There’s a certain hope, a longing. A gossamer sketch of a dream just beyond where you can reach. A one-day place or space somewhere, sometime where life just isn’t so hard.

We’d hiked up the foothill slope, between the gap in the rock rim, and down the back sway into the grassy bottom of the small valley that hugged the mountainside. It was evening. It was summer.

It was last December that I received an email from a longtime reader with a single word written in the subject line: Substack??

The soothing sound of rain on the roof gently woke me from my early morning sleep

Sometimes, that’s how life is, haphazard and untamed, a cowlick that won’t be slicked. There’s work and travel, then travel again, and spring’s come and weeds have, too

The beach was gray and windswept. The outgoing tide had left the sand soaked and milling about, miniature rivers running

I recently fell backward down a rabbit hole of my own writing, reading further and further back 

My favorite things in life right now are the family group chats that we have perpetually going on

It feels good to ground myself again. To dig in and settle. To plant something.

The days have passed, opened, closed, opened, closed, slanted gray, mostly

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Throw your shearling boots on, toss a shawl over your shoulders, pick up your dress, and run along the riverbank.