They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this series I’ve chosen one picture per post which brings out strong memories for me and has a story attached to it. This picture is of the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, California, the place I first watched the sun set into the Pacific.
I was as far from home as I’d ever been.
When I went to college, my goal was to work for the National Park Service. My major was Wildlife and Fishery Science with a minor in American History. I spent five years working on two degrees to prepare myself for my career, but in the days of the infancy of the internet I really didn’t know what that career would entail. While there, I worked in the banquet department at a beautiful resort hotel and golf course and made pretty decent money for a college kid. I was, therefore, pretty disappointed when I started looking for a real job only to find that the only Park Service jobs available to me were 3 month temporary positions in parks I’d never heard of making $8 an hour. I couldn’t believe it – after five years of good grades and two degrees from an excellent institution I was only going to make $8 an hour? That was significantly less than I was making in my current job. And in three months I’d have to start all over again?
I decided to think on it for a while and headed to my summer home of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In my first “real world” lesson, I had to sign to a one-year lease to get a decent place to live, and went back to work at the restaurant I had worked at the previous two summers. Over the next year I worked a lot, drank too much and made some really good friends, some of whom are still my friends today, but didn’t make a lot of progress towards any career goals. I’d like to say it was fun, but looking back it just seemed like it was at the time. There were some great days, but life after college was supposed to be different.
After a year of spinning my wheels I found myself no further ahead than I had been when I arrived. I cut my losses, packed up my bags and headed north. I went back to Pennsylvania for a while, and then headed to Ocean City, Maryland for a few days to see what the work climate was like there. Nothing seemed to be working out, so I finally gave up and heading home to D.C
Antietam National Battlefield was the sight of the bloodiest day in American History and one of the best known battle of the American Civil War. Along Antietam Creek just north of the tiny town of Sharpsburg, Maryland, 100,000 soldiers marched into battle on September 17th, 1862. By the end of that day almost 23,000 were dead, wounded or missing.
After a Confederate victory at the 2nd Manassas/Bull Run, General Robert E. Lee pushed into the North for the first time. The Virginia countryside had been ravaged during the first year of the war, and Lee wanted to give it time to heal, plus a decisive victory in the North might bring President Lincoln to the negotiating table.
On September 15th, 1862, Lee crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and dug in along the high ground west of Antietam Creek. Union forces under Commanding General George McClellan moved in from the east. At dawn on September 17th, the battle began…
The photos below come from a cloudy visit to Antietam National Battlefield, the site of the bloodiest day in the American Civil War. Civil War Chronicles will trace the major battles of the Eastern Theater through photos and brief histories.
Hello everyone! 10 weeks later and I’m still here in Washington and with no end in sight I’m trying to make the most of it. It’s been another tough week across the country, and here in our Nation’s Capital, and I don’t want to downplay the significance of what’s going on so that’s where I’ll start this week. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis saddens me greatly. If you are a regular listener of my podcast, you know that I don’t shy away from talking about racism in America and some of the horrible incidents which have occurred in our country’s history. Racism and violence towards minorities is not something which ended with the Civil War or the Civil Rights Act and it’s something which is an everyday reality for many of our fellow Americans. I try and keep politics and controversy to a minimum in this space, but there should be no controversy in this. A man was killed for no good reason and when that happens the person who did the killing needs to face the harshest of consequences. In this case, all the good cops should be leading the charge as what happened was a disgrace to the badges they wear.
Beyond that, I don’t know the answers. I wish I did. It’s been hard to watch the vandalism going on in my city and in my neighborhood. I wish that it hadn’t come to that, but I’ve been watching backlash for years over peaceful protests and sadly this seems to be what it takes to peoples’ attention. I’m trying to keep my ears open right now and really listen to what my black friends are saying. Their reality is different from mine and I acknowledge that and I am listening. I think the thing which affected me most was a tweet by Seth Green which said “Black people are literally saying ‘stop killing us’ and there are people saying ‘but…”. A change has got to come. What’s past is past, but there is still hope for the future.
With all of this weighing heavily on my mind, I’ve been trying to stay productive this week. I’ve been getting some photos edited and published and some writing done as well. I’m also making some headway on one of the books I’m writing, although it will undoubtedly take longer than I anticipated.
On July 21st, 1861 the first major battle of the American Civil War took place near the town of Manassas, Virginia and just west of a meandering creek called Bull Run. The battle was supposed to be a quick and decisive one, and many congressmen and socialites rode out from Washington with picnic baskets to watch it unfold. 10 hours after the battle began, 900 young men lay dead on the battlefield and the bloodiest war in American history began in earnest. This first Battle of Bull Run at Manassas was also where General Thomas J. Jackson earned his nickname as General Barnard Bee commented to his men “There stands Jackson like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians”. By the end of the day, the Southerners had sent the Federals running back to Washington and won a major victory for the Confederacy.
Just over a year later, the two armies clashed once again near this critical rail junction just 25 miles from Washington D.C. For three days in August, the Battle of Second Bull Run at Manassas raged violently across the landscape. When the smoke cleared, 3,300 soldiers lay dead and the South once again claimed victory. General Robert E. Lee, now in charge of the South’s Army of the Potomac, knew that their breadbasket in Northern Virginia was running low, so he pushed the war across the Potomac River and into the North for the first time. The tides would turn at the battle of Antietam at Sharpsburg, Maryland. To learn about this next chapter in the war, check back for my next installment of the Civil War Chronicles, coming soon.
The photos below come from a cloudy visit to the Manassas National Battlefield, the site of two important battles from the American Civil War. Civil War
I hope you enjoy this post with photos and history from Forest Hills, a beautiful neighborhood in Northwest Washington D.C.
Resting quietly between Cleveland Park and Chevy Chase and bordered by Rock Creek Park to the east is the quaint neighborhood of Forest Hills. Those of us who grew up in the era of the Metro are probably more likely to think about this neighborhood as Van Ness/UDC. The station takes its name from Van Ness Street, the main cross street in the neighborhood, and the University of the District of Columbia. Since the northern border of the neighborhood is considered to be Nebraska Avenue, I grew up right across the street from Forest Hills.
Once home to a Native American soapstone quarry, Forest Hills has quite an interesting history. In 1763, long before the creation of Washington D.C., Col. Samuel Beale was granted a tract of land by Lord Baltimore and named the area Azadia. Much of this tract would later be purchased by Isaac Pierce who would build his namesake mill along Rock Creek. In 1814, Revolutionary War veteran and retired land surveyor John Adlum bought a 200 acre tract of land in the area to start a vineyard. He named his estate Springland Farm and went on to become one of the first commercial producers of wine in the country (Adlum is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown). During the Civil War, Forest Hills was the site of Fort Kearny – one of the ring of forts protecting the Capital City…
Hello everyone, well we’ve made it through another week. I hope it’s been a good one wherever you’re reading this from today. Mine has been really good – probably the best I’ve had since returning home to D.C. now 2 months ago. After a positive start to being sheltered in place and having some free time to catch up on some work and try some fun stay-at-home hobbies, I really hit a downward spiral there for a while as claustrophobia and cabin fever kicked in. With the extended and indefinite closure of my industry (travel and tourism), I found myself staring out at an uncertain and challenging future. I usually keep my anxiety levels in check by being in control of certain aspects of the situation and then allowing the rest to unfold as it will. Under these circumstances, my environment is more controlled than usual, but there are thousands of moving pieces around the world that I have no control over, but which will help shape my near and distant future. I find that to be incredibly frustrating, and with limitations on how I normally deal with my frustration as the gym is closed, travel is limited and my camera is gathering dust.
I’m the kind of person who usually turns inward to sort things out, dealing with them in my own head with little or no outside influence. This week though, I’ve had a lot of outside influences help pull me up out of the mud. First I got some nice messages from some of y’all which is always appreciated. Believe me, I love to hear from you so don’t hesitate to comment or message me. Second, I met with a couple of different friend groups over Zoom which is always good. Third, I went to see some of my friends in person – masked and 10 feet apart, but it was still great to actually see people in the flesh. I hate the fact that I’m home and can’t see my friends or their kids, and this was a chance to at least pop around and say hello. And lastly, my mom came up with a plan to get us out of the house and provide some outlet for being stuck at home indefinitely.
Last Thursday, we went for a walk in Rock Creek Park, the large green space which surrounds its namesake creek through the middle of the city. We took a look at the earthworks that were once Fort DeRussy…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In this series I’ve chosen one picture per post which brings out strong memories for me and has a story attached to it. This story is about a beautiful morning along the Nabesna Road in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, my last morning in Alaska.
It all started with a cigarette.
I haven’t been a regular smoker for many years, but sometimes when I had worked a long season guiding tours and the days were turning cooler as summer turned to fall, I’ve been known to pick up a pack. Usually before that pack is finished I’ll remember why I quit, but those first couple remind me why I started to begin with. And so it was that on a sunny afternoon in early fall I found myself smoking a cigarette outside of my hotel a few miles from LAX International Airport.
This was a hotel we used for our staff during turnarounds between tours in L.A, and there were a few other of our vans than mine in the parking lot that day. A fellow tour leader who I didn’t know had seen me get out of my van, so she came over and introduced herself. We made small talk about what trips we were doing and what else we were up to with a few days off in L.A. and she told me she was filling out an application to return to Alaska to work the following summer. In the company I work for, Alaska is like the Promised Land, it’s somewhere everyone seems to want to go spend the summer, but in the old days it was somewhere you only got to go once. One season in the great north land, and that was it. More recently, she told me, we had started running some high-end tours and they needed some experienced leaders to run them so the application process was open to everyone. We chatted some more, and it got me thinking…
They say a picture is worth a thousand words and as a visual storyteller I usually tell stories through my photos. Since I’ve been sheltered in place though, I haven’t been able to get out and take as many photos as I’m used to. But I was recently reminded that after 20 years on the road, I have a lot of stories to tell. So here’s a crack at some of them. One photo and a thousand words (this is a big story - it’s actually a fair bit longer than a thousand words, but I was never much for rules). So here’s my first crack at this - it’s also a story I tell in Episode 0 of my podcast which you can listen to HERE.
When I was a teenager, I was standing alone one day in the rain, and in a moment of youthful angst I felt overcome with the feeling that I was never going to live to see 30. Through the years I have seen this is a fairly common teenage phenomenon, but I didn't know that at the time. Some of it came from the media, and the exposure to the James Dean and Jim Morrisons and Kurt Cobains of the world. All the cool people died young. And some probably came from anxiety about getting older and watching our youth and vibrancy disappear, becoming more like our parents and teachers. But no matter where it came from, it weighed on me and I set out to live a life with the time that I had, with a sense of purpose and urgency. And I did.
My youthful desires were actually pretty easy to fulfill. At 16, I needed a car and wanted an old Mustang, so I bought a 1968 classic 289. It was a beautiful car!. At 20, I wanted to live at the beach and see what that was like, so during my last two summers in college and for a full year after I graduated, I lived in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and partied like a rock star. Perhaps most of all though, from the time I was a kid, I wanted to see America. Fulfilling this goal wasn't as easy as the others until, one day, it was. At 24, as I set off on my career running nationwide tours, I saw my dreams become reality. Once I had seen the major American landmarks I had always been enthralled with, I set out into smaller towns and rural communities.
Hello everyone, another week has come and gone and it’s certainly had its ups and downs. More ups than last week, so that is at least something. The weather got warm here in D.C. for the weekend, and we enjoyed sitting outside in the sun. It’s turned significantly colder again as the new week began, which I’m okay with because I know the oppressive heat of D.C. in the summertime is not far away. It’s normally about this time of year that I’m making plans to head north and away from the heat. North to the Rockies, north to Alaska, north to the Great Lakes - somewhere where summer is a little bit easier to cope with and it’s actually a wonderful thing to be outside. I think it’s the knowledge that I’m likely to be here in D.C. for most of the summer which made my cabin fever boil over a bit this week. I miss the road. I miss my friends. I miss the opportunity to pick up and go when and where I want to. I miss new adventures and experiences.
We had a nice weekend here in the old homestead. My mother took charge of the social calendar for a night on Thursday and we enjoyed an evening in a colonial tavern. We had a wonderful meal and listened to some lovely fife and drum music from Colonial Williamsburg. It was a lot of fun and definitely different.
Friday, we had a nice barbecue outside, minus the barbecue. My old gas grill wasn’t working right, so we cooked inside instead, but at least we sat outside and enjoyed the nice weather and some good music…
Hello everyone, and welcome to another sheltering-in-place update from our nation’s capital. It’s been a tough week for me here personally, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m in a one-day-at-a-time kind of place right now. I’m grateful to have my family around me as we support each other through the highs and lows of this process.
My friend Ryan passed away over the weekend. Ryan was a part of my local hometown gang – a group of my closest friends that’s been hanging out together for more than 20 years. We’ve been through ups and downs, marriages and kids. Some of us grew up together, but we’ve all grown through adulthood together, and I’ve never doubted that I could call on any one of this group for anything in the world, even though my travel schedule makes me a recurring guest star more than a regular cast member. I have a photo of this group on the visor of my van, and when I’m feeling lonely, I flip down my visor and I’m surrounded by my closest friends. Ryan had cancer, and this wasn’t something we didn’t know was coming, but it still hurts to know he’s gone. I’m a hopeful person, and I never lost hope that he would come out the other side of it. He was my age, entirely too young to die. I’m thankful that we gathered the gang together over the holidays, some coming from as far away as California and Colorado, so that we could laugh and share and break bread and just be together. We knew what was possibly to come, and I’m glad that my friends made this gathering possible and that I was in town to be there for it. It was a wonderful weekend filled with warmth and love. Ryan’s smile, laugh and playful spirit will be missed. May he rest in peace.
Also this week, I got a text message from my ex-girlfriend telling me that she got engaged. This is, of course, happy news and I’m very happy for her and her fiancé. I am giving her the benefit of the doubt, as I have for several years now, and believe that she texted me because she wanted to share her good news with me and also wanted to be sure I heard it from her and not through the grapevine. It’s still incredibly painful news to hear though, although also not unexpected…
In 1713, two colonists were granted a tract of land extending from what is now Cleveland Park all the way to present-day Rockville. That tract long predates both the city of Washington DC and the United States as a whole, and its owners named it “Friendship”.
By the turn of the 20th Century, only two homes were located in the area, one was located a few hundred yards back from Wisconsin Avenue in a grove of silver maples, and the other lay closer to the road and was owned by the Ball family. This home had an attached blacksmith shop and also served as a changing station for stagecoaches bound between Rockville and Georgetown. In the early 1900s, trolley tracks were laid connecting Georgetown to Montgomery County, and the area became prime real estate.
Over the next decade, the land was purchased and subdivided by two men, Albert Shoemaker and Henry Offutt, and a small community began to developed. By 1914, the Village of Friendship Heights and The Hills was recognized by the state of Maryland, and the community around it was also known as Friendship Heights. This was a rural area, and an annual fall hog slaughter was a much anticipated event…
Hi Everyone! It’s really hard to believe how quickly these weeks are flying by. I can’t believe it’s been 6 weeks since I got home and started writing my weekly updates from here in D.C. I’m still keeping very busy and still have plenty of things to do, but the days really start to mush together when I’m not out there on the road or at least making plans in that direction. The weather has been decent this week, and we’ve been spending some good time outside enjoying it, which has been great.
This week has been one of celebrations, which has also been really good. On Friday we celebrated another week gone by with our weekly “Forget About It Friday” party in the basement. This week I broke out my blacklight from college and went a hundred years into the future for a “future party”. We had some glowing gin and tonics and a few laughs and played a new-to-us card game called The Game which we all enjoyed. Saturday we all threw in together in the kitchen and created a huge and wonderful New Orleans inspired Italian meal. Monday we celebrated my folks’ anniversary with another nice meal and last night we had some tacos and margaritas for Cinco de Mayo. Because television and walks only boost your spirits so much, we’ve enjoyed these celebrations as an excuse to be together and enjoy something fun and different. The themes just give it some direction.
I got some good news this week from a wooden puzzle company in England who wants to use one of my photos of Cloudland Canyon in Georgia on one of their puzzles…
