The Old Man and the Tree: Returning to Writing Later in Life

// 5 min //

When you fell a Douglas Fir and examine its rings, you read more than years—you uncover a life story. The innermost rings tell of tenuous beginnings, where a sapling strained toward light. In my life, these early rings mark a childhood shaped by books, where stories offered escape and understanding.

My earliest memories are of my mother reading to me nightly, illuminating my childhood with stories and imagination. Like many young readers, I stretched toward these tales, eager to read myself. Once I could, my appetite for reading only grew stronger.

I was fortunate to grow up in a family of readers. Knowledge flowed through encyclopedias, magazines, and newspapers that filled my grandparents’ home. Their shelves held volumes of history, archaeology, religion, geography, and science—each one feeding my growing curiosity.

Powell's City of Books Storefront
Powell’s City of Books in Portland, OR

Like a nurse-log nurturing new growth in the forest, the library system and Powell’s City of Books became my sanctuary. I found my place among the vast stacks of human experience. Literature provided the nutrients of knowledge and inspiration that fed my mind. I wandered through towering aisles, breathing in the must of aged paper and fresh coffee. The store cafe became a favorite spot to read or enjoy conversations with people further along in life.

I was drawn to writing, and aspired to be a professional author, someday. You never saw me without a notebook—even at wrestling tournaments, where I’d win a match, then retreat to the bleachers to write, making the most of my time before the next one. I imagined myself at book signings in a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches as I signed books. I even knew what my default inscription would be.

Traditional education wasn’t my path. Dropping out after the eighth grade, for reasons too complex to go into, I found an interest and talent for technology. The path to software engineering wasn’t planned so much as discovered, leading me through the halls of Netscape Communications and beyond through corporate acquisitions to Sun Microsystems and Oracle. I found parallels between coding’s precise patterns and narrative structure. I built systems and solved problems. There was satisfaction in solving issues for clients from Apple and the Vatican to NASA and Johns Hopkins.

Like any good author, life throws difficult challenges into your story. Those Douglas Fir rings reflect these seasons of drought, sickness, and fire.

I chose to retire at forty, ready to begin a new chapter. Only months after, I collapsed on my way to my desk. I spent several days on the floor before regaining the strength to crawl into bed. Months after, I began a series of trips to the ER, surgeries. Three months combined time in the hospital over the following five years. Last year, during a two week stay after a visit to the ER, doctors told me I had been hours away from coma — or death.

I lost myself over these years and understood why men often die soon after retirement. Without work, what are you? Who are you? I did not know how to function in a world where profession was not the focus. I was purposeless, a husk of potential with eyes narrowed on the immediate days and weeks, but no further.

Returning from the latest hospital stay, I had resigned myself to find simple contentment in life. A lot of people find contentment in movies, books, videogames, and a nice cup of tea. I had to accept it and stop living with my eyes on the horizon.

Nature knows that sometimes destruction precedes renewal. Forest fires, though fierce, clear the understory and prepare the soil for new growth. It clears space for saplings, and even triggers certain seeds to sprout. Illness and loss of purpose, like a cleansing fire, burned away old underbrush of expectations and self-image, creating space for fresh emergence. These challenges would clear the way for something unexpected.

In a recent day—months ago, that changed. Where illness threatened to derail everything, new opportunities emerged. Over a few years, several people asked why I didn’t write again. I dismissed the suggestion. That was an ambition before relationships, career, and health. Aspirations of another person in different circumstances.

A Typewriter on a Tree Trunk

Until, one day . . . that desire revisited me, stronger than ever. It stayed. Like a seedling finding light through forest canopy, it grew from some deep place I couldn’t name. It arrived, like that moment you are lost in a book and your brain shouts at you that you forgot to pick your kids up from school.

I’m starting fresh in familiar territory. The analytical patterns that once shaped code now weave through narrative structures. The systematic mind that once traced pathways through programs now follows character arcs and plot threads.

When I committed to this return, stories emerged: some ready to take shape immediately.

Seneca said that “it is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it” and “life is long if you know how to use it”.

Insightful, but the truth is that few of us learn this lesson from anyone. We only discover it on our own journey and, often, much too late.

Time is precious. There is less of it than there are stories.

I worried that starting a writing career in your mid forties is too late. In truth, so many remarkable authors found their voice in middle age or later. Raymond Chandler was 51 when he published The Big Sleep. Frank McCourt wrote his Pulitzer-winning Angela’s Ashes at 66. Richard Adams published Watership Down at 52. Laura Ingalls Wilder began her Little House series at 65. Charles Bukowski published his first novel Post Office at 51. Bram Stoker published Dracula at 52, and James Michener’s writing career flourished after 45. Their later-life works grew stronger for the rich soil of experience beneath them.

I approach this renewal like those first Douglas Fir rings—resilient and determined. Each ring in our stories, even those marking difficult seasons, shapes who we become. These challenges have prepared the ground for new growth. Whether you’re rekindling old passions or share a love of literature, I invite you to explore these paths with me. Stories, like trees in an old forest, grow stronger when their roots intertwine.

Here, I’ll explore the craft of writing and everything related to literature. I’ll document my path both to find my way and to share what I discover. After all, it’s never too late for new growth to emerge.

Seumas Froemke's Signature

I am . . .

Born and raised in Oregon, I grew up in a family of avid readers, splitting my youth between juvenile delinquency and haunting the Multnomah County Library system and Powell's City of Books. After twenty years of engineering, I retired at forty and wandered, lost, until rediscovering my passion for reading and ambition for writing. Here, I document that journey.

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