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.

An unexpected, hundreds-of-miles-long road trip just might mean that, in your scattered packing, you’ll forget something.

I woke up on the sofa, the morning light slowly gathering through the windows, the sound of the creek, of birdsong, of another day spilling in.

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

Loves! I’m waving from here as I gather my bags to depart for more multi-day, multi-stop travel across Montana

We found him way down there in the sea of capped and tasseled graduates waiting for the ceremony to begin; waved wildly so he could see us, too.

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

I open the bin that holds my off season clothes and there lies my summer wardrobe. Hello, old friends. I’ve miss you. Can’t wait to wear you again.

At the bend in the creek, the naked dirt bank reached high and steep, topped by a tall fence. Unprotected and vulnerable, the bank’s soft earth was no match for spring’s mad water.

Back to pencil and paper. Back to revisions. Back to another early morning, sitting on the sofa with a cup of tea, looking out toward my garden space, reimagining.

Sleeping with the windows open, waking to the twitter of birds, watching as green slowly colors the land