At the edge of the Talking Water Gardens stands a forgotten giant—a concrete beast devoid of life, lights, or purpose. Once a symbol of innovation, it now looms as a monument to misplaced optimism and taxpayer funds squandered without foresight. The city's infrastructure is crumbling silently, waiting for someone to address its forgotten plight.

The year died the way most of them do—loud, crooked, and without asking permission. Twelve months of busted plans, accidental revelations, half-empty coffee cups, and moments so sharp they could cut glass if you held them wrong. A year that started with good intentions and immediately veered off into the weeds, where the real stories live. There were no clean arcs here.

Share what you know about the year you were born. (Photo was taken by my friend Robert @rjackso714 on instagram) I was born in 1982, which means I entered this world mid-hangover, sometime after the party peaked and before anyone bothered to clean up. America was sweating through the last good years of the Cold War, still convinced it could win an arm-wrestling match with the entire planet.

The last adventure of the year didn’t arrive with fireworks or fanfare. It came quietly, soaked in rain, dusted with snow, wrapped in cloud cover, and carrying that unmistakable end-of-chapter weight that settles in your chest when you realize you’ve actually made it to the end of something you weren’t sure you could finish. Twelve months. Twelve destinations. One different corner of the Pacific Northwest every month, rain or shine or whatever punholy hybrid the sky felt like throwing at us.

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you. I hope they say I showed up. Not in some clean, Hallmark-approved, résumé-polished way. I’m talking about the ugly kind of showing up. The kind where you arrive late, a little bruised, half-lost, pockets full of bad decisions and good intentions, and you stay anyway. Even when it would’ve been easier to disappear into the fog like so many others did.

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you. I hope they say I showed up. Not in some clean, Hallmark-approved, résumé-polished way. I’m talking about the ugly kind of showing up. The kind where you arrive late, a little bruised, half-lost, pockets full of bad decisions and good intentions, and you stay anyway. Even when it would’ve been easier to disappear into the fog like so many others did.

Coffin Mountain – “No Map, No Mercy” Coffin Mountain doesn’t sound like the kind of place you stumble into by accident. And yet… that’s exactly what we did. The map said Quartzville Road. The instincts said “Just a bit further.” The forest said nothing—just stood there watching like it knew something we didn’t. We were somewhere past the boundaries of good judgment, signal dead, roads turning to gravel and then to rumor.

Yaquina Head – “Birds, Fog, and the Ghost of the Sea” By Nerdy Viking Photography The ocean doesn’t care about you. Not in a poetic way—not in that “vast and beautiful indifference” kind of nonsense. I mean really doesn’t care. It would swallow you in an instant, spit your bones back onshore, and let the gulls pick through what’s left. And standing on the edge of Yaquina Head, lens in hand, I believed it.

What could you do less of? What could I do less of? Hell, where do we begin on a question like that—what fresh lunacy do you want me to peel back first? Life is a buffet of bad habits and questionable instincts, and I’ve piled my plate like a drunk at a casino breakfast bar: too much, too often, and with no regard for the arteries involved.

There’s something dangerous about closing a chapter, especially one built out of 12 months of dirt roads, sleepless nights, shutter clicks, and the kind of Oregon backcountry hallucinations only too much caffeine and bad trail decisions can provoke. And now it all funnels toward one last destination: Sauvie Island, a place calm enough on the surface to lull you into a false sense of pastoral security.

There’s a moment on every hike where reality tilts, just a little, where the forest stops being a collection of trees and starts feeling like some ancient organism breathing around you. That’s what happened when we stumbled on these little fungal outlaws rising out of the moss. A tiny family of mushrooms, huddled together like they were conspiring against the rest of the woods.

Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it? “Do you have a favorite place you have visited? Where is it?” Jacksonville, Oregon… Written the only way it deserves: with one foot in memory, one foot in the present, and the whole damned story dipped in nostalgia and feral honesty. There’s a strange gravitational pull to Jacksonville, Oregon.

There are places in Oregon that don’t just sit quietly on the map , they brood. They lurk. They wait. Trillium Lake is one of them. We hit the place on a gray morning heavy enough to make a grown man question his life decisions. The sky looked like wet concrete slapped across the horizon, a ceiling built by some cosmic contractor who’d long since given up on pride.

There are days when the town you live in turns on you, shows you a different face, a strange feral mask that hides beneath all the cozy small-town brochures and cheerful banners hung over First Ave…

There are days when the universe behaves itself, and then there are days like this one. When the world tilts sideways just enough to let you slip between the cracks. A cold November run into the Mount Hood National Forest. Three destinations. Zero expectations. And the kind of wandering that feels half spiritual, half deranged. In other words: a good day.

Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why? Beach or Mountains? The Eternal Question With No Clean Answer Filed from Somewhere Between the Trees and Whatever Ghosts Follow Me There’s an old, warped question people like to toss around at parties or in those strange pockets of silence on a long drive: Beach or mountains? Like you’re supposed to pick one with the same certainty you pick a coffee order.

Mountains are calling & I must go! Let’s wander where the Wi-Fi is weak & the trails are steep. Adventure awaits! for fandoms & sharing all my misadventures in life.

Mountains are calling & I must go! Let’s wander where the Wi-Fi is weak & the trails are steep. Adventure awaits! for fandoms & sharing all my misadventures in life.

There’s a moment, right before the ocean inhales, when the world holds its breath. Then it happens, the roar, the explosion of white fury, the Pacific trying to claw its way inland like it’s got unfinished business. That’s the Devil’s Churn for you, one of nature’s oldest tantrums, and somehow, still not done screaming. I snapped this shot while Robert stood there, a lone figure swallowed by the enormity of it all.

Hell, I don’t want to be remembered as some saint in pressed slacks with polite stories and a framed photo gathering dust on a mantle. No. I want them to remember the chaos, the wild-eyed ramblings, the restless spirit that refused to sit still long enough for life to get boring. I hope they remember the smell of pine and wet asphalt on a long drive to nowhere, the sound of gravel under the tires, and the way the world cracked open when the light hit just right through the trees.

What have you been working on? Christ, what haven’t I been working on? The camera’s been glued to my hand like a holy relic, and somewhere between the shutter clicks and the smell of damp Oregon earth, I decided to start writing it all down. The book, the madness, the miles, the ghosts that still hitchhike in my rearview mirror.

What major historical events do you remember? I remember the Challenger.. Not the details, not the names, just the explosion. A white bloom in the blue, a mushroom of disbelief hanging over a generation that still thought the future came with neon grids and synth music. I was a kid, staring at the TV, not fully understanding what had happened, just that the adults went silent.

It took me a few days to say anything because, truth be told, I’ve been chewing on the ghosts. October’s always been my month , the sweet spot of madness and magic. My birthday. Halloween. The smell of cold air and dying leaves, like nature’s own whiskey-soaked confetti. But there’s a weight to it now. A silence that creeps in when the laughter fades.

Smith Rock. Midday sun bleeding into the canyon, the kind of light that burns truth into your retinas whether you want it or not. The air was sharp, dry, whispering through the sage like some old ghost trying to tell you it’s all a cycle, birth, ruin, dust. And right there, carved into the bones of Oregon itself, was a man sitting cross-legged in the dirt.

There’s something savage and almost biblical about the Oregon coast when the sun refuses to show its face. The light doesn’t rise, it bleeds through the clouds, slow and reluctant, like the sky itself has a hangover. You can smell the salt and rot before you hear the ocean. And when you finally do, it’s not some gentle lullaby of waves, it’s a roar.