It has been a weird couple days. A few months ago we had an idea for a very special kind of Eons episode — getting out of the studio and doing natural history content in the wild, so to speak. This week it was time to make it happen. Unfortunately, my life changed a lot in the middle there. My dad died, I took two unexpected weeks off to grieve, and I still feel like nothing will ever be stable again.

Still, I went on this trip mainly because I did not know what else to do. I was “back to work” for about 2 days before it was time to get on a plane and I got on that plane because I figured if I was gonna be sad, I might as well go be sad in California.

We had some very long work days that were fun and cool and — for me at least — emotionally fraught all at once.

When I first told my dad about this trip a couple months ago he had a lot of questions I could not answer about the future video. He wanted to know everything about what we were going to see and do and learn. Everywhere we went I was only half focused on the task at hand because I kept thinking about how much he would have loved hearing the answers. There’s the audience for this video, sure, but mostly there’s the imaginary audience I’ll never get to have. I have so much to tell my dad about what I saw and did and learned.

I grew up here, so each day was so overwhelmingly full of dad nostalgia: reminders of hikes that we went on together; picturing his instructions for my small child self in the event of a mountain lion encounter; seeing motorcyclists in LA — a population my dad once belonged to — and hearing his commentary in my head; driving around places where I have so many actual memories with him, many of which were things I haven’t thought about in years.

I can’t quite say if I was truly ready to do this. Something made me cry everywhere we went. At one point while hiking I had an actual panic attack and had to turn around and wait for everyone else to go on ahead without me. It was a lot.

But then: I don’t know that I’ll ever be ready for any of this. For all the ways this trip was painful, it was also cathartic. I am ultimately grateful that I had the chance to do this. As I drove the team around I got to share fun stories about my dad. I got time to laugh about how great he was, and for a few brief moments it didn’t hurt so much.

Wish you were here. Always.