3:42 a.m.—Three hours before sunrise. Sarah and I are awake. Sort of. We begin our marathon route in the hamlet of Manitou Springs, a town where everything is organic, even the Subaru exhaust.

We start our journey alone, in front of the little courthouse, the official starting line of the Pikes Peak Marathon. Before we begin running, we hug each other tightly.

“We’re doing this,” we say before we sprint off into the silent streets.

We’re doing this.

Our path, lit by our headlamps. Our feet, slapping the pavement in a two-beat rhythm. We are the only living creatures awake for miles except, of course, for the prairie rattlesnakes, most of which are, thankfully, at Whole Foods Market right now.

3:49 a.m.—We are running uphill now. We are heading toward the mountains. And, since this is the Amazing Age of Technology, we are using our GPS to lead us to Barr Trail. You have to love technology. It truly is incredible. Even though we don’t know where we’re going, we are safe in

the knowledge that our sophisticated, expensive, specialized trail GPSs will lead us along the official race route.

4:07 a.m.—We are lost.

4:19 a.m.—We are nowhere near the mountain; we are running in circles through random Manitou Springs neighborhoods. My sister is very upset right now. She has never been one to hide her emotions. She is assaulting my small GPS unit, which costs about as much as a tactical government helicopter. The unit keeps saying it’s recalculating. My sister keeps telling it where, exactly, it can lodge its recalculations.

4:22 a.m.—Even though we’ve been running for 40 minutes, we seriously have no idea where we are. I think we are in Iowa.

4:28 a.m.—Sarah is really pissed now. Also, my GPS has gone to be with…

Morning in Manitou Springs, Colorado. My sister and I have a rental cabin located near the base of Pikes Peak. I am sitting on a picnic table outside our cabin, drinking crappy instant coffee, finishing my third chocolate bar. 

My sister brought the chocolate. It’s artisan chocolate. She is asleep in the cabin right now. She’s not going to be happy when she awakes and finds out I’ve eaten all her fancy chocolate. I will undergo one of her famous improvised gender reassignment operations. 

I can see Pikes Peak in the distance. The mountain looks significantly bigger than I remember. About 14,115 feet bigger to be exact. 

We scattered my father’s ashes up there when I was 11. It was a bad day for me. There were a lot of emotions that fateful afternoon. 

The predominant emotion was, of course, altitude sickness. Thanks to the thin air, I could not feel my face, my hands were numb, I was spacey, and I was pretty sure I’d seen Abraham Lincoln and Alexander the Great

in the gift shop. 

Also, there was anger. I was mad. At everyone. At everything. At circumstances. At life. And, most importantly, at Major League Baseball players, who were currently on strike that year. I was just mad all over. And I stayed like that for about 21 years. 

In my defense, I had a lot to be mad about. My dad was in his prime when he shot himself by inserting the barrel into his mouth. He was healthy. He was smart. He was a marathon runner. He ran this mountain every year. 

And then. One day. Bang. Over. 

On the day of his scattering, I was supposed to recite the 23rd Psalm atop the mountain as we upended his ashes. But I never finished…

This is a big trip for me and my sister. We are visiting Pikes Peak to see my dad. And it’s going to be big.

The first thing you should know about my sister Sarah and me is that we like people. It’s just who we are. She and I are both what you’d call extreme “people people.” My father was a people person. And we definitely got his genes.

Like him, we love meeting strangers, talking, laughing, and forming lifelong friendships with random individuals in public who are edging away from us slowly as we continue conversing with the backs of their heads.

It’s what we do. Sarah is even more of a people person than I am. She is outgoing, friendly, and extremely talkative. She has not paused to take a breath since 1994.

My sister takes the art of peopling to the next level and is capable of making friends with anyone, even non-people entities. I know of at least one occasion wherein my sister

made close personal friends with a municipal fire hydrant by trying to feed it dog treats. After the incident, she upgraded her prescription glasses.

Sarah has an extremely amiable personality. I cannot take her to a supermarket without spending several hours waiting for her to finish various spontaneous conversations in the produce department, dairy department, canned vegetable aisle, bulk dried goods department, clearance displays, vitamin section, and women’s restrooms, where I sometimes stand in the bathroom hallway and hear echoes of her conversations drifting past the water fountains.

Most of these random supermarket conversations are centered around extremely womanly issues, and feature no place for a man to insert his thoughts.

Take me. I have been a man for almost as long as I can remember. I do not know how to contribute…

Our plane touched down in Albuquerque. No sooner had my feet hit the airport terminal floor than I knew immediately—call it gut intuition—that Albuquerque is definitely a city with two Qs.

Jamie, my cousin Randa, and I arrived at the theater where I performed my one-man shipwreck before an audience of extraordinarily friendly Southwesterners who were kind enough to give me a standing ovation. True, the ovation was moving toward the exits. And true, nobody in the ovation was facing me. Come to think of it, nobody was ovating, either.

But after the show I went to the lobby and met some lovely people from the audience.

I met a young woman who grew up in a strict Mennonite sect, who loved music but was prohibited from playing instruments. As a little girl, she learned the fiddle in secret, taking lessons up in town, despite the risk of being excommunicated from her community.

We also met a man who arrived wearing braids and a bandana. The resemblance was shocking. He looked

exactly like Willie Nelson would have looked if Willie Nelson had been born looking like someone else. 

I also met an Apache elder and cowboy who was chewing an actual mouthful of tobacco and used words like “pilgrim” non-ironically.

I met a 95-year-old New Mexico woman named Martha Ann who hugged me and then grabbed my butt.

“I may be old,” she said, with a firm handful in her grasp, “but I ain’t dead, sonny.”

Next, we awoke in Texas. Texas was nice, but Amarillo was windy. And hot. The ambient heat index was approaching 2,106 degrees Fahrenheit. It was windy, too. I haven’t experienced that much hot air since the Baptist sermons of my youth.

That morning, we traversed the Oklahoma Panhandle, briefly.…

Over the years, I’ve written about Morgan many times, keeping notes on many of the conversations Morgan and I have had, so I’d never forget the things she told me. 

They are the words of a young woman with a wisdom deeper than I am able to understand. She spoke these things in casual conversation, with no idea that her words are extraordinary. We call them “Morganisms.”

Some of the following paragraphs were spoken directly after she was placed under hospice care. Here are a few of my favorites: 

—“I don’t think it’s fair that life is measured in years. There are some people who live many years and don’t do much with their lives. There are also people who live a short time and do a lot of stuff. I think life should be measured in the amount of love you collect. And the amount of love you give. If that’s how life was measured, I would be very, very old and very wealthy.”

—“Life is too short to fight with people. I’m

hard to fight with. I just stay silent. Let the other person win.”

—“Every day is a chance to make a new best friend.”

—“I’ve heard that in heaven there is no time. No clock, no future, no past. Only eternity. So, since the future and past are all happening at the same time, this means everyone is already there in heaven. I’m there. You’re there. My mom and dad are there. All my loved ones are there. We’re all in heaven. Right now. All the people who are alive right now on earth, they’re waiting for each other in eternity. 

“This means that as soon as I close my eyes in death, time won’t be holding you here. So the first thing I’m going to see is all…

Dearest Morgan, 

It’s four in the morning. And I’m awake. Just sitting here. Thinking about you. 

I haven’t slept since your last text. Your text about how doctors placed you under hospice care. Your text asking me to come say one last goodbye. 

Here I am, in the dark of morning, sitting in my kitchen. Lost. 

And for some reason, I’m thinking about the thief on the cross. The Sunday school story about the remorseful thief who hung crucified next to the Humble Nazarene. Remember him? I’m thinking about how in his final moments of life, life became so clear to him. 

Right now, I feel a little like that thief. I’m thinking about the impact you’ve had on my life. Thinking about all the little ways I have changed since we first met. So many changes. Too many changes to count. 

Beautiful little changes. Millions of them. 

Like the way I say “yes” to stuff now. Even stuff I don’t want to do. I choose yes instead of no. I say yes to friends’ schemes more often,

whereas once upon a time I wouldn’t have. I do this because it was you who once told me, shortly after you almost died, “I’ve learned to ALWAYS say yes to fun, especially when it’s bad timing.” 

You were 19 when you said that. 

Also, I work less now. Because it was you who once told me—and you said this while attached to life support—you said: “I’ve learned that life is not about how hard you work.” 

I also hang out with people more often now, even when I don’t feel like peopling or being social. Because you once told me, after one of your near-death experiences, you said you learned that life itself wasn’t the main gift. You…

My dad was a runner. He started just before I was born. One day after work, they say he came home and decided it was time to quit smoking and start jogging. He stabbed out his smoldering cigarette and he tore off running, right then. He finished the cigarette later that evening. 

He ran marathons throughout my childhood. Marathons were his thing. And although, occasionally, I still saw him sneak Marlboros, it was ONLY on special occasions. Such as Wednesday. 

But he couldn’t smoke much because running and smoking contradicted each other. But then, the old man was a walking contradiction. 

My father was an ironworker. Union man. Local Number Ten. He wore denim and boots every day of his professional life. The man hung suspended from 40-story skyscrapers, tied off with a safety harness, and stick-welded column splices from nine to five. 

When he got home, he’d be covered in soot, with little white patches of skin around his eyes, and he smelled like diesel. And yet, the first thing he’d do was change into

running clothes and go for a six-miler. 

He began running the Pikes Peak Marathon on a whim. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. One day he came home from work, loaded up our van with camping gear, and announced that our family was going to Colorado where he would run 26.2 miles, climbing 14,000 feet above sea level. My mother responded by picking up the kitchen phone receiver. 

“Who are you calling?” Daddy asked. 

“I’m upping your life insurance,” my mother replied. 

We camped in Colorado for a few days. I remember the morning of the race. The old man was nervous. He wore red cotton shorts. A Coors Banquet Beer ball cap. He was unprepared. But he believed he could do it. 

He kissed my…

Tonight, we walk the streets of Savannah with royalty. Traffic does not part when she walks by. Her unwitting subjects, trudging along the sidewalks, do not pay her a genuflecting glance. When they see her, they do not even recognize her sacred station. But they smile just the same. For one cannot help but smile at royalty. 

Her sovereign vestments are made of cotton and denim. Her robe, of spun atmosphere. Her jeweled crown, invisible to the human eye. But she is royal nonetheless. 

Her name is Maddie. Or as we like to call her, “Your Majesty.”

Her Grace stops at a crosswalk to wait for a string of traffic to pass before crossing Habersham Street. She is smiling at each car that passes, for no reason at all. It is Sunday evening, and for no explainable reason, she is happy. 

“Why are you so happy?” I ask Her Excellency as she monitors the traffic situation. 

Maddie cannot hear me speak, of course. She is deaf. But she has trained

herself to feel vocal vibrations and read lips. The random vibrations she senses, she associates with mental colors. The colors help her earmark all sounds and place them into categories. It is in this way that Her Highness can identify different noises. She can, for example, tell the difference between the deep-purple thrum of an A/C unit and the bright-red explosion of a dog barking. 

She replies to my question after sensing the peach-colored vibrations from my voice and reading my lips with her one good eye. 

That’s another thing. Her Highness’s left eye was removed because of glaucoma complications. Her right eye has glaucoma, but right now it works fine. The bad eye was giving her migraines. 

Maddie spent her teens in a murky depression. Sometimes Maddie wouldn’t…

I’m sure some of you have noticed I haven’t been writing as much as I used to. I get lots of emails asking why this is. Many of these emails are ultra-friendly emails, beginning with the words, “WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU!!!?”

To answer this, I need to start by telling you about our trip to Spain. 

Not long ago, we walked the Camino de Santiago for a second time. For a second time we were on foot in Spain, living out of our backpacks, communicating fluently in Spanish hand gestures. 

For a second time, we read Spanish signage, watched Spanish TV, ate Spanish foods, and enjoyed many authentic Spanish foodborne illnesses which transform the lower digestive region into nuclear field testing sites.

While we were there, something kinda cool happened to me. I heard a voice. I don’t know how to describe the voice. I don’t even know whose voice it was. But it was definitely a voice. It was, however, a quiet one. 

I suppose I could only hear the

voice because the noise of daily life died down. And I became acutely aware of the present moment. I had never really connected with the present moment before. I’d always been living in the next few moments. Or worse. I was reliving the decades of past moments. But in the silence of the Camino, I was here. I was now. And I heard the voice. 

We live in a loud world. 

Smart TVs, mobile phones, tablets, and other media devices blare frightening news, twenty-four-seven. The news isn’t even news anymore. It’s cleverly worded headline phrases with trigger words and slanted spin phrasing. Stories are announced by talking heads, capable of discussing a single media event for upwards of six or seven hours without once pausing to reapply hairspray. 

And…