On a cold December night during a World War, three months before her due date in a strange city, my mother delivered a five pound baby boy who was to spend his first six weeks in an incubator if he was to live. By the time he arrived at the tiny, snow covered clapboard house overlooking the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, his eyebrows and fingernails had finally developed. When he arrived he got the first and last glimpse of his father for years to come and without knowing it learned everyone has a story. That is where my journey began.

I have been blessed to have lived in every geographical region of the country and have traveled around the world. I have shared rooms in a boarding house with young single women who poured their affection over me like a fine wine sauce. I have lived with more relatives and friends of the family than I can remember and shared a bath in a small hotel populated by old men and pensioners down on their luck. I have ridden in private jets, dove the wall off the coast of the Turks and Caicos and ascended the Great Wall of China with my wife.

I have experienced many loves but the one that has made the greatest difference in my life has been the cute little blond airline stewardess who had no better sense than to say “I Do” to an uneducated pizza delivery boy who never dreamed he could fail her. I have ridden horses on the Nevada high plains with my beautiful daughter and rounded the thousands of curves of the Blue Ridge Parkway on a motorcycle with my son. I have crossed the Gulf Stream in a small sailboat and crashed a single engine airplane at night never thinking it might kill me.

My first book “The Bridge Over Cedar Creek”, with readers around the world, began as an effort to explain to my children why my world view at times seems so distant and severe with the fervent hope that when they sprinkle my ashes over some beautiful Colorado mountaintop, they will understand that I truly loved them and only wanted them to have the very best they desire in life. The book evolved as my way of honoring a wonderful, kind hearted old curmudgeon that loved me but never uttered the words. I believe in a Divine Presence and while I don’t always understand why life unfolds as it does, I know in my heart it is unfolding as it should.

The stories and photos you will find in my writings are a record of my journey. It is a journey no greater or lesser than others but a path that has created my world view and speaks to why I think the way I do, right or wrong. I can only express my sincere gratitude to all of the people and events that have come and gone in my life and hope the remaining years will reveal a tapestry full of color.