How did it come to this?

The day after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I said that the only other events that were comparable in how they'd made me feel were 9/11 and my first wife Cara's death. Looking back eight years later, there was absolutely no hyperbole in that statement.

It's a little unsettling how Donald Trump's second election to the presidency, while still extremely upsetting, isn't eliciting nearly as strong an emotional reaction in me - this despite his second election being a much worse event than his first. I don't think it would be out of line to suggest that this is the worst thing that has happened in our country in my lifetime. But Trump's first term in office and the COVID pandemic made me more than a little numb to bad things happening in the news. And, of course, this election result wasn't a shock in the way the 2016 result was. We were more prepared for the possibility.

On the bright side, another reason 2016 was so hard on me was that I was alone. Now I'm married to a wonderful partner in Erin and we have a beautiful three month old daughter. A daughter whose future I worry about deeply, but whose presence is an incredible source of comfort and joy.

A man who has been described as a fascist by people who worked in his first administration, who incited a violent insurrection and attempted to install himself as a dictator after losing the 2020 election, and who is a thoroughly reprehensible person in every way has just been elected to be the most powerful person in the world. It's a really bad situation! It leaves us to wonder, how is this possible? How did this happen to our country?

I have a lot of thoughts on that, but I'll just briefly summarize what I think are the three most important points:

1. Our country was founded on the idea of "all men" being "created equal" but on the reality of Black people being enslaved, and much of our country was originally built on slave labor. The Civil War ended slavery, but the whole history of the country since then has been a struggle between people fighting for the principles of equality on which the country was ostensibly founded, and people fighting to keep the racial hierarchy in place. Whenever there's major progress toward equality, there's a backlash. Reconstruction happened after the Civil War, and the backlash led to Jim Crow. A Black man was elected president, and the backlash spawned the MAGA movement.

2. For the last thirty or so years, Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have been waging a propaganda campaign that has now caused a large segment of the population to be thoroughly detached from reality on most of the issues affecting their votes. Perhaps even worse, whereas 20 years ago most of the leading GOP politicians were probably in on the scam and just using their duped audience to get more tax cuts for the rich, now many of the important figures have grown up on this propaganda diet and are themselves true believers in the cult. The ease of spread of misinformation on the Internet, of course, makes this all worse.

3. Specific to the 2024 election, the economy and inflation since the end of the pandemic led to an incredibly strong anti-incumbency voting environment worldwide. No incumbent party won a national election this year (which had never happened before), and Democrats in the U.S. did better than most. That's likely the main reason Republicans won this particular election, whereas points 1 and 2 are my postulated reasons for the emergence of the insane Trumpist cult and its takeover of one of our two major parties.

Those are my thoughts on how our country got into its current terrible condition. But that's not really what this post is about.

What I find really remarkable, looking at it all, is not that this catastrophe happened in the country I was taught as a child was the greatest on Earth. What I find really remarkable is, well, everything.

Everything about human society. Everything that human beings have accomplished. How? How did it all happen?

Collective human achievement

There are so many amazing things that humanity has achieved. We often take it for granted, but if you take a moment to think about it, it's really quite staggering. We've risen from primitive hunter-gatherer ancestors to create a world-spanning civilization. We've sent humans to the moon and sent space probes to the farthest reaches of our solar system, where we can still communicate with them from Earth many decades after they were launched. We've cracked the genetic code underlying life. We've created vaccines that have saved hundreds of millions of human lives. We've created tremendous and awe-inspiring works of art and culture and music. We've created various modes of transit enabling individuals to cover distances unimaginable on foot, from the airplane to the bicycle (the most efficient form of transportation there is). We've created a global communications network on which we can almost instantaneously look up almost any piece of human knowledge. The list goes on and on and on.

What's really awe-inspiring about all this is that none of these things could ever have been accomplished by a single person starting from scratch. In fact, the distance from what a single person starting from scratch could accomplish to what humanity has accomplished is so vast that it seems absurd. Everything we take for granted in life is the result of the cumulative work of countless other humans over tens and hundreds and thousands of years. It's all been built up over those years on scaffolding built by the people who came before. And for that scaffolding to hold, a functional society, in one form or another, had to exist.

Human beings did not evolve to live in a society like the one in which we live. We evolved to live in small groups of people without any of the technology that makes modern society possible and without any knowledge of what was happening in the rest of the world. Over the last few millennia and especially the last few centuries, the pace of evolution of human society has vastly outstripped the pace of our biological evolution. Biologically, a human today isn't tremendously different from a human ten thousand years ago. Take a newborn from today and transport them to ten thousand years in the past, or take a newborn from ten thousands years in the past and transport them to today, and they'd not be aware of anything amiss and would grow up a totally normal member of the society to which they'd been transported. But do the same time travel with an adult, and they'd be utterly befuddled by the strange world they found.

I don't think there's any other species for which this would be true, certainly not to nearly the same extent as it would be for humans.

I'm of the firm belief that the human brain is the most amazing thing in the known universe. A biological supercomputer in an organism that evolved over billions of years from primitive single-celled ancestors and can perform so many incredible computations and feats, the underlying mechanisms of which we're only beginning to understand. One of my favorite things about my brain is that in its neural networks are stored tens of thousands of different songs (some stored with higher fidelity than others). How do our brains do that? Why do our brains do that? And that's far from the most amazing thing about the brain.

All the amazing feats of humanity I listed are the accomplishments of the human brain, but not just one human brain, thousands upon thousands of human brains collaborating across both space and time.

But something that takes millennia to build can be destroyed in an instant.

The human brain is an amazing thing, but it has many failure modes, and it wasn't designed to deal with the complexities of the modern world. Given the right (or wrong) circumstances, a whole bunch of human brains might collectively decide that electing someone like Donald Trump to be their leader is a good idea.

Democracy

Our country was founded nearly 250 years ago as a representative democracy. It wasn't the first attempt at a democratic system of government in history, but at the time, it was a big divergence from how nations were typically run. The founders of our country were embarking on a grand experiment, one they feared wouldn't last. Benjamin Franklin was famously quoted as answering, when asked if our government would be a republic or a monarchy, "a republic, if you can keep it."

And to quote a timely and unsettling recent Atlantic article by Tom Nichols:

[George] Washington feared that, amid constant political warfare, some citizens would come to “seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” and that eventually a demagogue would exploit that sentiment.

Clearly, Donald Trump is the sort of demagogue that Washington feared. Trump frequently expresses admiration for dictators, would enjoy being one himself, and already tried to make himself one four years ago. (Note: if you disagree with these statements despite the mountains upon mountains of evidence, no amount of evidence will ever convince you, and this post probably isn't for you.)

It seems remarkable, given that Trump has now been voted into office not just once but twice, that in the previous nearly two and a half centuries no one of that nature had ever been elected to the presidency. Quite a few previous presidents did despicable things, some assaulted democratic norms in certain ways, but none ever tried to keep their hold on power when their time in office was up. All respected the founding principle of our country that power lies with the people and not with any one man. All until Trump.

Why did this happen now and never before? Is there something special about our present era, or was it a fluke occurrence? The sample size is just too small (n = 1 would-be despots among 45 men who have held the presidency) to draw any conclusion.

It is important to note that America didn't truly become a full-fledged representative democracy until less than 60 years ago with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It's possible that democracy will both have been achieved and ended in this country within my parents' lifetimes. Will we still have free and fair elections in four years? I'm hopeful, but I wouldn't place a bet in either direction.

Democracy, it seems, is a fragile thing. Every time there's an election and the ruling party loses, for democracy to continue, they have to cede power. Every time. If just one time, those in charge decide not to respect the results of an election, they get their followers on board, and they have their hands firmly enough on the levers of power to succeed in their scheme, then bam, no more democracy. After the 2020 election Trump decided not to respect the results and got a lot of his followers on board but he didn't have enough control of the levers of power and there were still enough safeguards in place. Will that still be true if Trump or another MAGA Republican tries the same thing in the future?

Going from democracy to authoritarianism seems much simpler than the reverse. In the 1930s, Germany went from democracy to authoritarianism. Going back to democracy only happened after the fascist regime lost a horrifically bloody World War. That's not a typical course of events and not one that anyone would hope to see happen! The 1930s also saw a fascist movement in America. Perhaps it was because we fought the Nazis in WWII that the idea "fascism is bad" became strongly enough ingrained in the American identity for it to take most of a century before the resurgence of such a movement. Long enough for memories of that devastating war to have faded.

Anyway, I guess one aspect of "how did it come to this?" is "how has democracy even persisted for this long?"

Trying to understand a complex world

As I already stated, the human brain was not meant to understand a world as big and complex as ours. The decisions that voters make depend in part on how they understand the world. But do most voters, in any meaningful sense, understand the world?

In our modern world, we have access to just such an overwhelming amount of information. How can the average person filter out the good information from the bad? Honestly, in many cases, I doubt it's even possible. And once someone starts down the path of a given system of beliefs, algorithms just provide more and more information to reinforce those beliefs, regardless of the accuracy of that information.

It's no wonder that so many people believe so many untrue things. But was it any different in the past?

People today have access to far more information than people in any previous era of history. And a huge amount of that information is bad information. But it's not like people in the past were getting only good information.

Think about someone 50 years ago. 100 years ago. 200 years ago. How was their understanding of the world formed? They didn't have the Internet. They could get information from things like school, newspapers, books, people they knew, or authority figures in religion, business, politics, etc. There's no guarantee that most of that information was accurate, and undoubtedly, a lot of it wasn't. And today it's at least possible for an ordinary person to find accurate information on just about any given topic. In the early years of our nation's existence, there was no way to do this!

So yes, the explosion of misinformation today makes it hard for people to correctly understand what's going on in the world. But were most people in the past any better able to understand the world than most people today are? I doubt it.

Another important point is that whether people were getting their information from newspapers and authority figures in their community or whether they're getting it from the Internet and cable TV, people who already have money and power have a baked in advantage at getting their views out and influencing people's beliefs. Propaganda is effective.

Although I doubt that average people's understanding of the world has gotten significantly worse over time, I do have some speculation on how the changing information environment might contribute to the mess we find ourselves in today.

One, although propaganda has always existed and has always been effective, I think that cable TV, the Internet, and the consolidation of media from many independent sources to largely being controlled by a handful of corporations have together made it much easier for certain bad actors to capture a large portion of the population with the same coordinated propaganda messages. A century ago, a rich businessman who wanted to control what people thought of him might have purchased a newspaper that served one city, or maybe even a few newspapers for a few cities. Today, someone like that might buy, oh, Twitter? That is, one of the major means of disseminating and discussing news for the entire world.

Two, I think that the fact that we have access to so much information might give people misplaced confidence in their own understanding of the world. Maybe in the past, most people accepted that they didn't really understand the bigger picture of how the world works because they didn't have access to much information on how it works. So maybe they placed more confidence in authority figures, who often did understand things at least better than the average person did. Today a lot of people are very confident in beliefs about how the world works that are totally detached from reality, and think they know better than authority figures (on topics such as, for example, vaccines) when they really don't.

Three, I think the Internet has a big reinforcing effect on extreme beliefs. Before the Internet, people's views were more influenced by other people in their physical communities. If you started getting into a really crazy belief system, it wouldn't be likely that everyone around you would have those same crazy beliefs. The information you got from people around you could pull you back toward reality. Today, if you believe something crazy, you can find a community of like-minded individuals online and get most of your information from that online bubble, and then your crazy beliefs will just be pulled more and more toward craziness.

That's just speculation, though, and the general statement that most people have never had a good understanding of how the world works and have never made truly well-informed decisions when selecting their leaders is one I feel pretty confident about!

Evidence

I'm a scientist. From childhood, I've been passionate about learning things, acquiring knowledge about the amazing world in which we live. As a child, I did this mainly by reading books. Acquiring knowledge through reading continues to be something I love, but an exciting aspect of my career is acquiring new knowledge - knowledge that not only I didn't have before, but no one had before.

To make a claim of a new piece of knowledge, one should have strong evidence for that claim. I inhabit a world where arguments are made by accumulating evidence for the argument and presenting it in an organized, logical way. To me, if you want to convince someone to your point of view, that's the best way to do it. So I've spent a lot of time in my life, especially on the Internet, presenting a pile of evidence, data and graphs and explanations, to try to persuade people to my perspective on various issues. I'm not saying that my perspective has always been right, but that's how I operate.

I've come to realize that most of the time, this doesn't actually work.

If someone strongly believes in something, most of the time you can present all the evidence in the world to them and even if their belief is utterly wrong and the evidence shows it's wrong, their mind isn't going to be changed.

In the case of the 2024 election, the deciding issue, the reason Democrats were in an almost impossible position as the incumbent party, was the state of the economy and inflation. And you could show people graphs that illustrate how inflation has been a worldwide problem and how since the pandemic ended it's dropped more in the U.S. than it has in peer nations, so it makes no sense to blame inflation on the Biden administration. You could show people articles about how basically all credible experts say Trump's proposed policies would be terrible for the economy. A reasoned, evidence-based argument would show that voting for Trump because of the economy and inflation is at best horribly misguided. But this literally doesn't matter to most voters.

Something that I've noticed about myself and that I've come to feel is fairly unusual is that if I believe something and then come across solid evidence that seems to contradict that belief, I get excited and want to learn more so I can better understand the topic and update my beliefs. In my first ever research project, I set out to find evidence supporting a hypothesis that I was initially led to believe was probably correct, but I eventually discovered that the hypothesis was probably incorrect, and I very enthusiastically pursued and laid out the evidence.

Most people, it seem, just don't function in that way. If they already believe something, showing them evidence to the contrary doesn't seem to make much difference. This is often true even with scientists, I've found. Other scientists I've worked with have been very tied to certain pet hypotheses and are very resistant to accepting evidence that those hypotheses are wrong. I'm not saying I'm immune to this - we all have our biases - but I honestly do feel a certain glee in accumulating evidence to dismantle a belief that I previously held! I can think of multiple times I've done this!

I think that no belief should be held too strongly unless the evidence for it is overwhelming, and I think that's a philosophy that more people should follow, but that's not the reality of how people form beliefs. People come to very strongly believe things based on scant or misleading evidence, and after that happens, showing them that the evidence against their belief is overwhelming is usually (not always, but usually) a pointless exercise.

Everyone believes lots of things that aren't true. Most people very strongly believe in some things that aren't true, to the extent that trying to change their minds using evidence and logic is pointless. Some of those beliefs are more harmful than others. And some of those beliefs are more widespread than others. Some very widespread and very harmful incorrect beliefs have basically formed the basis for the existence of the MAGA cult, with consequences such as (among many others) a violent insurrection attempt and hundreds of thousands of preventable COVID deaths among people who didn't get vaccinated. But people from all parts of the political spectrum also strongly hold various other incorrect beliefs.

This has undoubtedly always been true, and I think it's really interesting to consider this when we think about not only the problems we face, but also about all the great things humans have achieved.

Discovery 

So much of what we take for granted about modern life could not exist without scientific discovery. Doing good science is hard work. It's not for everyone. It requires inquisitiveness, sharp observation skills, critical thinking, an ability to evaluate the strength of evidence with both an open mind and skepticism - skepticism being especially important, and this is one of the hardest parts for most, when evaluating your own ideas - and more. Most people don't have all these qualities. (Whether most people inherently don't have all these qualities or if they could develop them under the right circumstances is something I'm not sure about.) Based on my own personal experience, even many people who do science for a living seem to not have the right skill set to do truly good and rigorous science.

Multiple people whose opinions I value highly have said that I'm a very good scientist, and it's something I take a lot of pride in. Discovering new things about how the natural world works and doing so in a rigorous way so that we can feel confident we're describing something real is an awe-inspiring experience. And maybe being able to do it well is a rare gift. That doesn't mean scientists are better or more important than other people, of course. There are all sorts of talents people have which they use to contribute to society in all sorts of valuable ways. Taking care of other people. Creating beautiful art. Producing food and turning that food into delicious meals. Etc., etc., etc.

Without there being some people with the ability to discover true things about how the world works, though, society wouldn't have progressed very far.

(How can we know for sure that we're discovering true things? Well, we can never be 100% sure, but if we build models of reality that make predictions and our models approximate the truth, then the predictions should come true. For example, our understanding of how diseases and immunity work led to predictions about the effects of giving vaccines - and those predictions were validated when vaccinated people had much lower rates of getting sick and dying.)

This doesn't always have to be via strict application of scientific methods. People have discovered things about the world in many ways. But a common element of these discoveries is that people make predictions based on their understanding of the world, and then collect and evaluate evidence to see whether those predictions come true. This could apply to anything from the development of agricultural methods to the development of gravitational theory.

This is kind of meandering but the point I'm getting to is that, based on the culture of a society and the priorities of its leaders, scientific discovery and the resulting progress might be encouraged or might be discouraged. In the United States, in the last century a high priority was placed on promoting and funding scientific research, and it helped us become the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world. (That's not to say that scientific discovery hasn't also led to bad things, but it's worth noting that before the development of modern medicine and sanitation/hygiene methods, average human life expectancy was less than 40.) Societies led by religious extremists, on the other hand, have generally not valued science and have often acted to prevent it from being freely undertaken (see, for example, Galileo being called a heretic for his correct claim that the Earth orbits the Sun).

Donald Trump is very clearly someone who does not value a correct understanding of how the world works. Listening to him speak on a variety of subjects from climate change to economic policy, he doesn't even seem capable of understanding complex issues. What he seems good at understanding (perhaps intuitively) is how to con people and get gullible people to like him. But another thing he surely does know is that scientists and educated people in general tend not to like him. (This is probably because being educated makes it easier to recognize that Donald Trump is a crazy idiot and a fraudster.) Hence, a society run by someone like Donald Trump is not going to be a society that values or encourages discovery and knowledge. In Donald Trump's world, the truth has no value. The only value any belief has is whether that belief helps Trump. And because an understanding of how the world works leads to the inevitable recognition that Trump's ideas are incoherent and harmful, people who honestly strive to understand how the world works must be shunned.

A society entirely controlled by people with such values would be a society in which scientific discovery would rarely happen and even more rarely have any lasting influence. And because scientific discovery is a process that builds on itself over centuries, if people like Donald Trump had been in charge of human society for all of history, none of the amazing things we have as a result of that science would exist. Modern medicine? Gone. Modern transportation methods? Gone. Weather prediction? Gone. Television and radio and the Internet? Gone.

None of it would ever have existed.

What makes humanity great

Humans individually and the human race collectively have done so many great and good things. The most staggering achievements to me are (1) the discoveries we've made about the world and universe from the inner workings of the atom to the evolution of life to the wonders of the cosmos and (2) the indescribably beautiful works of art and music and literature and architecture that in their own way also say so much about the nature of reality and of our existence. But there's also, I think, a basic goodness to most human beings in the compassion that we have for other people and animals. I've witnessed it so many times and it's so sad when it gets pushed into hiding by the hateful rhetoric and propaganda that so often dominate our politics. But I think it's still there. Cara, when she was sick with the lung cancer that eventually took her life, once wrote, "I cry, but most times it's out of gratitude and awe. I am moved every single day by the kindness of friends, family and total strangers." Those words still ring true to me most of the time, even if kindness does seem to be in shorter supply these days in segments of our society.

To me, those are the biggest things that make humanity great. Sadly, Donald Trump is the antithesis of all those things.

He has no intellectual curiosity and shuns any attempt to understand the world if it would undermine him. He's never shown, to my knowledge, any meaningful appreciation for arts and culture, and people like him in general tend to value such pursuits for their use as propaganda rather than for trying to gain any insight into the human condition. And lastly and most importantly, he is entirely self-centered and seems functionally unable to understand concepts like empathy or working for a greater good (see, for example, his many disparaging comments about soldiers).

If human society had always had people like Donald Trump in charge, most of the amazing discoveries humans have made about the world would never have happened and society would never have progressed anywhere. But beyond that: if the human race was entirely made up of people like Donald Trump, people that self-centered and amoral, our species would likely have gone extinct long ago.

Gratitude and awe

When I really take a step back and think about all the things I've gotten to do in my life, I'd have to consider myself very lucky. A lot of people talk about what a horrible place the world has become. In some ways, I suppose that's true, although in some ways, things have always been horrible. But then there's the good. The things I've gotten to do that most people in human history never could have dreamed of.

I've traveled by airplane to take amazing vacations in Costa Rica and Spain and fantastic destinations throughout our country. Only possible within the last century.

I've seen so many incredible concerts. A part of human life for who knows how long, but the diversity of genres and sounds we have today has only existed for decades. And I can carry my entire music collection (over 16,000 songs) in my pocket. Only possible within the last two decades. (Yes, of course, it's possible to access even far more music than that on a device you carry in your pocket, but fuck Spotify, musicians deserve a living wage, rant over.)

I've gotten to experience the joy and exhilaration and sense of freedom that come from riding a bicycle. Only in wide use since the late 19th century. And mountain biking? That's only taken off in the last few decades.

I've discovered a previously unknown function of a specific motor neuron in the feeding system of the sea slug Aplysia californica. Every member of the species has this neuron (one of many neurons that have been identified through decades of painstaking work by many researchers) and the neuron does this specific thing in this specific behavior and before me, no one ever knew this, and now we do. That might sound interesting or it might just sound really weird, I don't know, but to me it's so incredibly cool to be able to discover real things about how the world works and about how life works and about how animal behavior works. Animal behavior is so fascinating (humans, of course, are animals, and our behavior is some of the most fascinating of all). The ability to do research of this sort on the functions of single neurons is something that has also only existed for a matter of decades.

Think of all the amazing and cool things you've gotten to do in your life that depend on the ingenuity and hard work and creativity of human beings, past and present. I'm sure there are a lot.

I have an immense amount of gratitude for all the collective achievements of humanity that have made all those incredible experiences possible.

Simultaneously, I'm in awe that all those things were collectively achieved by the same species that, collectively, could also do something as indescribably fucking stupid as elect Donald Trump president.

Not just once, but twice. And the second time more convincingly! Which might make one wonder whether our species, which has such an incredible capacity for learning by individuals and small groups of people, is even capable of learning at an overall collective level.

One day in May 2019, I was walking through New York City and on a sidewalk near the main branch of the public library, I saw this:

I was so struck by these words. I think there's so much truth in them.

I think that deep down, we humans haven't changed much over the whole course of recorded human history. We're still pretty nearly the same, as biological entities, as we were when our country was founded, or in ancient Rome, or 10,000 years ago. But the world has changed so much and society has changed so much and the human race has accomplished so many staggering feats, all through the actions of people building on the actions of people before them building on the actions of people before them.

Think about it. All the tasks we do in our day to day lives that seem so normal, like driving a car or going on the Internet or cooking dinner, we weren't designed to do and we didn't evolve to do any of those things. Our brains simply evolved to have the flexibility and adaptability to be able to do many things, and then cultural and technological evolution far outstripped the pace of biological evolution, and now all those things seem like second nature even though there's nothing innate in us when we're born that instructs us on how to do them.

And everything we as a species have accomplished, we've accomplished despite what I believe is very likely to be the case (although I might, of course, be wrong) that the majority of things believed by the majority of people about how the world works are basically wrong.

I'm not saying this as a call out of Trump voters, by the way; I think this is true of people in general.

At best, any single person can understand a few specific things really well, understand a much broader range of things moderately well, and have the humility to recognize that there are far more things that they don't understand. Most people, I think, don't reach that bar. The world is so much bigger and more complicated than what our brains evolved to comprehend that I don't think it's even realistic for most people to reach it.

A common refrain I've heard about the election is "voters are idiots." It's tempting to agree, but let's examine this statement. If we say "voters are idiots," we're really saying "human beings are idiots." Human beings are a species of animal. It's common to say we're the most intelligent animal on this planet. Certainly, we seem to have the most cognitive capacity. If human beings are idiots, what does that make all the other animals? Would we say, for instance, "crows are idiots"? What would that even mean?

Humans have the greatest capacity to understand the world we inhabit and how it works... but perhaps this also means we have the greatest capacity to misunderstand the world.

Perhaps humans are simultaneously the smartest animals and the stupidest animals.

Perhaps that's just the duality of mankind and the duality of life. Both wonderful and terrible. We couldn't have one without the other. We're just a bunch of hairless apes living in a world we weren't mean to live in and that none of us could ever hope to really understand, just trying to do the best we can in our own little lives, in a society built on layers upon layers of scaffolding erected by long dead people who similarly didn't really understand the world around them and were just trying to to the best they could in their own little lives, and somehow it all still works (often not very well but well enough to keep going) and we keep innovating and discovering and creating the most astonishing and fantastic and beautiful things while also doing the most stupid and cruel and pointless things, and...

And I don't know how much of this will even make sense to anyone, but everything I've written in this post is what I've been spending a lot of time thinking about for the last nine days. In November 2016 I learned that my expectations of humanity had been too high and I became horribly depressed as a result. In November 2024 I've learned that my expectations should be ratcheted down yet another notch, but instead of being depressed, I find myself in awe of all the good and wonderful things that such a flawed species has achieved.

Maybe it's just that my brain is constantly bathing in oxytocin thanks to spending time with my beautiful daughter.

I know it's not easy in times like this. I know that I'm lucky to not be directly threatened the way a lot of people are. But in a world with so much horror and so much beauty, we do have a choice in what gets our attention. And so much of how we feel and our mental and emotional states can be determined by where our attention is directed. This is something I know well from experience.

We shouldn't ignore the horror. But constantly immersing ourselves in it isn't helpful either. Focusing on the beauty can help us to just get through the day and have the energy and motivation to fight the horror. Try it, if you haven't.

It's even supported by science.

Birth

Earlier this year, I wrote of the transcendent experience of seeing a total solar eclipse in person and stated that "nothing, nothing, can prepare you for what it's like... until you actually do it yourself." I'm very blessed that 2024 has now brought a second experience about which I could say the same thing: witnessing the birth of one's first child. 

On my first date with Erin, sitting across from her at a table at Cloak and Dagger cocktail bar, I did not wait all that long in our conversation before saying, "So, I saw on your [dating app] profile that you do want to have kids." Pretty forward, yes, but why not? When you're dating in your late 30s and looking for a life partner and you have an absolute deal breaker, it's logical to be clear about that from the start.

Oddly enough, it turned out that each of us had just recently broken up with previous partners over the issue of us really wanting to have kids and our exes not being able to commit to the idea!

And now here we were, 27 months later, counting down the days until the birth of our first child. Life comes at you fast.

Erin had expressed hope that our baby would be a "high achieving baby" by being among the roughly 5% who are born on their due dates. This did not end up happening. It was an odd mental space in which we found ourselves in the days leading up to and then following the due date. The most amazing and life-changing event would be happening to us, and we knew it would be happening soon, but we had no idea exactly when it would be happening. One of those days, though, it would just happen - and then bam, life forever altered.

A couple days after the due date, early in the afternoon on a to that point lazy weekend day, I was waking from a nap when Erin walked into the bedroom and said, "I think my water just broke."

Water (or amniotic fluid, to be more precise) breaking, as some people undoubtedly know and others probably don't, doesn't usually happen in the dramatic way it does in movies. And so it was for Erin. It was a slow leak of fluid and she didn't know for sure whether it was her water breaking, she just suspected it was. Usually it's an event that happens in the early stages of labor, but sometimes it happens before the onset of labor. Erin had not yet gone into labor. She had already made plans to hang out with a friend that day, following the theory that if she had plans, she would go into labor in order to throw off those plans. And so she decided, why not go on with the plans?

The three of us went for a nice walk at Shaker Lakes. Erin hoped the physical activity would help bring on labor, but to no avail. The three of us went out for dinner at the Fairmount, a fitting choice as it was where Erin and I had celebrated her positive pregnancy test in November (I somehow didn't think of the significance when I suggested it!). Then Erin and I went home. She figured she'd probably go into labor during the night.

Still, it didn't happen.

And so the next morning, after we'd eaten a pancake breakfast I cooked, we headed to the hospital. Erin had hoped to go into labor when her body and the baby decided it was time, not to be induced. But with PROM (premature rupture of membranes, i.e., early water breaking) there's an increased risk of infection if you wait too long for labor. Still a small risk, but even a small risk is worth avoiding if it's a risk of something really bad.

It was a surreal feeling, driving to the hospital. This was really happening. We were going to the hospital a married couple, Erin and Jeff. We'd be leaving the hospital Erin, Jeff, and a baby, a family of three.

The first few hours at the hospital were uneventful. Erin wanted to give it a little more time to see if she'd go into labor naturally, and was permitted to do this, but still, it didn't happen. Reluctantly, late in the afternoon she agreed to start intravenous Pitocin (a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin) to induce labor. And then it was on!

Besides not being induced, another even stronger desire Erin had had about her labor was that she would do it unmedicated, not with an epidural. It's often said that contractions induced by Pitocin are especially strong, which could make it difficult to stick to this unmedicated birth plan. At first, though, the contractions didn't seem like that big a deal. Erin described the feeling as being like her period. She began to think, maybe this wouldn't be so bad.

She would later look back on those thoughts and think how naive she'd been.

In the early hours of labor we were basically just hanging out and watching the Olympics on TV. It was around 10 pm that things began to pick up in intensity. It no longer felt to Erin like being on her period. The contractions gradually started to get stronger... and stronger and stronger.

I look back on it with a sense of awe. Things were happening in Erin's body that she'd never felt before and that I, as a man, probably can't even begin to imagine. I don't know what it's like to feel what she was feeling, but it was very clear that very intensely painful sensations were periodically coursing through her. I could only watch and try to offer support as best I could. A birth doula Erin had hired was also present to offer support and (as it turned out) much needed guidance.

One role I had was to provide the soundtrack for Erin's labor. Around 11:30, when things seemed to really be happening, I decided it was time for some tunes so I muted the TV and pulled up the music on my laptop. Erin had previously said that she thought she would like a mix of classic rock plus the Spotify playlist "I Think I'm Hitting a Wall: A Running Playlist by the National" (a selection of running-appropriate songs by one of our favorite indie rock bands, its title a reference to a lyric of theirs). I hadn't put together a playlist in advance so I opened Spotify and put on the National playlist.

That playlist contains 20 songs. Over the course of the 76 minute runtime, labor got more and more intense. Shortly after midnight, Erin remembered that she wanted to log her labor as a Strava activity, and started the recording on her watch. Another reminder of why I love her. She ended up burning a lot of calories in that activity!

I did my best to offer Erin any help I could, following her and the doula's suggestions, as she rode the heightening waves of the contractions. In between contractions, I was putting together a playlist to play when the National playlist ended. Based on the contents of that playlist, it seemed Erin was looking for driving, energetic rock music.

I'll never forget Erin's reaction upon hearing the opening notes of the first song of my hastily assembled playlist, "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin: a sudden glare in my direction, and the single word "NO!"

Welp, so much for my playlist. Zeppelin was apparently not the vibe Erin now wanted. I remember at this point the doula asking Erin, who was breathing through a painful contraction, what she wanted: music or no music (music), what kind of music (calmer music), lyrics or no lyrics (lyrics), and I scrambled to bring up something that would better fit the mood. I struggled at first but eventually made some selections that worked well, and in fact, both Erin and the doula complimented my soundtrack after all was said and done.

It was about 1 am when Erin violently vetoed my Zeppelin song choice. She was having quite a rough time then, and it got worse for the next hour. On more than one occasion, during contractions, she exclaimed, "I can't do this! I need an epidural!"

She had made it clear beforehand that she did not want an epidural. I would not have judged her at all for deciding to get one, but I also knew that if she made it through without going that route, she would feel very proud of herself afterwards, whereas if she got an epidural, she might end up wishing she hadn't.

There's something about pushing one's body to its absolute physical limits. It's valuable to know how that feels. Erin said something to this effect afterwards, and from witnessing what she went through, I very much believe that she did this during labor. I'll never know what it feels like to give birth, of course, but pushing my body to its limits is something I did many, many times during my distance running career, so I very much appreciate and relate to that sentiment. Thinking about it made me realize that there are probably a lot of people who go their entire lives without knowing the feeling of truly pushing their body to its limits, which I find interesting to ponder.

Anyway, I didn't say anything to Erin about whether she should or should not in fact get an epidural, but was planning, if she continued to say she wanted an epidural, to ask her between contractions whether that was just what she felt in the moment during the height of the contraction, or if it was what she really wanted deep down. There was never a need for this conversation, though, because the doula made a suggestion that changed the whole course of Erin's labor in a way that seemed miraculous: perhaps Erin should try getting in the shower.

The exact way that events unfolded is already hazy, but another moment that stands out, from after Erin started mentioning an epidural but before she got in the shower, was that a new intern MD checked Erin's cervix, and said that he wasn't totally sure, but he thought she was very close to fully dilated. This raised Erin's hopes that the immense pain she was experiencing might not have to continue too much longer. The newbie doctor had to have a resident check his work, though.

The resident reported that Erin was in fact barely more dilated than she'd been when was admitted to the hospital.

This, needless to say, was very discouraging to Erin, who was suffering through pain like nothing she'd ever felt and now seemed to be making little progress for all her struggles!

At this point she was given the option to go with the epidural, but decided instead to try the shower. She did this at about 2 am. I and the doula took turns spraying hot water on Erin's back as she did her best to position her body and use her breathing to get through the contractions.

It took some time, but eventually this really started to work. The contractions were clearly still extraordinarily intense, but now somehow manageable to Erin. She seemed to settle into this state that was simultaneously primal and zen. It's hard to describe, perhaps because I've never seen anything like it. I just know it was amazing and having witnessed it makes me admire my wife even more than I already did.

I also know that I'll never again be able to listen to Bon Iver's 2011 album Bon Iver, Bon Iver without being transported back to that scene of Erin in the shower stall in the dimly lit delivery room. Somehow the vibes of that album, one of a few I picked after abandoning the playlist I made, were perfect for a meditative labor experience in the middle of the night (I also can't imagine the same scene playing out in the light of day; perhaps it could have but in my mind's eye the vibes would be all wrong).

Erin spent about two hours in that shower, a span of time that somehow felt simultaneously shorter and longer. And eventually she began to feel that something was happening. The pushing stage, once it officially began, was incredibly short. Erin was back in bed, her cervix was checked again and she was now fully dilated, an IV was hastily put in her arm (hilariously, Erin very calmly said "Do you like cats?" to the nurse putting in the IV, who was wearing a cat necklace), an urgent call was sent out for the delivery team to get into the room, I took a seat next to Erin and grabbed her hand, a bunch of people rushed in (I was vaguely aware of all the people since my attention was all on Erin), and then the head was emerging and Erin pushed a couple more times and suddenly, our baby was being placed on her chest!

At first, it didn't even seem real. For a moment the baby didn't quite register as a human being in my mind. But rapidly it started to sink in. This was our baby. Our baby was here.

The doula took some pictures during and immediately after the birth. They're really nice pictures for Erin and me to have but not pictures we'd share with a wide audience. One really funny thing about the pictures is the facial expression I'm wearing in quite a few of them. Here's a cropped pic:

 

Based on the pictures, my face was apparently frozen like this for some period of time. I don't know if my face had ever before produced that exact expression. I was almost in shock but simultaneously overjoyed.

We had chosen not to learn the sex in advance. We both had a modest preference for a girl but would have been thrilled with a healthy baby either way. It turned out we did have a girl. This was convenient, since we'd still failed to agree on a boy name!

Time of birth was 4:43 am. Clearly, now the most significant minute of my life. I'd heard it said before that becoming a parent profoundly changes a person like few other things do. And it really does. You've lived your whole life, for me 41 years, and there are so many interests you have, passions you pursue, people whose lives impact yours, and then in this one moment there is this new person who enters the world where before there was only (from my point of view, at least; it's somewhat different for the mother who's carried the baby inside her) a vague concept of a person-to-be, and in that moment this new person becomes the center of your world, surpassing in importance everything that was important before.

Another profound change I've noticed is that I'm thinking about the future much more than I ever previously did. Thinking, with excitement and curiosity and awe, about all the things our child might do in the coming years.

Erin and I instantly fell in love with our daughter (I'll forever cherish the memory of seeing our precious little girl, minutes after birth, open her eyes for the first time), and fell more in love with each other in the process. We've gone on quite a few big adventures together in the relatively short time we've known each other. It's so corny but also so true to say: this will be our biggest adventure yet.

The Erin and Jeff elopement experience

Near the end of 2022, a very exciting announcement for elder millennial indie music fans was made: Ben Gibbard, frontman of both long-running indie band Death Cab for Cutie and beloved one-off side project The Postal Service would be taking both bands out on tour to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of 2003's classic albums Transatlanticism and Give Up. Erin and I quickly agreed we didn't want to miss the tour. There was no Cleveland date; the nearest was Detroit, but we decided it would be fun to go somewhere more exciting (not that there's anything wrong with Detroit) and make a little vacation of it.

We decided on a show in Denver in late September, which we thought would be a great time to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. Tickets went on sale on December 16 at 10 am local time; that is, noon in Cleveland for a show in Colorado. It was my responsibility to buy the tickets as it's much easier for me to do that while at work than it is for Erin. I don't remember what I was doing at work that morning. Probably not much, as I was still at my old job where I had been kind of phoning it in for quite a while at that point. I do know that I went to work that morning fully intent on going to the ticket website right at noon.

Sometime around 1:30 I was looking at social media and saw a friend's excited post about having gotten tickets for one of the shows and realized that I, myself, had forgotten to buy the tickets.

I went straight to the ticket site and to my dismay found that both Denver shows were sold out - as were almost all the other shows on the tour. But there was one show that wasn't yet sold out, at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, on October 9. The original tour announcement had showed two shows at that venue and there were now three so it appeared a third had been added after the first two sold out. I quickly texted Erin to explain that I'd forgotten to buy tickets on time and the Denver shows were sold out and how did she feel about going to LA instead (yes, LA, which is not where the show was, but in my panicked state I was thinking of the Greek Theatre that I knew about in Los Angeles, despite the website clearly saying Berkeley). I didn't get an immediate reply and not wanting this show to also sell out I went ahead and bought the tickets and texted Erin that I'd done so. Shortly after I added my realization that the show was actually in the Bay Area, not southern California. And then I said this was an example of "the Jeff McManus experience" (a phrase that quickly joined our exhaustingly long list of inside jokes).

Erin finished up with a patient at work and then got to have a good laugh at this flurry of texts on her phone.

Although not our original plan, we soon decided that seeing the show in Berkeley would probably be just great. The Greek Theatre looked like a really cool venue, and there were all sorts of other fun things we could do while in California. We could make it a week long vacation. We could even go to Yosemite National Park! An outline of a plan soon emerged. The show was on a Monday. We could spend the preceding weekend in the Bay Area, go to the show, then head to Yosemite for a few days, and then finish up the trip by going to Monterey for a couple days including driving down the coast to Big Sur. It sounded like it would be a great time. This was true, but at the time the plan was made we had no idea what a great time it would end up being!

Over the next few months, our relationship continued to progress, and we realized there was a good chance we'd want to get married later in the year. We weren't engaged yet. I didn't feel ready to get engaged yet. But we both had a sense, if things continued to develop the way they were, that was where things were headed, and we wouldn't want to wait too long.

We had a lot of planning to do, for all the things we wanted to do in 2023. One of those things was buying a house, which we ended up not doing (but as of me finally finishing this post, just recently have!). Even without that, we still had a lot of things to plan. And planning a wedding involves a whole lot of planning.

At some point, perhaps in May, Erin said she'd been doing some thinking, and she thought, what if instead of having a big wedding, we just eloped in Yosemite during our California trip? We could have a reception party back in Cleveland later. And I thought that sounded like a fantastic idea.

We still weren't engaged yet. I still didn't feel ready to get engaged. I felt like I would be ready in time to elope in Yosemite, but I was having trouble feeling completely sure. In my defense, I've had a lot of really crazy things happen to me in my love life.

In June, we moved in together, us and our four cats (one of Erin's, and three of mine). We had quite a whirlwind summer that saw us spend about as many weekends out of town as at home. We continued to talk about ideas for our California trip and potential Yosemite wedding.

In August, on my family's annual Adirondack vacation, on a spectacular hike to Indian Head that was suggested by Erin (who had never been to the Adirondacks before and had found the hike on the Internet and it turned out to be one of the best hikes I've ever done), we finally got engaged!

 

Fish Hawk Cliffs, the site of the proposal. We were the only ones there as we ate lunch and then I proposed with the ring I'd been carrying in my backpack. I held out the ring and blurted out "Will you marry me?" to which Erin replied "Of course!" I then proceeded to squash her half-eaten PBJ by sitting on it while we kissed.

This picture was taken by one member of a nice lesbian couple we encountered at Indian Head overlook, the next stop on the hike. They were very excited to hear we'd just gotten engaged.

 

Rainbow Falls, the best waterfall in a hike full of great waterfalls. Waterfalls have been a big part of my and Erin's relationship and I was considering waiting to propose until we reached this spot but when we were at Fish Hawk Cliffs it was too perfect not to do it there.
 

This happened on August 17. Our California trip was set for October 7-15... so we now had less than two months to plan and make arrangements for a Yosemite elopement.

This did not come without several seeming mishaps, which we came to describe as "the Erin and Jeff elopement experience." The most critical steps were securing a professional photographer and a wedding permit for the park. The photographer part proved to be no trouble as we quickly found one whose work we really liked and with whom we clicked when we talked by phone. The permit part led to a few hiccups. Erin had looked up how far in advance a permit application had to be submitted and we made sure to do this. But after having done this, and then waiting for the permit to be approved, and more waiting, we got in touch with the office responsible for approving the permits, and we were initially given an estimate on the timeline for approvals that made it seem a little unclear whether we'd actually be approved in time?

Oh, and also, we were told there was another issue, which was that the government might be shutting down and if this did happen the national parks might also be shutting down.

Oh. Oh, wonderful.

Thankfully the looming government shutdown was averted at the last minute, but not until after several really anxious days for us. And thankfully our permit ended up being approved with time to spare, time enough for the next parts of the Erin and Jeff elopement experience.

Almost everything we used in our ceremony - clothing and other items - we ordered online. Some of those orders were pretty last minute. Especially mine - I have quite the penchant for procrastinating. We did get everything in time, but one of the online orders proved highly problematic. Erin had ordered a dried flower bouquet as well as a flower crown and a boutonniere for me. Upon receipt, she was dismayed to discover all the flower items contained baby's breath, an invasive species that is explicitly prohibited from being used in Yosemite wedding flower arrangements, and that had not appeared in the pictures or descriptions of the flower arrangements Erin had ordered. (I think most people wouldn't check for this and/or realize the problem with the flowers - Erin, of course, isn't most people!)

This led to Erin painstakingly removing the baby's breath from the bouquet, flower crown, and boutonniere, which unfortunately did not produce ideal results. What was the ultimate resolution to this problem? Read on to find out!

We flew into San Francisco on Saturday, October 7, four days before our wedding date. We were set to spend the first two nights of our trip there before heading to Berkeley on Monday for the concert. Our visit to SF was highlighted by our first ever e-bike experience. On Sunday we had planned to rent normal bicycles to do some riding around the city. It turned out the rental place was out of normal bicycles, and only had e-bikes, which we were offered at a discounted rate. Neither of us had ever ridden an e-bike before, and probably would have turned our noses up at the idea. But we decided to go ahead with the rental and honestly the experience was a revelation!

To be clear, these were pedal assist e-bikes, meaning that you can't ride them without pedaling; you just get an electronic boost to your pedal power. It felt a little weird at first but we got used to it quickly and it turned out to be such a great way to get around a city, a similar experience to riding a normal bike but faster and therefore giving us the ability to cover more ground than we otherwise could have. It was especially great in a city as hilly as San Francisco. I couldn't help but think of how many people could replace their cars with e-bikes for commuting, but that's a topic for another time.

The day included a ride around Golden Gate Park, and then a trip on my uncle Tim's boat to watch the air show, which was great fun.

 

Late in the afternoon, later than we'd anticipated, we decided to ride our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge, more of an adventure than planned as the bridge was enveloped in fog (in contrast to the sunny skies of our boat trip) and we were buffeted with heavy winds. It was still a lot of fun and we got to take some iconic bike pictures* with e-bikes!

*When Erin and I go on bike rides together, we like to find a good spot to take a picture of our two bikes and we like to call these "iconic bike pictures."

Monday saw us departing San Francisco and heading to Berkeley for the concert that was the original reason for this trip, but not before a stop at Muir Woods to see some amazing trees. 

There are two very famous types of redwood trees in California that we got to see on our trip. These in Muir Woods were coast redwoods, a species that includes the tallest trees on Earth. Awaiting us in Yosemite were giant sequoia trees, a species that includes the most massive trees on Earth. Both species can live for thousands of years. Just thinking about it can make you feel pretty insignificant. But then, we humans are the one species that is able to know and comprehend those facts, which in its own way I think is even more awe-inspiring! Regardless, trees are really amazing, something I already thought before I knew Erin but which spending time with her has led me to appreciate even more.

It was then off to Berkeley where we checked in at our hotel and got ready to go to the concert.

It's a rare musician who's had a year as productive as Ben Gibbard's 2003. Releasing either of the two albums this tour was celebrating in a year would have been a great accomplishment. Releasing both? That's pretty astonishing. I got into both Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service a couple years later, during my first year of grad school, the year that marked me becoming the music fanatic that I've been ever since. Erin was also very into both bands during that time. It's cool to be able to look back and know we were both experiencing feelings to the same music all those years ago, long before we knew each other. It's crazy to think about how many years ago that now was.

The Greek Theatre is a beautiful venue, apparently one of Gibbard's favorites. We normally go for trying to stand near the stage at concerts, but having had an exhausting few days, we opted (at my suggestion, which surprised Erin) for seats about halfway up the steep amphitheater bowl so we wouldn't have to stand the whole time. This turned out to be a bit of a misstep on my part for reasons I'll get to, but it didn't ruin the night!

The Beths opened, a favorite band of both of ours who we'd already seen open for the National in Detroit a couple months prior, and who put on a great performance as always. The New Zealanders are so charming and so earnest and just write and play the most infectious tunes.

Yes, that's a giant inflatable fish on stage behind the band. 

Ben Gibbard is also a big fan of the Beths. He told us all how great they are and let us know how serious he was about it by dropping several f-bombs while doing so. Which was kind of laughable, but I'm glad he has good taste in new music.

When Death Cab for Cutie took the stage and the crashing guitar chords of Transatlanticism album opener "The New Year" filled the Greek Theatre, Erin and I were both thrilled but also surprised that no one around us was standing up. Since the shows on this tour, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of two beloved albums, had all sold out almost instantly, we'd assumed that everyone there would be huge fans, and for huge fans of the band on stage to remain seated through a rock concert just feels weird. I mean, live music is just more enjoyable when you're moving around to it, and you can do so more enthusiastically while standing than while sitting. Those are just facts. Is it because we're getting old, I wondered, and then recalled the Springsteen concert Erin and I attended with my parents earlier in the year and how all the boomers around us were standing for the whole three hours. There seemed to be a weird lack of passion for the music from a lot of the people around us, including some chatting during songs (the worst!). We would have been better off with our usual positions in the pit. But I don't want to complain too much because it was still a great show! Seeing an album you love performed live from start to finish is always great. Album title track "Transatlanticism" was just epic and the highlight of the set. Fun fact, the album was released on October 7, 2003, so we were very close to the exact anniversary.

During the break between the Death Cab and Postal Service sets, Erin and I discussed whether we thought the people around us would stand up for the latter. Give Up is an album of synthy, beat-heavy pop music - very danceable, that is. How could people possibly keep sitting down for the whole concert, Erin wondered? Spoiler: most of the people around us did, in fact, keep sitting down. However, we came to the decision that we were going to get up and dance regardless of what those around us did. We hadn't flown across the country to sit through the only live Postal Service show we might ever see!

(In between when I originally wrote this section of this post and when I finished writing the post, more Death Cab/Postal Service dates were announced for 2024 and we're planning to go to one, so this turned out not to be the only Postal Service show we'll ever see, but the point stands.)

I'd always really liked Give Up but honestly I hadn't passionately liked it to the point of it being a favorite album, or of me having a live Postal Service show as a bucket list item or anything. The performance of the album at the Greek Theatre blew past any expectations I'd had. All the music was really elevated in the live setting.

If you were alive and existing in society in the mid-aughts, there's a good chance you heard the band's biggest hit "Such Great Heights" at some point. Finally getting to experience such an iconic song after having listened to it so many times in my early grad school days was a real treat. The duet between Gibbard and Jen Wood on "Nothing Better" was another standout.

Every song seemed to have more energy and vitality than the (already great in their own right) album versions. The last two songs on the album, "Brand New Colony" (if you're an indie music fan, check out the Beths' adorable cover of this song!) and "Natural Anthem," rocked especially hard. Not dancing would have been a crime.

After an acoustic reprise of "Such Great Heights" ended the show in beautiful fashion, Erin and I joined the rest of the happy crowd milling out of the amphitheater and across the UC-Berkeley campus on which it sits. And with the original main reason for our California trip over and done with, it was back to the Erin and Jeff elopement experience.

I was hungry, and Erin said she could eat something too, so we stopped to get some tacos at a local shop on campus. And soon found our mouths on fire after biting into some of the spiciest food we'd ever eaten. Which was very strange, since there was no indication that the tacos were supposed to be especially spicy. Seriously, an extremely spicy fish taco? Oh well, another amusing little story for our future retelling of our California adventure!

Then we got back to our hotel and here the Erin and Jeff elopement experience kicks into high gear.

The photographer we hired had always been very responsive to emails in the past.  We hadn't been in touch with him in a while, though, and for most of the time there hadn't been any reason to, but we'd expected that in the week before the wedding we might hear something from him about finalizing our plans for the big day. We did not get any such message. Over the weekend, Erin emailed him and didn't get a reply. That was okay; he'd told us that he'd be at a friend's bachelor party in a remote location that weekend. But now it was Monday night. The weekend was over and done with. We still hadn't heard anything. It had been weeks since our last contact and our wedding was less than 36 hours away and we still hadn't heard anything.

The next morning we were going to drive to Yosemite National Park to get married there on the morning after, and the professional photographer we'd hired - a huge part of the reason to get married in Yosemite being, of course, to get really spectacular professional photos taken - had seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth.

The anxiety we'd both experienced at the possibility of the national parks being shut down returned and was now more like a mild panic.

What was going on, we wondered? Maybe our photographer had COVID and was debating what he should do? What if he was dead? We scoured the Internet for any sign we could find of his recent activity. He'd apparently stopped being active on social media a long time ago so that was no help, although we did find several of his relatives' accounts and I briefly pondered trying to message them. We googled our photographer's name with "obituary" which didn't turn up anything. Did we really think he might be dead? It seemed very unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

Erin tried emailing him again and we finally went to bed.

The next morning we had a reply. He'd had a lot of messages coming back from his trip and had skipped over ours. Crisis averted.

October 10th was a busy day. We had a four hour drive from Berkeley to our accommodations in Yosemite West, a tiny community of vacation homes located just outside the park. On the way was an appointment at the county clerk's office in Mariposa, literally a zero stoplight town as we discovered. We first stopped in Modesto where I bought the shirt I'd wear for the wedding and we also went to Trader Joe's, not only to stock up on provisions but also so that Erin could get flowers to arrange for her bouquet after the debacle with the baby's breath-contaminated Internet-purchased dried flower arrangement. She did a lovely job!

In Mariposa we got lunch, got our marriage license, and mailed the elopement announcement/reception save the date cards we'd addressed on our flight. In retrospect we should have mailed them earlier; mail delivery times are not what they once were.

Shortly after entering the park we pulled over to get out of our rental car and enjoy the fresh air and the scenery. Scenery that paled in comparison to what we'd see in the valley itself, but was nonetheless magnificent. I remember standing there and taking it in and just having this incredible feeling of wow, we're really here, we're really doing this, and what a journey it was for us to get to this point.

Getting to our rental required first driving through the valley. I'd been there just once before, more than half my life ago. Erin never had. We were both in awe of the scenery that opened up before us. We stopped the car again to take a short walk on the path to Bridalveil Fall. October is far from the best time of year for the waterfalls in Yosemite, but we were apparently pretty fortunate as they were running better than they often are that late in the season.

 

 

As I mentioned before, waterfalls have been a big part of our relationship. Iconic waterfall selfies could go up there with iconic bike pictures for us!

We then drove up out of the valley and to our rental but not without a stop at Tunnel View, that is, the famous view of the valley. Our ceremony the next morning would be occurring just on the other side of the nearly mile long Wawona Tunnel for which the viewpoint is named.

After getting settled in at our cozy accommodations, it was time for more Erin and Jeff elopement experience fun. Erin's friend Steve, who'd be serving as our Internet-ordained wedding officiant, was spending the night in Oakhurst, about an hour south of us. We'd agreed ahead of time to meet for dinner and go over our plans for the next morning in person. Meeting in person was not just a preference, though, it was a necessity, because in my typical doing things at the last minute fashion I'd ordered a tie to wear at the ceremony and had it shipped to Steve's place in the Bay Area rather than to our place back in Ohio because I wasn't certain it would make it to our place in time. We had had dinner with Steve and his family over the weekend, but at that point the tie had not yet arrived. Me having my tie in the morning therefore required us to meet Steve in person that night (we'd be getting sunrise photos taken before we'd be meeting Steve at the ceremony location two hours later, so getting the tie from Steve in the morning wasn't an option).

This, we realized, wasn't ideal, since we were an hour away, and we'd be getting up extremely early the next morning. We would rather not have to drive an hour to Oakhurst and then an hour back. But there also weren't a whole lot of good dinner options in between.

We found one about halfway. We were texting Steve about it as we headed out on the road. Then we went through a patch of no cell phone reception. This meant it was unclear whether Steve had actually gotten on the same page as us regarding the dinner plans, as we were driving to dinner!

Things did work out; we did successfully meet up with Steve, receive the tie, go over plans for the next morning, and enjoy a nice dinner. And then it was a 40 minute drive back to Yosemite West on a dark, winding road, later at night than we would have liked given our very early rise the next morning. Always an adventure!

Our first destination on the morning of October 11 was Glacier Point, a spectacular viewpoint overlooking the valley. Our photographer had suggested taking advantage of the golden hour lighting for a sunrise photo shoot before getting married later in the morning. Sunrise was at 7:03 am. Glacier Point was a 35 minute drive from our rental unit. This meant we'd need to hit the road before 6:30 - after, of course, making ourselves presentable for our wedding, not a quick task (especially for Erin, as the star of the show). We wouldn't be getting a whole lot of sleep!

And so, the next morning, Erin got up earlier than 5 am, I slept in a bit and got up a little after 5, and we scrambled to get ourselves put together and make sure we had everything we needed with us before heading out into the chilly pre-dawn air, getting in our car, and hitting the road. The drive to Glacier Point was a very winding uphill 18 miles. The dim light grew less dim and the excitement and adrenaline built as I drove us up the narrow two-lane road through the conifers that towered on either side. We were most of the way to the top but still had several miles to go when tail lights appeared ahead of us and grew rapidly nearer.

A very slow moving horse trailer was being pulled up the mountain. There was no way to safely pass it given how narrow and winding the road was. We were already running a tight schedule, because of course we were, so this was the last thing I wanted to see. My face was full of frustration and exasperation as my eyes searched in vain for an opportunity to pass the trailer. What if we didn't make it to the top in time? Could anything in the Jeff and Erin elopement experience happen without an unanticipated source of extra stress?

But we did make it to the top in time. The first rays of sunlight had not yet appeared over the mountains to our east. We parked and met our photographer Norm and set out to begin our photo shoot. It was, as we'd anticipated, very cold, but we had prepared for this; Erin had a cardigan sweater she could wear over her dress and we had a blanket with us. The spot at Glacier Point where Norm usually liked to take photos was in fact being used for another couple's wedding ceremony, so we took a short walk to another, equally spectacular viewpoint.

Everything around us was still in shadow, but a golden light was building behind the mountains to the east. The sky was mostly clear, with a few clouds hanging here and there, including a little cloud hanging out behind the top of Half Dome. It all felt like being in some sort of dream world.

 

One thing we realized that day, that we hadn't anticipated, is it's actually quite fun to have someone taking a whole bunch of nice pictures of you, directing you to do various actions and poses, and capturing it all in a beautiful environment. We had hired Norm for six hours and we had definitely never done anything like this before. I guess I might say that it just makes you feel special and important in a way that's different from the things you do in your normal life. It's also extra fun to be doing all this with your favorite person in the world and to have our purpose be to get each other to smile and laugh and just have a good time in each other's company so it can all be documented for posterity.

Rays of sunlight began to appear from the east, creeping over the mountain tops and illuminating the tops of the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. The scenery grew increasingly stunning. We continued to pose for pictures. "Okay, now look into each other's eyes," Norm would say. Click click click. "Now lean in for a kiss." Click click click.

Then came the moment when the sunlight hit us, and it was simply magical.

When we were planning our Yosemite elopement, we had originally envisioned having a sunrise ceremony. It was Norm's suggestion to take full advantage of the best lighting for a photo shoot and then have the ceremony later in the morning. This turned out to be a great idea (no surprise there - he does this for a living!).

Although the temperature was still far from warm, once we were in direct sunlight it actually felt quite pleasant out and there were no issues with feeling chilly. We walked to several more points at the overlook and took lots and lots of pictures. Thinking back on it now, it's almost hard to believe it was real. I'm so glad we have the pictures, the full set of which I just viewed for the first time as I'm writing this. Looking at them, the love we have for each other is so obvious and it just makes me feel very happy.

After finishing up the Glacier Point photo shoot, it was back down the road we'd driven up before dawn and then to the overlook near Tunnel View that Norm had suggested for our ceremony. We found a parking spot at the side of the road and met up with Steve, and then the four of us - Erin, me, Norm, and Steve - crossed the road and scrambled a short ways up a rocky hillside, and suddenly it was just us, with spectacular scenery stretching as far as the eye could see. A perfect spot to get married and a perfect day to get married at that spot.

We took our spots. This was really happening.

When the Yosemite elopement plan began to take shape, one question was who would be the officiant for our ceremony. We could hire someone, of course, but that wouldn't be cheap. Then Erin had the thought that her good friend Steve from grad school lived in the Bay Area and that he seemed like someone who would do a good job officiating our wedding. Erin is an extremely smart person, so naturally, she was right about this. Steve had never officiated a wedding before, but he did a great job, and afterwards we felt that it could become a good side hustle for him if he wanted.

I'll share the beginning of the opening statement that Steve wrote because it's very thoughtful and well stated, and as magical as it was to experience this moment as just the two of us, Erin and me, it's a bit of a shame that no one else got to see it:

Erin and Jeff. Good morning and thank you so much for having me to participate in your joyous occasion. Today you celebrate the strength of your love and connection. Before we begin, take a moment and look around…take in the pristine view of Nature before you. Know that your journey up until now has led to this moment…behold it and embrace it.

As we stand here in this splendid Nature, let us also recognize the seriousness of the occasion. Marriage is a profound, sincere commitment, and one worthy of our reverence. Love is the soil from which life itself grows. As Carl Sagan famously wrote:

"The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth. We should remain grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. The sum of all our evolution, our thinking and our accomplishments is love."

I love this Carl Sagan quote that Steve chose. It's a beautiful sentiment, and I think it was perfect for us as a couple and also for the setting in which we wed.

Steve's introduction also included a reading that we had chosen, "Union" by Robert Fulghum:

You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.

The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.” Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.

For after today you shall say to the world – This is my husband. This is my wife.

It was then time for us to exchange vows. We had written our own vows; Erin had remarked that she hoped we would end up each including some of the same inside jokes in our vows, which, of course, was indeed the case. We both made ABCD references. We both mentioned pedaling through life together. We both referenced indie rock lyrics (Erin the National, me boygenius). 

Erin went first, and did such a lovely job. We wrote our vows in little "His" and "Hers" vow books that Erin found online, a really nice touch and nice keepsakes, and reading her vows again just makes me smile so much. I think my favorite line was "I believe we have now collected enough data - the way I feel when I'm with you is not just correlation." (Yes, we are really big nerds.)

And then, after our vows, we said our "I do"s, exchanged rings, and were officially pronounced (by the power vested in Steve "by the Universal Life Church and by the State of California") as husband and wife and presented to the world for the first time as a married couple!

Weddings in California require one witness. Norm did double duty as both photographer and witness.

It was an extraordinary moment. It was part culmination of a wild journey Erin and I had been on since we first met, and part beginning of an even more epic journey. I couldn't think of a more perfect setting for the moment.

We took some more pictures at the ceremony site before moving on to our other photography destinations. I especially like this one, which I like to think of as Erin and me, together, looking toward our futures and all the amazing things ahead but also all the challenges we'll face, and vowing to take it all on as a couple and as a team (really, I think it looks like the last shot of a movie hinting at a possible sequel):

We had planned three major stops in our six hours with Norm: Glacier Point, the ceremony spot near Tunnel View, and Tuolumne Grove. Norm had suggested if we had time we could make a short stop in the valley, between major stops two and three, to get some pics there too. We did have time, and here's probably the best picture from that stop, with the massive rock face of El Capitan looming in the background:

If you look closely at the bottom of this picture, just to the left of the log that's lying on the ground, you might notice something. It's a bouquet. Erin set it down there while we were getting our pictures taken, and then we both forgot about it, and didn't make note of its absence until much later in the day when it was too late to go back. We had (gasp) left a trace. How could we??

We didn't know the exact spot the flowers had been left until we received the photographic evidence some time later, but we had a pretty good idea of the approximate location. We did stop there the next morning to look around, which proved futile, but did yield some incredible scenery thanks to the early morning mist clinging to the valley floor while bright sunlight lit up El Capitan in the background:

Someone must have picked up the bouquet sometime the previous day after we'd left it. Unfortunate for us, but another good Erin and Jeff elopement experience story.

Back, now, to our wedding day photo shoot. Our final destination was a grove of giant sequoias. It was a bit of a drive from the valley but turned out, not surprisingly, to be easily worth it. We parked at the Tuolumne Grove parking lot and got of our car. Before we headed into the woods, the question was raised whether Erin should bring the bouquet with her, and we decided, not realizing that the bouquet was still miles away, that we had enough pictures with the bouquet so it wasn't necessary. Then we and Norm headed down the trail to the giant sequoia grove. It was a much longer walk than anything else we'd done that day, about a mile of mostly downhill walking just to get to the grove, but it was a pleasant day for it and our wedding attire wasn't too uncomfortable. We got some nice fall foliage photos along the way, too.

It was kind of nice that we had to walk a ways to get to the giant sequoias. I think it made their appearance among the other more normal looking trees in the forest more dramatic than if we had just been able to drive right up to the grove. It was truly awe inspiring just how massive the trees were. Erin had never seen anything like it, and I had just once, on my family vacation more than half my life ago. The trees also provided more incredible fodder for wedding photos, and I'm really glad we decided to include a stop there. The photos are so different visually from those we got while above the valley, and some are just as spectacular in their own way!

The whole thing was just so fun. Being in this amazing setting with Erin, all dressed up and posing for all these cool pictures and making each other smile and laugh through it all. I have to say for anyone who might have a wedding in their future and might be considering doing something similar, absolutely go for it!

We finished up the photos right on time for us to make the uphill walk back to the parking lot and finish our six hours with Norm. We thanked him and said goodbye and then it was just Erin and me, newlyweds with the rest of our lives ahead of us, and more imminently with the rest of a great vacation ahead of us.

That night we celebrated with the most expensive meal we'd ever eaten, a five-course dinner at the Elderberry House in Oakhurst, about an hour south of our accommodations. The elegantly plated food ranged from good to excellent. Was it really worth as much as we paid for it? The food itself, probably not, but we were also paying for an experience, and this day, our wedding day in Yosemite, was truly a once in a lifetime experience. The dinner at Elderberry House was a great conclusion to that day. We drove back from the restaurant, once more along that dark and winding road, but now much less stressed out than on the previous night. Now just basking in the bliss of everything we had done that day, and of the thoughts of our future lives together.

So at this point, we were about halfway through our California trip. The wedding was the climactic moment, but many additional exciting and fun experiences still lay in store with another day and a half in Yosemite, and then a two night stay in Monterey before we'd return to San Francisco to fly home. Rather than recounting it all in detail, from here I'm going to share the highlights through photos and brief descriptions.

The day after our wedding was mostly taken up by a really spectacular 10 mile hike along the Mist and John Muir Trails that took us to Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall:

 

Vernal Fall comes into view.

 

At the top of Vernal Fall.

 

 

On the climb to Nevada Fall.

The view from the top of Nevada Fall.

 

 

Looking down from above Nevada Fall.

Looking back at Nevada Fall on the return leg of the hike.
 

The next day, before leaving Yosemite, we went to Mariposa Grove, the largest grove of sequoias in the park:

 

Really big trees. Seriously, walking into a giant sequoia grove almost feels like being on some alien planet.

 

Us in front of the Grizzly Giant, which is apparently the 26th largest tree (by volume) in the world. The branches of this tree are as thick as what you would probably consider a pretty big tree if you saw it in your everyday life.

We finished our Yosemite stay with a bike ride in the valley before driving to Monterey. The next day, we drove down the coast to Big Sur with several scenic stops along the way:

The famous Bixby Creek Bridge, which was referenced in the Death Cab song (although not from Transatlanticism) "Bixby Canyon Bridge" (I guess Ben Gibbard thought that flowed better than the bridge's actual name).

 

Us being our goofy selves in front of a tidefall (above Erin's head in the picture), a rare phenomenon where a waterfall flows directly into the ocean.

 

The ocean was just so pretty.

 

 

Cool rock formations at Pfeiffer Beach.

The beach is known for its purple sand, created by erosion of nearby garnet deposits.

My wife with some seaweed.

October 15 was the last day of our trip, which was sad, but it was also a very exciting day. I, a lifelong otter enthusiast, got to see sea otters for the first time in my life! (It was also the first time for Erin, who was also very excited.)

This is my genuine reaction, captured by Erin, to spotting the sea otters as we walked by the ocean that morning.

Having only my phone with me, I did not get any even vaguely good otter photos, but that's not important. This is what I was looking at when the above photo was taken. There are two otters in this picture.

 

The picture cropped to show a zoomed in view of the otters (at center), just so you can see they're there.

 

 

One last exciting stop: Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, home of the Giant Dipper roller coaster, which this year is celebrating its 100th birthday. I fondly remember riding it on the same family vacation when I first visited Yosemite. I love these truly classic old wooden roller coasters and there are far too few of them still around.

When we returned to Cleveland, the weather was not nearly as nice as that we had left in California, but we were greeted by a rainbow at the airport!

It was such a great trip, such an adventure with the love of my life and favorite adventure buddy.

On one of the last visits Erin and I made to my parents' house (they just moved after living there since I was one year old), I realized something funny. For as long as I can remember, on the wall in the living room there hung a poster with an Ansel Adams photo of Yosemite Valley:

Erin and I were of course already aware of this when we planned our elopement, and that itself was funny, because it's not like the poster was a reason we planned the trip. But the really funny part? For most of my life, there was also a picture on that wall of Lower Ausable Lake in the Adirondacks - a lake that, if you scroll up to the picture of us just after getting engaged near the top of this post, you might realize looks familiar.

For most of my life, whenever I was in my parents' living room, I was looking at photos of the place overlooked by the spot where Erin and I would one day get married, and of the place overlooked by the spot where Erin and I would one day get engaged! How's that for foreshadowing? A term that is, of course, normally used when discussing works of fiction. But sometimes the twists and turns of real life are crazier than any imagined story.

And that's the Erin and Jeff elopement experience.