About

When you are out and don't know your location, you take a bearing. Taking Bearings borrows that idea—not just for physical location but for temporal location: our place in time. These weekly essays explore time with the conviction that we live richer and better lives when we consider how the past produced the present in the places where we live.

The consistent themes are place, history, and writing—or, as I've come to think of it: nature, time, and stories.

I started Taking Bearings in August 2022 and have published every week since.

I am a historian by training, a writer by practice, and a Pacific Northwesterner by luck.

After a quarter-century teaching college history, I stepped away from the classroom to work closer to the ground. Now, embedded in the Skagit Valley of Western Washington, I work as a freelance writer and historian, an occasional editor, and a high school track coach.

I am currently writing a history of American national parks and working on several forest history projects rooted in the Northwest. Much of this work surfaces here first.

Support

Taking Bearings is free. Donations help make the work possible—you can also leave a donation as a one-time contribution of any amount. I'm grateful for every reader.

Other Writing

I write for places other than my newsletter. This includes creative nonfiction essays, commentaries, academic history, and local stories. Links appear here when I publish this work. My Publications page gathers a mostly complete, mostly updated record.