My husband Earl joked that I would take pen and paper with me to the grave. He’d tolerated a lot of time when I would sit at my computer to type while he played golf. Most mornings, I would finish about eleven and walk out on the golf course to join him as he finished his last four or five holes.

We had both retired when we married. He’d been wintering in southern California, enjoying 18 to 36 holes every day under the endless blue skies of the desert.

He had earned the privilege, having started in the woods as a boy. He was a high climber while in his teens and had spent decades logging, buying and selling land.

An avid reader, he was never an author—with one exception of which he was very proud. He kept a copy of his letter to the editor that had been printed years before. But if writing wasn’t his forte, he smiled at my endless hours trying.

You can read more about the wonderful, charismatic man Earl was in my book EARLY: Logging Tales Too Human to be Fiction here.