Originally from Kansas, I came to Washington for a graduate degree and stayed. I worked for a state environmental agency in Bellevue, cleaning up hazardous waste sites and occasionally writing policy and regulation or helping formulate them for about 20 years. I have now taken a position doing the same work in Yakima, and am living in Ellensburg full time (a change if you've looked here before). I love to garden, live in a century+ old house (so have gotten good at keeping it in shape), wander the sage taking pictures, especially flowers in the spring. I love being outdoors. The last some years I've gone through a process of choosing to be happy (being grumpy or happy take the same energy...each of us gets to choose how we'll spend ours), growing more connection with my feelings, and generally finishing up the things my family didn't really have the skills to impart. Most of my "baggage" no longer travels with me, though I don't think I'll ever be done with ALL of it...or learning to grow myself better. Life is good...and I have some sense it'd be better shared with the right person with whom to grow old together (in the best possible sense of that phrase). That would be someone to learn, love, laugh, cry, travel and marvel at life's mysteries with. If you'd like to see if there could be a "we" that leaves room for each of us to have a life of our own too, I think I'd like to hear from you. As Joseph Campbell would say, this is the inward arc of the Journey of the Hero. On a slightly different note, I bought an old BMW motorcycle this spring, commute with it up and down the Yakima Canyon (fair weather, anyway)and take occasional weekend road trips (on back roads)in the summer and fall.

You might have coffee while I have an Italian Cream Soda (no, I'm not a coffee person)...a casual meal with plenty of deepening conversation...a walk by the river or waterfront...bring your current favorite book and the most moving thing that's happened to you in the last month, and I will too...it's a time to learn more of who you are, and the reciprocal. Those first real impressions that'll help decide...do I want to see you again...and you me...or has it been good to meet you, and fare-thee-well? I'll be getting over all my guesses, illusions and projections as I learn who you REALLY are. Always a journey worth taking.