“When I saw you two up there on the rock, I thought to myself ‘they’ve either been married for 15 minutes or for 50 years.’” We were trying to take our own picture and were obviously struggling to do so given our precarious perch atop the jetty. The stranger down below smiled at our predicament […]
Letter: Overwhelmed By Beauty, Captivated By Mud
She couldn’t have been maybe two years old. Dressed in her Sunday church-going best, she knelt at the edge of the muddy patch created by an earlier rain. All – everyone in fact – who happened by, understandably so, avoided the smallish amount of muck oozing from the ground. But not her. As her parents […]
Letter: Be Like the Daisy
They’re everywhere underfoot. Hundreds of them, thousands even. Found on every continent but Antarctica, the ‘flower of spring’ with its tiny happy face and sunny disposition brightens hillsides, cheers landscapes and meadows, even messages its love and innocence from the dark mouth of a cannon. “It’s difficult not to grin when you see a field […]
Letter: About Growing Up
When I grew up, I always wanted to do something great, be somebody special. Now that I am grown up, maybe that’s why I play with the Jurassic World Dominion Epic Attack dinosaurs, complete with chomp and roar actions, its jaws closing on Bluey Friends Coco The Pink Poodle, which canine stuffed animal I rescue […]
Letter: Love, When It Rains
It’s raining again. No surprise. This is ‘Wash’-ington after all. April showers bring May flowers. But this is March. Think of all the flowers we’ll have! There is so much beauty when it rains. Raindrops lay like pearls on soft petals. Blossoms carry their wet burden with an aplomb. Pollinating bumblebees can sometimes be seen, […]
Letter: Place vs. Pace
A world of difference is the single letter that finds a home in the word ‘place’ (does it not stand for ‘love’?) but that is missing from the word ‘pace.’ Our pace was admittedly slow as we drove about the countryside, too slow apparently for some whose familiarity with the turns and twists in the […]
Letter: “Look Where I Am Now!”
The Facetime caller was from nearly 3,000 miles away. The very good friend from what seemed like forever wondered how she was doing. In answer she walked to the window – and later she would do so from the dock – and she turned her phone toward the view. She wanted him to see what […]
Letter: There Is a Place
Looking back down on the way I had come I knew the return would be tough. What got me here was going to be repeated. What goes up must come down. But for now, I rested. The view stretched forever. A snow-covered mountain glistened. The sky was eternally blue. A range of steep, forested hills […]
Letter: Side By Side
She knows I love to hike, though saunter is more the word that describes our pace. Because I am irresistibly drawn to places where beauty, wonder, and awe abound, to be inspired as with Descartes’s portrayal of wonder as ‘that sudden surprise of the soul,’ (“Wonderstruck – How Wonder and Awe Shape the Way We […]