salisbury are experienced and can compete with just about any top unit here. They’ve got a coach with a proven track record in Grant Clafton, and they are going through a meat grinder of a schedule to prepare for big moments in late February. Forget the record: they are playing the best hockey of anyone here right now.

Cause for concern: For the first time in what seems like decades, goaltending is a real question mark in Minnesota’s greatest goalie factory. Four different tenders have split time this season, and only in the past week has sophomore Luke Sherlock stepped up and laid claim to the job. If he can keep it up, I like the Thunderhawks’ odds.

Keep an eye on: Garski, the star senior forward who has missed time due to injury this season; he has decent numbers, but hasn’t set the world on fire. He’s capable of some big things, and if he gets rolling, Rapids will be a tough out.

Section seeding fate: Control their own destiny and can grab the top seed with wins over Marshall and Rock Ridge. Lose one and they’re 2nd or 3rd; lose both and they’re in the 4/5 game.

Duluth Marshall

Overall record: 14-2-1
PageStat Rating: 19.07 (#33)

Record among 7AA contenders: 1-0 (win over Rock Ridge)

Games vs. 7AA contenders remaining: vs. Grand Rapids, Jan. 27; at Duluth East, Feb. 10

The good: For the second year in a row, they tied rival Hermantown; ran out to an impressive lead in a win over Rock Ridge

The bad: A loss to a Superior team that tied the likes of Duluth Denfeld; needing overtime to beat Rochester Lourdes; a loss to Cloquet

Why they could win it: Depth. Marshall has been building toward this season for a while, and while they do not have the star power of some of their rivals here, they are chalk-full of B-plus players like Benson Peterson, Bennett Scissions, Kyler Black, Leyton Anderson, and Sam Berry. In a section without any elite teams, that is usually a pretty good formula.

Cause for concern: The schedule. There are weak schedules, and then there is Marshall’s schedule, which is possibly the weakest I have ever seen for any realistic AA section contender ever. There’s no doubting there is talent here, and the Hermantown and Rock Ridge games show they can give good teams a run. But when you’re playing against the likes of Greenway, Anoka, Irondale, and Pine City most weeks, it’s hard not to fall into bad habits that simply don’t work against higher quality teams, especially when you need to win a couple tough games in a row.

Keep an eye on: Viljami Sinisalo, the Finnish exchange student who has contributed some key goals, helping to make up for the holes in the Hilltopper lineup left by a couple of early departures. This team’s balance is the key to its success, and if they can outmatch other teams’ lower lines and play smart defensive hockey, they have the pieces to a run through sections.

Section seeding fate: Can grab the top seed with wins over Rapids and East. Lose one of those and they’re in the 2/3 range; lose both and they’re probably in the 4/5 game. If it gets really messy, it’ll be fascinating to see what other coaches make of this schedule.

Forest Lake

Overall record: 11-7

PageStat rating: 18.42 (#40)

Record among 7AA contenders: 2-1 (wins over Rock Ridge and Grand Rapids, loss to Duluth East

Games vs. 7AA contenders remaining: None

The good: Those overtime stunners against two 7AA frontrunners catapulted the Rangers toward the top of 7AA. For a team that has so long lingered in the middle tier of this section, this is a rare, golden opportunity to make a serious run.

The bad: Lost to Duluth East when they had a chance to wrap up the top seed; lost to a weak Woodbury team

Why they could win it: They’ve won the big games against the section’s preseason favorites. Coach Jay Ekman seems to have this group believing, and it’s easy to build a Rangers-against-the-world narrative given their humble history and the departure of freshman wunderkind Maverick McKinnon for St. Thomas Academy before the season. Their Suburban East Conference schedule gives them ample tests against quality Metro competition, and they seem comfortable playing without the puck, able to withstand some tough shot margins and strike in transition to change the tenor of a game.

Cause for concern: Depth, or lack thereof. They’re going to get outshot in most big games and have a thin margin for error. Those two dramatic overtime section wins were cool, but home games around New Year’s are a far cry from playoff success for a program that has never won a section semifinal.

Keep an eye on: Ryder Siedow, the senior forward who is having a huge year and scoring clutch goals. Sidekick Nate Peterson has helped the cause plenty, too. They’ll go as far as their stars can carry them.

Section seeding fate: Have a chance at the top seed, but need Grand Rapids and Duluth Marshall to both lose section games down the stretch. More likely to land at #2 or #3.

Rock Ridge

Overall record: 9-9

PageStat Rating: 19.07 (#32)

Record among 7AA contenders: 1-2 (win over Duluth East, losses to Duluth Marshall and Forest Lake)

Games vs. 7AA contenders remaining: vs. Grand Rapids, Jan .30

The good: Frankly, for their talent level, they do not have any particularly impressive results.

The bad: Spotted Duluth Marshall a 5-goal lead with some ugly play in an eventual 6-4 loss; could not finish off Forest Lake

Why they could win it: They’ve got the best player in the section by a healthy margin in Caz Carlson, along with his sidekick Colton Bialke, and they have enough strong forwards to round out two pretty good lines. They are a fiery group, capable of laying big hits and showing off real talent. Pound for pound, they are the most talented team in this section, and if they can play to that potential, they have the best odds of winning the thing.

Cause for concern: Consistency and performance under pressure. This team is Jekyll and Hyde: they have parts of games where they look like a top 15 team in the state, controlling the pace with their heavy play. They also have moments where they look utterly discombobulated, and when things start to go downhill, they struggle to recover that swagger. Discipline is a somewhat regular concern, too. Do they have that championship mettle?

Keep an eye on: The easy answer would be Carlson, the star who needs to control his emotions and put the team on his back. My other name to watch is sophomore forward Jackson Bartovich. The flashy sophomore is the key to the Wolverines’ depth, and if he can help carry a second productive line, they’ll be a load.

Section seeding fate: Probably stuck in the 4/5 game unless they can beat Grand Rapids, and even then may need some help; #3 is their ceiling.

Duluth East

Overall record: 6-10-2

PageStat rating: 17.70 (#53)

Record among 7AA contenders: 1-2-1 (win over Forest Lake; losses to Grand Rapids and Rock Ridge; tie with Grand Rapids)

Games vs. 7AA contenders remaining: vs. Duluth Marshall, Feb. 10

The good: Section win over Forest Lake and tie with Grand Rapids; a couple of competitive top 20 losses

The bad: Losses to East Ridge and Roseville; a tie with lowly Mounds View

Why they could win it: East is the fifth of the five teams in 7AA at the moment on body of work, but the upside may be the highest of anyone. They have the best core of young talent, headlined by defenseman Liam Brooks and forward Zane Medlin. The defensive corps, one through five, is probably the deepest here.

Cause for concern: Chemistry is always a real question mark on teams where the sophomore class is the most talented. Coach Steve Pitoscia and company have their work cut out for them as they try to lean into the youth movement while also weaving in some of the older kids who have paid their dues and have some imperfect talents; the young group can’t carry the load alone. Too often, these Hounds look like a collection of individuals trying to do things themselves rather than a complete team.

Keep an eye on: Where the goals will come from. The defensive point production from Brooks and fellow sophomore Greyson Medak is nice, but it has never felt like the forward lines have settled into a productive hierarchy; there’s a lot of aimless rotating of bodies without committing to combinations that make real sense, and I scratch my head at the continued use of four lines. Medlin and McKennen Kramer have the points, Jax Edgerton has an all-around game I really like, and a few others like Easton Orhn and Fin Kuzmuk bring different skills that could cohere; can the whole come to exceed the sum of the parts?

Section seeding fate: Currently in line for the 5-seed, but could rise up to #3 or so if they can beat Duluth Marshall and perhaps get a little help.

Eyes Closed Dreams

“Modern man likes to think that he is thinking wide-awake. But this wide-awake thinking has led us into the mazes of a nightmare in which the torture chambers are endlessly repeated in the mirrors of reason. When we emerge, perhaps we will realize that we have been dreaming with our eyes open, and that the dreams of reason are intolerable. And then, perhaps, we will begin to dream once more with our eyes closed.”

– Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude

I start 2026 on the Northwoods ski trail outside Silver Bay. Conditions are poor: the snow is icy crust, the trail littered with debris. The trail to Palisade Valley, the greatest of Northland skis, is ungroomed and overgrown. No matter. There is nowhere else I’d rather be.

I follow someone else’s tracks on the ungroomed trail to Bean Lake, where I sit on a log for a minute. The grey clouds open up in a circle over the lake, a dreamy baby blue; an eagle glides the length of the lake and pauses overhead. Sunlight filters through, makes the lake’s floor and walls glitter. It splashes across my notebook page, a pulse of warmth on a single-digit day. I think back on past visits to this lake, drift into a realm of dreams.

What do you get when you strip away all the rationalizations, dip into those deeper corners of the psyche? I defend much of what civilization has given us, its incredible progress and smoothed rough edges off our greatest extremes. But there is a dialectic here, an ear willing to listen for the tune of things. Feel the more primal urges, the pull of the wilderness, the desire for communion.

It comes out in rootedness to the land; the instinct that will drive me into a grotto along a plunging stream or out into a cathedral of pines or along these silent white trails, a drift out of linear time and into the rhythms and cycles that are at once more opaque and more meaningful. It comes in a hunger for the language of faith, not because I am deeply devout but because I think we chop off some fundamental piece of the human experience when we cannot go there, get left with fairy tales and happily ever after pablum (or, worse yet, defeated resignation) instead of the full triumph and tragedy of humanity. We can construct a rational vision of a future with a career and a credential checklist and a house and even a lifestyle and some idealized family life, but a mission-driven push toward that eyes-open rational dream loses some ability to trust the waves, cannot quite lose itself in deeper communion with an awesome external force. True rootedness, true vocation, true love: the source of their strength is somewhere in here.

In 2026, I will trust the pull into parts unknown. Quit the scrolls, touch grass (or snow) and chase deep into the places where the pinging device cannot dictate action. Stay out for that extra conversation, that last drink at the end of the night. Let the eyes wander, ask questions, try out new ways of moving through and find people who share that intensity.

I have only ever been an intermittent dreamer. Rarely do I remember much. But when I do it almost always brings a warm glow, usually some pulse of youthful intensity, one with some kid who breaks down the barriers of his reserve and finds his flow state, his pace. Dreams may not be reality, but sometimes they tell us more about the true nature of things than a lifetime of careful calculations ever could. My belief has never been deeper.

Building from Within

Through seven games there has been no obvious moment of arrival, no loud statement. But slowly, steadily, the Duluth East Greyhounds are stirring to life. They have some talent, flashing some genuine skill and a deadly power play. There is some real depth. They play feisty hockey, willing to throw some hits without tipping over the edge. After the dark depths of last season, Greyhound hockey is starting to resemble its great legacy again.

The Hounds have taken care of the teams they should beat. They are winless in four games against top 15 teams, and while the first two were lopsided, the more recent ones show signs of progress. First, they took Holy Angels to overtime, pestering a rising power and coming very close to a tie; later, after struggling in the early going against Eden Prairie, they seized the initiative and pushed the Eagles to the brink in a 4-3 loss. They’ve also got a tie against Grand Rapids, a statement to a rival and section favorite that they can hang with them. East hockey is entertaining again.

The key to the fresh look is a youth movement, which is especially pronounced at forward. Marccus Anttila is the lone senior on the top three lines. Sophomore Zane Medlin is starting to flash his skill, leading the team in scoring and looking genuinely scary when he gets loose. Mckennen Kramer and Fin Kuzmuk have some good moves; if they can round into complete hockey players with vision on the ice, they will be a lot of trouble for opposing teams. Jax Edgerton is a candidate for most improved player, while Easton Orhn adds some welcome fire. The lower lines can play intelligent system hockey and hold their own much more often than they could the past few couple seasons.

The defensive corps is solid. Liam Brooks is the showstopping sophomore star, perhaps the best next-level Hound prospect since Ryder Donovan. But Landon Pearce and Henrik Spenningsby are stalwart seniors who have gutted it out through rough years and are now team leaders, Wally Lundell’s big presence makes a difference, and Greyson Medak is contributing right away, too. Throw in a veteran in net in Nolan Nygaard and there is a lot to like on the back end.

There are limitations. Even if Medlin rounds into form rapidly, scoring up front is going to have to be by committee. The team needs to keep flushing out the dumb habits that aggravated me so thoroughly over the past two seasons. There have been and no doubt will be plenty more youthful moments. The coaching staff needs to keep working through its collection of interesting pieces, find combinations that click, and put kids in positions to succeed. (They also need to bring back the black jerseys.) The right-sized schedule gives them a chance at a winning season while still providing a healthy number of real tests against quality teams. I could see them cracking the top 25, but they are not yet the top-15 type of squad we came to expect out of East for decades.

But, in this season’s Section 7AA, what they are is enough for legitimate contention. No team here is elite. Rock Ridge has the flashy top line, but has some question marks in back as they look to play complete games against good teams. Grand Rapids has a lot of returning experience but has not looked particularly impressive in the early going. Undefeated Duluth Marshall has a solid core of seniors and juniors and will likely peak this season; it’s a golden chance for the Hilltoppers to cash in on a quality core. Their high end is not overwhelming, though, and their paper-thin schedule raises real questions about their preparedness for serious playoff tests.

There is a deeper current to my optimism, too: no matter where this season goes, this doesn’t look like a flash in the pan. The Duluth East youth teams, all the way down, are somewhere between good and great. There is legitimate talent, and it will be flowing into the Heritage Center in the coming years. It is a testament to patience, to building from within and the hard work of a lot of good people who knew that the valleys this program has faced this decade could not hold up: the east side of Duluth just has too strong an infrastructure for a good community-based hockey program. Now I will make a few more requests: a renewed student presence, and the families coming together as a group instead of hanging out in clumps of twos or threes. (Can we also get more than three cheerleaders, and perhaps a ten-piece band that shows up for ten games a year instead of a 50-person ensemble that appears at random with such volume to render speech in the Heritage Center impossible? As long as I’m dreaming, I might as well make the request.) Let’s take care of our cultural inheritance, please.

Enough of the soapbox, though. To all of my current and future friends in the program, keep putting in the work; for all the long nights and occasional dramas, we’re doing a lot right. If you’re one of my casual East fan readers, get out there and see this team. It’s not peak Dave Spehar or Garrett Worth Greyhounds, but it is lively, competitive hockey, and a healthy reminder of what this program, and this sport, can be. Just keep building.

The Price of Commitment

In the late stages of Duluth East’s dismal 2024-2025 hockey season, I commiserated with a dad with whom I watched many games that year about the state of the program. The dad listed off a heap of players who were no longer with the program and sighed as he watched his own kid, one of the relative talents on a bad team, struggle to do what he could. “This is what we get for being loyal,” I lamented.

It was a strange, spontaneous comment whose bitterness has stuck with me since. Why was I so down? Loyalty is a value I hold deeply, both to people and to place. Such conviction comes at a price, and the tests of those things held most deeply reveal true character. People who know themselves, writes Joan Didion in “On Self-Respect,” “are willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.” In that momentary lapse in a hockey arena, I forgot my respect for the odds, forgot that certain sacrifices are worth it if we truly believe what we say we do. I hope not to do so again.

Hockey was among the least consequential areas where I felt the price of loyalty this year. I fell deeper into a relationship than I have in years, and then I fell out of it, largely because my ex and I could not reconcile ourselves with the quasi-spiritual tie I feel to my hometown, where she does not live. I enjoyed my time with her, but I had to deal with the consequences of questioning one of my most deeply held articles of faith, and that faith won. At work, I dealt with the whims of powerful people beyond my circles of influence that have battered my employer; I got to be the executioner for a layoff. And yet, after fighting through the worst of that, I have found some of my past career ambivalence overrun by a deep commitment to the work I do and the places that I do it. I have come out of this year like a soldier who has been to war: bloodied, bruised, saddened by losses, and more committed to my core loyalties than ever.

As I worked through new life challenges, I realized what a hardened soul I can be. “You’re going to find that you are very set in your ways,” a friend who entered a long-term relationship with her now-husband in her late 30s warned me as I entered mine this year. She was spot-on. I am set not only in certain habits and what gets on my nerves, but also in how I manage conflict. I can dither, take too long to say important things, but when I make decisions, I do not second-guess them. I am not so bold as to claim I always make the right decisions, but I think I make the best decisions I can make for myself in the light of what I know, and that knowledge is enough. Again, from the Didion essay: “To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.”

I am more confident than ever that I have that self-respect. I can discriminate with some confidence, even when I know it will hurt to do so. I know the tools I need to find a necessary level of inner calm. With that calm, I can accept that I have given everything I could, note any mistakes for future reference, and solider on. Explained poorly this thought process could feel heartless, but it is sustained by a flame burning beneath me, a restless fire of life that refuses to dwell, refuses to lapse into too dark a place because there is too much more to do. I know where to go when struggles arise: sometimes into the woods, sometimes into these words, perhaps into the arms of a few people who have been there through it all. But I go there and I make my commitments and that is that.

My confidence in these decisions gets some juice from the recognition that even a heavy year did not appear to age me much. In a weird way, I rediscovered some youth over recent months, gained insights into that flame beneath. “Don’t let the old man in,” repeated Uncle Bob on our summer hike in the Uncompahgre, a mantra for a man entering retirement who can still power up fourteeners. I am in a different stage of life, but I took those words to heart this year as I worked out more than ever, kept up my own travel pace, and found myself grumbling when other people preferred to sit and vegetate. Call it the Rob Jones effect (named for Uncle Bob’s son, my literally tireless cousin and semi-regular travel companion), call it some restless spirit, but it is core to who I am. I want to chase new experiences, say yes to things that make me a little uncomfortable, stay out until the end of the night if the situation demands it.

That value of youth was one of several things I learned or re-internalized over these tumultuous months. I can sometimes be a bit thermostatic, channeling the moods of people around me; that adaptability is a part of who I am. But beneath that there is a core, or at least a preferred set of modes I like to channel. The careful rationalizing of how my skillsets may complement another person’s, which works well in the work world, makes much less sense in a relationship. Instead I must trust the instincts, trust the passion, trust the pursuits I cannot shake. They are right more often than not, and even if they miss the mark, I can walk away with only the right regrets.

One of the beauties of being a writer, one that helps immensely when wrestling with tough questions, is that I have often pre-written the words I need to deal with just about anything. I reread parts of my blog in trying times this year: my last two year-end posts, the posts about my travels, each of which finds new ways to reveal something about who I am. But the core is the fiction I play around with, where the relevance of a few passages are obvious enough.

Here, a character named Evan ponders the suicide of his father some years prior:

It strikes him suddenly that, unlike ever-questioning Mark, he’s never really been consumed asking why. He wonders what went through his father’s mind, certainly, and wishes he’d had the power break his fall, been given some insight into the sickness that plagued the man so that he could have expended every ounce of his energy into saving him. Easy to say now, he thinks, but he does like to believe he could have done so, and even if he couldn’t, would have been able to make peace knowing he did all he could.

This is his style, he thinks to himself, a smile growing on his face. He is comfortable in reality, knows his limits, all guided by his faith. Faith in what? It almost doesn’t even matter since it just works for him, day in and day out, the lows never too low.

He wishes he could talk to his dad again, yes. He knows he carries some part of him inside him. He will never know what could have been. And yet, there it is: from the start, he’s managed to accept that nothing he can do can change what is done, and that it is his solemn task to take tragedy and turn it into something that can empower him. It seems almost cold. He can picture himself trying to explain this to his mother or Bridget and coming off as robotic, the self-improvement machine moving on with no need for pity. Perhaps this is why he can’t say a word about it.

And then Evan’s friend Mark, running trails on Nantucket, hung over after the pursuit of a woman did not go quite as planned:

He’s not quite sure how long his agony lasts, whether it is five minutes or half an hour, but it doesn’t matter. This is more than some stray hangover. He is a piece of trash, a useless scum, a kid with promise who’s pissing it away in a silly performative world of endless nothing. This will be the end of the line, the wake-up call he needs and the liberation of a sickened soul. No more descents into hedonism without purpose, no more sad nights alone in his room. And then there, squatting in a bush, clothing caked in sweat, hands buried deep in his disheveled hair, he turns his gaze upward and his closed eyes perceive the world through those of a child, future or past he cannot be sure, and suddenly he feels the pain easing away, drained out into this sandy Nantucket soil where it can remain.

Mark rises and begins a steady trot back to the beach house, ready to guide his charges out on a tour of the island’s lighthouses and feed them a fresh seafood dinner. His stomach rumbles softly. The wind tugs his hair in and out of his eyes. He smiles a manic smile. He’s found his pace.

I thought of these words as I laughed off a theatrical stumble on a ridgetop trail run of my own the weekend of my breakup. It hurt, but I kept on going, and there is so much to look forward to. Family holiday season is upon us. Winter is here. Ski trails beckon and hockey rinks call. I have next adventures to plan, decisions to make over how to pursue deeper commitments. A ferocity of life takes hold, and I push onward at my own pace.

Gateways and Arrivals

Arrival in Florida feels like one prolonged wait. Upon landing in Miami, my mom and I undertake an arduous trek to the rental cars. A four-hour drive means our entrance to the Keys comes in darkness, a journey across suburban strips and swamp and long, lonely bridges into the night. We are on a journey to celebrate my mother’s retirement, freed from city politics and social service provision after many long years at the Duluth Public Library. We’d planned a version of this trip in April 2020, but after the world intervened then, we are now free to do it well.

At the end of the bridges sits Key West, a land of tasteful bungalows and grand verandas, the whole island colored by a tropical languor, the stately repose of a retreat at the end of the road. Grey skies put it in a sense of slumber, a promise not quite fulfilled upon arrival. We are here midweek in the offseason, but the party goes on every night at Sloppy Joe’s and Captain Tony’s and a few dozen other tiki bars along its main drag. Duval Street is a Bourbon Street for middle aged white people, live guitars in every bar and beer and cocktails around every corner. A power boat race is in town this week, with souped up trucks to match; just about every man looks like he is here to fish. Here there is some risk of paradise as a commodity, a repeat soundtrack of Bob Marley and Jimmy Buffett, endless references to the drinking that will happen here. I am not here to fish. I am here to have a few drinks, but we are not exactly set on shutting down the bars, either. I am not really here to escape, but instead to take a pause that lets me write, be with the companion I’ve traveled with more than anyone.

We take up rooms at the Eden House east of the city center. The rooms themselves are tight ground floor spaces, but I am of the camp that doesn’t much care about the interior of a hotel room beyond the basics: it is a launching point to go do other things. The Eden House’s pool deck has seating for all types, and a second story veranda is the hotel’s steal, one of those venues for Southern graciousness that is too often lost from later architecture. I sit out here and write three ways at once, this post and a possible follow-up and some musings on where my fiction goes from here. This town has punched above its weight as a retreat for writers for over a century, and I can only dream to catch a hint of that inspiration.

The Hemingway House is the highlight of Key West. The 61 cats prowl about and the writing studio sits in repose, books and typewriters and trophies from a life without limits, mementos of boxing and bullfights and fishing trips and safaris far afield. Here I find some of that awe, this time at that masculinity unleashed: the women and the parties for a warrior and a thinker, a man drawn to the questions of his time and the places where the action was, his pursuit straight up to the edge and then straight over it because what other way is there to live? Here the old man met the sea, fought it at times, churned out many of his greatest hits. He produced a legacy that smashes the underlying tragedy. The cost may or may not have been inevitable but it is a reality and it does just boost the mystique.

Ernest Hemingway’s crisp clarity defined modernity, his simple precision that can lead a 21st century reader to swoon about trout fishing in the hills above Pamplona or bring a pack of Two Hearted Ale to the mouth of the Two Hearted River in Michigan. (Yes, I have done this.) Joan Didion taught herself to write by copying down his sentences, and I have taught myself to write by toying with Joan Didion’s work. Of course from certain lenses Hemingway’s life can now be judged or even canceled; artistry with prose faces some headwinds in a flattened world of AI summaries and messages dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Moreover the Hemingway mystique can swallow the human tale beneath, the depression coursing through his work turned into some tragic heroism that satisfies a certain narrative of tortured genius. As a writer whose instincts are not all that depressive I wonder if I’m missing some key ingredient that I would prefer to never have, but I decide I can make do with that tradeoff.

The cherished home of a long-departed author underscores the permanence of words. Sure, the novel may lack the cultural power it had in Papa’s prime. But fifty years from now no one will be watching TikToks made in 2025. They will still be reading Hemingway. Putting down words creates a record, both in print and in type, that the ephemeral world of live video does not. Of course there are some snippets that will last, but the power to both capture and interpret, provide witness and critical distance, will remain all the stronger.

It would be easy to look around at the denizens of Key West and draw a harsh divide: us few, proud people of words who stand athwart the vapid party, immune to the siren call of the anomie of endless swipes. On a certain level I do believe some version of this argument: that is the point of a conviction. But there can still be pathways in for anyone, and pulling up the drawbridge to hold on to a snooty high culture isn’t going to change it. I instead prefer to own it, sit on a beach reading or writing and make it look good, share the best snippets here and there. And for anyone looking for a way in, Hemingway’s deceptively simple prose and chasing of great adventures isn’t a bad place to start.

Slowly, Key West shows more as we scrape beneath the surface. We visit Judy Blume’s bookstore, wander in search of beers and a spot on the beach beneath a soft curtain of an Australian pine’s wispy needles. Truman’s summer White House is here, and the ferry to Dry Tortugas beckons for a future visit, perhaps when the campground facilities are not shuttered thanks to a government shutdown. We tour the Audubon House, never visited by its namesake but a keystone for the preservation of Key West’s grace, a spendy preservation movement that nonetheless keeps it a step removed from sinking into the tourist trap ensnaring much of the rest of the Keys. The Conch Republic puts in the effort to maintain its independence.

After three nights on Key West, we are on the move again. This, I think, is my style of travel: a meander up an island chain, flashes of both wilderness and city, parts unknown and the center of the action. As we drive up the Keys we stop at a state park for halfhearted snorkeling, a bit of beach time, a stroll up the old railroad bridge that first knitted the islands together. Later we pause at a roadside carnival show named Robbie’s, where we feed some tarpons and see some manatees and dodge the scavenging ibises and pelicans. From there we are off through the wet lowlands and back to Miami.

In Miami the skyline glows as warmly as many of the well-toned bodies, but for all the glaze it cannot quite hide how it is paving over a swamp. On our second to last day in Florida we immerse ourselves in that swamp and shoot up the Tamiami Trail, a 1920s causeway that colonized the interior of the Everglades. Even now, it is a wild place, the kind of locale an ambitious xenophobe would set up a migrant internment camp. (Sure enough, loud signs announce the presence of Alligator Alcatraz.) South Florida’s history is a series of battles against the rising waters, a desire to tame them and cut back that thick, oppressive brush to replace it with orderly rows of palm trees. This region’s boosters sought to roust the beasts who live in these swamps and the last people who hid away in these refuges, or at least tame them into a roadside attraction.

A circuit on the Big Cypress National Preserve’s loop road is a safari through a menagerie of birds, a few dozen alligators, and a slow roll through everything from dense watery forests to reedy cypress savannas to a tangled mass of endless scrub. It contains a wildness and a secrecy that the open West cannot match, the eyes only so much good in trying to explore it. Even a short hike on a nature trail leaves a little claustrophobia, a question of what might lie around the next bend, the mosquitoes rising up and some mysterious scat marking territory in the middle of the trail.

On the way out we visit the Miccosukee, a Native tribe that battled the U.S. government beside the Seminoles and later retreated deep into the swamp to retain some independence for as long as they could. Their roadside attraction of a village is sleepy today; the expected tour guide never appears. But the camp is well-tended, the museum behind carved alligator doors tells the story well enough, and a show demonstrating how to properly tame one of their rescue gators is a window into a different world.

Out of this landscape rises Miami, one of the nation’s largest metros. Miami’s story is an updated version of a very American story, a gateway city haphazardly absorbing immigrants. It has all of this country’s greatness and all its flaws: a rush of development, a hunger for freedom and parties and sexy bodies, out with the old and in with the new. It was famed for crime and coke in past generations but is now more of a place where people instead seek to properly model their bare chests or sports bras. With its borderland status comes tension as culture remains stubborn and ties to old countries complicate the politics. (Miami is one of the very few American cities that can still reliably elect Republicans to higher office, thanks largely to the particularities of the Cuban diaspora.) The beach gives it an allure that other Sun Belt cities cannot match; its closest analogue is LA, though it is more niche than LA, lacks its cultural power beyond the Hispanic community.

Within that community, though, Miami is everything. In my travels, I’ve learned that Latin Americans aspire to Miami as much as any American city. The heart of the allure is of course in economic opportunity, in political freedom, in glitz and glamor on the beach. But old ties are hard to break, and a visit to Little Havana is an object lesson: this neighborhood is home to a court in exile and a continuation of pure Cuba, of salsa rhythms and cigars and dominoes over cafecitos. Even with a collection of people branded with Royal Caribbean stickers strolling the streets, it feels alive, something carried forward and a place where a Hispanophile can feel very much at home.

Miami is a city of gleaming beachfront towers, but it is also home to graceful Art Deco neighborhoods from an earlier era, that great triumph of American architecture serving as the perfect backdrop for this modern-day white city. Beneath the gleaming façade, color explodes, and never more so than in Wynwood, where we spend two nights. Wynwood is gentrification central just north and west of downtown, the inevitable boxy apartment blocks and trendy restaurants crowding out the bedraggled old concrete single-story homes and empty lots. I linger on these grungy old homes, wonder what stories they have told over the decades, which immigrant lives may have launched from here. Even as Wynwood changes there is an easy drift between Spanish and English here, a dance between two worlds, and I wonder how well it will hold on to its art. Miami is strongest in the places where it keeps the tension alive.

This trip is a perfect escape to celebrate a retirement, to find some well-earned rest and adventure all at once and think about what might come next. For my part, I am not sure how high Florida is on my list for a return visit. It is a land of leisure, but not one of awe, and as a pursuer of awe this easy luxury will never quite be me. I am not drawn to resorts or creature comforts, the overly sanitized or scheduled trip. Vacations should be a little bit hard, and I don’t mind a little snow, I think as the season’s first snowflakes wander down on the drive north from Minneapolis.

On the beach on Key West I read “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.” This short story was the first Hemingway piece to capture my imagination, and like all good fiction, it tells us something that we do not know that we know. “Snows” is a writer’s lament for the things he has not yet written and may never write, a call to me to get to work. It is a confession of the fumbles with women drawn in by the Hemingway-style pursuit, with Harry in the tale pushing Helen in ways that both give her new meaning and wound her, Harry at once proud of her but still questioning the whole exercise. And it closes with a drift away from even the heaviest of earthly concerns on to greater heights, to beauty, to the white snows at the end of the line. There are so many worthy goals here, so much to unpack and to reach for. And with that, I write.

Wilderness Calling

Summer draws to a close, and the days for carefree outdoors enjoyment dwindle. In the past six months I have been to Spain and the Caribbean and Colorado and Chicago, but I have neglected the more immediate opportunities. My dad tugs me into the Boundary Waters for the first time in four years, too long an absence for someone with wilderness in the backyard.

Our gateway to the BWCA comes at the Brandt Lake entry point off the north end of the Gunflint Trail. We set out with ambitions of revisiting Adams Lake, a gem deep in the interior of the BWCA; if we cannot reach that lofty goal, we will at least settle for exploring a little-traveled chain of lakes between it and better-known destination lakes like Gabimichigami and Little Saganaga. My dad tweaks his knee on day one, however, and our itinerary shortens considerably. We settle for a three-night jaunt in and out, puddle-jump over seven portages to Bat Lake, where we spend two nights before working our way back over two days, a journey of no great physical feats that instead turns to gentle release.


It has been a wet late summer in northern Minnesota. The first portage has standing water for much of its length, and the second and third are only marginally better. The fifth has developed a mid-path waterfall. The mosquitoes of legend, usually in remission by September, are still about, though tolerable. The grey skies are steady throughout our trip. The Canadian Shield has been stained black by rainfall, steady drips off overhanging cliffs into the water below. My favorite spot on the trip is Gotter Lake, a small, marshy expanse lined whose narrow points are lined by cliffs, the looming mists clinging to the walls and drifting over the grasses. We turn into the wrong arm on our way across it, but I don’t mind the extra paddle.

Some fall foreplay is emerging in the trees, first hints of the golden eruption that will strike in the coming weeks. Even across four days, we see a real difference. The nights settle into a perfect sleeping temperature. A steady procession of geese makes its way southward, their flying Vs audible long before they are visible. A flock of cranes, meanwhile, heads west. I contemplate the stray geese who do not quite get the memo about flying in formation: is it ineptitude, or rebellion? We fend off an intrepid chipmunk who darts about the site. We reach for our cameras when something emerges from our lake; from a distance it could be a moose, but it is just another canoe. I extract a leech from its feasting grounds on my foot. We watch something steadily work its way along currents on the lake against the wind. It is a leaf.

There is no boredom here, though. My dad continues to perfect the art of hammock camping, and while I stay in my trusty tent, I too set up a hammock and hang between trees to read and write and watch nights fade into darkness. This is wilderness but there are still people to liven up our days: six Brits flying the Union Jack from their lead canoe pass us on the way out and two good Samaritans take some of our gear as they double-portage in the opposite direction, sparing a second traverse of one of the longer portages on the gimpy knee. People ask about the fishing, on which we have no insight. Paddling and portaging is enough.

We grade our campsites. The site on Bat Lake is a B, with a nice sitting rock by the shore and a well-appointed kitchen and plenty of tent and hammock space. Its biggest demerit is the clear view of the latrine from the kitchen, and while it is quite likeable there is no real wow factor. Bat is not a destination lake, but it is a pleasant hideaway one portage short of better-known Gillis Lake. The site on Brandt Lake on the way out, however, is an A-plus. The kitchen sits right behind a rocky outcropping, which gives a commanding view of the lake and a place to bask in the sun or stargaze in better weather. It remains secluded, hidden from the nearest site by a protruding island, and offers a glimpse of prime moose territory in a back bay swamp. The tent pads are quality but not overused, and there are ample spots to string up a hammock for a lake view. Here the latrine is appropriately hidden, though a hint of lake is visible from a seat atop the throne.

Our conversation drifts about, from wilderness observations to retirement life to where I might travel abroad next. (Nepal? Brazil or Peru? Mount Kilimanjaro? Eastern Europe and on to Istanbul? Time will tell.) We appraise the amount of scotch we’ve brought with some disappointment at these deceptively small flasks. I read a book in the hammock and, for the first time in years, am not writing or editing the same damn short stories—one that had one installment written on a previous canoe trip—because I have made good on my promise from San Diego last November and am actually trying to do something with them.

Where that goes is of little import out here. The only demands are the most immediate, and the release from other obligations and communications and intrusive virtual worlds becomes more precious over time. Here we can just listen to what the wilderness tell us. We hear a whippoorwill, a distant white-throated sparrow; a few voices echo up the lake from the next campsite. A fish jumps, a beaver tail slaps, and the aspen leaves quake overhead. This home calls to me, even if I do not visit often enough.

The call, for whatever reason, seems deeper now, more pressing. Its immediacy has something to tell me. We make plans to try for Adams sometime again soon.