This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal. My father called my older brother and me into the room and told us to grab the blue notebook from the counter. He shakily clasped his glasses and opened the spiral revealing a list of the guns he owned. My brother and I both thought the conversation was going a completely different route, so we openly expressed: “What the hell, Dad? We thought this was going to be a serious conversation.” “You have to ...

This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal. I hear my wife begin recording videos for her fourth-grade class, but she is drowned out by the last of our wine deglazing the good bits from the cast iron in front of me. She has not seen her students for over a month, her heart breaking again with every email received. They ask when things will return to normal. I think of the undergraduate students’ essays I must grade after putting the browned neck ...