Once upon a time my family built a ship to explore the Eagle River Chain of Lakes together. Before that, for as long as I can remember, my dad was a pirate.

We didn’t call him Captain Steve in those days but we were likely on one of his adventures gathering garbage to be transformed into treasures, at a building site or remodel job finding electrical cOins while wandering framework imagined out loud at the kitchen table before school earlier that same week.

There was usually a central project in or lives (that mOm might have been secretly smiling about but wished he’d fix the sink instead). Always focused on something as a family….usally pretty cOOl…with about a million other things that had to connect in order to make it happen and then one day there was all of all of us, standing outside the Captain’s work truck one cold winter day in WI, Dad stretched across the bow of a trailered broken boat with a 2X4 cast to the nOrth yelling to his family:

DO YOU SEE IT???? 🏴‍☠️🦜

That’s the short stOry on growing up with my dad_ _ X learning you can make MAGIC real from anything you can dream, bring even the craziest ideas intO being, lesons on how everything is about everything so you better get to work, go all in, make every minute count so we can get out on the water …and put that other stuff in the garage because we might use it later…

it’s a pirate’s life & it’s right nOw