Introduction: Announcement

An announcement.

Winter Journal: Light

The valley teaches in light. Each season arrives with its own voice—spring’s honey-gold promise, summer’s restless shimmer, autumn’s amber hush, winter’s quiet charcoal. From my stillness, I see it all more clearly now. Every leaf. Every shadow. Every tender change. This reflection is about watching the year turn from a wheelchair—and realizing light is always writing love letters across the walls.

Winter Journal: Deer

Each morning, the deer return. I watch them through my window—daughters grooming mothers, fawns testing new legs. For years, I thought I knew them. I even named one. But lately, I’ve begun to see more clearly. This piece is about how nothing truly disappears. Not the deer. Not the stream. Not even us. Everything returns. Everything flows.

Winter Journal: Cold Snap

The snow is gone. But the cold remains. This reflection is about what winter strips away— how frost cracks the seed, breaks the stem, and scatters silk on the wind. Nothing blooms without a breaking. The universe waits in the split pod, the frozen bird, the hollow stalk bending to soil.

Winter Journal: Hunger Moon

The deer come at dusk, ribs showing, coats dull. The hunger moon rises. The carrion birds gather. This is a meditation on the sharp edge of late winter— where bare branches, bones, and longing all speak the same truth: Don’t look away. Even now, there is beauty. Even now, everything belongs.

Spring Journal: Mud

Spring doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It seeps in slowly—through thawing trails, frost-cracked soil, and the patient churn of mud. This reflection is about frost seeding, trail-building, and the quiet power of letting the mess make way for something new. Creation begins with dissolution. Mud first, then bloom.

Spring Journal: Betrayal

We thought spring had arrived. But last night, snow returned—quietly rewriting everything in white. This piece is about late snow, broken expectations, and the sorrow of things not going to plan. But also about what happens when we release the map, and simply notice the cardinal in the laurel.

Spring Journal: Two, yet not two

The valley awakens in purple fire. Snow crocuses rise from frost-heaved ground—tiny, defiant, luminous. This reflection is about early blooms, a single honeybee, and the deep magic that binds them. Two, yet not two. Flower and bee. Light and earth. You and the world. Spring begins here.

Spring Journal: The Joke

The groundhogs don’t know the stream floods. They just dig. Sip. Rest. Begin again. This piece is about watching them work— And realizing we do the same. We build our lives beside a stream that will rise and sweep it all away. But in that certainty, there’s freedom. In that impermanence, a strange lightness. What if falling… is just another word for flight?

Summer Journal: Softness

This morning arrived wrapped in the rare softness that only exists between seasons. Not quite spring. Not yet summer. Just this: Fox kits in the bamboo. Violets in the grass. Air like a rose petal against your cheek. This reflection is about new life, quiet light, and the gentle power of a world waking up.

Summer Journal: Career

I’ve spent my life planning. Careers. Companies. Calorie counts. Futures I may never see. This piece is about the joy of the game— and the quiet wisdom that comes when you realize the sun is setting on the field. Play hard. Play well. Then step off into starlight, laughter, and mosquitoes.

Summer Journal: Thicket

My daughter has returned home. A new husband. Two quiet cats. We find ourselves together in a season of transition— between continents, between careers, between life and death. This reflection is about catbirds, tangled margins, and the wild grace of transition. Where the stable gives way to the shifting. Where nothing endures, and everything grows. We are all dwellers of the thicket— becoming, dissolving, blooming again.

Summer Journal: This Bright Stillness

The valley wakes in song. Cicadas, hummingbirds, dew-laced grass. A breath, a breeze. A moment. This reflection is about letting go of clocks and stories— and stepping into the luminous stillness beneath it all. No coming. No going. No loss. Only this sunlit sea. Only now.

Autumn Journal: Fullness

The first true autumn morning arrived, carried on cool air and chickadee song. This reflection is about the season of fullness— when summer’s fire fades, fruit falls, and the world prepares to empty itself. But not yet. Not yet.

Autumn Journal: Black Walnut

They fall like green cannonballs—Black Walnuts pounding the forest floor, their hard gifts wrapped in bitterness and dye. This reflection is about what grows in consequence— how every squirrel, fern, fox, and fallen nut tells a deeper story of unity, shaped by starlight, soil, and time. Wait. Let the husk rot. Crack the shell. Light waits within.

Autumn Journal: Golden Hour

Sunrise sets the valley ablaze—trees become torches, a doe turns to gold, and birds fill the air with coins of sound. And then… rain. Silence. Letting go. This reflection is about how beauty arrives without warning, and departs without apology. And how, in its passing, it burns with the brilliance of the eternal.

Autumn Journal: Yellowjacket

Today felt like summer. The maple leaves burned red, and hornets circled the last tomatoes. This reflection is about the dying members of a broken home — their hunger, their panic, their separateness. And how, if we look closely, we might see something familiar in their flight. Chasing sweetness. Fearing frost.

Autumn Journal: Kindness

Five hours of daylight have slipped away since midsummer. Deer eat bark. The sun arrives later. Steam lifts from my coffee, then disappears. This reflection is about winter’s quiet shift— how we adapt, how we endure, how everything falls and rises again. There is nothing to fear. The leaf drifts down. The breath fades. And still, the light shines through everything.

Autumn Journal: What Remains is Radiant

One year ago today, I began this journal. Today I finish, while I have the strength to do it well. The year’s circle is complete. My final reflection is about the freedom of release. About how letting go becomes the blessing. About how, in the unclenching, we discover what remains. And what remains is radiant.

Afterward: Radiant Book Giving

Over the past five years of living with illness, I’ve developed a renewed appreciation for the value of books— audio and print—as companions, counselors, teachers, and friends. This appreciation is especially relevant for those of us living with conditions like ALS, and to individuals in hospitals, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centers, emergency housing, correctional settings, […]