Unmapped

Stay tuned for the book! To be released in March, 2025.

Not a Midlife Crisis (Really)

Okay, let’s get this straight from the start: I’m 53, and I’m not having a midlife crisis. I repeat, not having a midlife crisis. If I were, you’d know it—there’d be a cherry-red convertible with the top down, the wind whipping through my 1989 mullet hairstyle, stonewashed jeans, a cardigan, and a desperate attempt at guitar lessons from some 20-something who calls himself “Simon.” Instead, here’s my truth: two metal hips (titanium, not the cool cyborg kind I’d secretly prefer), a dad bod that’s more “can I get a Hazy pint” than “check out these abs,” and a daily routine that sometimes feels like I’ve tuned a radio to static and left it there. No thunderbolts of crisis—just a quiet question echoing inside me like a whisper on a still afternoon.

My kids have launched into their own orbits—my eldest sending back cryptic texts from college that require a Rosetta Stone to decode, and the younger one toeing the starting line to follow. My wife and I, with 23 years of marriage behind us (my belt size has grown in solidarity), are stepping into a new era: fewer family dinners, more hushed evenings, and a fridge that holds broccoli longer because the boys aren’t around to protest. My parents, once seemingly carved from granite, are aging at triple speed. I blink, and my dad transforms from the guy who could fix anything to the guy who fondly remembers once fixing something. Time, it turns out, never misses a step.

And me? I’m a middle school principal, which means I preside over a kingdom of hormonal rollercoasters and strange cafeteria smells, hoping to shepherd young souls through the gauntlet of adolescence. I’ve got good friends, decent health (if you count hips swapped like spare parts), and a life that, on paper, looks pretty darn good. Yet, in those rare quiet moments—between diffusing a hallway argument about who cut in line and watching my family disappear into their screens at the dinner table—I feel a subtle emptiness. Like I’m the last person sitting in a movie theater after the credits roll, wondering what comes next.

Returning to the Trail

Let’s be clear: this isn’t a cry for pity, or a cue for me to run off and live in a yurt to “find myself.” Nobody wants that image. It’s more of a gentle, persistent nudge from within: “Psst…what now?” The edges of who I am—those adventurous, curious, risk-taking parts—feel worn down. I’ve become comfortable, maybe too comfortable. My soul is tapping its watch, reminding me that I’m overdue for a spark, a challenge, maybe even a pinch of wilderness.

Once upon a time (around half a hip replacement ago), I had grand scholarly dreams. While working on my master’s in U.S. history, I planned to write a thesis on Lewis and Clark—those legendary explorers who ventured into lands as unknown as the minds of the middle schoolers I now guide. They navigated territories so raw and vast that today’s constant barrage of news alerts and online scare stories would pale in comparison. I wanted to argue that their world, though wild, was in some paradoxical way simpler, freer of the doomscrolling, hateful noise, political strife, and “What have you done for me lately?” mindset that buzzes through our screens now.

But life, as it often does, leapt from behind a shrub, shouted “Gotcha!” and led me elsewhere. The thesis was changed to a simpler topic. I got older, grayer, and better at brewing my own coffee.

Into the Unknown

But here I stand again, drawn back to that old idea—not as a young teacher with a head full of theories, but as a 53-year-old principal with slightly arthritic fingers and a belly that appreciates a good Goat Patch Hazy. I feel this tug—a call, really—to revisit that journey. Not to prove a point or impress anyone with intellectual gymnastics, but to rediscover something I set aside. Maybe it’s perspective, maybe it’s grit, maybe it’s the last scrap of curiosity rattling around in my pocket. I want to follow their trail from St. Charles, Missouri, to Astoria, Oregon, on the Pacific Ocean. And no, I won’t be paddling a canoe or carrying a musket. I’ll be walking, likely wheezing a bit, and cursing my decision not to join that spin class last year.

This time, the journey is personal—less about academic proof and more about personal truth. I want to chart an inner map—one that shows who I’ve been, who I am, and who I still might become. I’ll have a new German Shepherd pup, Freida, trotting by my side. Truth be told, if any hero emerges from this story, it’ll be her: bounding ahead, fearless, while I struggle to keep pace. Imagine the rag-tag crew in Stand by Me, each with their own quirks, except here it’s just me and a dog, walking into the unknown without a dead body at the end—just a different kind of discovery.

What do I expect to find? No clue. Maybe I’ll stumble onto a tiny wine festival in some sleepy hamlet and consider it a spiritual revelation. But I have a hunch that between the blisters and the bug bites, I might rediscover simple joys—the scent of pine needles after rain, the distant call of a cardinal, the humble creak of my hips as I stoop to tie a shoe. Maybe I’ll find the wisdom in moving slowly, in noticing what I used to skim past. Maybe I’ll see that the emptiness I feel isn’t a void, but a space waiting to be filled by new stories—my own version of Patrick Gass’s journal entries recounting each step forward into uncharted territory.

This isn’t just for me. It’s for my family—my boys especially. I want them to know that life doesn’t end when the nest empties out. I want them to have a map to my life, one that maybe one day they can follow in their own. Just like Lewis and Clark stepped into the unknown and reshaped what we thought possible, I plan to prove that we too can take on new chapters when our old ones seem to close. That if we stop, look, and listen, we each have an untraced map we can share with others. Maybe, through our journey, we will better understand how we came to be and how we would like to finish. Getting older doesn’t roll the credits on your story; it just changes the soundtrack.

The voices of the path will be intertwined in this narrative. The master mapmakers—Lewis and Clark—were seekers, not just explorers. Their world was unmapped, their success uncertain. Patrick Gass wrote about their daily trials and quiet triumphs, capturing the humbling reality of pressing on when nothing was guaranteed. They emerged with tales that changed the boundaries of what people thought possible for a nation. I’m not out to redefine a continent, but if I redefine myself, that’s a triumph worth a thousand dusty miles.

So, here I go: two titanium hips, a dog with a better sense of direction, and a willingness to be humbled. I’m heading into a landscape where I’m both the mapmaker and the traveler, where the echo of Lewis and Clark’s courage lingers. In the twilight years of my life, when the old routines feel snug but limiting, I’m stepping off the comfortable porch. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that we’re never truly alone—there are always footsteps before us, journal entries guiding us, and memories lighting our way.

In the gentle rustle of leaves and the stretch of an unknown road, I can almost hear that old whisper: Keep going. Take the next step, and then the next. Because even in uncertainty, even in the middle stretch of life when the audience thinks the show is over, there are still scenes to be written. And that’s reason enough to walk forward, creaky joints and all, into the wide-open spaces just waiting to be explored.