This started as a Facebook tribute to my dad on his 79th birthday. It began to wander into a narrative as winding as the roads we’ve traveled and the lives we’ve lived, and I thought, well, some things are bigger than Facebook.
Because how do you fit a lifetime of stories, sarcasm, and shared miles into a single post? Maybe this one just needed a little more room to stretch its legs, unfold its map, and find its way home.

Happy 79th Birthday to my dad: proof that genetics are wild and wonderful things. Scientifically, I’m 50% Jack and 50% Sandy (I think that’s how it works, but I’m no scientist). If you know me well enough, or look closely, you can probably pick out which pieces belong to which half. Most people think I take after my mum, and in looks, humor, wit, and occupation, I do. I don’t look like my dad, and my personality, well, that’s all Sandy.

I was the firstborn, which means I came into the world with the full, undivided attention of two brand-new parents. That lasted about thirteen months, until the twins showed up and the spotlight had to stretch a little thinner, or, on most days, disappear entirely. To this day, the family joke is about who is Mom’s favorite (spoiler alert: it’s Ryan), but I’ve always known, and still know, that I am Dad’s. Not in the spoiled or sugary “Daddy’s girl” kind of way, but in the quiet, unspoken kind that lives in the spaces between shared jokes and long drives. Ryan and Jenny might disagree, but that’s okay, they’re just jealous.

My dad is quiet and grounded. He doesn’t command attention or draw a crowd, not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t need to. He’s steady, thoughtful, the kind of man who listens more than he talks. But when he does speak, you should listen; it’s usually something important or something crudely funny you won’t want to miss. (Or, if you ask my mum, sometimes a little bitchy, but you can’t be perfect all the time.)

I’ve always been able to draw the lines between my father and me; our shared love of stories, our passion for travel and getting lost, our comfort in quiet, wild places. But if I had to pinpoint the moment that line was firmly drawn, it would be my solo trip to Colorado.

When I got to Denver and Fox Rental Cars, I bought a road map off the counter on a whim. An honest-to-God, unfold-it-till-it-rips, paper map. I didn’t need it; my phone sat on the dashboard, smug and certain, whispering turn-by-turn directions. But I wanted it.

The guy at the counter looked at me quizzically. He had tried to sell me extra insurance and a hardier 4×4 vehicle when he heard where I was headed, but all I wanted was that dusty map. My dad always had maps tucked into the seat pocket of the car, their edges soft from use, highways traced in pen, towns circled for reasons long forgotten.

When we traveled, it was always an honor to be the kid who got to hold the map and look for exits on highways where we could stop to eat or pee, and find our next stop. Maybe that’s where it started: my need to see where the road goes, to trust my own sense of direction even when I’m not entirely sure of it.

When I got into the car, I pulled a highlighter and pen from my bag (#educatorlife) and traced my route from Denver to Grand Lake on the map. I placed stars next to possible lookouts and scenic stops along the way. Then I set Google Maps to my hotel in Grand Lake and was off.

Throughout the thousand-mile journey around Eastern Colorado (Grand Lake was just my first stop), my dad was with me every step of the way. He’d text me randomly about alternate routes I might take or places he’d been that I shouldn’t miss. He shared stories and directions like breadcrumbs, as if he were quietly riding shotgun.

No one in my immediate family has an iPhone, so it was up to my friend Scott to track my location and AirTag, just in case I was eaten by a bear or fell off a cliff. Something my dad has worried about since I was old enough to walk and, therefore, climb over guardrails for a better look. In that, maybe we differ, or maybe it’s just age. Jack hates when I don’t stick to the trail or get too close to the edge.

I suppose I didn’t inherit a highly developed sense of self-preservation from either of them, which both my parents continue to lament.

There was one day in particular. I was still in Grand Lake, fresh off a weak attempt at snowshoeing, my first time. I literally took decorative (but real – they said I could use them) snowshoes from the wall of the hotel and set off with no direction or education on how to use them. Self-preservation and common sense be damned. 

Solo in Rocky Mountain National Park, I ended up buried to my neck in a snowdrift, convinced I was living out some Stephen King–esque scene and wouldn’t be found until summer when the snow finally melted. My head, sticking out of the snowmelt and mud, half-eaten by wildlife, a sad note scrawled in blood on a tissue stuffed into my bra: maybe Get busy living, or get busy dying, or simply, We all float down here. That’s all it would say. My final tribute to the world, a borrowed line from Stephen King and proof of my lack of creativity, but deep love for great literature and one-liners. (I know my dad is smiling and shaking his head as he reads this… even if it is dark.)

After that, I decided exploring from the safety of my car was the smarter option. (Second spoiler alert: I got out. It wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t happy, and I had snow lodged in places I didn’t know existed, but here I am.) I pulled out my trusty map and highlighted a few places I wanted to see. I found myself on roads with no names, no lines, no paving, and definitely no signs. I just drove.

I chased an eagle into someone’s driveway trying to snap a photo. They chased me off with a shotgun in hand. I found a quiet reservoir where an osprey fished for nearly an hour, and I sat watching, camera in hand, capturing shot after shot. (Did I mention my dad gave me my first real camera?)

There were hours where I didn’t see another car, and I didn’t care. I was free. The world was mine. And in those moments, I would find myself whispering to Moosen, “Oh, Jack would have loved this.”

Out there in the Rockies, windows cracked to the cold, I realized I wasn’t driving alone. I was following inherited roads, his steady hands on the wheel in the way I trace a ridgeline, his patience in the way I wait for the osprey to dive, his caution tugging my sleeve when I lean a bit too far over the guardrail or cross it all together. Maybe I don’t have his face, but I have his miles. And they fit.

The truth is, my dad and I have always traveled in parallel lanes. He taught me that work is a kind of motion too, something steady and honest that keeps you grounded while you chase whatever horizon calls your name.

He was a teacher by degree, but true to Jack-fashion, he obeyed no man or master. He struck out to make his own way, his own fortune, his own company, and he succeeded. Proof that if you work hard enough, and long enough, you can build something lasting. He’s still working today at his company that’s as old as I am. I wish he wasn’t. I wish he would just retire (again). I’ve told him before, Go then, there are other worlds than these. But even the words and wisdom of Roland Deschain don’t convince him. And I get it, deep in my soul, even when I don’t want to admit it, I do get it.

The company is as much his baby as his three children are. It’s his name, his reputation, his life; countless, thankless hours poured into something tangible and valuable. It defines him the way my work defines me. It’s why he answers emails at all hours, finishes quotes on deadlines, and works on vacation. I understand it because I do that too.

But legacy and creation aren’t just in what we build or where we go; they’re in what we tell and imagine. And my dad could imagine. It’s the stories, he had one for everything, that showed off his particular brand of genius. When he told them, you could see him come alive, winding up and taking off into something bizarre and fantastic, and sometimes, well, a little scary.

This was the man who used to tell us that tunnels, of which there are plenty when you grow up in Pittsburgh or travel through West Virginia and Virginia, were filled with Noop-Nops.

If you’re wondering, no one actually knows what a Noop-Nop is. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that they live in tunnels and other dark places. They have wings like bats and furry bodies; the adults can get pretty big, two or three feet tall, with sharp fangs and razor-sharp claws. If you’ve read From a Buick 8, you can see them. For the record, that book came out long after Noop-Nops were invented, Stephen King just put a face to them…at least for me.

To avoid them, you have to follow the rules. When entering a tunnel, make sure your headlights are on, your doors are locked, and your windows are rolled up tight. Sure, you’ll hear them, the tapping and banging on the car as you pass through, but if you follow the proper safety procedures, you’ll make it out the other side unscathed.

Maybe that’s where my love of scary stories really started, not with The Boogeyman or Cujo, but with the Noop-Nops. My dad invented the monsters, but he also taught me not to flinch when the dark got loud.

He had me read The Boogeyman when I was about ten, and I’ve been a horror junkie ever since.

What people who don’t like horror don’t understand is that it isn’t about the gore or the fright; it’s about the possibility. The unknown. That’s what keeps you turning the page, coming back again and again. There’s something primal about being scared; it reminds you what it means to feel everything all at once. It wakes something ancient in you, something that refuses to sleep. It sharpens your senses, pulls you back into yourself, makes your palms sweat and your heart race. For those moments, you are completely present.

When you close your eyes, the nightmares that follow are worth the fear, because you wake up exhilarated, grateful, and so incredibly alive. Fear, after all, is just curiosity in disguise. The same instinct that makes you turn the page also hums beneath your skin, a magnetic pull toward whatever waits just out of sight.

I think that’s what I really got from him, not just the map habit or the camera or Stephen King, not even the wanderlust itself, but the compass. The quiet, internal one that says, go see for yourself, and the equally quiet one that says, get home safe, check under your bed, and close the closet door. He gave me the discipline to plan a route and the nerve to ignore it. He taught me that hard work is just another kind of journey: you show up, you keep moving, you learn the road as you walk it.

In those gifts was also wonder. The kind that makes you look twice at the sky, pull over for an osprey, or read just one more chapter even when you’re scared. He taught me that life isn’t meant to be tidy or predictable; it’s meant to be lived. To take the road with no lines, the tunnel filled with Noop-Nops, the story that keeps you up at night. To love fiercely, work hard, and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And maybe that’s what it really means to live and love and inherit a story. It’s not the paths we’re handed, but the courage to travel them. The map might tear, the ink might fade, but the compass, his compass, still points true.

Always home.