Backwords Press: Visit Our Weekly Blog

BACKWORDS blog explores the intersection between presence and history. The blog is a platform that honors the moment of encounter that any one person experiences—with art, literature, music, performance, or place. Often, reflections fit multiple categories—the opposite of a news program or style blog, BACKWORDS is not preoccupied with immediacy. An event does not need to be current to be relevant, nor does a memory need to be close to its origins to hold its potency.

Featured Posts

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Giverny, This Way

Giverny, This Way

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

Spice and Rain

Spice and Rain

Traveling with Less

Traveling with Less

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

Recent Posts

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

After ringing in the new year, I felt a shift in my life. I decided – sometime back in the fall of 2018 – that 2020 would be the year I would attempt to thru-hike the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s hovered like a carrot as I researched gear, gave my job the longest notice ever, and put hundreds of hiking miles on my legs. It started with explanations of “Not next year, but in 2020…” then the switch to “Next year…” and now I am counting down by months. It’ll be weeks, then days bef

Giverny, This Way

Giverny, This Way

Art and its appreciation is an ever-evolving interest of mine, so when it comes to the work and life of a prolific artist like Claude Monet, I still feel a very novice level of understanding. He’s one of the omnipresent impressionist greats, of course, but I still feel like my knowledge is surface level. Like that of wandering through a museum and only reading the placards. Gift shop recognition. What you see is what you get. This past summer I was lucky enough to be in one o

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

My day job is in the staffing industry, not exactly a hotbed of arts and culture, so it rarely warrants a mention on the blog. But we do have an interesting client or two, one of those being Travel Oregon. Last year they gave us some beautiful poster prints from their recent ad campaign. My favorite is on the wall within view of my desk – a small car with a roof rack towering with camping gear passing through a farm scene, enormous green and gray mountains in the background.

Driving Through a Derecho, or, Toto, We Are Unfortunately Still in Kansas

Driving Through a Derecho, or, Toto, We Are Unfortunately Still in Kansas

Okay, more like, “Phil and Ruby, we’re unfortunately still in Kansas.” Phil and Ruby were the two German Short-Haired Pointers that I was helping my friend Shonna transport from Marin County, California, to their owners in Harding, New Jersey. We had a week to get across the country with our precious, adorable, sometimes-stressful cargo, and I’d chosen for us a fairly straight line to get from A to B. We had hotels booked in Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Nashville, and Sh

Twenty Four Hours in Russell, New Zealand

Twenty Four Hours in Russell, New Zealand

In November, 2018, I took one of the best trips of my life. Now let me tell you how it ended. After a miserable layover in Shanghai, a day at the world famous Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, and over ten days of flying, busing, and driving all over New Zealand I found myself with a major head cold and a growing fear of going back to “real life.” After a semi-late night out dancing in Auckland, my friend Lucas and I packed up the rental car and headed North, to the Bay of Islan

Mourning Place

Mourning Place

A few weeks ago I took advantage of an unusually sunny Sunday – a merciful break from the mid-winter gray of the Pacific NW. I headed from Portland toward the coast, set on doing a favorite hike but open to wherever the day took me. I hiked my hike in the astounding 55 degree sunshine, but it took me less time than I anticipated. With a few hours of sunlight still ahead of me, I decided to make a day of it. I drove north on Highway 101, toward my favorite spot on the Oregon C

Charlecote Park

Charlecote Park

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about connection, and ways to improve my own. Particularly with people in person. I work mostly from home, and can sometimes get too good at my own routine, my own rhythm of communication through social media, email, and texting. When it comes time to actually have a natural conversation, with immediate, unedited and meme-less responses, it can get more stressful than I’d like. As the weather goes from Fall to Winter, this question feels more i

The Small Mysteries of My Day in Songjiang

The Small Mysteries of My Day in Songjiang

When we stepped out of the train into the metro station, we were met with the same scene as in every other metro station in Shanghai: Escalators. (Without realizing it, escalators had become the thing that will always represent Shanghai in my mind.) But when we emerged into the humid, hazy early afternoon, our surroundings were noticeably different from what I’d become used to. It was noisy, sure, with heavy clangs from a construction project, but gone were the skyscrapers an

The Lake of the Woods

The Lake of the Woods

I was hunched over a circle of stones with a box of matches in one hand and an old torn up national park map in the other. I lit match after match after match, touching them to the crinkled map pieces already in the center of a small firewood teepee. It was windy and with the temperature dropping toward a predicted low of 24 degrees, I was getting more and more frustrated in my attempts. Shivering, I jammed in more paper and lit (or broke) another set of matches. But I couldn

The Babinda Moment

The Babinda Moment

“I’m at the bar. You’ll see me if you get here.” It was the last WhatsApp message I sent as I took my seat alone at a wine cellar turned eatery, Restaurant Ca La Montse, in Barcelona, Spain. I was in Barcelona at my first MFA residency and had just come from a reading where I’d gorged myself on free tapas and Estrella Damms, so I wasn’t particularly hungry. I did, however, want to meet up with my friend who was passing through. So, a bit drunk and fairly certain of how to get

This Way to Longleat

This Way to Longleat

“Either I will find a way, or I will make one.” – Sir Philip Sidney It was the third time we’d passed the small picture of a castle on a green road sign. It seemed to follow us around each roundabout we used that day. This way to Longleat. We were at the beginning of a planned-down-to-the-minute, 18-day road trip of southern England and Wales – but we were ahead of schedule. We’d already strolled through the history of Highclere Castle that morning (the place used for the TV

Spokane, Washington: Hometown Oddities and Affection

Spokane, Washington: Hometown Oddities and Affection

When I tell people I’m from Spokane, typically they respond in one of two ways: “What was it like growing up in your nation’s capital?” or “Zomg, I love Washington state! Doesn’t it rain all the time there, though?” It’s safe to say that, unless you’re a Sherman Alexie fan, you probably haven’t heard of my hometown. It’s about as far as you can get, within the intercontinental United States, from Washington D.C., and the climate is arid and seasonal (steppe), common for a pla

Gardens, Vita, and Virginia

Gardens, Vita, and Virginia

The style of the gardens behind the wall and tower are blended seamlessly – a mix of meandering precise paths. Some straightforward, others curving off in a new direction. Maze-like hedges hiding statues and special views, overgrown benches and manicured lawns, small pergolas and colorful flowers. Snaking vines and uniform trellises throughout the property are like bones forming a rib cage, overlaid with sinuous blood vessels. All of it with a purpose. Somewhere I found with

Granville Island: Success and Good Company

Granville Island: Success and Good Company

Along the southwest edge of downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, tucked underneath bridges and freeways, bisecting what the locals named “False Creek,” is the peninsula and shopping district of Granville Island. I first set eyes on Granville as an adult, just last year, on a birthday trip with my friend, Asaf. He insisted we do something special, something with traveling involved; and I chose Vancouver. Granville Island is home to over 275 businesses, art galleries, a commun

Treading Time in San Francisco: A Mortal in the Infinite City

Treading Time in San Francisco: A Mortal in the Infinite City

Several months ago, motivated by a surfeit of unseasonably sunny weather, I decided to play tourist in my own town. Armed with Daniel Bacon’s excellent guidebook, Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail, I set out early in the day to meander my way through the 3.8-mile hike, which began downtown at the Old Mint, a formidable structure of steel-fortified granite, sandstone, and brick that survived the 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire. The route was marked by a se

North Fork Road, Glacier Nat'l Park

North Fork Road, Glacier Nat'l Park

The North Fork Road, of West Glacier National Park, runs away from the outside edge of Lake McDonald and its outlet creeks and streams, for 40 miles through forest succession and recovering wilderness unhurriedly toward Canada. In terms of services, there is almost nothing there—a handful of water spigots, a few pit toilets—not even in the only town (if it can be called a town) along the road, Polebridge, MT. The road is only accessible by private vehicle, with a Ranger Stati

Terrible Lizards: Is There Anything More Mundane Than Lizard-Catching?

Terrible Lizards: Is There Anything More Mundane Than Lizard-Catching?

This week, our team has been discussing the Backwords Blog roots, along with our mission and methodology. Our approach to wrestling with our own histories and personal experiences, through the deepening of research. And, yes, our sometimes-departure from that form. In light of the number of, say, “political posts” from us lately, and given the tenor of the times, the blog’s undertaking has occasionally felt like an inadequate vehicle for speaking our truth—especially to power

Elected Grief

Elected Grief

I had something else written. Something I felt good about, but was honestly somewhat rushed. Wordstock prep consumed me last week, and now I'm in Boston for a conference all week long. This is rushed, but the urgency feels right. After last night, I wrote this instead. I've been trying to put into words how I'm feeling about this election. Everything is overwhelming, yes. I'm sleep deprived, anxious, so many things, yes. The truth is: I'm feeling like I'm 13 again – in a

A Personally-Inspired, Wholly Vicarious Experience of Porto Alegre

A Personally-Inspired, Wholly Vicarious Experience of Porto Alegre

Our first talk was brief; a ward against loneliness. I wasn’t familiar with the place he was from but its distance impressed me. At first I thought it was warm; a party city at night, that’s how my mind’s eye imagined it. But as it happened, the first time we had a real conversation was in his small apartment about a week later. Only then did I notice his dark hair; his delicate nose, features on his round, pale face rimmed with blue glasses. It was summer and the afternoon f

The Seattle Art Museum and the SAM Remix 2016

The Seattle Art Museum and the SAM Remix 2016

The Seattle Art Museum, three times a year, throws an event called SAM Remix. The latest event was “inspired by SAM’s exhibitions Graphic Masters: Dürer, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Goya, Picasso, R. Crumb and new art at the Olympic Sculpture Park including Tamiko Thiel’s ‘Gardens of The Anthropocene’ and Victoria Haven's ‘Blue Sun.’” The night allowed participants to choose their own adventure in an “evening of performances, tours, dancing and more at this creative late-night out.”

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