There has yet to be a free-association exercise in which the first response to the prompt "Seattle Seahawks" has been "discipline."

With three weeks in the books, the Greater Spokane League races are starting to get a little clearer – at least in the 4A ranks.

For the next three or four weeks all of us who grow vegetables and fruit are going to be playing tag with Mother Nature when it comes to getting our harvesting in before frost.

Welcome to the first weekly installment of a new feature we’re calling “Friday Night (High)lights” – an obvious play on words to the famous book, movie and TV show. It’ll be a look back at the high school football action from across the Greater Spokane League, Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

This time of year, the perennial garden can take on a colorful life of its own. The cooler weather allows heat dormant plants to come alive again and spread their fresh color over the garden. Here are some highlights to begin planning for next year’s show.

I knew something was off in the first mile of our climb. I had a big breakfast in preparation of a lengthy summit, but I was well into my snacks before breaking the tree-line, and still feeling wobbly. I assumed the mosquitos had drained too much of my blood supply.

Unlike many of my friends, I’ve never wanted kids.

I have spent very little time in the jungle, possibly because accessing one requires international travel, but largely because they are home to insect life I prefer to pretend is make-believe.

Great stories free us. Great stories move us to imagine beyond our petty self-preoccupations, beyond our living circumstances, beyond our destructive biases.

Off the Grid: Our forefather explorers had all the fun

It seems a little strange writing a column about high school sports for the Fourth of July paper, but if the past 16 months have taught us anything, it’s this: adapt and advance.

For years, I have been looking for a good reason to stop running. Other people I know find all kinds of good reasons: Their knees are damaged, chronic shin splints, they are too busy, it’s too hot or too cold, they don’t like it, it’s hard, unpleasant, unproductive and arguably a waste of time and energy.

A decision to ban stand-up paddleboarding on the Little Spokane River in May garnered a torrent of criticism from some dedicated users and highlighted an ongoing challenge: How do land managers handle an unprecedented influx of outdoor recreation?

Jessica Lenihan doesn’t play a lot of golf, but she spends a ton of time on the course.

“To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself.”

I didn’t really think much about it until recently when I contracted to have some landscaping done. I had to move all my vehicles and park them next to one-another in a small field above the house, and after doing so, the property looked rather like a used car lot. For someone who absolutely hates motorized vehicles, I certainly have a lot of them.

Upon return from any extravagant adventure, I find myself desperately seeking out The Next Greatest Thing in a textbook method of avoiding Post Adventure Blues. Much of my life has been a sort of rumbling-tumbling fall from fantastic dream to failure to spontaneous expedition to epic catastrophe merely to missed flight in an attempt to avoid stagnation.

I love the spring. It comes with warm breezes and sun-heated green houses and birdsong. Unfortunately, it also comes with a fair amount of carnage at the claws of my cats. They are a furry gang of feline assassins, leaving feathers and limp moles strewn about my house.

We are interlopers, invading upon a space where we don’t belong.