I think of the Camino often.

Every day, actually. The Camino sort of lives inside me. Wherever I go. Whatever I do. I think about it.

I remember who I was as I walked the ancient trail. I remember those 40 days. Living out of a backpack. Hardly any possessions. Two T-shirts. One pair of boots. I had a fiddle on my back.

I remember the camaraderie along the way. I remember how we made friends with fellow pilgrims. Deep friendships. Pilgrims from every nation. We could not speak each other’s languages, but it didn’t matter. Love is its own language.

Whenever we were together—all us pilgrims—there existed no Americans, no Russians, no Jews, no Muslims, no nationalities between us. No Black, no white, no political persuasion. We were just people.

People with basic needs. Who needed water, shoes, good sleep, and a secluded place to pee.

And, of course, we had to eat. Which wasn’t always easy.

There was the time we were all miles from the nearest village, without enough food. So

we all pooled our lunches together, sitting beneath an old oak tree.

A man from Switzerland brought a bottle of wine. A woman from Brazil had a loaf of bread. A guy from Italy had anchovies. We passed around the fish and loaves, and gave thanks. We ate all we wanted. There was enough leftovers to fill 12 backpacks.

There was the blind man I met on the trail. Walking toward the nearest village. Shuffling along on a highway, and yet, pausing to give me—me, a Big Dumb American—some encouraging words.

There was the time I was injured, when my wife and I parted ways on the trail. I compelled her to leave me, to find her own Camino. To find her own truth out there. I would follow her by cab.

I cried as she walked away. Because I wished her so much joy. So…

Dear Young Me, I am sending this letter back in time. I hope you get it. Tell everyone I said hello. Brush your teeth.

The main reason I’m writing is because the world is going to go nuts someday. And I mean totally, flipping nuts. I can’t even describe the level of nuttiness you’re about to experience.

But believe me, someday you will wake up and the current state of the world, and all its wacky human inhabitants will suddenly seem so screwed-up, you will feel like a giraffe.

This will be especially evident in the young generations that follow yours.

Certainly, young people have always differed from their elders, but with the current techno boom we are undergoing, young people will become a different species.

In generations past, the highest form of technology was the walkie-talkie radio in the handle-bar basket of your Schwinn. You bought this radio at the five-and-dime using a wad of crumpled cash from your piggy bank.

But

in the future, there won’t BE piggy banks. There won’t be five-and-dimes. And there definitely won’t be many Schwinns.

Likewise, at one time, the highest aspiration of kidhood was merely to build a really cool fort. But there aren’t many forts being built today.

There was a recent study done. Researchers found that Americans of previous generations played outside often. In fact, a staggering 90 percent of American kids used to play outside. Today, the percentage falls somewhere around 20 percent.

Yesterday, for example, I was on a walk when I passed a group of kids, sitting on their porch. Each kid held his or her respective iPad, playing some kind of game; each kid was simultaneously texting on a secondary mobile device; each child wore massive, noise-cancelling, reality-blocking, soul-crushing headphones clamped tightly on his or her head.

And this is normal.

Young Me, they were…

A little girl rescued a turtle from a busy highway.

This happened yesterday afternoon.

Moving a turtle is not a remarkable sight, really. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. Somewhere in the known universe, a rural kid moves a turtle off the highway. I have been that kid myself. Many times. Maybe you have too.

Yesterday, however, the unique privilege went to a little girl. She was maybe 12.

I saw her in the middle of the highway. She was flagging down traffic in both lanes.

It was a rural two-lane. In the wilds of central Alabama. Lots of mobile homes. Lots of pastures with cows. Lots of American flags on home-built trailer porches.

The child was standing in the middle of the highway, halting cars in both lanes, like a professional commercial air traffic controller.

Traffic halted at her cues. A string of vehicles was soon backing up toward the horizon—vehicles traveling both directions. The impromptu traffic jam was growing, too, accumulating more vehicles every few moments.

Among our friendly little gridlock,

there were two log trucks, a few dump trucks, and cars of every size, shape, and partisanship preference. All stalled by the singular hand signal of a child.

The girl was oblivious to the danger that surrounded her. People die every day on those old highways. She was blissfully unconcerned.

The turtle was not a small creature. It was about the size of watermelon. She had to lift with both hands.

But first, she had to gain its trust inasmuch as the turtle was hissing at her. It had huge claws that could have severed an average human limb.

Several of us gathered around the girl to watch. She looked like a tough kid. A country girl. Like this wasn’t her first tortoise rodeo.

It took a few moments for the girl to win the turtle’s good faith enough that it let her pick it…

I have an important question. How would you spend your best day ever?

This might sound like a dumb question. But if you have time, take a brief break from doom scrolling and think about your best day ever (BDE).

What would you do on this particular day? Where would you go? What would you wear? And most importantly, what would you eat?

Don’t laugh. Food is sacred. Is there a gift more precious than the taste of real, wholesome food? Is there any joy more humanly gratifying than unrefined flavors of fat, salt, and sugar?

You could be the richest, most powerful sultan on Planet Earth, with entire nations under your control, a harem of lovers who all look like professional underwear models, and a giant trampoline in your living room. But if you had no tastebuds, if everything you ate tasted like No. 9 Styrofoam… Your whole life would suck.

Who would be with you on your BDE? Why would you choose this person? Would it even BE a person? Or would

it be a canine? Feline? Ferret? Goldfish? Rare form of exotic algae?

If it WERE a human you chose, however, why them? How does this person make you feel? Do you love them? Where do those feelings come from? Have you ever wondered about this?

You cannot necessarily “choose” your feelings about a person. You simply feel how you feel. You either feel one way or you don’t. It’s a decision your soul makes, not your brain.

Ah, the soul.

There’s that word. A dangerous word, so laced with divisive religious overtones that people dare not talk about it. Thus, society just ignores the issue of a soul altogether.

But you cannot ignore your soul. It’s the true You.

Which is why there are some humans in this life who give your soul an overwhelming sense of unconditional love, joy, and kinship. Whereas others give your…

The helicopter was flying low over Sacramento Highway 50. The helicopter was rocketing toward the earth below.

The flight was losing altitude, heading directly into eight lanes of traffic below; directing into thousands of motorists and commuters.

Kenneth De Crescenzo saw it all happen. “When it was coming down,” he said, “I looked at it and said, ‘This isn’t good…’”

It was the opposite of good. The aircraft was a medical helicopter, with a three-person crew of EMTs, consisting of a pilot, a nurse, and a paramedic. The crew had just saved a life, only minutes earlier, offloading a critical patient at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento.

It took only seconds for the helicopter to lose control and strike the pavement. The boom could be heard for miles. It was a crashing, roaring, twisting, scraping of metal, scuffling along the highway. Incredibly, the helicopter pilot struck no cars.

Traffic came to a halt.

People jumped out of vehicles.

Isabella Lorenzo was taking her grandson home when it happened.

“I thought it was going to land,” she

said, “and it kept going down lower and it just nosedived. And when it nosedived, we all just was in shock.”

The helicopter lay on the highway. Inert. A mangled mess of metal and bent rotor blades.

One of the crew was lying on the pavement. One crewmember was stuck in the cockpit. The other crew-woman was trapped beneath the wreckage.

Onlookers could hear screaming coming from beneath the wreckage.

“Someone’s stuck!” somebody shouted.

Samaritans were already racing toward the helicopter. Most were waiting for the air to fill with the smell of gasoline, waiting for the aircraft to maybe explode, or catch fire perhaps. But there were no flames.

Minutes after the crash, fire-department Capt. Peter Vandersluis was on the scene. He heard the crew-woman’s voice, she was pinned beneath the wreckage.

They needed to move the helicopter. But how? How do…

My friend Morgan Love is in the hospital again.

I’ve lost count of how many times she’s been in the hospital. She’s slept in a hospital bed more times than any human I’ve known.

By now, Morgan knows everything there is to know about hospital life. She is savvy in all things medical. She knows healthcare institutional routines, backward and forward. She can sign official medical documents in her sleep. She knows the entire medical staff by name, age, rank, and denominational preference.

If you go to the hospital to visit this 20-something, you’ll have to wait in line behind all the nurses, therapists, techs, doctors, surgeons, specialists, and probably even members of the custodial crew, who are all waiting their turn just to say hello.

You might also see her fellow Delta Gamma sorority members dropping in. Or other random people visiting, who all want to bask in her glow.

She’s just one of those people.

People visit Morgan the same way they gather to visit the statue of a saint who grants miracles. Probably because Morgan is always happy. Even when

she’s not actually happy, she’s “always happy,” if you know what I mean.

Morgan’s mother—who also lives in hospitals with her daughter—once told me, “She doesn’t ever admit when she’s in pain. That’s why it’s hard to know if she’s hurting. She’s more worried about you than she is about herself.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Morgan not smiling. I don’t even know what she looks like when she frowns.

You will never hear her complain. You will never hear her condone the complaints of others. She will even defend those who have wronged her.

There have been times when various medical staffers from various medical institutions have made significant errors. I’m not talking about small mistakes. I’m talking serious oversights that affected Morgan negatively.

And yet, Morgan will advocate for them. She will softly say,…

It’s the trees. The trees get me every time.

When you walk the sidewalks of Fairhope, Alabama, it’s the trees that impress you most. It’s not the upscale homes, nor the Mayberry-like storefronts, which all give you the impression that you have fallen into a Rockwellian planned urban development.

No. It’s the live oaks.

They tower over the byways like ancestors. Trunks as thick as Buicks. Tall as ferris wheels. Giant, spidery arms, draping over roadways, intertwining in a giant web, letting tiny slivers of sunlight between their fingers.

Their bark is covered in brilliant green resurrection ferns, which grow directly into the gnarled skin of each tree.

Resurrection ferns do not steal water and nutrients from the oaks; they absorb nutrition from the air. During drought, the ferns conserve water by shriveling and turning brown. But they’re just sleeping, really. Once moisture returns, they “resurrect,” unfurling their fronds of verdant green.

But, oh, the trees.

As you walk through the groves of Quercus virginianas, you feel each tree’s personality. Don’t let anyone tell you that trees don’t

have personalities.

One tree is strong and stalwart, almost symmetrically bold in its warrior pose. Another tree is slender, flexible, twisting its arms, gyrating in all directions, like the class clown in a senior photo.

A stroll through Fairhope feels like walking through a private social club of Southern live oaks. They gather together. Like they’re mingling. You feel like a crawling toddler, scuffling along the floor of your parents’ living room during a cocktail party. Crawling through the forest of adult legs, hearing adult conversations above you, but you have no idea what they’re saying.

Two massive trees in the distance have arms intertwined, almost like they are touching. It looks like they are holding hands. I’ve never seen trees do this before. It’s amazing.

“Trees can be in love,” says an old man who I meet in the park. He’s…

Sixty-one percent of American adults say they’re lonely. Sixty-one percent.

Think about that.

You probably missed this information, but loneliness was recently listed as an epidemic by the US Surgeon General and the World Health Network. That’s how big of a deal this is.

Namely, because loneliness leads to fatal medical conditions. If you’re lonely, you’re more likely to die by heart attack or stroke, more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, and significantly more likely to read stupid things on the internet like this.

Last year, 870,000 deaths were attributed to loneliness. The number grows each year.

But here’s where things get interesting. The loneliest demographic in America isn’t who you think it is.

You’re probably envisioning a mass of white-haired, elderly souls, trapped inside assisted-living facilities, forlorn, eating cold clam chowder, constantly being exposed to dangerous amounts of “Live with Kelly and Mark.”

But if you want to see the loneliest people in America, look no further than our young people.

According to recent studies, two in three young people are lonely. It’s gotten so bad that academic researchers

have termed this generation “the loneliest generation” in history.

But why? How can we all be so lonely?

As futuristically modern humans, we are more connected than ever. We have ka-trillions of digital connections in our pockets. At any given moment, if we wanted to, we could communicate with ALMOST ANYONE IN THE WORLD.

Doesn’t matter. We’re lonely. Really lonely.

And you can see these lonely people when you’re out in public. Maybe when you’re shopping. You might not notice them right away, they blend in.

They might not be exhibiting symptoms, and I doubt whether they’ll be wearing a T-shirt that reads: I’M LONELY! In fact, they might be wearing a political T-shirt that you disagree with.

But they’re starving to death. When you look at them, try to stare past the T-shirt. They are giant NICU…

Rico was going to be euthanized in a few days. He was in his kennel. Unmoving.

He wasn’t making a fuss the way hopeful dogs do when visitors come. It was almost like he knew. He was not long for this world.

That’s when Rachel happened.

“I saw this picture online of this really cute black and tan dog… and they said he had two days left to live. I paid the fee to get him out of the pound, but they hadn’t found him a home, [so] I ended up paying and bringing him over.”

She paid an adoption fee, then paid to have him delivered to her home in the UK. A trans-Atlantic pet delivery fee, Rachel discovered, costs about as much as purchasing a four-bedroom-two-bath beachfront condominium.

But Rico was worth it. He was sweet. And happy. Some dogs are just born happy. And by “some dogs,” I mean “all dogs.”

One day, however, Rachel discovered Rico’s remarkably unique ability. Rico, it turned out, could sniff like a mother.

“He was REALLY good at [tracking]. It

was like hide and seek where they sniff you out.”

Rachel worked with Rico to develop his olfactorial talents. His powerful nose was soon stunning small audiences consisting mostly of Rachel’s friends. Rico was great at dinner parties.

But one day, the trajectory of Rachel’s life changed. Rico’s incredible nose became more than just a parlor trick.

Rachel and Rico were walking through a parking lot. There was a family gathered outside their car, and everyone was weeping. Turned out their dog was missing.

“My friend suggested Rico try and help them, so we let him sniff… the car to get the lost dog’s scent. We searched for about three hours and he kept going to the same location…”

Rico found the missing dog.

“I’ve never been so proud,” said Rachel.

That first rescue turned out to be the beginning of…

The parking lot is crowded. It is dark. Runners are all outside their vehicles, warming up before the race. They are bouncing on the pavement. Doing calisthenics. Pulling and pushing their own bodily limbs into impossibly contorted positions. Not a thimbleful of body fat between them.

As the sun peeks above the roofline of the Hoover Metropolitan Complex, 2,000 of Birmingham’s most bloodthirsty competitive runners begin to gather at the starting line, forming tight social clusters.

They are all listening to music on earbuds. Lacing and re-lacing shoes. Many are wearing skimpy athletic outfits, revealing six-pack abs, massive deltoids, and well-defined gluteal regions. Some of the runners look like living GI Joe figurines and Barbie dolls.

I am wearing athletic shorts purchased from Walmart. I look like a pig farmer from Butler County.

But I’m here.

“This is for the kids,” is the slogan of this race. Everyone keeps saying this mantra.

The BHM26.2 Marathon is a fundraiser. In its eighth year, the race has raised over $1 million for children in Alabama.

All proceeds benefit Magic Moments. Each year, this race brings together thousands of people who inadvertently grant a wish to some hope-starved child in Alabama. A kid with a chronic, life-threatening, or life-altering condition. That’s why I’m here. For the kids.

The music on the loudspeakers starts. The emcee gives us the go-signal. And we’re off.

The mass of runners moves forward. We in the rear are merely shuffling. Because we are not fast runners. We are not competitive athletes. We are what is commonly known to the global running community as, “middle-aged normal people.”

Even so, we all have our reasons for being here.

One woman runner tells me a doctor once told her she would not live to see her 65th birthday, due to breast cancer. She is 71 and runs marathons.

Another man in his 50s began running after his divorce. One morning, on…