This is my final column as outdoors editor of the Grand Forks Herald, a position I’ve held since February 1998. I’ve retired – it’s going to take a while for that to sink in – and my last day was Thursday, Dec. 4.

Retirement wasn’t forced on me; it was my choice, and for that I am grateful.

You could call this a “retirement announcement,” I suppose, but it’s also an opportunity to look back on a career that’s spanned more than 40 of my 64 (and soon to be 65) years on this earth.

I started at the Herald on Nov. 26, 1985, as a young copy editor barely a year out of college. I spent the first 3½ years with the Herald company as a copy editor for Agweek Magazine before moving “across the alley” to the Herald newsroom, where I was in charge of editing and designing features pages. I also had

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