Tag Archives: Blended family dynamics

Dream of crossing a desert with an ex-wife

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Traversing the Past at the Future End of the World?

What does a dream of an attempt to cross a bloody damn desert with an ex-wife, on bicycles, even mean? I even told her, the ex, Kristina, as well as my current wife, Faithlyn. Neither had any clear answers. Is the desert itself the primary character, a huge clue hiding within the subconscious in plain view? Or merely the stage upon with old issues reared themselves in the form of avatars?

The dream:

From what I remember, my dream started out with Kristina and I riding horses in the desert but the horses morphed quickly into bicycles. Handlebars grew out of the horses necks, the horses morphed into simple, two-wheeled machines, and before we knew it we were pedaling bikes. The change felt strangely normal, mundane, as if we had been riding horses turning into bicycles all along. The transition from animal to machine was so bloodless and without protest it was as if accomplished by futuristic magickal sorcery or by self-programming algorithms. The bicycles were old-fashioned bikes without gears. While adult bikes, they looked childlike with glittery tassels twirling from our handlebars. We pedaled down between boulders beneath clear blue skies. Continue reading →

A Dream of a Remodeled Past

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What does dreaming of ex-wives and community housing mean?

I’m writing this on Wednesday night the 3rd of September 2025. All of what I have in my notes is unusually brief: 

Dream from Sunday AM
Me Gwen Kristina tour Orca Landing which is now Star/Sky
Sunday 8 June 2025

That’s it. What I do recall is the dream being intense and socially complex. It felt real, and dreams feeling real have an intensity about them. Yet I can tell the experience was a fantasy dream because two different locations were one single place. Within the dream, and in this “real” everyday life, however, we three are all divorced from each other, remain friends, and each one of us has married again to someone else. In this strange dream, however, we functioned as a triad to the point we walked side by side with me in the center. Continue reading →

The Blessing of Three Daughters

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A tent, a conversation on daughters, and Heaven

The day was a slow, sunny afternoon in mid to late April 2025. I was downtown at my sales job working in outdoor adventure retail. Watched customers check out a Marmot tent set up on the floor across from where I was stationed in the Climbing Department. The blue, green, and gray tent was a classic tent for short backpacking trips. A bit on the heavy side, but sturdy and robust. Tough. A young father and two adorably dressed girls were all playing around and in the tent. His daughters were so excited! They bounced and crawled around inside the tent laughing, giggling, and chattering. Their Dad squatted down outside zipping and unzipping the door zipper of the tent; checking out how smoothly the zipper ran on its track. He laughed and smiled at his little girls.

As there was a lull of sorts in Climb, I walked over and said, “Hello, it’s ok to check out the tent.”

Also mentioned I have three daughters of my own, but they were all grown up now. They were, however, like his once. His two reminded me of my kids’ energy back when they were young.

“Oh, you have three daughters?” The man said as he continued to zip and unzip the tent door. He turned around part-way upon his haunches and looked up at me, eye to eye, with a sparkle in his brown eyes. “Do you know what it means when you have three daughters?”  Continue reading →

Back when the Kids Dressed Up, Danced, and Performed

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A Blended Family Legacy Foto-Essay of kids in Dragonfly Community,

Greater Seattle, circa 1995 – 2010

***Graphic heavy with 107 fotos & 12 avi.avi videos. Yes, 107 pictures and 12 videos! Plus a long read. Please allow TIME for individual fotos to download. You may possibly need to download a free AVI (Audio Video Interleave) movie converter. Or not. Some of the videos require two clicks to access the video, and once finished, 1 or 2 clicks back to return to the main article. Other videos require only one click away and one click back. Only takes a few seconds at the most. Hey, it’s worth it! There’s a bit of family history here below. Enjoy!***

1. Dragonfly Community

Pop Stars! The Three Dragonfly Sisters performing at the Yellow Dragonfly House, in the Seattle neighborhoods of upper-upper Fremont south of the Woodland Park Zoo. Left to right are Kate, age 6, Morgan, age 10, & Talia, age 2. Foto taken with Kristina’s Canon PowerShot A40 on Saturday 7 August 2004.

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To the River House

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Our blended family’s joys & sorrows finding, gaining, enjoying, and losing our dream house and the many wacky adventures & jolly mishaps in and around the area, 2007 – 2010

*Click on any picture to expand and enlarge*

*This is a graphic intensive foto essay with 246 fotos & 1 video, and the larger the screen the better*

Kristina out in front of our new home with our realtor Randy V. We called it The River House. I took this picture with a LG smartfone camera at the time, Tuesday the 16th of October 2007, down in Mule Tail Flats outside Plain, Washington, in the Greater Stevens Pass – Leavenworth – Wenatchee Corridor.

The River House, Monday 18 August 2008.

Our back yard ends here at the river. The Wenatchee River flows thru the Cascade Mountains from Lake Wenatchee down thru several canyons before merging into the huge Columbia River. Wednesday 26 December 2007.

Blended family dynamics, y’all! Trying to get ourselves togerther for a family portrait by our comic genius Emily, one of my oldest daughter’s closest friends. I’m on my knees in the snow. Behind stand L2R: Talia, Kate, Morgan (now Dylan), & Kristina. Wednesday 16 January 2008.

Kids were at the right age for goofy pranks, too. Here my oldest, Morgan/Dylan discovers, well, this shower stall doesn’t quite work like one of Dr. Who’s TARDIS booths. This one here just sucks people screaming down the drain merrily, merrily, merrily into oblivion. OK, well, I don’t know exactly what she’s up to here, LOL! But Emily does! Mid-January of 2008.

Talia & Kate wrecked & laughing at the Sledding Hill over in Lake Wenatchee State Park close to the River House. A big day for Talia as she got back into snow sports after breaking her leg in a sledding accident on the same run two years earlier. Taken on Monday 15 February 2010.

The back side of the River House, the side facing the Wenatchee River. Yeah, I cleared and cleaned up what was an overgrown, debris-strewn yard. “Parked it out,” as the locals say. Took many long days and weeks. Had to for wildfire insurance, too. Hot tub on the deck picture right, and an onion swing, a fun gift for the kids from family friends up in Edmonton, Alberta just left of center. Aye, we love this place. Took us a long time to get over its loss. Was a house we’d expected to leave to our kids and their kids and have family & friends from around the world visit us here. Monday 18 August 2008.

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A Family Dayhike up Little Si Mountain one July

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Part of a Postmodern Age blended family goes for a hike & scramble up a small mountain near Seattle as they wonder about the future amid echoes of the past, Sunday the 6th of July 2008

Talia, the stepdaughter I helped deliver and raise as one of my own beloved children, with her dog, Joline. We all called our doggie JoJo, tho.

Kristina, my then-third wife (now ex) atop Little Si. A few spires and avalanche chutes rise into the fog behind her on Mt. Si, aka Big Si.

Today is surprisingly chilly for July for a low mountain peak so close to the Sound. The damp fog, brooding clouds, and the threat of rain amidst silence of the unknown felt foreboding at times as the financial collapse of the Great Recession accelerated thru our lives.

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Upside down in Snow

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A romp in the woods with my lover at the time & two of our kids goes, well, upside down! Our winter ramble in Snoqualmie Pass, Washington, near where the old Mountaineers Cabin used to be one Sunday on the 22nd of January 2006.

Silly Daddy leads the way. Kristina laughed & refused to follow. “I’ll just take pictures. How about that?” she said & chuckled again.

Kate & Talia can’t wait! Kato’s in purple & purple, and TaTa’s in pink & polka dots. Sunday afternoon on the 22nd of January 2006.

Four of us rode up together in our blended family minivan. We all wanted to go play in the snow! Except for my oldest girl, Morgan, now called Dylan, and I cannot recall why she stayed behind. Probably because the future Dylan Blair preferred to pal around with her tween friends. Especially as she was 12 years old back then and soon to turn 13 in less than 3 months. Hmn. Never mind my pet baby name for her was my Li’l Twinkle Star. Katie Kate Kate could barely wait, tho, and she was already 8 years along. No longer was she just my Li’l Kitty Kat. Our youngest, Talia, or, ahem, TaTa the Tater Tot, as we called my Li’l Butterfly back then was still an adorable 3 years old. I drove thru the village of Snoqualmie Pass, known for its concentration of ski resorts, hiking, climbing, and even a small, rare cave system, and parked in a cleared-off lot near a snowy lane leading to where the old Mountaineers’ old cabin is.

Or was back then in January of 2006. Cabin is a misnomer. Aye, it was a palace in the forest! The Mountaineers Club, however, called it a lodge. Snoqualmie Lodge. Hey, this place was historic! Snoqualmie Lodge was a major hub for backcountry action for over half-a-century. A quasi-medieval frontier fort of a sort, the lodge looked ramshackle and all teeter-tottery after the snows melted, but altho rustic, it was built solid by engineers and carpenters. By men & women who knew what tools they held in hand, knew what they were doing, and if they didn’t, they knew how to work together to figure things out and make it so. The snow seemed to help hold it up, but truth is the snow exerted walls of pressure on the famous old building. This was before the Fires of Spring.

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Snakes & Horses! Lake Wenatchee Family Camping Trips 2005 & 2006

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Memories & Restored Fotos from two family camping trips a year apart to Lake Wenatchee State Park and nearby Nason Creek Campground in the surrounding Wenatchee National Forest, May 2005 & May 2006

*This is an unfinished work in progress. Please enjoy anyway. Thank you.*

Snakes! Kate with a corn snake, Monroe, WA. Memorial Day Weekend, Monday 30 May 2005. Here’s she’s about 6 and a half years old.

Horses! Talia upon a horse in Lake Wenatchee State Park, WA. Sunday 28 May 2006. Talia had recently turned 4 years old.

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Morgan at Whitehorse Mountain, June 2010

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A father struggles with PTSD as he idolizes his daughter in the wake of tragedy and before she changed their name to claim a deeper, truer identity

Dylan Blair, age 16, nine years ago as I write this, back when she was known as Morgan Hannah. She stands in a roadside field in the Stillaguamish River Valley below the bulk of Whitehorse Mountain.

Being outside in nature can kill you. Or nature can heal you. My family and I needed nature’s medicine. We lived in Edmonds, Washington at the time. Just north of long, skinny Seattle. Been there only three months. Moved in on the 20th of December 2009. Five hectic days before Christmas. Our large, rental house, a temporary abode in the wake of losing our homes and finances in the wake of job losses, embezzlement, and the Great Global Recession, caught on fire and burned down one Saturday morning in March of 2010. My oldest daughter, still called Morgan back then as she hadn’t yet changed their name to Dylan, was celebrating her 16th Birthday with a close circle of friends on the weekend following her actual birthday. I was out and away picking up her two younger sisters, Kate and Talia, from different sleepover parties at their respective friends down south in Seattle. Kristina, my third wife at the time, was at the vet with our dog, Jo. Apparently so much thick, toxic smoke rolled up from the basement rooms no one could get out the front door. Her friends, all high school girls in their mid-teens, had surprisingly expensive belongings downstairs where they had spent the night. The day was warm and sunny for March. Indeed, this Saturday the 20th was the first day of Spring.

The flames spread fast in a big house designed to function like a tipi merged with solar panels and a hot rock room. The home was a gorgeous experiment built on a steep slope near the head of a large ravine. It faced out to look west towards water and mountains, and had been designed by an already deceased husband-and-wife team of architects. Thick, toxic, black smoke billowed up the stairs from the lower levels where the kids had slept. The girls made a flurry of fone calls to 911 and to parents, but began to panic. They were desperate to race downstairs to retrieve personal items such as sleeping bags, clothes, shoes, gifts, smartfones, iPods, toiletries, luggage, school books, papers…when Morgan shouted at all of them they “all need to get out now! We need to get outa here now! That way! NOW!!!”

Following her lead, they raced across the house towards the back, the side facing water and mountains. There the teenagers climbed up over a wooden railing and jumped off the deck. Jumped off wearing a mix of t-shirts, underwear, pajamas, gym shorts, socks, and bare feet. Depending on the incline, the deck was anywhere from one to half-a-story up in the air. They were terrified! Fire and smoke and poisonous stench and crackling, crashing noise seemingly everywhere. Within moments after all of the teens climbed over the wooden railing and jumped off, possibly within seconds, the whole back deck, the one facing down a wide ravine to look out across the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains, collapsed in fire and smoke and disintegrated.

Foto of our house in Edmonds erupting in flames moments after the birthday party girls jumped off the back deck in picture left and fled before it collapsed.

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Back to the Olympics! Wacky Family Fun in the Great Outdoors, 2008

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A blended family returns to Olympic National Park and surrounding areas again and yet again in the Year 2008

*This is a work in progress. Enjoy anyway, woo HOO!*

Kate & Talia playing in the stinky seaweed. Makes Morgan retch, so she hangs back outa site. Friday 8 August 2008.

The Olympic Peninsula is almost a separate state from the rest of Washington. Kinda like West Virginia is to my native Virginia. It’s small, compact, remote, and rugged. Unlike West Virginia, however, it’s bordered by the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Salish Sea on the other two. Kristina, born in Seattle, grew up out there. Her dad, a dentist, a loner, and a survivor of US internment camps for Japanese-Americans, took her on numerous fishing trips deep into the river canyons of the Olympics and out into the straits even in stormy weather. We can see the peaks of Olympic National Park and the surrounding national forest wilderness areas from across the water in Seattle. I am always in awe of the everchanging views, even those of rain and clouds, whenever I gaze across the Salish Sea toward yon Olympic Mountains.

The ONP is also where Gwen & I came together as a couple back in the Summer of 1986. The wild combination of mountains, forests, glaciers, whitewater, meadows, and seashore made the ONP my favorite national park to explore. The proximity of the Olympics to Seattle is a primary reason Gwen & I raised our kids out here in Washington State as well as why Kristina & I continue to return there. At the same time, however, the Olympics are so close to Seattle yet so far away. Transportation times are long with the combination of big-city streets, ferry ships, and congested, winding, two-lane roads. Didn’t matter. For years we returned there time and again to nurture our blended families.

This little essay is my recreation of journeys and experiences in which many of the things often used to jog our memories and anchor ourselves across the fabric of timespace were destroyed in a 2010 catastrophic house fire. So many fotos were lost. So many journal entries and kids’ drawings were burned up or blotted out by smoke and water damage. If you see more pictures of some people more than others, well, the ones you see were those salvaged from the watersoaked ashes of the fire, not any judgment or demonstration of preference. The remains of recollection hereby present themselves. Enjoy anyway, and may we all learn even more from the many lessons experienced from living the lives we choose to live.  

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Twin Falls on a February Sunday: A Dog, Kids, Love, & Waterfalls

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A Family Dayhike into the Twin Falls Natural Area, Olallie State Park, Washington,
Sunday 13 February 2005

*This is a work in progress as rediscovering “lost” stories, documents, & pictures salvaged from the 2010 Fire continues. Have fun anyway! Click on each foto to blow it up big. Enjoy!

The Author & his kids & the family dog at one of the overlooks along the Twin Falls Trail in Olallie State Park. L2R: Talia (in pink jacket), Katie (just behind her), me, William (in back), Morgan (who now goes by Dylan), & Jo, short for Joline, our English Springer Spaniel. Foto by Kristina. Sunday 13 February 2005.

We were a blended family, a goofy family, & we loved to get silly. We faced many challenges of blending post-double divorce family born of a wild and yet strategic mix of polyamory, intentional community, and devotion to conscious parenting. Kristina & I sought to ground our blended family outdoors in nature and indoors with fellow communitarians. For us, deep relationship was a spiritual practice, a challenging practice, and one demanding constant practice with ever-evolving self-awareness. In the moment, however, hugs & fun & even an, “Uh, Dad, what is going on?” is everything. And now, with the passage of time, forever gone.

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