State park trail entry point.

Journey Home

Tales from the pilgrimage.

Paul Deaton

  • Independence Day Parade

    When someone waves at a parade, wave back. It is the polite thing to do, and every act of kindness and consideration adds to a tasty soup of life. If one doesn’t do things with friends and colleagues relationships can wither. Engaging in society, including the thousands of people participating in and watching Independence Day… Read more

  • Processing Vegetables Before Independence Day

    It takes longer to process vegetables from the garden than it does to harvest them. That means a lot of summer spent in the kitchen. I focus on each job — sorting kale leaves, parboiling and freezing green beans, cutting turnips for storage — yet the mind wanders along paths hidden in a day’s activities.… Read more

  • Gardeners Are Cooks

    As the garden produces more food than we can eat fresh, attention turns toward the kitchen where preservation, along with preparation of tasty fresh food meals, are the priorities. Kitchen work started Saturday afternoon and continues. I prepared a simple dinner while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio. For appetizer there was basil… Read more

  • Independence Day 2016

    Sunday will mark completion of the seventh year since I retired from transportation. It was a risky decision. Nonetheless, my blood pressure immediately dropped into the normal range, and I began engaging differently in society with results that mattered more than pursuit of monetary compensation from a private company. Outcomes weren’t always positive, but are… Read more

  • Scattered Talk

    As we live through the final month before the national political party conventions, most people I meet know the presumptive presidential nominees but don’t talk about them. When they do the dynamic is like this, “I can’t see voting for Trump, but Hillary, you know what you get with her, so I don’t know.” One… Read more

  • Weekend Reckoning

    Supper was a leftover jar of bean soup, sage and cheddar biscuits, and apple crisp from last year’s crop. It was delicious… an apple joke. I set my alarm for 4 p.m. to begin two hours of cooking. I also wanted to hear Garrison Keillor’s radio show from Tanglewood. He’s retiring in July. Keillor lucked… Read more

  • Book Review: Give Us the Ballot

    The word “progressive” got bandied about more this year than it has in a while. Who is a progressive? Who is a “real” progressive? Who will continue a progressive legacy after the 2016 election? Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders debated what it means to be a progressive at the beginning of the 2016 Democratic presidential… Read more

  • Summer Reading List

    I posted a request for summer reading suggestions on Facebook and Twitter. There were a lot of replies and suggestions, some I would not have considered had I not asked. My summer usually begins with a re-read of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This year I am re-reading Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of… Read more

  • Spring Notes From the Garden

    Spring ends and summer begins with a full moon illuminating our yard and garden. Predawn darkness mitigated by silvery reflected light. As daylight shortens its span spring gardening went well, setting the stage for a bountiful harvest. There is a lot to learn in the garden and here are some notes from 2016. “Temperatures over… Read more

  • Father’s Day Weekend

    A benefit of an American lifestyle is having the occasional weekend off. Yet the weekend is more French than American — le weekend! In June 1977, over two weekends, I was in France with a French infantry marine unit. Those days imprinted the meaning of “weekend” on me even if I don’t get to weekend very… Read more