cloudsandtrails

Riding the trails and river with Houdini often sparks song ideas. This one reflects on getting lost, learning from missteps, and finding truth in the quiet, wandering moments of nature and life’s ever unfolding paths.

Did I miss the marker did I make a wrong turn

Trails split in the cedars every lesson to learn

Cottonwood seeds drifting in the clouds while the sun burns

I follow fence posts to the end of the world

Deer in the clearing watch and they never swerve

Crows in the branches judging everything that I deserve

Sugar sandy beach inquires. I was trying to bury hers

While my fishing line waits bobs with impatient nerves

Frogs in the dark ask me exactly what I’ve earned

Water keeps moving no pause and no set an alarm for 11 concern

Maybe getting lost is how the truth is heard

turning the river to corporate gold.

They call it a beautiful haze.

But the sky tastes of burning forests

and boardroom promises.

This sunset is not romance.

It is a warning in amber.

I just saw someone who looked like you, but you are gone

I just had a memory of you walking down 11th St., but you are gone

I think all those times being alone in the moments I needed support the most, has changed something in me.

I’m not mad at anyone… I’m just tired of letting people disturb my peace.

Tired of caring deeply about people who don’t care back.

Tired of pretending I don’t see the lack of compassion—for each other, for animals, for the land we live on.

Once you notice that kind of emptiness in people, you can’t unsee it.

I realized I’d surrounded myself with folks who march behind big slogans but ignore the simple things like, truth, kindness, responsibility, accountability, basic humanity.

People who preach goodness but don’t practice it.

I do not believe in heaven or hell or Jesus Christ and Satan, and somehow, without believing in any of it, I ended up living more by the “love thy neighbor” rule than they could ever dream of. I’ve never seen such a large group of people that loves to hate so much. It’s disgusting.

But when nobody wants to talk about real things—when facts feel optional and compassion feels rare—you start going quiet.

And if I can’t talk about what matters, then I don’t have much to say at all.

So I’ve stepped back. Ghosted almost everyone, not out of hate… but because the world hurts too much to pretend.

This last year I’ve tried to heal through music, but every song pulls tears out of me before the chorus ever lands.

So I go out into raw, untouched nature instead.

And for a little while, when it’s just me and my dog, Houdini… the world feels like it’s still worth fighting for.

I won’t be reaching out again;

my silence says the things I’ve before said.

They know my heart, they know my stand and

if theirs has shifted, maybe there’s a door.

But if it hasn’t, let it stay closed;

I’m done with knocking on a loveless doors.

And if we pass like strangers now,

no wave, no smile, no second chance—

I’ll keep on walking, lighter still,

unburdened by the old, uneven dance.

For peace is something I protect,

Buried deep in the waves of grass

A weathered post where the decades pass

Barbwire rusts like a weathered line of song

Yet, holds the field, where it belongs

Snow or bloom it does not bend

Keeps watch where the prairie ends

I have framed it in autumn burning with gold

And in spring time when the green takes hold

It never moves yet it never the same

Each glance carves it a brand new name

The light the sky the silence near

All shift but the anchor stays clear

Change can live where nothing moves

My mirror stands in the open bloom

Ripples on the surface I’m lost in the flow

Fireflies in the evening, putting on a show

Every day and every night, I am the king of Cedar Beach

Just living that life man, nothing is what it seems

Every day and every night, I’m just living that life

Every day and every night, if I could, I would ride the trails all the time

Every day and every night, I’m living it up slow

Driftwood dreams in the flow, so with the current I go

Every day and every night I’m hitting that

Every day and every night, I’m leaving it sound

In the silence of the water, I am a thundercloud

Every day and every night I am floating in the tide

With sunset in my eyes and the river as my guide

Watercolor in the skies, I am painting what’s on my mind

Hitting that, living my life and the dream I had as a child

Every day and every night, I’m standing, barefoot in the breeze

Watching dragonflies circled daisies, I’m one with the trees

Every day and every night, I am a high cloud in the blue

Every day and every night, I’m a river running through you

TikTok, I am the clock, but I’m not in a rush

Every day and every night, I am the hush in the hush

Every ripple is a song, every wave is a refrain

Know this: I’ll honor your voice.

No access, no bridge, no plea,

Until apology stands face to me.

This isn’t a threat; it’s a vow,

Boundaries set, here and now.

Silent wars may suit your play,

But in my world, they don’t stay.

White flakes of snow fell soft and brief in January’s arctic wake.

The white snow barely blanketed the scars we have inadvertently made.

Forests leveled to dirt to cheaply build expensive plywood homes, while

leaving all of the wildlife exiled with nowhere to call home or roam.

A wild coyote prowls where many trees once stood. It is searching for scraps and is often misunderstood.

You cuss the coyote’s hunger and its desperate fight and thrive for life, but you completely tore its world upside down and sideways last night,

and that is not right.

Corporate boxes rise like those monoliths, pale and silver gray,

Like a rusty old reel casting so many small dreams further away.

The soul of a small town, its shops, and its art are all crushed beneath greedy shareholder’s cold and ruthless hearts.

They say one by one, we can make a big change, but corporate giants will always pollute, offset, and lobby the exchange.

Their dollar signs gleam in their eyes with their conscience dead.

They exploit all of the people and the earth and then leave all of it bled.

I’m pissed, are you? Can you not see, the cost of this endless blood thirsty consuming economy?

The countrysides burn under greedy corporate flames and we are left to shoulder and stomach the shame.

Look past these fake fences and all of these imaginary planted walls.

Look past the choreographed sprawl and hear the coyote’s cry warning us all.

January’s frigid frost won’t cover the cost of the wildlife and towns we have so carelessly lost.

The Sentinel

The locals called it Fire Bend 🌲🔥, a hidden clearing deep in the Cedar Forest. There once even lived a wicked witch named Esmeralda 🧙‍♀️. She was always casting dark spells, scaring everyone, making the woods dark, dangerous, and creepy 🕯️🌌, especially the children she sometimes feasted upon! That’s an entirely different story… 👻

Well, one October, after a terrible ice storm came, a gigantic wildfire swirled through the cedar trees. Smoldering ash was the only thing left at Fire Bend! 🌫️💀

Thankfully, soon after the fires, rains came and the flames ended. Only one thing now stood tall. The natives called it “The Sentinel” 🌲⚫, the petrified, charred, and onyx-colored remnant of a once sturdy cedar.

Since the wildfires and arrival of The Sentinel, Esmeralda has not been seen, but Big Nick and Downhill Bill did say they saw her fly mid-afternoon over the windmill, then north over the swimmin’ hole, trying to return last Thursday, but The Sentinel would not let her in! 🌬️ He banished her to the Spook House 👻, claiming the woods, river, and trails. He even took possession of all her power by collecting her wicked dark magic wands made from stones and carefully selected branches from the cedars and cottonwood trees. Legend has it that if you break some of her wands in half, there’s a star in the middle ⭐!

Fire Bend and the trails are safe once again for endless sunsets 🌅, stretching into the end of the world. The Sentinel is always watching now 👁️, forever protecting the blackened, crispy land. Come May of next year, the grass will be the greenest you’ll ever see 🌱💚. Even the cacti and some trees will be brought back to life. The Sentinel will use its new-found powers from Esmeralda’s wands to heal the forest tenfold by spring! Mark my words!

Houdini trail rides

The scent of fall in the air—