You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

Oddly enough I just finished writing a book based around one year of my life. Here is the first sentence:

“There’s something unhinged about deciding to cram a whole year of your life into a single book, every trail, every busted knuckle on a camera strap, every ghost-town sunrise, mountain storm, and late-night epiphany scribbled on the back of a gas station receipt.”

That’s how it starts.

Not with a polite introduction or a tidy explanation of who I am and what I’ve accomplished — because the truth is far less organized than that. Life isn’t a neat timeline of achievements and lessons learned. It’s a barroom brawl of memories, mistakes, beautiful accidents, and the occasional moment of clarity that sneaks up on you somewhere between a highway rest stop and a mountain overlook.

If I’m going to write an autobiography, it has to start with the admission that the whole thing is slightly insane.

Because who in their right mind decides to document a year of wandering around Oregon with a camera, chasing waterfalls, ghost towns, and quiet moments that most people drive past at seventy miles an hour?

Apparently… me.

Somewhere along the way I realized the small moments were the ones worth keeping. The early mornings when the fog hangs low over the trees and the world hasn’t quite woken up yet. The quiet click of a camera shutter echoing across a valley. The smell of wet pine needles and cold river water that makes you feel like you’ve stepped outside of time.

Those are the moments that get scribbled down.

Not the big dramatic headlines — but the strange little fragments. A conversation with a stranger at a gas pump. The way the stars look when you’ve stayed up too late on a mountain ridge. The sound of wind pushing through a forest that has been standing there longer than any of us have been alive.

And then there are the people.

Friends who willingly pile into trucks at ungodly hours to chase some half-baked photography idea. Family who tolerate the madness. The quiet encouragement of a wife who probably wonders why anyone would voluntarily freeze on a mountainside just to take a picture of the sunrise.

Those people become part of the story whether they like it or not.

Because a life — especially one lived wandering through forests and forgotten places — isn’t just about the landscapes. It’s about the strange tribe of humans you gather along the way. The ones who share the road, the campfires, the occasional moment of existential confusion when you realize you’re standing in the middle of nowhere with a camera and a head full of thoughts.

That’s the real autobiography.

Not a list of accomplishments. Not a tidy narrative arc.

Just a man with a camera, a restless mind, and a year’s worth of trails stretching out ahead of him — trying to capture something honest before the moment disappears.

And if that sounds unhinged… well, that’s probably because it is.

But sometimes the best stories start that way.