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By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 25, 2026) – I was mindlessly streaming one YouTube music video after another this past weekend, and I ran across an old song that I hadn’t heard in years but that has regularly come to mind in various contexts.

It was Eagles founding member Don Henley’s solo hit, “The Heart of the Matter,” from his 1989 studio album, The End of the Innocence. The album came out the year before Henley founded the Walden Woods Project, a nonprofit organization that has been near and dear to my heart since July 2012 when Timberley and I went there — to Walden Woods and Walden Pond near Concord, Mass. — for the first time. I had been accepted for the week-long Approaching Walden seminar for high school teachers. It was the best professional development of my career.

Having been an Eagles fan since at least the summer of 1977, which was not long after the band’s multi-platinum-selling albums Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and then Hotel California initially hit the pop charts and airwaves, I was hoping that during the week-long seminar at the Thoreau Institute, Henley himself might show up to greet us, especially since his band wasn’t on tour right then. He didn’t come around, wherever he was; instead, he sends me a fund-raising letter every year in December. Even though I know what it is when I see it in our post office box, I get a momentary thrill seeing Henley’s name on the return address.

Continue reading ‘I’ve Been Trying to Get Down to the Heart of the Matter’

By RAHN ADAMS

The legal battle was over / who owned the lot — / the benevolent developer / or the crusading islanders.

They’d already fought / over crossing the wide moat / that protected their castles / in the shifting sands,

And the king had won, / realizing his plan / to replace the drawbridge / with a high-rise, concrete span.

But Lot 1A was different, / being new dry land / that had built itself up / with each crash of ocean surf.

At the end of the day, / King Ed said, “Let it be so / that the people win. / Our crown will be this gazebo.”

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 18, 2026) – All week I’ve been intending to write this essay about the recently concluded Walk for Peace — the part of it where, not the rubber, but the bare feet of Buddhist monks and their Peace Dog met the road on their trek across the Bible Belt. That part of the mission officially ended last Wednesday.

According to the monks’ leader, the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara of Fort Worth, Texas, an individual’s walk for peace by practicing mindfulness should never end. That person should seek this type of peace for the rest of his or her life. And if they keep trying to find that peace within themselves — that “inner child,” he called it — they will not have failed.

That was my own epiphany — the monks’ definition of peace — after seeing them in person with Timberley on Jan. 16 outside Mount Olivet United Methodist Church near Kannapolis, N.C. The historic church, with its own old cemetery, is located across the street from Carolina Memorial Park, which covers the entire hillside there.

According to the Find-a-Grave website, more than 28,000 individuals rest in peace on that sacred hill where we met the monks.

It was the 83rd day of their mission that had begun on Oct. 26, 2025. Distance-wise, they were almost midway through the 2,300-mile, 108-day walk from Bhikkhu Pannakara’s home temple in Fort Worth to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. They officially ended the sacred walk with a peace rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Wednesday on Day 109. On Days 110-112, they visited Annapolis, Md., and returned to Fort Worth by bus.

Continue reading ‘Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir, At Long Last?’

By RAHN ADAMS

The setting sun shone / in the window / of the great room / with the cathedral ceiling.

Every day at dusk / we walked together / past this bright house / on Fairmont Street

As we headed back / from the beach strand / or the tennis courts / on the island.

From the water tower / to the waterway, / the unmarked pavement / ran south to north,

Letting twilight die / a golden death / in the highest peak / of this vacant second home.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (Feb. 11, 2026) — So many things are happening right now, it’s as if this second week in February is the nexus of alternate universes. Take three seemingly unrelated events this week that are alike only in terms of spectacle:

The week started on Sunday with Super Bowl LX — an unremarkable football game whose two halves book-ended a most remarkable halftime show. Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny’s extravaganza was 13 minutes of cultural education.

On Tuesday, the Buddhist monks that Timberley and I have been walking with in spirit for the past two months reached Washington, D.C., on their 2,300-mile, 108-day Walk for Peace. They are there today and tomorrow before catching a bus in Annapolis, Md., for Fort Worth, Texas, where the peace walk began. I’ll write more about it next week.

And today is the start of Speedweek 2026 at Daytona International Speedway in Florida — a really, really big deal for folks who like stock car racing. They’ve had three months of nothin’ since the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., last fall. The single-ring circus gears up again starting today.

Back in the 1990s when Dale Earnhardt was The Intimidator and won the last few of his record seven NASCAR Winston Cup championships, Timberley and I would regularly meet up with her dad, Nat Gilliam, at the races in either Darlington, S.C., or Rockingham, N.C. Nat worked with Earnhardt’s race team, representing one of its sponsors, Western Steer/Mom ‘n’ Pops, Inc., of Claremont, N.C. He even got us into the Daytona 500 once.

Continue reading Bad Bunny, Buddhist Monks, and Daytona Speedweek ’26: Signs of Changing Times

By RAHN ADAMS

As of this morning, / the bees were still buzzing / in one of our hives / like a well-built Belvedere.

On my knees, I pressed / my ear to the box / and heard the happy thrum / of a thousand little lives,

Clustered against the cold, / generating heat / to protect that one life / at the center of their being.

Why the other hive died / we probably won’t know. / Too much stress / and too spread out, we guess.

We should have robbed it — / taken all of the gold / to make them work / harder for their precious honey.

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 4, 2026) – Yesterday when we left our house to drive into town, we saw three beautiful girls playing in the snow at a neighbor’s house. They seemed to be in much better moods than the last time we saw them outside.

That occasion was a few days before Christmas, and, once again, we were in the car but headed in, not out. The girls caught our attention that time because they were frantically running toward us as we parked in our driveway. “Hey!” I said. “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

Startled to see us, the three large does — that is, female deer — veered away and cut through the yard, then around the house into the woods. As we climbed the stairs to our front deck, Timberley spotted what was wrong. “Look,” she said. “Over there. It’s hurt.”

It was a good-sized buck, a young spike that was half lying, half sitting in a ditch across the hollow from our house. One hindquarter was injured, keeping it — or I should say him — from even standing, much less running. But he could hold his head up, and he was alert.

Continue reading Oh, Deer! Not How I Thought This Sad, Sad Tale Would End

In anticipation of spring

By RAHN ADAMS

Three boys tossed a ball / in the vacant sandlot, / an excuse just to talk / and to laugh until they burst.

The eldest one quit first, / taking his new ball with him, / forcing the others / to play with another horsehide.

As hard as those two tried, / the old spheroid didn’t feel right. / One boy joked, / “This ol’ pill must be hexed.”

The younger fielder left next, / not wanting to go, / but he was called away / without any choice in the matter.

Deciding not to be a lone batter, / the last boy elected / just to play catch with the sky / until it rained or worse.

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Jan. 28, 2026) – The Hibriten High School pep band was the coolest group of musicians this 11-year-old kid had ever heard in person. It was three more years before I would hear Maynard Ferguson’s screaming MF horn in the old concert hall at App State. But that’s another story for another day.

Mom would take me and my little brother to our older brother’s JV basketball games — Mom was the hoops fan, not Dad — and then we’d stay for the two varsity contests that followed. That’s when the pep band played, starting at halftime of the girls’ game. Those guys and gals playing horns and banging drums were so cool. Whether it was that first year or the next, I remember admiring Joe, the trombone player, in particular. I wanted to play just like him.

Coming from a white evangelical background — a really strict fundamentalist Christian household — I didn’t get to listen to rock or even pop music openly at home. Now, I was in the elementary school band — I played trombone, like Joe — but the only good songs we played were easy arrangements of Tijuana Brass tunes. My only other link to popular music was a wired earbud and a cheap AM transistor radio that picked up only the local radio station. Top Gun, as WKGX in Lenoir was called back then, played country-and-western music, and went off the air every day at sunset.

But that’s when the pep band started heating up on those cold winter nights in that crowded and stuffy high school gym. During breaks in the games, the band stood at one end of the home stands and played neat songs like “Windy” by the Association and “Up, Up and Away” by the 5th Dimension, as well as two jazzy tunes by Chicago, the original rock group with horns. I also remember a Cliff Nobles Philly soul hit called “Horse Fever” (not to be confused with “The Horse,” which every other pep band played), as well as the first Hibriten fight song that was actually App’s “Hi-Hi-y-ike-us” (mountain talk for “Hi, how do you like us?”).

Continue reading ‘Waiting for the Break of Day, Searching for Something to Say’

In memorium

By RAHN ADAMS

That ride on the golden escalator / was already at its lowest level. / It should have been shut down / once and for all, God damn it.

The golden tower never was as tall / as it was said to be. / The sales pitch was just a big lie, / selling fools timeshares on the 13th floor.

Now they want golden parachutes / to break their falls. / The rest of us are left waiting for an elevator, / or we’re forced to take the stairs.

The golden doors suddenly slide open; / we can go up or down. / Two good and pretty elevators can carry us, / but both are covered in blood.