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I often hesitate to update this, thinking that unless I have some update on our lives that it really isn't worth writing anything. I have to remember that this blog isn't strictly informational in the "I just did this, we just did that" sorta way. I guess there are plenty of things that I wish you knew about the two of us. Chances are, when you learn these things, we will have found another thing in common. We like that common word. Community.

I have been reading a lot of David James Duncan as of late. More specifically My Story As Told By Water. I guess you can call it a memoir. If you call it that, then I guess you could read it and hear our story too. I (Mark) feel like it is as much of My Story As Told by Water as Duncan's. His descriptions of the Pacific Northwest feel hauntingly like the very words I use to describe it, the images created by his words are the very photos and mini-movies I have preserved in my memory.

So I have been flipping through all of those as of late. Remembering and reliving those sacred moments in Lincoln, OR. Beth and I both go through these times often. Beth calls them the "Oregon Homesick Blues."

Take for example the photo below. A picture of our honeymoon road trip starting in San Francisco and traveling north through the redwood forest.

Thinking about that first full day of our marriage...man. We arrived in San Francisco, rented a Jeep Patriot from a shady rental place, and turned that thing north. We traveled for nearly seven hours, passing through the rolling, grass covered hills just north of San Francisco, then dodging in and out of dense redwood forest and the subsequent fog. We stopped in tiny towns for burritos and gas. We drove by roadside attractions like "The Legend of Bigfoot," and laughed.

.

We met Paul Bunyan, who amongst the giant redwoods, seemed at home, but thankfully retired many years ago.

We were headed to a campground on the coast in Brookings, OR. Our second night as a married couple was to be spent in a tent, and we preferred to set up that tent with plenty of daylight. But as we entered into the ancient forests the headlights started to beat out the sun as far as illumination. After hours in the forest we rounded a corner and beheld the mighty Pacific and the setting sun. Still hours from our campground we decided to stop and embrace the disappearance of our easily set up tent. We took this photo:

Man, how I wish we could repeat this again soon.