Passing Through, Holding On
Last week marked the birthday of one of my closest pals—a best friend to the core, a guy I’ve shared countless miles with on both trails and waterways over the years. Among our ragtag crew of camping clowns, it’s become tradition that every birthday calls for a lovingly savage roast, authored by yours truly and delivered to everyone via group text. My annual “tribute”, so to speak. The result is always the same: a flood of laughter, a flurry of insults, and a cascade of old photos from our outdoor adventures. It’s become a rite of passage at this point, and truthfully, I look forward to writing every insulting word—though I sometimes frighten myself with what pours from my brain onto the page. Jimmy’s birthday was no exception. While digging through the archives, I unearthed this gem of a photo, taken on our beloved Grand Island in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—a place we've come to consider our own personal sacred ground.
The photo itself feels like a small miracle. Captured on an old Canon Powershot—an unreliable, slow little camera with low resolution—it somehow managed to freeze a perfect moment: well-timed, well-framed, and alive with energy. The camera, known for its painful shutter lag and spotty focus, rarely produced anything close to great. But that day, against the odds, it caught something real—something fleeting and unrepeatable. A moment that now feels almost too perfect to have been unplanned.
Jimmy, with his signature mix of quiet confidence and dry humor, is steady with his cigar in the foreground, anchoring the scene. In the background, suspended mid-air, is our friend Aaron—caught mid-flip as he launched off the granite cliff and into the cold blue of Lake Superior below. He wasn’t just a random blur of human motion. He was a friend I traveled to the mountains of Haiti with, someone who joined our hiking team during a rough season of his life. For a few summer months, he became part of our story, bringing raw energy, honesty, and a searching spirit to the mix. That he ended up in this photo—weightless and fully alive—is something I still find strangely poetic. This image doesn’t just capture Jimmy or Aaron; it captures friendship, timing, grace, and the quiet way people drift in and out of our lives, sometimes briefly, but always leaving something behind. And in Jimmy’s presence, it captures the constant—one of those faithful friends God blesses you with for the long haul.
Life is good. So good. Happy birthday, Jimmy. I love you, brother. And here’s to the many more epic photos still waiting to be taken.
~ Jamie
