“The morning was so calm that it seemed as if the world had stopped spinning to catch its breath.”
~Anonymous

This morning I came across a photograph of Leona curled contentedly in her kitty bed in the bay window.

Beyond the glass, the woods were beginning to wear their autumn colors, while inside she rested in the quiet assurance that this was her home and she was loved.

The memory gave a gentle tug at my heart.

Although Leona has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, I like to think that something of her sweet presence remains here in the wee cottage—the nearly silent padding of soft paws down the hallway, her morning greeting, the warm little hollow she made for herself in her bed beside the window. Love leaves echoes in the places where it has lived. Sometimes we hear them when the house is still. Sometimes we glimpse them in an old photograph. And sometimes they simply arrive as a warmth in the heart, reminding us that absence is not the same as disappearance.

Outside the window behind my desk, darkness still hovers over the woods. I have opened the glass door, and chilly, fall-like air drifts into the room. For a moment, I think about closing it. But after the relentless heat of this past summer—and especially of this past week—the coolness feels too welcome to shut out.

It is as though the earth has been holding its breath beneath the heavy sun and, at last, has been allowed to sigh.

My mug of coffee steams beside me. It tastes especially good this morning. Perhaps it is the cool air. Perhaps it is the darkness gathered beyond my little pool of lamplight. Perhaps it is simply the pleasure of being awake at this secretive hour, when the night has begun to loosen its hold but morning has not yet fully arrived.

From somewhere in the woods comes the soft, solitary hoot of an owl. The sound breaks the silence without disturbing it. The owl seems like a keeper of the threshold, watching over that mysterious border between darkness and dawn, summer and autumn, what has passed and what is yet to come.

I have read that the great migration of birds has begun. Even now, while much of the human world sleeps, countless small wings may be carrying their travelers through the darkness toward distant winter homes. I wish them safe passage. May they find favorable winds, places to rest, and welcoming skies along the way.

There is a Japanese phrase, mono no aware, that speaks of our tender awareness that all things are passing. Its sadness is not without beauty. We cherish the cool September morning because the heat preceded it and because this morning, too, will pass. We cherish the creatures who have shared our homes because their lives, like ours, are brief. Their leaving breaks our hearts, but their having been here enlarges them.

In these deeply troubling times, such moments of calm feel especially precious. I am not religious. Indeed, I have seen too much harm done in the name of religion to find comfort there. But I am spiritual, and my soul is soothed by mornings such as this one—by cool air through an open door, coffee steaming in a familiar mug, an owl calling from the darkness, birds traveling beneath unseen stars, and the remembered presence of a little cat sleeping peacefully in her bed beside the window.

Perhaps the sacred is not something distant that must be sought within walls or doctrines. Perhaps it is here, in the quiet threshold between seasons—in memory, gratitude, and the enduring love of those who once padded softly beside us.

The world has not stopped spinning. But for a few gentle moments, it does seem to have paused to catch its breath.

I pause with it.
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And so this day starts.

~Wylddane

It rained yesterday morning.

And although I was grateful for those few hours of rain, it ended too soon.

It is dark now at this early hour. A glance through the window behind my desk reveals mostly shadows, with only the faintest suggestion of light gathering along the horizon. The window is open, and the wind whispers through the leaves outside. Music drifts quietly from the stereo—not demanding to be heard, but offering itself as a gentle background to the morning and to these thoughts.

I take a sip of coffee and think about rain during a drought.

What does it mean? What comes next? Will there be more?

Or was yesterday’s rain merely a brief kindness—a promise the sky was not yet prepared to keep?

Few things symbolize renewal, hope, and relief as powerfully as rain falling upon drought-stricken land. Rain is often associated with gloom, inconvenience, and canceled plans. But during a drought, it becomes something entirely different. It becomes grace. The first drops striking the roof can produce something very near euphoria.

Scarcity teaches us the meaning of abundance.

When rain has been absent for too long, we listen differently. We hear each drop. We notice the darkening soil, the beads of water trembling upon leaves, the cool fragrance rising from the earth. The harsh, brittle rustle of the woods gives way to the soft percussion of water. For a few hours, the whole world seems to exhale.

In the traditions of some Indigenous peoples of North America, the Thunderbird is a powerful spirit whose wings summon thunder and whose flashing eyes create lightning. Its coming carries the power of the heavens into a thirsty world—a reminder that renewal sometimes arrives with great wings, a darkened sky, and a voice strong enough to shake the earth.

Yesterday’s rain was quieter than that.

It did not arrive triumphantly. It simply began to fall.

Yet even gentle rain performs small miracles. It settles the dust. It washes the tired faces of flowers. It gathers in the curled leaves of plants and darkens the trunks of trees. It makes old things appear new—not because they have been replaced, but because what had obscured them has been washed away.

Perhaps renewal is often like that.

It does not necessarily give us a different life. Sometimes it allows us to see this life differently.

Longfellow wrote, “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” There is wisdom in those words beyond the weather. Some things cannot be hurried, controlled, or persuaded to remain. Rain comes when it comes and stops when it stops. Our task is to receive it while it is here.

But now it is another morning.

The rain ceased before yesterday had reached noon, and the drought continues. I find myself wondering when the next clouds will gather. Today promises to be dry although not as warm and humid as it has been. It hardly seems possible that autumn is here. The calendar insists upon it, while the weather appears to have misplaced the announcement.

Still, autumn is present in quieter ways: in the later sunrise, the deepening darkness of morning, a few fallen leaves scattered across the deck, and the subtle weariness of gardens that have been blooming all summer.

Not every change announces itself with thunder.
Not every hope is fulfilled at once.

Yesterday’s rain was not enough to end the drought—but it was enough to remind the earth what rain feels like. Enough to dampen the roots. Enough to clear some dust from the leaves. Enough to place the scent of wet soil into the morning air.

Perhaps “enough” does not always mean complete.

Sometimes enough is simply what carries us until the next rain.

The horizon beyond my window is growing lighter now. Soon the shapes of trees will emerge from the darkness, the birds will begin their morning conversations, and another dry autumn day will unfold beneath an unseasonably warm sky.

I cannot know when the rain will return.

But I can remain grateful that it came.

I can listen to the wind, receive the music, refill my coffee mug, and step into this new day without demanding that all uncertainty be resolved before I begin.

The drought continues—but so does hope.
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And somewhere beyond the horizon, unseen from this small pool of lamplight, another cloud may already be forming.

~Wylddane

“Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.”
~Samuel Butler

This morning begins in a warm pool of lamplight.

My mug of coffee rests beside me, its steam rising and dancing whenever the cool breeze slips through the open window behind my desk. Serpentine Creative Group’s Two Hearts plays softly in the background, giving the room a gentle pulse—as if the wee cottage itself has awakened and begun to breathe.

Outside, the woods are strangely quiet.

I hear no birds. There is only the wind moving through the trees and, now and then, the hollow tock of an acorn striking the roof, the deck, or some other hard surface. Each one falls with the small authority of a period placed at the end of a sentence.

And perhaps that is why I find myself thinking about the sentences that have made up my life.

Not the life I planned. The life I lived.

There is a difference.

When we are young, we tend to imagine life as a road stretching clearly into the distance. We will become this, accomplish that, arrive somewhere recognizable and plant a little flag bearing the words: Here is the life I intended.

But life rarely behaves like a straight road. It wanders. It doubles back. It disappears beneath fallen leaves.

Sometimes it leads us confidently toward a destination we later discover was never ours. Sometimes what appears to be a detour becomes the only path that could have brought us home.

I have been many people along the way—or perhaps I have been one person continually discovering how many selves he contained.

I was a dutiful son and a questioning one. A believer and then a man who could no longer believe what he had been taught to believe. I was a young man attempting to fit into a life others had designed for me, even as another, truer life waited quietly behind a closed door.

Eventually, I opened it.

That did not happen without fear, grief, or consequence. Becoming oneself is often described as liberation, and it is. But liberation is not always accompanied by trumpets. Sometimes it arrives as a trembling hand on a doorknob. Sometimes it is the whispered admission that the old life no longer fits. Sometimes courage is simply deciding that one would rather live uncertainly as oneself than safely as someone else.

And then there was California.

Northern California. The San Francisco Bay Area. From the first time I was there, something within me recognized it. I did not merely visit it; I felt received by it. The hills, the fog, the ocean, the jumble of neighborhoods and lives—all of it seemed to say, There is room for you here.

There are places we choose, and there are places that appear to choose us.

The Bay Area became one of those places for me. Along the beaches of Pacifica, beside the restless Pacific, I discovered a landscape large enough to hold both my past and the person I was becoming. I walked beside waves that had traveled farther than I could imagine. Fog erased the horizon and then revealed it again. The ocean taught me that something could be constantly changing and still remain entirely itself.

I belonged there.

And now I am here, in a wee cottage in the woods of Northern Wisconsin, listening to acorns fall.

That was not the ending I imagined while standing beside the Pacific. Yet this morning, as the breeze moves the steam above my coffee, I do not feel that I have arrived at the wrong destination. The path from there to here may not look sensible when drawn on a map, but a life cannot be understood by geography alone.

The ocean gave me immensity. The woods have given me intimacy.

California taught me to look toward the far horizon. Wisconsin has taught me to notice the birdbath among the hostas, the red-gold light on the trunk of an old tree, the sound of wind moving through September leaves, and the unmistakable tock of an acorn announcing that another season is preparing to turn.

Somewhere along the journey, I discovered photography—or perhaps photography taught me that I had always been looking. It showed me how to pause before the fleeting thing disappeared: light touching water, fog gathering over a hillside, a garden leaning toward autumn, the wee cottage glowing before dawn.

And then I discovered writing—or perhaps writing discovered me when I finally had enough living behind me to understand that ordinary moments are never merely ordinary.

Through words and images, I began gathering the scattered pieces of my life. Not to force them into a neat design, but to honor their unexpected shapes. A photograph says, I was here, and I noticed. A story says, This happened, and it meant something. A reflection says, I have lived this day, and before it passes, I want to understand what it gave me.

Looking back upon one’s life is not the same as giving up on its future. It is not a rehearsal for dying. It is an act of gratitude—and sometimes an act of reconciliation.

We look back not to declare the story finished, but to discover what kind of story we have been telling.

Was my life what I planned?

No.

It has been stranger, more difficult, more beautiful, and far more surprising than anything I might have planned. There were roads I wish had been gentler. There were losses I would never have chosen. There were years when I did not know where I belonged and moments when I mistook endurance for failure.

Yet there were also friendships that became chosen family. There was music. There was love in more forms than I once knew love could take. There were ocean mornings and woodland mornings. There were dogs and cats, laughter around coffee-shop tables, flowers blooming beside weathered paths, and stories waiting patiently for me to find them.

Perhaps a life well lived is not one in which every dream is achieved.

Perhaps it is one in which we remain awake enough to recognize the life that arrives in place of the one we imagined.

The music continues. Two hearts, two shores, two landscapes: the Pacific Ocean and the Wisconsin woods. The young man I was and the older man seated here this morning. They are not strangers to one another. They are movements within the same composition—sometimes harmonious, sometimes unresolved, but belonging to the same piece.

Outside, another acorn falls.

Tock.

The breeze comes through the window, and the steam above my coffee dances once again.

So begins this day—another measure in a composition I have been creating mostly by ear, feeling, and instinct. I do not know how many measures remain. None of us does.

But the music is still playing.

The coffee is warm. The window is open. The path is still unfolding.
​
And this life I did not plan has become, unmistakably and gratefully, my own.

~Wylddane

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
~John Lubbock, The Use of Life

It is quiet this morning.

The birds seem to be murmuring rather than offering their usual distinctive notes of greeting. Perhaps they, too, have noticed that night’s darkness lingers longer now. Perhaps they know something about September that we have temporarily forgotten amid the heat, the humidity, and the drought.

Outside my window, the morning does not feel quite the way a September morning should. I imagine cool nights and mild afternoons, blue skies washed clean by northwestern winds, and sunlight sparkling upon a lake as blue as memory. I imagine the scene in the picture before me: trees still clothed mostly in green, a glimpse of brilliant water beyond them, and one branch blazing scarlet—as if autumn has quietly signed its name in the corner.

But September has arrived imperfectly this year.

Perhaps most things do.

The coffee tastes especially good. Chopin’s Rondo à la Krakowiak dances from the stereo—first delicately and then with gathering brightness, as though the music itself has decided that morning must be coaxed awake. I sit within the familiar pool of light at my desk and think about Labor Day.

We often treat this weekend as summer’s final bow: one last picnic, one last gathering at the lake, one last afternoon when we pretend the calendar has not begun leaning toward autumn. Yet beneath the cookouts, sales, and three-day-weekend cheerfulness lies something more solemn.

Labor Day is a memorial.

On September 5, 1882, workers gathered in New York City for the nation’s first Labor Day observance. They marched not merely for celebration, but for recognition—for the dignity of their labor and for better lives. Twelve years later, during a period of intense labor conflict surrounding the Pullman Strike, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day a federal holiday, and President Grover Cleveland signed it into law on June 28, 1894. Even the holiday’s earliest advocate remains uncertain: the Department of Labor notes that either Peter J. McGuire, a carpenter and union leader, or Matthew Maguire, a machinist, may first have proposed it. 

Perhaps that uncertainty is appropriate. Labor Day does not belong to one famous man. It belongs to multitudes.
​
It belongs to the farmer walking into the fields before sunrise and the teacher turning on the classroom lights.

It belongs to the carpenter, the machinist, the nurse, the truck driver, the cook, the cashier, the custodian, and the person stocking grocery shelves while most of us sleep. It belongs to all those whose names we may never know, yet whose hands keep the machinery of ordinary life running.

The protections associated with modern working life did not appear out of generosity or inevitability. Fairer wages, safer workplaces, reasonable hours, weekends, and the eight-hour workday grew from years of organizing, negotiation, protest, legislation, and sacrifice. They came because ordinary people understood that a single voice may be ignored, but many voices raised together become difficult to dismiss.

That history carries a warning: rights remembered only as conveniences may eventually be mistaken for gifts. And gifts, we imagine, can be withdrawn.

But the dignity of labor is not a favor granted by the powerful. Neither is the dignity of rest.

We are more than what we produce. We are more than hours entered on a time sheet, tasks crossed from a list, or profits calculated at the end of a quarter. A human life cannot be measured solely by its usefulness to someone else. We need hours in which to sit beside sparkling water, listen to music, share food with friends, walk beneath changing leaves, or simply lie upon the grass and watch the clouds pass overhead.

Rest is not laziness.

Rest is how the body repairs itself, how the mind finds clarity, how the heart remembers what all the labor was for.

And community is not weakness. It is how people protect one another. It is how frightened voices become courageous voices, how overlooked lives become visible, and how hope moves from being a private wish to becoming a public force.

So this Labor Day weekend, let us enjoy the last sweetness of summer. Let us sit beside the lake, linger over coffee, and welcome whatever cool breeze may find its way through the open window. Let us rest without guilt.

But let us also remember.

Remember those who marched when marching cost them a day’s wages. Remember those who demanded that workplaces should not kill or maim the people who entered them. Remember those who insisted that a day must contain hours for family, friendship, thought, beauty, and sleep. Remember that much of what we casually call normal was once considered impossible—or unreasonable—until people stood together and demanded something better.

Outside, the birds continue their quiet conversation. Chopin’s music sparkles and dances through the wee cottage. In the picture before me, one branch has turned scarlet while the rest of the woods still holds fast to summer.

Change often begins that way.

One branch.
One voice.
One person willing to step forward.

And then another.

The coffee is warm. The morning is still. Rest is not a waste of time, and remembrance is not merely looking backward. Both prepare us for the work that remains.
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And so starts this day.

~Wylddane

“They did not deny the harshness of the season. They simply answered it with gold.”

A new day has dawned at the wee cottage with the possibility of thunderstorms hanging somewhere in the humid September air.

For the moment, however, everything outside the window behind my desk is still. Not peaceful exactly—stillness and peace are not always the same thing. This is the expectant stillness of a world holding its breath, waiting to discover whether those gathering clouds intend to offer rain or merely another empty promise.

Just as the darkness began to soften, I heard a cardinal. I could not see him, though I searched the shadowed branches. I imagined his bright red feathers against the deep green of early September—a brilliant accent mark placed at the beginning of the day.

Now Mahler’s Blumine echoes through the wee cottage, lyrical and tender, while my coffee mug sits beside me as a familiar and welcome companion.

And now I hear a blue jay squawking.

Because of course I do.

The cardinal offered a graceful invitation to the morning. The blue jay apparently believes invitations should be shouted across the neighborhood.

Beyond the window, my garden beds are dry. This severe drought has taken its toll. Some plants have faded prematurely; others have simply surrendered, their leaves curled and brittle, their summer ambitions abandoned. Yet among them are the black-eyed Susans.

I have always thought of them as September flowers. They may begin blooming earlier, but September is when they seem most at home. Their golden petals belong to this particular light—to the season when summer has begun packing its bags but has not yet surrendered the keys. They are flowers of the threshold, standing cheerfully between abundance and decline.

Black-eyed Susans are the unbothered, chaotic-good protagonists of the late-summer garden. They do not require our validation, our premium fertilizer, or our tears. They ask for sunshine, a patch of earth, and enough room to begin their plans for eventual domination.

Planting a few Susans is less like gardening and more like signing a lease with a roommate who gradually moves furniture into your bedroom.

They look so innocent while doing it.

Their name carries an old romantic association with Black-eyed Susan searching the docks for her sailor love, Sweet William. Gardeners eventually brought Black-eyed Susan and Sweet William together in their flower beds, where they make a handsome couple—gold and dark brown beside pink, red, and white. After all her searching, Susan apparently found William and immediately began taking over his side of the garden.

Even their botanical name contains a little human comedy. Rudbeckia was named by Carl Linnaeus in honor of the Rudbecks, Swedish botanists associated with his education. It was undoubtedly a sincere tribute, although one cannot entirely dismiss the possibility that even the great Linnaeus understood the professional value of complimenting one’s mentors in permanent Latin.

And then there are those dark centers. From a distance, they provide beautiful contrast to the golden petals.

Up close, they resemble tiny fuzzy voids staring back into one’s soul and silently judging one’s watering habits.

Mine have ample reason to judge.

Yet beneath the humor, there is something quietly heroic about these flowers. During the most punishing weeks of August, when much of the garden looked exhausted by heat and drought, the black-eyed Susans continued facing the sun with open, cheerful faces. They did not deny the harshness of the season. They simply answered it with gold.

A bed of them resembles a living golden quilt spread across the resting earth. Bees visit them. Butterflies pause upon them, gathering nourishment for the journeys ahead. Even as summer begins to withdraw, the Susans remain generous. Their beauty is not merely decorative; it feeds something.

There is folklore that imagines such golden blossoms as drops of sunlight fallen to earth, keeping the soil warm as the world turns toward winter. Whether or not the old stories are literally true, the image feels right.

Black-eyed Susans hold the color of the sun near the ground just when the light begins to change.

Perhaps that is their lesson for this morning.

Resilience does not always look solemn or heroic. Sometimes it looks slightly unruly. Sometimes it spreads beyond the boundaries assigned to it. Sometimes it lifts a bright face beneath a threatening sky and goes on blooming without waiting for conditions to become ideal.

The garden is dry. Thunderstorms may come, or they may wander elsewhere. Summer is loosening its hold. Autumn waits somewhere beyond the trees.

Still, the black-eyed Susans bloom.

Mahler plays. The coffee is warm. A hidden cardinal offers beauty from the shadows, and a blue jay provides unsolicited commentary.

And so starts this day.
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May we meet it as the Susans do: open to the light, generous to those passing through, resilient in difficult ground—and just unbothered enough to keep blooming.

~Wylddane

“Sometimes the path back to who we were leads us more deeply into who we are.”  ~Wylddane

This morning, a stray rain shower drifted through the woods outside the window behind my desk.

It was not a determined rain. It had no ambitions of ending the drought, filling the lake, or earning a dramatic mention on the evening weather report. It simply passed through—softly tapping the leaves, darkening the tree trunks, and briefly adding its quiet percussion to the music coming from the stereo.

Inside the wee cottage, the desk lamp cast its familiar pool of warm light. Steam rose from my coffee mug.

For a few moments, the room held that particular kind of contentment created by rain, music, lamplight, and coffee—all of them ordinary, all of them somehow conspiring to make the morning feel sacred.

And then an old photograph carried me away.

It was taken years ago during a walk along a restored wetlands trail leading toward Rockaway Beach in Pacifica. Strangely, I remember the moment I stopped to take it. Not approximately. Not as one remembers a general season of life. I remember that particular pause, as though the person I was then had taken the photograph only moments ago and had just handed it to me.

There was the stream beside the trail, babbling toward the ocean as if it knew exactly where it belonged.

There was the distant, steady sound of the surf. There were red-winged blackbirds calling from the reeds, flashing those bright shoulder patches as they flew. There was the cool Pacific air and that unmistakable mingling of damp earth, grasses, creek water, and salt.

A photograph captures only a fraction of a second, but a walk unfolds over hours. Somehow, that single image compressed the entire journey into itself—the sounds, the weather, the light, the landscape, and the person who moved through it.

Perhaps this is one of the gentler forms of time travel.

We do not need a complicated machine with blinking lights, mysterious levers, and a scientist shouting that something has gone terribly wrong. Sometimes all we need is an old photograph and enough quiet to look at it.

The photograph opens, and suddenly the distance between then and now becomes very small.

There I am—the person I once was—walking along the trail. He does not know the life that awaits him. He does not know all that will be gained or lost, the people who will arrive, the ones who will leave, or the roads that will eventually lead him from the Pacific coast to a wee cottage in the Wisconsin woods.

He does not know that one rainy morning, years later, I will be sitting at a desk remembering him.

And I, of course, know what he could not.

That is the strange tenderness of looking at our former selves. We see them moving innocently toward a future that has already become our past. We may wish we could call out to them with warnings or encouragement:

Do not worry quite so much.
Stay longer at the ocean.
Take more photographs.
And for heaven’s sake, wear more comfortable shoes.

But perhaps our former selves do not need our instructions. Perhaps they need only our kindness.

Celtic folklore speaks of spirit walkers—figures moving between the visible world and the unseen one. An old photograph can make a spirit walker of the person we used to be. For a little while, that earlier self walks beside us again—not as a ghost to be mourned, but as a companion to be welcomed.

In Greek mythology, Ariadne’s thread guided Theseus through the labyrinth and safely home again. Perhaps our remembered paths serve a similar purpose. The trail beside the wetlands, the stream flowing toward Rockaway Beach, the distant Pacific—all become part of the thread connecting who we were with who we are.

We sometimes imagine our lives as a succession of separate selves: the child, the young adult, the middle-aged person, the person we are today. Yet they are not strangers replacing one another. They are fellow travelers on the same long path. Each carries something forward. Each leaves something behind. Each takes a few steps and then hands the journey to the next.

The person walking beside that Pacific stream is still within me.

So is the child who listened to distant trains in the night. So is the man who walked along Sharp Park Beach beneath a gray sky. So is every version of me who stood somewhere beautiful without realizing that the moment would one day become precious.

Perhaps that is why old photographs can move us so deeply. They remind us that ordinary moments do not announce their importance. A walk is simply a walk. Rain is simply rain. A red-winged blackbird calls from the reeds, the ocean sounds in the distance, and someone pauses to take a photograph.

Only later do we understand that we were preserving a landmark of the heart.

Ancient mariners believed certain landmarks held the spirits of safe returns. I like that thought. Perhaps the places we have loved remain inside us as quiet anchors. We may be separated from them by years and miles, yet they still know the way to bring us home—not necessarily to the place itself, but to the peace we once found there.

This morning, I traveled back to Rockaway Beach without leaving my chair.

I walked beside the stream. I heard the blackbirds. I listened to the surf. And for a little while, the man I was then walked beside the man I am now.

Neither of us needed to explain anything.

We simply followed the trail together.

Then the rain outside my window stopped. The last drops slipped from the leaves. The music continued, and my coffee mug had become suspiciously empty.

The past released me gently into the present.

And perhaps that is the gift: not to live backward, nor to clutch at what has gone, but to recognize that no moment of genuine beauty is ever entirely lost. It becomes part of the thread. It travels with us. It waits quietly in a photograph, a melody, the scent of rain, or the distant sound of water until we are ready to find it again.

So let us be attentive to this day.

Somewhere within it may be a moment our future self will treasure—a patch of unexpected light, a bird calling from the trees, rain passing through the woods, or steam rising from a freshly filled mug.

We will probably not recognize it as history.

That is all right.

The best moments seldom know what they are becoming.
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And so this day starts—not at the beginning, exactly, but somewhere along the long and beautiful trail between who we were and who we are still becoming.

~Wylddane

“Not every darkness must be banished; sometimes it only needs a lamp.”  ~Wylddane

The argument began at 8:17 on Monday morning when Martha walked into Bean & Birch wearing an orange scarf patterned with tiny golden leaves.

It was a beautiful scarf. It was also entirely unnecessary. Outside, Lone Pine was wrapped in warm, humid air that felt more like July than the final morning of August.

Lucy looked up from the espresso machine.

“You do know it’s seventy-two degrees already?”

“Yes,” Martha replied. “But tomorrow is the first day of fall.”

From the coffee gang’s favorite table, Sam lowered his mug.

“No, it isn’t.”

Martha stopped.

She slowly turned toward him.

There are moments when a sensible person realizes that silence is the wisest course. Sam, though otherwise a sensible man, had never been especially gifted at recognizing those moments.

“Fall begins at the equinox,” he continued. “September twenty-second.”

“Fall begins tomorrow,” Martha said. “September first. Meteorological fall.”

“That isn’t real fall.”

“It has the word fall in it.”

“So does ‘fallen soufflé,’” Sam said. “That doesn’t make it a season.”

By then, the entire table had grown quiet. Even Toby had stopped buttering his cinnamon toast.

Maren emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of scones.

“What are we fighting about?”

“The first day of fall,” said Erica.

“Again?” Maren asked.

Apparently this had happened before.

Martha removed her scarf, folded it carefully, and placed it on the back of her chair. The removal suggested neither surrender nor discomfort. It had the solemnity of a lawyer setting down her briefcase before addressing the jury.

“Meteorological fall begins September first,” she explained. “September, October, November. Three complete months. Neat, orderly and sensible.”

Sam shook his head. “Astronomical fall begins at the equinox, when the sun crosses the celestial equator.”

Martha looked toward the others.

“He rehearsed that.”

“I read,” Sam replied.

“Instructions for power tools do not count.”

Tom raised one hand. “I would like to point out that neither the atmosphere nor the sun has consulted Lone Pine.”

“That is true,” said Liam. “Around here, fall begins whenever someone smells woodsmoke and becomes emotionally attached to a sweater.”

“Or when Maren puts pumpkin muffins in the display case,” Toby added.

Everyone looked toward Maren.

“They’ll be here tomorrow,” she admitted.

Martha sat back triumphantly. “The prosecution rests.”

“The prosecution has a pastry-based case,” Sam said. “That won’t hold up in court.”

“It would in Wisconsin,” said Erica.

Lucy brought a fresh pot of coffee to the table. “Personally, I think fall begins the first morning you step outside and say, ‘Ooh, it’s chilly,’ and then go back in for a jacket.”

“No,” said Tom. “It begins the first day somebody complains about people who like pumpkin spice.”

“I don’t complain about them,” Sam said. “I simply question their judgment.”

“Repeatedly,” Martha noted.

“And at considerable length,” Erica added.

Toby, who had resumed buttering his toast, said, “Maybe we need categories.”

He took a paper napkin and borrowed a pen from Liam.

Across the top, he wrote:

OFFICIAL SIGNS THAT FALL HAS ARRIVED

“First,” he said, “meteorological fall: September first.”

Martha nodded.

“Second, astronomical fall: the equinox.”

Sam nodded.

“Third, culinary fall: pumpkin muffins.”

Maren nodded.

“Fourth,” Lucy said, “wardrobe fall: Martha’s scarf.”

Martha nodded again.

“Fifth,” Tom added, “Wisconsin fall: the day you turn on the furnace in the morning and the air conditioner in the afternoon.”

Everyone nodded at that.

“Sixth,” said Erica, “emotional fall.”

Toby paused with the pen above the napkin.

“What is emotional fall?”

Erica looked through the front window. Across the street, the maples were still mostly green, although one small branch near the top of the oldest tree had begun to turn a muted shade of red.

“It’s when you notice the first changed leaf,” she said, “and something inside you changes with it.”

The table grew quiet.

Not an uncomfortable quiet. Bean & Birch had many kinds of silence, and this was one of its better ones—the silence that came when somebody had said something worth leaving alone for a moment.

Outside, a pickup truck rolled slowly down Main Street. Inside, the coffee grinder whirred, dishes clinked in the kitchen, and a soft jazz piano wandered beneath the ordinary sounds of the café.

Liam rested both hands around his mug.

“I suppose seasons rarely arrive on a single day,” he said. “They send small announcements ahead of themselves. A cool morning. An early sunset. One red leaf. A certain slant of light.”

“A pumpkin muffin,” Toby added.

“Yes,” Liam said gravely. “Even a pumpkin muffin.”

Martha looked at Sam. “So you admit that I’m right?”

“I admit that you are one-third right.”

“Two-thirds.”

“One-third.”

“Three-quarters.”

“That is not how thirds work.”

“It’s meteorological mathematics.”

Lucy returned with the coffeepot and topped off their mugs. She had heard enough of the debate to recognize that it was unlikely to produce a winner.

“Perhaps,” she said, “fall begins whenever you are ready to welcome it.”

Martha considered this.
Sam considered it too.

It was, they both realized, an intolerably reasonable answer.

“But that means everyone could have a different first day of fall,” Sam protested.

“Of course,” Lucy replied. “People have different first days for almost everything that matters.”

She moved around the table, filling one mug after another.

“The first day you feel at home somewhere. The first day a stranger becomes a friend. The first day grief doesn’t accompany you into every room. Those dates aren’t printed on calendars either.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Then Martha reached behind her chair, picked up the orange scarf and draped it around Sam’s shoulders.

“There,” she said. “Now it’s fall.”

Sam stared at her.

The scarf looked surprisingly handsome against his blue flannel shirt, although no one was prepared to tell him that.

Toby studied the napkin again and added one final category:

Bean & Birch fall: 8:43 a.m., August 31. Confirmed by scarf.

Maren divided the last maple-pecan scone into seven uneven pieces and passed them around the table.

Lucy refilled the coffeepot. Sam left the scarf around his shoulders, claiming it was only because removing it would give Martha the satisfaction of believing she had annoyed him.

Outside, the morning remained warm and humid. The maples remained green. Summer had not disappeared, and autumn had not fully arrived.

But around the favorite table, among coffee mugs, crumbs, gentle teasing and old friends, a small season of its own had begun.

It was substantive enough to matter and light enough to carry.

And perhaps that was all anyone really needed from a Monday morning.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

This final morning of August is quiet.

Warm and humid weather has returned, and the air conditioner hums steadily in the wee cottage. Beyond the windows, the morning is still dark. Inside, lamps cast their warm pools of light across familiar rooms.

Beside me, coffee steams in my Leona mug. Its aroma is rich and comforting. The first taste is deeply satisfying—the kind of small pleasure that asks for no explanation or defense. Before long the mug will need refilling, and that thought itself feels reassuring. There will be more coffee. There will be another small beginning.

Yesterday was a difficult day, although nothing particularly difficult happened.

I was lethargic—perhaps even a little depressed. Nothing interested me. I drifted through the hours, napping for a while, reading for a while, and then napping again. Even the thought of doing something felt uncomfortable. The day did not feel tragic or dramatic. It simply felt heavy.

Because that is not normally the way I move through my days, I notice its remnants this morning.

I do not know what caused it. Perhaps it was the end of August and the subtle melancholy that comes with any ending. Perhaps it was the approaching end of summer, even though autumn is my favorite season. Perhaps it was grief for my dear friend who died at the beginning of this summer—grief moving quietly beneath the surface, requiring no anniversary or invitation before making itself known.

Or perhaps yesterday was simply a low day.
Not every feeling arrives with an explanation.

We often believe that if we can name the cause of a feeling, we can manage it, correct it or usher it politely out the door. But the heart is not always so orderly. Some sadness comes without a clear story. Some weariness cannot be solved by making a list or thinking more positively. Sometimes the most honest thing we can say is: Yesterday was hard, and I do not entirely know why.

That honesty is not ingratitude.

It is possible to love one’s life and still have a difficult day. It is possible to recognize our blessings while also recognizing the shadows. Gratitude does not require us to pretend that darkness is light. Rather, it gives us a lamp to carry into the darker places.

And so, this morning, I count my blessings—not to erase yesterday, but to meet today.

There is the wee cottage, warm and softly illuminated against the darkness.
There is the steady hum of the air conditioner, keeping the returning humidity outside.
There is the Leona mug beneath my hand and the coffee within it, fragrant, hot and satisfying.
There are books waiting to be read, music waiting to be heard, friends waiting to be remembered and loved.
There is this quiet hour in which nothing is demanded of me.
There is September waiting just beyond midnight.

Tomorrow, meteorological autumn begins. Astronomical autumn will take its time, arriving with the equinox later in the month. The trees will follow their own calendars. One leaf will redden, then another. The mornings will cool. The light will soften. Sweaters will return, coffee will taste even better, and the wee cottage will settle into the season it seems to love best.

Perhaps we are like that too.

Perhaps our inner seasons do not change because a calendar tells them to. Perhaps hope does not always arrive dramatically. Sometimes it begins with one small sign: getting out of bed, turning on a lamp, brewing coffee, noticing that its aroma is pleasing, realizing that today feels a little lighter than yesterday.

That may not seem like much.

This morning, it feels like enough.

I can say goodbye to August with gratitude for all that it held—the beautiful and the difficult, the laughter and the grief, the abundant light and the shadowed afternoons. I do not have to decide that every day was good. I need only recognize that every day was part of the season, part of the journey, part of this life I remain grateful to be living.

Soon I will refill my mug.
Soon the darkness beyond the windows will soften into morning.
Soon August will give way to September, summer will begin its slow surrender to autumn, and the world will move forward—not hurriedly, not all at once, but one changed leaf at a time.

And so starts this day.

Not with every shadow banished, but with a warm light shining among them.
​
Not with all sadness explained, but with gratitude beside it.

Not with a grand declaration of hope, but with a steaming mug, a beloved cottage, the promise of autumn—and the quiet realization that this life, even on its heavier days, remains worth carrying tenderly forward.

~Wylddane



​

A Bean & Birch Tale

By seven-thirty on Saturday morning, there wasn't a dry umbrella in Lone Pine.

Nobody minded.

Rain had begun sometime before dawn—not thunderous rain, not the furious sort that hammered rooftops and sent water racing uselessly toward culverts, but a soft and persistent rain.

The good kind.
The kind that stayed.

It whispered through the maples along Main Street. It tapped against windows. It gathered on cedar branches until the droplets grew fat enough to fall. It darkened lawns that had spent most of August looking tired and defeated.

And everywhere, the earth seemed to be drinking.

At Bean & Birch, Maren had propped open the front door.

Lucy noticed immediately.

“You're letting the damp in.”

Maren continued arranging blueberry muffins beneath the glass dome.

“We've spent two months begging for damp. We're not shutting it out now.”

Lucy considered this.

“Fair point.”

Outside, rain pattered against the awning.

Inside, coffee steamed.

And soon the Saturday morning congregation began arriving.

Erica and Tom came first, Erica shaking an umbrella just outside the door.

“I stepped in a puddle,” she announced.

“You're sixty-something years old,” Tom said.

“I know.”

“On purpose.”

“Absolutely.”

Maren slid a mug toward her. “How was it?”

“Wonderful.”

Tom sighed. “She's seven.”

“I am temporarily seven.”

Sam arrived next, smelling faintly of wet flannel and cedar.

“You know what wet sawdust smells like?” he asked nobody in particular.

Nobody answered.

“Heaven.”

Toby came through the door a few minutes later but didn't immediately enter. Instead, he stood beneath the awning, hands in his pockets, staring toward the street.

“Toby?” Lucy called.

He raised one finger.

“Listening.”

So everyone listened.

Rain on the awning.
Rain in the gutters.
Rain against the pavement.
Rain whispering through the trees.

Toby finally stepped inside.

“Haven't heard that in a while.”

Nobody needed to ask what he meant.

Then the door opened and Martha appeared.

She had no umbrella.

Her jacket was soaked, and her famously fuchsia hair had collapsed against her forehead in several spectacular wet spikes.

Erica stared.

“Martha.”

“What?”

“You own an umbrella.”

“Three.”

“Then why—”

Martha peeled off her jacket.

“I have complained for six weeks about being dry. I refuse to begin complaining about being wet.”

She looked around the room.

“Coffee.”

Maren already had it waiting.

“Bless you.”

A few minutes later Ethan and Liam arrived from Stillwater Gleam with Bear and Mabel in tow.

Bear entered Bean & Birch with the swagger of an animal who had apparently discovered rain personally and was prepared to take full credit for it.

He shook.

Violently.

“BEAR!”

Half the room shouted it simultaneously.

Bear looked delighted.

Mabel, meanwhile, stood beside Liam wearing the expression of a border collie who considered precipitation a regrettable administrative failure.

Ethan laughed.

“You should see the lake.”

That quieted everyone.

“How is it?” Sam asked.

“Beautiful.”

Ethan pulled off his rain jacket.

“The whole surface is dancing. Little silver rings everywhere. And you can smell the cedars again.”

Liam settled into his chair.

“The shoreline is already darker.”

“Think it'll help?” Erica asked.

Liam looked toward the rain-streaked windows.

“It'll help.”

It wasn't a promise that the drought was over.

Everyone understood that.

One morning of rain could not erase weeks of drought. The rivers would not suddenly rise. The lakes would not refill overnight. The gardens would not forget the long, hot summer.

But still--
it was raining.

And sometimes still was enough.

They had just begun passing around a plate of cinnamon rolls when the door opened again.

A father entered with a little girl of perhaps six or seven.

She wore yellow rain boots and carried something carefully between both hands.

A small glass jar.

Maren noticed it while pouring the father's coffee.

“What have you got there?”

“Rain.”

The girl held up the jar.

Indeed, there was perhaps an inch of water inside.

“You collected it?”

The girl nodded.

“Why?”

She looked at Maren as though the answer should have been obvious.

“Because I wanted to save some in case it forgets how to rain again.”

The coffee table went silent.

Even Martha had nothing to say.

For approximately four seconds.

Then she whispered, “Well, hell.”

Lucy gave her a look.

“What? That was beautiful.”

The little girl and her father carried their breakfast to a table near the window.

Maren disappeared into the kitchen.

She returned carrying an empty jelly jar.

She opened the front door, stepped outside, and placed it beneath the edge of the awning.

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

“Saving some.”

Everyone laughed.

But nobody told her it was silly.

By nine o'clock, the little jar held nearly two inches of rainwater.

Maren brought it inside, dried the outside with a towel, screwed on the lid, and placed it on the windowsill behind the coffee bar.

Sam found a scrap of paper.

Toby found a pen.

Martha supplied the handwriting.

AUGUST 29
THE RAIN CAME BACK

They taped the little label to the jar.

For a while everyone looked at it.

A jar of rainwater.

Completely ordinary.

Utterly priceless.

Liam wrapped both hands around his coffee mug.

“Maybe that's what hope is.”

Ethan looked over.

“What?”

Liam nodded toward the windowsill.

“Saving a little of today for the next time you're convinced tomorrow will never come.”

Nobody spoke.

Outside, the rain continued.

Soft.
Steady.
Patient.

The thirsty earth drank.
The trees lifted their leaves.

Stillwater Gleam danced beneath a gray August sky.

And inside Bean & Birch, another pot of coffee began to brew.

Martha lifted her empty mug.

“Well, if we're saving miracles, somebody better save me some of that.”

Lucy laughed.

“Coffee isn't a miracle.”

Martha stared at her.

“Take that back.”

And the Rain Table erupted in laughter while, beyond the windows, Lone Pine quietly turned green again.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

This morning the coffee tastes especially good.

I am not entirely certain why.

Perhaps it is the cool, damp breeze coming through the open window. Perhaps it is because after so many hot and dusty August mornings, the air itself feels washed clean.

Or perhaps coffee simply tastes better when accompanied by rain.

The stereo plays softly, but this morning the musicians have acquired an unexpected percussion section.

Rain against the deck.
Rain against the windows.
Rain tapping upon the leaves of the towering oaks surrounding the wee cottage.

Beyond it all comes the indignant squawk of a blue jay, apparently determined that even a drought-ending rainstorm will not interfere with his morning commentary.

Somewhere farther away, a cardinal offers his gentler note.

Music.
Rain.
Birdsong.
And coffee.

Not a bad way for a day to begin.

For weeks now, this corner of the northwoods has lived beneath the word drought.

We have watched lawns fade, gardens struggle, rivers shrink and lakes retreat from their familiar shorelines. We have watched clouds gather hopefully only to pass overhead carrying their rain somewhere else.

After a while, drought becomes more than a meteorological condition.

It becomes a mood.

You begin expecting disappointment.

Perhaps that is why this morning's rain feels like more than water.

It feels like hope.

Of course, several hours of rain cannot undo an entire summer's thirst. Stillwater Gleam will not rise magically by noon. The rivers will need more. The trees will need more. The deep soil will need more.

But this morning, none of that diminishes the gift.

Because sometimes hope does not arrive as the solution.

Sometimes hope arrives simply as evidence that change is possible.

A drop.
Then another.
Then another.

Until suddenly the roof is singing.

Perhaps our lives have droughts too.

Times when inspiration seems absent. Times when kindness feels scarce. Times when the world appears determined to become harsher and noisier and more frightened. Times when something we have quietly hoped for seems no closer than it was yesterday.

We wait.
And wait.

Eventually we may stop looking toward the sky.

Then one morning--
rain.

Not necessarily enough to fix everything.

Just enough to remind us that nothing stays exactly as it is forever.

That may be one of hope's greatest gifts.

Hope does not require us to pretend the drought never happened. It asks only that we remain open to the possibility of rain.

Outside my window this morning, the leaves of the oaks tremble beneath the droplets. The garden looks refreshed. The world beyond the wee cottage is gray and wet and beautiful.

And somewhere beneath all of it, roots are drinking.

There is something comforting about that thought.

Much of what restores us happens quietly.

A conversation.
A friend's laughter.
A beautiful piece of music.
A bird singing from a rain-soaked branch.
A cool breeze through an open window.
A cup of coffee held between two hands.

Small things working their way down toward the roots.

The rain continues.

I think I will leave the window open and listen.

There will be time enough later for whatever this Saturday asks of me.

For now there is rain.

There is music.
There is coffee.
There is hope.

And perhaps that is plenty.

I reach for my mug and discover it is nearly empty.

Well.

Hope may sustain the soul.

But the coffee pot is considerably closer.

And so this rainy August day begins.

~Wylddane

“We may move the hands of the clock, but the sun keeps its own time.”
~Wylddane

The trouble began at Bean & Birch at precisely 8:07 on Thursday morning.

Or possibly 7:07.

That, Ethan would later argue, was the entire problem.

Outside, the August morning had finally brightened over Lone Pine. Sunlight slipped through the front windows of Bean & Birch and fell in long golden rectangles across the wooden floor. Inside, Maren was behind the counter steaming milk, Lucy was arranging blueberry scones beneath the glass dome, and the usual coffee gang had assembled around the big table near the window.

Ethan arrived carrying the expression of a man who had already found something wrong with civilization before breakfast.

"Daylight Saving Time," he announced.

Martha looked up from buttering a scone.

"What did it do now?"

"It made morning dark."

"Morning gets dark every year," Toby said.

"Not unnecessarily."

Ethan removed his jacket and sat down.

Maren arrived with his coffee.

"Careful," she said. "He's been thinking."

"Before coffee?" Lucy called from behind the counter. "That's dangerous."

"I had coffee at home."

"Then there is no excuse," Martha said.

Ethan took a sip.

"This morning I woke up, wandered toward the coffee pot, and realized how dark these late-August mornings have become. And once again I asked myself the obvious question."

Everyone waited.

"What exactly are we saving?"

Toby raised a finger.

"Daylight."

"No," Ethan said. "We're moving it."

"We're saving it for later."

"Where?"

Toby hesitated.

Ethan leaned forward.

"Is there a daylight warehouse somewhere?"

Sam looked thoughtful.

"Probably outside Eau Claire."

That was when Martha decided the matter required judicial intervention.

She picked up a teaspoon and struck her coffee mug three times.

"Order! The Bean & Birch Court of Temporal Affairs is now in session."

"Oh, Lord," Maren murmured.

Martha pointed the spoon at Ethan.

"You may proceed."

Ethan stood.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury—"

"We don't have a jury," Toby said.

"You are the jury."

"Then who's the defendant?"

"Daylight Saving Time."

Lucy leaned over the counter.

"Can we convict it?"

"We haven't heard the evidence," Sam said.

"I've heard enough."

Martha banged the mug again.

"Order!"

And so began The People of Lone Pine versus Daylight Saving Time.

Ethan presented Exhibit A: morning darkness.

Exhibit B: people stumbling toward coffee makers while their bodies remained convinced it was the middle of the night.

Exhibit C: the general absurdity of pretending human beings could alter the amount of daylight by changing numbers on clocks.

"We have electric lights," Ethan argued. "When evening becomes dark, I perform an astonishing technological maneuver."

He paused dramatically.

"I flip a switch."

Lucy applauded.

"Remarkable."

"And then?"

"The light comes on."

Maren shook her head.

"What will they think of next?"

Toby, appointed counsel for the defense because nobody else wanted the job, attempted an argument about summer barbecues, evening softball games, and sitting on patios until nine o'clock.

"Electric lights," Ethan said.

"Baseball fields have them," Sam added.

"Patios have them," Lucy said.

"My deck has them," Martha said.

Toby frowned.

"This courtroom is hostile."

"It is also caffeinated," said Martha. "Continue."

Ethan then introduced the biological evidence: human circadian rhythms respond strongly to natural light, particularly morning light. Standard Time more closely aligns clock time with the solar day. Bright mornings help tell the body that the day has begun; darker evenings help tell it that the day is ending.

Sam nodded.

"So basically the sun has been setting the clock correctly for several billion years."

"Approximately."

"And we decided we knew better?"

"Apparently."

Martha sighed.

"That sounds like us."

There was silence around the table.

Then Toby made one final plea for the defense.

"But don't you like those long summer evenings?"

Ethan considered this.

"Yes."

"Aha!"

"I also like chocolate cake. That doesn't mean I should reorganize the Earth's rotation around dessert."

Lucy laughed so hard she had to put down the coffee pot.

Martha struck the mug.

"The court is prepared to rule."

Everyone became solemn.

Even Maren stopped wiping the counter.

Martha cleared her throat.

"Having reviewed the evidence, consumed one blueberry scone, half of another, and approximately fourteen ounces of dark-roast coffee, this court finds Daylight Saving Time..."

She paused.

"...guilty of impersonating time."

The table erupted.

"Sentence?" Sam asked.

"Immediate deportation."

"Where?"

Martha considered this.

"Arizona."

There was another explosion of laughter.

Eventually the conversation wandered elsewhere, as conversations at Bean & Birch always did. Someone mentioned the weather. Someone else wondered whether the drought would finally break. Lucy brought another plate of scones. Maren changed the music.

And outside the windows, completely indifferent to clocks, legislation, congressional committees, summer recreation schedules, and the Bean & Birch Court of Temporal Affairs, the morning continued arriving.

The sun climbed higher.
A raven crossed the brightening sky.
Somewhere beyond Lone Pine, an oak released an acorn.
And time went quietly on.


* * * * * * * * * * * *

Earlier this morning, before Bean & Birch existed anywhere except in imagination, I wandered through the wee cottage toward the coffee maker.

It was dark.

These late-August mornings are noticeably darker now, and because I am a morning person, I notice. I want morning light. I want that first pale illumination along the eastern horizon, the gradual revelation of trees, the transformation of black windows into windows again.

Instead, I switched on a lamp.

And while the coffee brewed, the first music of the morning began.

Ralph Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending.

There could hardly have been a better choice.

The violin rose gently through the darkened cottage, tentative at first and then soaring, as though somewhere beyond the windows the day itself were gathering courage.

Coffee poured.
Steam rose.
Music filled the room.

And I found myself thinking about time.

Not time in the great philosophical sense, but that peculiar human invention by which twice each year we march through our houses adjusting clocks and pretending we have somehow altered daylight.

We haven't.
We cannot save daylight.
We cannot manufacture morning.
We cannot store July sunshine in some celestial account and withdraw it during January.
We merely move numbers around.

There is something almost endearingly human about that.

We take the immense machinery of the universe—the turning Earth, its journey around the sun, the tilt of its axis, the changing seasons—and announce:

We have decided it should be an hour later.

The universe presumably continues without comment.

Perhaps that is what bothers me about Daylight Saving Time.

My clock may say one thing.
My body knows another.

The birds know.
The oak trees know.
The lark certainly knows.

There is an older clock inside us, one that existed long before watches, smartphones, railroad timetables, congressional legislation, or microwave ovens flashing 12:00 after a power failure.

It is wound by sunlight.

Morning light says: Wake.
Evening darkness says: Rest.

And perhaps there is wisdom in allowing ourselves to belong, whenever possible, to that older rhythm.

We modern humans are very good at fighting darkness.

We have lamps.
Streetlights.
Headlights.
Fireplaces.
Candles.

The warm pool of light from a desk lamp.

The golden windows of a restaurant on a winter evening.

The welcoming glow of home.

Darkness arriving earlier does not frighten me.

There is something wonderfully comforting about the wee cottage when evening settles around it—the woods disappearing beyond the windows while inside there is warmth, music, a book waiting to be read, and light enough for everything that needs doing.

But morning light is different.

Morning light is not merely illumination.

It is announcement.

The world is beginning again.

And now, as I finish these thoughts, the darkness that surrounded the cottage when I first poured my coffee has disappeared.

Outside my window, the towering oaks are softly illuminated by yellow-gold morning light.

The woods have emerged from shadow.

The day has found me.

Then--

TOCK.

An acorn hits the deck.

Apparently one of the oaks has decided that Vaughan Williams has had quite enough time on the program and percussion should now begin.

I smile.

Coffee beside me.

Morning light through the trees.

The last notes of The Lark Ascending somewhere in memory.

Perhaps the clocks can argue among themselves.

The sun knows what time it is.

And so, apparently, does the oak.

Tock.
​
And so starts this day.

~Wylddane

It was Wednesday morning in Lone Pine, and Bean & Birch was unusually subdued.

Not silent, mind you. Bean & Birch was never silent.

The espresso machine hissed like an irritated cat. Cups clattered against saucers. Someone near the window was trying to explain to someone else why the Packers were either going to have a magnificent season or a disastrous one, apparently with no possibility in between.

But underneath it all was music.

Dolly Parton.

Maren had chosen it that morning. Lucy hadn't asked why.

Nobody needed to.

By the time the coffee gang had assembled around their usual table, Dolly was singing “Jolene.”

Martha arrived last, carrying a blueberry scone large enough to require its own zip code.

“Well,” she announced as she settled into her chair, “if Jolene looked anything like Dolly described her, the rest of us never stood a chance.”

That got the first real laugh of the morning.

“I always liked ‘9 to 5,’” Erica said. “That song could make you want to overthrow capitalism and dance while doing it.”

“Which is pretty much what the movie did,” Tom added.

“Oh, that movie!” Martha cried.

And suddenly everyone was talking at once.

They remembered Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly plotting revenge against their horrible boss. They remembered the fantasies about what each woman would like to do to him. Martha began reenacting one scene with such enthusiasm that Lucy called from behind the counter:

“Martha, whatever you're doing, please remember this is a licensed food establishment.”

That brought another round of laughter.

Then the music changed.

The opening notes were softer now.

“I Will Always Love You.”

The table grew quiet.

“I think that's the thing about her,” Erica finally said. “She could be absolutely hilarious one minute and break your heart the next.”

“And she wrote it,” Liam said. “That's what people sometimes forget. She wasn't simply a singer. She was a remarkable songwriter.”

He took a sip of coffee.

“She understood people.”

Perhaps that was it.

Dolly understood people.

Not people as demographic groups. Not people as political constituencies. Not people as markets or audiences.

People.

The poor mountain child who needed a book.
The gay kid who needed to hear that somebody famous thought he was perfectly fine just as he was.
The working woman who was tired of being underestimated.
The person who needed laughter.
The person whose heart had just been broken.
The person who simply needed a song.

They talked about the Imagination Library and the millions of books placed into the hands of children. They talked about her support for medical research. They talked about her willingness, over the years, to stand beside LGBTQ+ people when others found it more convenient to stand somewhere else.

“She made kindness look easy,” Maren said, joining them with the coffee pot.

Liam shook his head.

“No. I don't think kindness is ever easy. I think she made it look natural.”

Maren smiled.

“That's better.”

Lucy came over carrying a plate of warm cinnamon rolls.

“And she was funny,” she said. “Never forget funny.”

“Oh, I've got one,” Martha said.

Everyone braced themselves.

She raised one finger dramatically.

“Dolly said, ‘I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb…’”

Several people around the table joined her for the ending:

“…and I also know that I'm not blonde.”

The table erupted.

“That,” Martha declared, “is wisdom.”

Another quote followed.

“Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

Then another:

“I never tried quitting, and I never quit trying.”

For a while nobody said anything.

Outside the windows of Bean & Birch, Lone Pine was beginning another ordinary Wednesday. Cars passed along Main Street. Someone walked a dog. A raven flew over the rooftops. The clouds hung low over Stillwater Gleam.

Inside, coffee steamed in mugs.

Dolly sang.

And a group of friends sat together remembering someone none of them had actually known and yet, somehow, felt they had.

Perhaps that is one of the strange gifts of certain people.

They enter our lives without ever entering our rooms.

Their songs become attached to summers and heartbreaks and road trips and kitchens. Their words become things we repeat without remembering where we first heard them. Their laughter becomes familiar.

And then one day they are gone.

But not entirely.

Martha stared into her coffee.

“I saw something online this morning,” she said.

There was a dangerous twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, Lord,” Tom murmured.

“Someone said God took the wrong eighty-year-old.”

There was a moment of silence.

Martha shrugged.

“I don't know about that. I strongly suspect God wanted Dolly…”

She paused.

“…and has been screening the other fellow's calls.”

For half a second nobody moved.

Then Liam snorted.

Erica covered her mouth.

Tom nearly spilled his coffee.

Lucy laughed from behind the counter.

And Maren, trying unsuccessfully to look disapproving, simply shook her head.

“Martha.”

“What?”

Dolly kept singing.

And somehow, on a Wednesday morning in a little coffee shop in Lone Pine, laughter and sadness sat down together at the same table.

Which, come to think of it, was probably exactly the way Dolly Parton would have wanted it.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

"The Glorious Pieces of Good"

It is still dark outside the wee cottage.

Rain fell sometime during the night. I can see its traces beyond the window, and perhaps when daylight comes the world will look freshly washed. It wasn't enough rain—not nearly enough for this thirsty Northwoods summer—but it was rain nonetheless.

This morning, I will accept the gift for what it was.

My coffee is beside me.

The cottage is quiet.

And Dolly Parton is singing “I Will Always Love You.”

This morning those familiar words sound different.

Yesterday, the world lost an extraordinary human being.

There are people whose deaths seem to leave an unexpectedly large empty space behind them. Not because we knew them personally. Not because our daily lives will materially change without them. But because their existence offered a kind of reassurance.

They were out there.

Somewhere.

Being decent.
Being generous.
Being funny.
Doing some good.

Dolly Parton seemed to be one of those people.

She possessed extraordinary talent, certainly. But talent alone doesn't explain why her passing feels different. The world has never lacked talented people.

What seems rarer are talented people who remember that talent can be used in the service of something larger than themselves.

Dolly gave children books.

She helped fund medical research.
She stood beside people whom others rejected.
She made people laugh.
She wrote songs for broken hearts.

And through it all she somehow retained that wonderfully mischievous ability to laugh at herself.

Perhaps that is why the words in the image before me seem especially appropriate this morning:

“I make a point to appreciate all the little things in my life. I go out and smell the air after a good, hard rain. These small actions help remind me that there are so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world.”
~Dolly Parton

Great, glorious pieces of good.

What a wonderful phrase.

And what an important thing to remember.

Especially now.

Because goodness rarely shouts.

It doesn't demand the microphone.
It doesn't pound its fist on the table.

Often it is simply a book placed into the hands of a child.

A friend welcomed instead of judged.
A neighbor helped.
A stranger treated gently.
A song that makes someone feel less alone.
A cup of coffee shared.
A flower noticed.

The smell of the earth after rain.

Perhaps making this world better was never meant to be one enormous heroic undertaking.

Perhaps we do it one glorious piece of good at a time.

Dolly did.

And maybe the finest tribute we can offer her isn't merely to play her music today—although I certainly intend to do that.

Maybe it is to notice the opportunities we are given to add our own small pieces of good to the world.

To be generous when stinginess would be easier.
To choose acceptance when others choose judgment.
To laugh.
To encourage.
To help.
To love.

And perhaps most importantly, to notice that despite everything that troubles us, goodness has not disappeared.

It is still here.

Outside my window there is rain clinging to leaves.

Somewhere beyond the darkness, morning is preparing itself.

There is coffee in my mug.
There is music filling the wee cottage.
There are people I love.
There is still beauty.
There is still kindness.
There are still, as Dolly reminded us, so many great, glorious pieces of good in the world.

And this morning I am grateful that for eighty years, one of those glorious pieces of good was named Dolly Parton.

Her voice fills the cottage now.

I Will Always Love You.

My coffee mug needs refilling.

Morning is coming.
​
And so starts this day.

~Wylddane