Notes from my Knapsack 9-25-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 9-25-2025
Jeff Gill

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been
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My wife and I just took a long trip, for us, to the Pacific Northwest. It was a part of the country neither of us had ever been to, and had a number of personal connections that made it a much anticipated and memorable venture.

It was also too much. We jammed so much into the nine days we had, with a travel day on either end for eleven in total, that halfway through we had a serious conversation about what we could cut to give us a bit of a respite. Serious it was, but our decision was to press on, and we did.

I figured out how to navigate Puget Sound's ferry system, which we rode three times with our rental car, and that saved us some time, but the driving was still something else. For anyone considering that area, let me caution you that many of the popular locations (or ferries!) can fill up by 9 am, but it is common to have dense fog until 10 am, so driving in limited visibility is something you just have to get used to.

As I posted our pictures on social media, I heard from a number of friends variations on a perfectly fair question: are you out of your mind? We covered a ridiculous amount of ground both in vehicle and on foot. One could ask, why?

We have been thinking about that, in terms of planning future travel. The reality is we were both raised by fathers who never took all the vacation they technically had, and were uneasy about being away from work; our mothers were homemakers and thus never had time off. We can feel like we've come a ways from our upbringing, but still be constrained by it.

The truth is, with my wife recently retired and my work status complicated, but heading that way, we both never took all of our vacation time, either. On my spouse's official retirement she had a certain amount of unused vacation she could receive in compensation, but she still left double-digit days' worth of time on the table. In forty years, I took two full weeks covering three Sundays off precisely once, and it was a) arranged as a term of employment, b) with a year's warning to one and all that I'd be gone, and c) it was for a backpacking trip to Philmont Scout Ranch which some might not consider vacation in the first place (something about spending ten nights on the trail with fourteen youth and five other adults, but it was glorious). On the other hand, I often had to cope with congregational leaders who thought time I spent directing church camps or going to regional events was "personal time" and counted against vacation days. It was a factor we pushed back against, but it was always there.

Otherwise, we took lots of four and six day vacations when we thought we could afford to get away together. Data indicate we were fairly typical Americans in that respect. And we got habituated to packing as much experience we could into as few days as possible.

In retrospect, we both wish we'd taken more time off. It would have helped us, and I honestly believe it would have made us better employees, but the reality is our history and culture and institutions tend to push against taking vacations, and even at that our experience is mostly before the issue of online tools creating the "infinite workday" we're talking about now.

Meanwhile, we are working on how to change our own assumptions around work, even in retirement. It's definitely a work in progress, even in our sixties.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has some places he'd like to go he's never been. Tell him where you'd like to visit at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 9-19-2025
Jeff Gill

Standing in the surf as the tide rises
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Earlier this summer, Charlie Kirk said on X: "When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it's important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember internet fury is not real life. It's going to be ok."

I remember being surprised by this. His reputation was more for provocation and challenge and defiance, but this recommendation was itself pretty solidly grounded. I clicked "like" and scrolled on. I'd like to say I made a mental note to check him out more thoroughly, but it was June 17th and if I did I never got around to it.

My wife and I were on vacation when the news came, tragic and shocking. We were about to make my first visit to the Pacific Ocean, and Charlie Kirk's death was on my mind as I stood in the waves, feeling the sand itself move under my feet as the tide was surging in. You can stand and watch breaking waves, one after the other, roaring in your ears and spraying your legs, for some time. It's a contemplative place, timeless and yet indicative of inexorable time passing, one wave after another. Plus the reality that with each stronger wave you could really tell the ground beneath you was not stable. And it was cold.

Walking back to the rental car, I worked to get the sand off my sandals before getting in, never a task done to completion. The grit and kelp was woven into the straps of my sandals, and stayed with me all the way back to our hotel. The news I'd heard, and the details of the assassination, were stuck in my thoughts as well. In part, I was sorry I had heard about it; self-pityingly, I wished I'd stuck to old pop music and anodyne entertainment, and not let my notifications pull me into the strong currents of daily news. Looking at iconic Haystack Rock, I was still mindful of a new widow and small children sure to ask when Daddy was coming home.

From Minnesota legislators shot at their own front doors to an Atlanta police officer killed trying to stop a shooter spraying a government building, all the way back to our summer vacation last year coming to a halt for a day with the attempt on President Trump's life, there's no way to look around and think this is too much, it's building and growing in ways we can't seem to control, and the world is feeling unstable under our feet. The knowledge that just as inexorably, the tide will go out just as it has come in, is not much of a comfort right now. Are we at a high tide, or is it still to come?

Which is where a number of people, all over the political . . . spectrum? Arc? Sphere? Two dimensions don't seem to do it these days. But all sorts of us recalled and pulled back up that June aside by Charlie Kirk himself, as a surge of political furor was washing up around our ankles, and no doubt his, since he was one to wade out deep into troubled waters. And we recall what he said:

"When things are moving very fast and people are losing their minds, it's important to stay grounded. Turn off your phone, read scripture, spend time with friends, and remember internet fury is not real life. It's going to be ok."

I really can't improve on that. I promise to try, in coming weeks, but for now, I'd like to give Charlie Kirk the last word. "It's going to be ok."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has a variety of political opinions, most of which he doesn't preach about. Tell him how you stay in touch with real life at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.