Elliott Returns
How an old friend in the river reminded me what all this work is for
The morning started with a list that looked like it could break a man.
An all-hands agenda to finish. A one-page breathwork guide to make “simple,” which, as it turns out, is the hardest thing. A stack of emails multiplying like weeds in sidewalk cracks. And the new job starting next month—one I’m deeply grateful for, but already feeling the weight of the pre-first-day stress. Even unemployed, I can keep myself busier than a nine-to-five.
What I wanted, if I’m honest, was none of that. I wanted a notebook, a pen, and a quiet patch of nature where no one could find me. I wanted to write the way a man drinks water after a long walk. I wanted to sit still long enough for the wind to say something true.
There are days when “should” climbs onto your back and pretends to be virtue. Today he brought friends.
I stared at the cursor blinking and felt the ache in my chest. It wasn’t fear. It was the weight of not listening. The body knows when you’re lying to yourself. It grinds the gears until you either stall or shift.
I shut the laptop.
Not a slam. Just a click like a small door closing on a bad plan. I grabbed the keys and walked out before I could explain myself to myself.
The river doesn’t care about deadlines. That’s why I went.
I parked crooked, hurried to be honest, and followed the thin path through cottonwoods to the little rocky beach I use when the city gets loud inside me. Oregon isn’t Wyoming. The light is softer here. The air damp even when it’s hot. But water is water and wild is wild, and that cousin-kinship is enough when you need it.
Drift logs made a pew. I sat down in the back row of church and let the sermon come from the current. Students floated downstream. A crow argued with nobody. The breeze came slow and even. I didn’t pull out the phone. I didn’t pull out the notebook. The quiet rebellion was to do nothing at all.
After a while my eyes did what they do when I let them. They softened. Sometimes when my eyes go soft, I see faces where others see bark and stone. Not a trick. Not a hallucination. It’s the world unclenching and showing its cheekbones.
The river talked in light and shadow. Ripples pulled the sun into long silver threads. A line of foam swung across the current and broke into little mirrors. One held still long enough for something to catch.
A cheek. A brow. The line where nose meets water.
I blinked and the face broke apart. Waited. The sun slipped behind a cloud, came out the other side, and the face returned.
The head tilt. The half-smile. Calm that could carry a boy through storms.
Elliott.
Exactly the same, yet not at all. I was forty-five and felt seven in a breath.
“I thought I outgrew you,” I said to the river.
No answer. There never had been. Elliott wasn’t words. He was knowing. He showed up when the world got too big and pointed to the part that fit in my hand.
I hadn’t felt him since I was seven. I’d grown up, done the serious things, learned to make lists and keep them, learned to pretend I didn’t need what I needed. And here he was. A face in the water more real than the sticky notes on my desk.
A memory stepped onto the rocks. I was seven, sitting beneath the old apple tree in the backyard. Throwing apples into the branches and watching them crash in the grass. My mother’s voice was brittle from the packing tape. The sky felt too big, and I felt too small. Elliott leaned against the trunk beside me. Sun-bleached hair beneath a green felt cap. A tan that didn’t quit. He looked like a boy who camped light and walked far. He didn’t tell me “It’s okay.” He just drew a circle in the dirt with a stick, tapped the center, and looked at me. I breathed. And the center of that circle felt like a place I could stay.
That’s how it always was. No speeches. Just space. Just the reminder: choose what feels alive and true to my path.
The face in the river shifted. The boyhood-guide version blended into someone older. Indiana Jones if he’d traded the whip for mala beads. Weathered jaw. Softer eyes. The look of a man who’d crossed continents barefoot. He’d gone to the places you can’t take pictures of. This wasn’t nostalgia—it was a parallel life. While I worked jobs and chased paychecks, he’d been out exploring. Not away from me. Just elsewhere, under the same sky.
Embarrassment came hot and quick. A grown man at a river, seeing an old friend no one else could. I almost laughed. Then almost cried. That’s how you know it’s true.
The knowing arrived like weather. No words. Just recognition.
The overwhelm wasn’t about the list. It was about forgetting the thread.
Responsibilities aren’t boulders to push up a hill. They’re lines of connection.
Writing isn’t hustle. It’s a hand out to whoever needs it.
Breathwork with veterans and men isn’t a service to sell. It’s a campfire.
The nonprofit work isn’t a chore. It’s a rope across a gap.
Even the new job—the one that keeps the lights on and steadies the ground—isn’t separate from the vision. It’s the foundation that makes the dream possible.
And that dream of traveling the world to study the breath, of Wyoming’s big sky and tin-cup light—it’s not separate either. Same man, same thread, same aliveness pointing toward what’s next.
Joy isn’t at the end of the road. It’s here, in the circle, if I’ll choose it. And the circle reminds me: choose what feels alive and true to my path. Elliott proved it.
The building doesn’t have to kill the vision. Build like a gardener, not a jailer.
That was the lesson. Connection. For now, that was the north star.
I stood up. The path through the cottonwoods looked the same but walked different. The list hadn’t disappeared—agenda, one-pager, new job, the whole parade—but they had turned from enemies into bridges. The restlessness wasn’t failure. It was compass calibration. The needle rattling as it found north.
Back at the desk I opened the laptop. The click sounded lighter. The veteran’s group agenda wasn’t a burden; it was a plan for men who needed steady ground. The breathwork guide wasn’t busywork; it was a note to myself on how to come home. The new job didn’t feel heavy; it created possibility.
I have a secret superpower. I see faces where others see rocks. I used to be ashamed of it. Now I call it what it is: connection. The world has a face. Sometimes it shows it if you stop squinting at your own importance.
North Stars shift. That’s not betrayal—it’s navigation. Today the star is connection. Tomorrow it might move a degree. I’ll shift with it. But the phrase doesn’t change.
Choose what feels alive and true to my path.
I’m still building. Still grateful. Still nervous. But I won’t build from obligation. I’ll build from joy. From alignment. From breath.
Growing up doesn’t mean leaving wisdom behind. It means carrying it better. At seven, Elliott drew a circle under the apple tree. Today he drew one on the water. Different landscape. Same lesson.
Elliott’s around, just beneath the surface. A palm on my shoulder when I drift toward “should.” He doesn’t have to talk. He just looks ahead, and I can’t help but follow.
Some wisdom transcends time. From seven to forty-five and whatever comes next, the thread is the same: tell the truth, breathe steady, and choose what feels alive and true to my path.