Little Big Moments

Early in our family’s vacation to the mountains, my wife got sick. What awful bad luck! Instead of days spent hiking and evenings sipping adult beverages, she was plastered to the couch, enduring mindless Netflix movies.

Sitting on the outdoor patio at a brewery, there is a book of Barry Lopez’s essays in my hands and, in the distance, the Appalachian Mountains rise into an incomparably blue sky.

Our friends are moving today, and they seem excited, sad, nervous, eager, and hopeful. Earlier this week, I stopped by their house unannounced with a box of Chapel Hill Toffee and a gift card to Door Dash.

My daughter is six-and-a-half years old. She knows that living things need rain in order to grow....

Acknowledgements: little markers and echoes and ghosts of love. When perusing a library or bookstore, I’ll flip to the front or back of a book to read the acknowledgements section.

Pulling open the door to the Gray Squirrel Coffee Co. in Carrboro, I saw a tall stranger striding...

It felt like periodic cicadas emerge from the ground more often than my wife and I get out from under the depths of childcare. So, we left our little critters with my mom for an evening and went out past our children’s bedtime.

Last weekend, I attended a wedding in a huge Catholic church in the Triangle. I arrived Friday evening for the rehearsal. With a simple role in the service, I was free to roam around the gorgeous sanctuary with its icons and statues of saints—sacred objects one does not find in a Protestant church.

Doomscrolling is the act of reading depressing or worrying content, especially on one’s handheld...

Last Saturday, I joined a hundred or so runners for the Haw River Island Ramble in Saxapahaw. A...