I just drove away….
THE STORY
In November 2024, a surgeon removed my heart and replaced it with someone else’s. I had spent 22 years managing congestive heart failure—a software career, a marriage, a house, all of it built around a condition I expected to manage indefinitely. On the other side of the OR, I found that surviving wasn’t the same as living. The career went. After 35 years, the marriage ended. The address went with it. What I hadn’t expected was that I’d start writing—essays, scripture, technology…more than I’d have guessed. So I pointed myself at the open road and started figuring out what comes next—and writing about all of it along the way.
THE ROAD
Where I’ve been and what I found there—parks, towns, monasteries, back roads, and the people who turned up along the way.
THE GEAR
What works, what doesn’t, and what I’d buy again—honest equipment reviews and the practical decisions behind travel that actually functions.
THE LIFE
How this actually works—managing complex health needs away from home, solving problems nobody wrote a guide for, and building something workable under real constraints.
THE RECKONING
The interior work—what the transplant left behind, what the silence turns up, and the questions that don’t resolve.
LATEST POSTS
- A Year Late to Kuwohi
From a hospital bed, waiting on a donor heart, I promised myself the climb to the top of the Smokies. I got there a year late, by way of a campground with no signal, a ranger’s warning about bears, and a joke my dad told on that same summit when I was a teenager. - Watch Your Step: East Fork State Park
Four brown posts in the grass with a wire strung between them. I photographed them on the first morning, photographed the horse warning signs a little farther along, and still needed three actual horses standing in it before any of it connected. - No Inventory
The woman at the camp store didn’t believe the card was mine; she said I didn’t look old enough. I qualified under the other half of the rule. I’d come back to camping after most of a lifetime away, not at all sure I’d still want it. - The Day After Yellow Springs
Thirty thousand people had filled these streets the day before. I couldn’t find a single trace of them—no wreckage, no litter, just swept brick and open parking. It took two strangers and a sold-out appetizer to convince me the Street Fair had happened at all. - The Abbey of Gethsemani
Vigils is at 3:15 in the morning. Seven offices a day, silence in most of the halls, and Thomas Merton buried out back in a plain row with no marker pointing the way. Several days at a Trappist monastery in central Kentucky.
James Nerlinger
I’m a writer and rogue scholar working out of Cincinnati, mostly by leaving it. A monastery in central Kentucky, a state park an hour from the house, a town I’d driven past for thirty years without stopping. I go, I pay attention, and I write down what was actually there.
In November 2024 a surgeon took out my heart and put in someone else’s. I’d spent 22 years managing congestive heart failure to get to that point. On the other side of it, after 35 years, the marriage ended. Neither of those was my idea. Rogue Wayfarer is where I write about all of it—the gear, the places, the people I meet along the way, and the slow work of rebuilding a life you didn’t plan for.
Many Lamps, One Flame—Torah, philosophy, and the contemplative work.
One More Beat—Living with a transplanted heart.
At Ground Level—Technology and leadership.
Contact
Thoughts? Questions? Fellow wayfarers?
jnj@roguewayfarer.com