Summer Journal: After the Storm
The heat broke with a roar.
The storm came like a cleansing rage—wind tearing leaves, lightning painting the night, water reshaping the earth.
This reflection is about that fierce reset…
and the quiet morning after, where a great blue heron stands atop my daughter’s car,
and we meet as two survivors.
Renewal doesn’t always whisper.
Sometimes, it howls.
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.
Summer Journal: Humidity
After days of rain, the valley pulses green.
Cicadas sing. Tomatoes bend low. Black walnut leaves fall like early hints of goodbye.
This reflection is about the thick, fragrant breath of late summer—
when everything feels eternal, until it doesn’t.
Only in its passing do we glimpse its true shape.
Summer Journal: Tree Trunks
The season’s first tropical storm arrives like a wanderer from the Gulf.
Rain falls for five days. The valley overflows.
This reflection is about flood and movement, wind and breakage—
and the deeper stillness that holds beneath it all.
Summer Journal: Slack Tide
Summer pools in the valley’s cup.
Green towers. Cicadas rise. Life pulses with urgency beneath a canopy of light.
But even here—
in this heat-heavy fullness,
the turning has begun.
This reflection is about summer’s slack tide—
a moment poised between ripeness and release.
Summer Journal : The Thorn Eaters
The heat has cracked the earth. The sky hangs low.
But this morning, green shoots rise where the mower cut too deep—
and from the bamboo thicket, a mother deer steps forward.
Twin fawns follow, speckled and trembling, learning how to be wild.
This reflection is about that brief, perfect moment—
between milk and thorn, between safety and sorrow.
Before the forest swallows them again.
Summer Journal: Exhale
In the midday heat, the valley holds its breath—
life retreating to the cool edges of dawn and dusk.
This reflection is about heat and hush, lavender and fireflies,
and how the world exhales into evening—
a slow turning from dragonfly to deer, from bumblebee to bat, from sun to starlight.
Summer Journal: Heat
The heat is relentless.
Sweat clings. We dream of snow. And still, we long for something else.
This reflection is about that restlessness—
and how, beyond it, the world unfolds in perfect rhythm.
Not chasing. Not correcting. Just becoming.
We are sparks in a river of stars,
brief flashes of knowing in a universe that’s already whole.
Summer Journal: River and Cup
Above the valley, the wind howls and the trees toss like restless giants.
But down here, all is still.
This reflection is about air that rushes, air that rests—
and butterflies that drift like falling petals, rediscovering flight with every breath.
Summer Journal: Cloudburst
A summer storm lifted my old camping tent into the sky.
It was just nylon and poles—but also the sacred ground of childhood, fatherhood, and a thousand quiet moments.
This reflection is about the stories we attach to what we lose…
and the deeper strength it takes to let go.
Letting go doesn’t mean not caring.
It means facing what is, without clinging—and saying, with your whole heart:
Nevertheless.