“We need not wait for the sun in order to carry a little sunlight of our own.”
~Wylddane

This morning the wind is restless.

I hear it moving through the woods beyond my open window, rushing through the leaves with an urgency that makes me wonder whether it carries news from somewhere beyond the horizon. The sky is darkly clouded, and for the first time in what seems like forever, I find myself looking upward with hope.

Perhaps today it will rain.

I take another sip of coffee and listen.

These days of drought have become wearisome. The lakes and rivers of the northwoods are terribly low. The earth is dry. Gardens thirst. Trees show signs of stress. Even the landscape seems tired of waiting.

My iPhone cheerfully informs me that there is an 85 percent chance of rain today.

Wonderful.

Except that when I look more closely, there doesn't seem to be any particular hour when there is an 85 percent chance of rain. Sometime around eight this evening, apparently, there might be a 35 percent chance.
I stare at this information while drinking my coffee and decide there are mysteries of the universe I am simply not meant to understand.

What I do understand is this:

I wish it would rain.

Not one of those summer showers that spits halfheartedly against the windows for seven minutes before wandering somewhere else. I want rain that settles in. Gentle rain. Steady rain. The kind that drums softly upon the roof throughout the night and is still falling when morning comes. Rain that lasts long enough for the earth to stop merely getting wet and begin drinking.

Perhaps several days of it.

Outside, the wind continues to move restlessly through the trees.

And then my eyes return to the rose begonia.

This is my first summer growing these remarkable flowers, and almost every day I discover something new about them. I find myself studying their blossoms—the impossible yellows and golds, the blushes of pink and coral, the petals folded upon petals as though some extravagant artist simply couldn't decide when enough was enough.

But what fascinates me most is their light.

They seem to glow from within.

Even on a morning such as this, beneath a sky heavy with clouds, the blossom does not seem merely to reflect light. Somehow it appears to possess its own.

And perhaps that is why I need this particular flower this morning.

There are seasons when the world does not give us what we think we need.

There are droughts of the earth, certainly.

But there are other droughts as well.

Times when kindness seems scarce.
Times when hope feels depleted.
Times when the relentless noise of the world becomes exhausting and we find ourselves wishing for something gentle and restorative to settle over us.

A soaking rain for the spirit.

Yet here is this ridiculous, glorious begonia blazing gold and pink against a cloudy August morning.

It cannot make the rain fall.
It cannot refill the St. Croix.
It cannot raise the lakes or quiet the restless wind.
It simply blooms.

And somehow, this morning, that seems like wisdom.

Perhaps we spend too much of our lives waiting for circumstances to become favorable before allowing ourselves to shine.

When the rain comes.
When the problem is solved.
When the uncertainty ends.
When the world becomes kinder.
When life finally behaves itself.

Then we will bloom.

But the rose begonia appears to know better.

It does not wait for the clouds to part before revealing its colors.

It carries its light with it.

Maybe that is one of the quiet lessons of an August garden.

We cannot always change the weather around us.

But we can tend the light within us.

We can offer kindness when kindness seems in short supply. We can notice beauty when the world appears determined to show us ugliness. We can make coffee, open a window, listen to the wind, cherish a flower, call a friend, feed a bird, laugh at an absurd weather forecast.

Small things.

Yet perhaps light has always entered the world through small openings.

So this morning I sit here with my mug of coffee while the wind tosses the trees and clouds gather above the northwoods.

I still hope for rain.

Oh, how I hope for rain.

But until it comes, there is this flower.

Golden.
Pink.
Radiant.

Blooming in the drought.
​
And reminding me that even beneath the darkest clouds, we need not wait for the sun in order to carry a little sunlight of our own.

~Wylddane

“Even in the tired garden of late summer, something is still blooming.”
~Wylddane

This morning I want to walk through my August garden.

Not because it is perfect. Perhaps precisely because it isn't.

By August, a garden has lost the fresh innocence of June. The greens have deepened. Some leaves have browned around the edges. Flowers that once seemed inexhaustible have begun to tire, while others suddenly burst into bloom as if they have been patiently waiting all summer for their moment.

In the photograph, a white clematis opens among all that green—a small, luminous star surrounded by leaves bearing the unmistakable evidence of summer.

This is my August garden.

And perhaps, this morning, it is also me.

August has been difficult this year. Heat. Humidity. Drought. Day after day of waiting for rain that does not come. There is a sameness about prolonged summer heat that eventually begins to work its way into the spirit. The world feels suspended beneath a heavy sky, and I find myself suffering from what I have come to call the August doldrums.

It is not unhappiness, exactly.

It is more like a weariness of sameness.

And I have discovered something about myself during these long summer days: gratitude does not make me immune to being human.

I can know that my life is blessed and still have a day when everything irritates me.

I can believe in the magic of this astonishing Universe and five minutes later become annoyed by some petty inconvenience.

I can sit peacefully with my coffee contemplating eternity—and then find myself muttering about the weather.

Apparently enlightenment has its limits.

And perhaps that is all right.

Most days, when the August doldrums begin creeping into my thoughts, I remind myself of the blessings surrounding me. Most days it works. Some days it kind of works.

And some days?
Not at all.

There is something oddly comforting about admitting that.

The garden does not apologize for having brown leaves.

It does not pretend the drought hasn't been difficult. It does not hide the spent blossoms beneath the new ones. It simply continues—flowering here, fading there, setting seed somewhere else, preparing quietly for whatever comes next.

Ancient people understood August as a threshold.

In the Mediterranean world it belonged to the season of Ceres and Demeter, when attention shifted from growing toward gathering. The fierce late-summer sun carried both blessing and danger. The rising of Sirius marked the legendary "dog days," when heat seemed capable of unsettling plants, animals, and human beings alike.

And in old folklore, wild corners of gardens and fields became mysterious places as summer aged—places where the visible world seemed to brush against something older and unseen.

I rather like that.

Because an August garden does feel like a threshold.

Summer is still here, unquestionably. Yet somewhere beneath the heat something has begun to change.

The shadows are different.
The evening arrives a little sooner.
The morning light carries a slightly more golden hue.

And every now and then there comes a breeze that seems to whisper:

Not yet...but soon.

This morning that whisper feels a little stronger.

The day has dawned cooler. The humidity has dropped. Through the open windows of the wee cottage comes air that actually feels refreshing rather than heavy.

Then, moments ago, a flock of Canada geese flew overhead.

I heard them before I saw them.

Their voices moved across the morning sky, and for just a moment my spirit rose with them.

Perhaps they know something I don't.
Perhaps not.
Perhaps they were simply geese going somewhere geese need to go.

But sometimes grace does not require an explanation.

From the stereo, the beautiful melody of Shostakovich's Romance from The Gadfly drifts quietly through the rooms. I lift my mug and take another sip of coffee.

And then--

a blue jay squawks outside.

So much for transcendence.

I laugh.

And there it is.

The sacred and the ridiculous sharing the same August morning.

Shostakovich and blue jays.

Ancient gods and brown leaves.

The mysteries of the Universe and another mug of coffee.

Contentment and restlessness.

Beauty and imperfection.

All of it belongs.

Perhaps that is what my August garden is trying to teach me.

Life does not have to feel extraordinary every day in order to be extraordinary.

There will be seasons when we flourish and seasons when we simply endure. There will be mornings when gratitude comes easily and mornings when we must go looking for it. There will even be days when we look for it and cannot quite find it.

Still, somewhere in the tangled green, a white flower opens.

Somewhere overhead, geese are flying.

Somewhere beyond the August heat, autumn is gathering itself.

And somewhere inside this ordinary morning, the Universe is quietly reminding me that nothing stays exactly as it is.

So I will stop complaining about August.

Well...
I will try.

And for now I will take my coffee and walk through my August garden—not looking for perfection, not asking summer to hurry away, but simply noticing what is here.

The flowers.
The fading leaves.
The golden light.
The deep shadows.
The abundance.
The weariness.
The promise of change.

And perhaps I will linger beside that white clematis for a moment and remember:
​
Even in the tired garden of late summer, something is still blooming.

~Wylddane



​

“Sometimes change whispers before it arrives.”
~Wylddane

There are mornings when the world seems to be saying something.

Not loudly. Not with thunder or proclamation. It speaks instead through small departures from what we expect—the river running too low, a leaf turning red too soon, the unexpected crow of a rooster somewhere beyond the trees.

Perhaps wisdom begins simply by noticing.

A few days ago, after finishing my errands, I decided to take the scenic route home. I stopped at Nevers Dam Landing, one of my favorite places along the St. Croix River. I have stood there many times and watched the river go about the ancient business of being a river—moving, murmuring, carrying sunlight and shadow downstream.

But this time it was different.

The water was terribly low.

Where once it moved with something resembling laughter, it seemed now to languish beneath the August sun, quiet and overheated. The river looked tired.

I stood at the railing and found myself wishing for rain—not the violent downpours that rush across the land and disappear almost as quickly as they arrive, but the old-fashioned kind: gentle, steady rain falling hour after hour, day after day, soaking slowly into the earth.

The kind of rain that heals rather than merely interrupts.

We need a week of it.
Perhaps more.

Whether this strange summer will give us such a gift remains to be seen.

Then, back at the wee cottage, there is the little tree along the fence line.

Some of its leaves are already turning red.

It isn't even the middle of August.

My first reaction was delight. Autumn! Perhaps my favorite season was sending an advance messenger, slipping one crimson leaf into August as if to say, I'm coming.

But trees sometimes tell harder truths.

Early color can be caused not by approaching autumn but by stress. Heat. Drought. A tree conserving what moisture and strength it has by surrendering leaves it can no longer afford to sustain.

And suddenly that little patch of red seems less like decoration and more like testimony.

There are old stories about such things.

In Algonquin tradition, the great bear of the heavens is pursued across the sky by hunters. When the bear is wounded, its blood falls upon the forests below, staining the leaves red. Other traditions have looked upon early-changing leaves and ripening berries as messages from the land—warnings that the season ahead may be difficult.

I don't know that I believe nature predicts our future.

But I do believe nature tells the truth about the present.

And perhaps that is prophecy enough.

The river is low.
The earth is thirsty.
The leaves are surrendering early.

Something is happening.

And maybe there is a lesson for us in those leaves.

A tree under stress does not waste its remaining strength pretending everything is fine. It lets go of what it cannot sustain and sends its resources inward, toward the trunk, toward the roots, toward what must survive.

There is wisdom in that.

We spend so much of life thinking strength means holding on. Holding everything together. Maintaining appearances. Carrying every obligation, every expectation, every old hurt, every fear.

Yet sometimes survival—and perhaps even transformation—requires exactly the opposite.

Sometimes strength is knowing what to release.

And there is something else about those prematurely colored leaves that stays with me.

The red was there all along.

We simply couldn't see it.

During summer, chlorophyll's green dominates the leaf. As conditions change, other colors become visible—the yellows, oranges, and reds that had been hidden beneath the green.

Perhaps people are not entirely different.

There are seasons when difficulty strips away what ordinarily conceals us. Comfort disappears. Certainties weaken. Familiar patterns no longer work.

And underneath, something essential is revealed.

Courage, perhaps.
Compassion.
Resilience.

Or simply the quiet knowledge that we are stronger than we thought.

This morning, sitting at my desk in the wee cottage, these thoughts drift through my mind while I hold my mug of coffee between my hands.

And then I hear something unexpected.

A rooster.

Somewhere in the distance, beyond the trees, a rooster is crowing.

I don't remember ever hearing one from here before.
I smile.

Apparently somebody has decided morning needs an official announcement.

Between his proclamations come the gentle notes of a guitar concerto drifting through the cottage. Rooster and guitar—an unlikely duet, perhaps, but somehow perfectly suited to this August morning.

And for a moment I simply listen.

The river is low.
A tree is turning red.
The earth waits for rain.
A rooster announces another morning.
And my coffee is warm in my hands.

Maybe change rarely arrives all at once. Maybe long before the great turning points of our lives, there are whispers. Small alterations in the landscape. Something familiar feels different. Something unexpected appears. A leaf changes color. A river grows quiet. A sound we have never heard before travels through the morning woods.

We sense movement before we can name its destination.

Mid-August itself is such a threshold.

Summer still surrounds us. The afternoons remain warm, the trees mostly green, the gardens still blooming. And yet somewhere beneath all that abundance, another season has already begun preparing itself.

Autumn is not here.

But neither is it entirely absent.

And perhaps life is filled with such thresholds—places where we stand with one foot in what has been and another approaching what will be.

We cannot always know what comes next.
We cannot command the rain.
We cannot tell the river to rise.
We cannot persuade August to remain August forever.

But we can pay attention.
We can listen.
We can release what no longer needs to be carried.
We can protect what matters.

And we can trust that even when the landscape changes, life is still moving beneath the surface.

Perhaps that is what this morning is telling me.

Change is coming.

I can feel it.

Not necessarily something ominous. Not necessarily something wonderful.

Simply change—the oldest rhythm in creation.

And so I sit for another moment in the wee cottage in the woods, listening to a distant rooster crow while a guitar plays softly nearby.

Then I lift my mug and take another sip of coffee.

Morning has arrived.

Whatever this day contains, I am here to meet it.
​
And somewhere beyond my window, one small red leaf trembles in the August breeze.

~Wylddane

“Some of our greatest blessings disguise themselves as routine.”
~Wylddane

There was a moment this morning, somewhere between sleep and waking, when consciousness returned.
For just an instant there was nothing.

And then came the first thought:

It is Tuesday.

With that small realization came everything Tuesday might contain—the ordinary obligations, routines, things needing attention, all those little pieces of life patiently waiting for me to get out of bed.

But then came another thought.

It arrived quietly, without effort, almost as though someone had whispered it into the room:

Isn't it a wonderful day to be alive and in good health?

And suddenly Tuesday became something else entirely.

It became a gift.

I got out of bed.

Think about those words for a moment.

I got out of bed.

My feet carried me across the floor. I wandered into the kitchen. I turned on the coffee maker. Somewhere in the early-morning darkness, I switched on a lamp, and a little pool of light appeared.

Coffee began to brew.

Morning began to happen.

These things are so ordinary that we barely notice them.

And perhaps that is one of life's great paradoxes: some of our greatest blessings disguise themselves as routine.

We notice the extraordinary because it interrupts our lives. But perhaps we should occasionally notice the ordinary precisely because it doesn't.

A body that carries us into another morning.

Eyes that open.

Lungs that breathe.

Hands that reach for the coffee mug.

A mind capable of thinking, remembering, wondering, laughing, loving.
A home in which we feel safe.
A lamp waiting in the darkness.

Coffee brewing in the kitchen.

Another morning.
Another chance.

Outside my open windows now, the world seems to be celebrating the same thing.

A woodpecker announces himself with his insistent rat-a-tat-tat-tat. Jays squawk as though something terribly important has happened overnight. Somewhere among the trees is a bird whose call I cannot identify. And then, every so often, comes the unmistakable fluting voice of a cardinal.

No conductor.
No sheet music.
No rehearsal.

Yet somehow it becomes a symphony.

Inside the wee cottage, music drifts softly from the stereo, mingling with the music coming through the windows.

And beside me sits my mug of coffee—which, while I have been pondering the meaning of existence, has inconveniently grown cold.

Apparently enlightenment has its practical limits.

The mug needs refilling.

Perhaps that, too, is part of the lesson.

We sometimes imagine that a spiritual life must involve extraordinary experiences—visions, revelations, mountaintops, sacred places.

But maybe awakening is much simpler.

Maybe awakening is literally awakening.

Opening our eyes and realizing:

I am here.

For thousands of years human beings have understood morning as a kind of rebirth. Sleep carries us temporarily away from the conscious world, and each dawn returns us to it. Breath enters the lungs. Eyes open. Awareness returns.

Life says once again:

Here you are.

And every morning we are given another opportunity to answer:

Yes. Here I am.

Not every morning will feel wonderful.

There will be mornings of grief and worry. There will be mornings when the body aches, when sleep has been elusive, when the news of the world feels unbearably heavy. There will be days when gratitude requires considerably more effort than simply pouring another mug of coffee.

But perhaps gratitude does not require pretending that everything is wonderful.

It asks only that we notice what is wonderful.

And there is so much.

This morning I think about that yellow wildflower I found blooming beside the St. Croix River.

It was not waiting for September.
It was not complaining about the dog days of August.
It was not wondering whether something more exciting might happen tomorrow.
It was simply blooming.

Yellow petals open to the light.

Alive.

Completely, gloriously alive.

Maybe I can learn something from that flower.

Because I know myself well enough to recognize these August doldrums when they begin creeping around the edges of my days. Summer has grown old. The light has subtly changed. The gardens are beginning their slow journey toward autumn, and sometimes my spirit wants to drift into that same sleepy rhythm.

But not today.

Today I want to bloom.
Today I want to hear the woodpecker.

I want to notice the cardinal.
I want to laugh at the noisy jays.
I want to refill the coffee mug while the coffee is still hot.
I want to feel the floor beneath my feet and recognize the quiet miracle that those feet carry me where I ask them to go.
I want to notice sunlight moving through leaves.
I want to listen to beautiful music.
I want to love the people who share this journey with me.
I want to remain curious.
I want to grow.
I want to be astonished.

And when evening comes, I want to be able to look back upon this very ordinary Tuesday and know that I did not merely pass through it.

I inhabited it.

Perhaps living vibrantly does not require a vibrant life.
Perhaps it requires vibrant attention.

The willingness to recognize that the commonplace is not commonplace at all.

A lamp switched on in the darkness.
A familiar room.
Birdsong through an open window.
A yellow flower beside a river.
A steaming mug held between two hands.
A steady breath.
A beating heart.

Morning.
Life.

Here we are.

And whatever this day eventually brings, perhaps that is enough reason to greet it with gratitude:

Isn't it a wonderful day to be alive?

Yes.
Yes, it is.

And now, before the coffee gets cold again, I think I'll have that refill.
​
~Wylddane
​

This morning I find myself thinking about heaven.

That seems a rather substantial subject to place beside a steaming mug of coffee before the day has properly awakened. Yet perhaps heaven is exactly the sort of thing one should contemplate while the world is still quiet.

The wee cottage rests peacefully around me. A flute concerto drifts softly through the rooms, delicate notes rising and falling almost as naturally as breath. Beyond the open window, birds are beginning their morning conversations among the trees. Light is slowly finding its way through the woods.

And there, nearby, is my coffee—warm, fragrant, familiar.

Nothing spectacular is happening.

And suddenly I wonder:

What if this is heaven?

Not Heaven with a capital H, necessarily. Not pearly gates or streets of gold or choirs of angels. Not some distant celestial reward waiting beyond the final breath.

Just this.

This moment.
This astonishingly ordinary moment of being alive.

I have become increasingly comfortable with the Mystery of what comes afterward. I don't know what happens when this life ends. Despite all the confident voices that have spoken throughout history, I suspect none of us really knows.

And strangely, I find that comforting.

Mystery does not frighten me nearly as much as certainty sometimes does.

W. B. Yeats wrote:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

There have always been people passionately certain about heaven—who gets in, who stays out, what one must believe, whom one must love, how one must live, and which rules must be followed to receive the promised reward.

Sometimes that promised eternity seems to come with an awfully long list of terms and conditions.

And love with conditions begins to look suspiciously unlike love.

Perhaps that is why Zachary Jean's wonderfully irreverent line made me laugh:

“If you can't be a good example then be a horrible warning.”

There is wisdom hiding inside the humor.

Because perhaps the spiritual life is not demonstrated by how loudly we proclaim what we believe about another world.

Perhaps it is revealed by how gently we live in this one.

How we treat the stranger.
How readily we forgive.
How deeply we love.
How generously we give.
How willing we are to sit beside someone who is hurting without trying to fix them.
How often we stop long enough to notice a flower.

This morning I look at another rose begonia from the garden, its golden blossom surrounded by extravagant greens and burgundies and touches of pink. The flower offers no theology. It makes no promises about tomorrow. It asks for no profession of faith.

It simply blooms.

Here.

Now.

And perhaps that is one of nature's quietest spiritual teachings.

The flower does not postpone its beauty for another world.
The bird does not save its song for eternity.
The morning does not withhold its light until we have earned it.

They give themselves completely to this moment.

Maybe we can too.

I don't need to know what lies beyond this life in order to recognize the sacredness within it. Whatever comes afterward will come. Mystery will remain Mystery until it isn't.

Meanwhile, there is coffee to savor.

Music to hear.

Birdsong to notice.

Flowers to admire.

People to love.

Kindness to give.

Laughter to share.

Morning light to watch moving slowly across the floor.

And breath.
Another breath.
And another.

Perhaps heaven is not merely a destination toward which we are traveling.

Perhaps heaven arrives in small pieces throughout our lives, and our great spiritual task is learning to recognize it.

A peaceful cottage.
A flute concerto.
A rose begonia blooming outrageously beneath an August sun.
A mug warm between two hands.
A bird singing somewhere beyond the window.

And one quiet human being awake enough to notice:

I am here.
I am alive.
This moment asks nothing of me except that I receive it.

Whatever eternity may hold, I will leave eternity to the Mystery.

This morning is enough.
​
And this morning--
this beautiful, ordinary, fleeting morning--
feels a little bit like heaven.

~Wylddane

“Perhaps solitude is not withdrawing from life at all. Perhaps it is entering life more deeply.”

​The window beside my desk is wide open this morning.

The air coming through it is a little cool, but pleasantly so—the kind of coolness that reminds me summer does not intend to remain forever. Beyond the window, the woods are beginning another day.

I would like to say I am being serenaded by the liquid notes of a cardinal or the bright song of an oriole or wren.

Instead, there is a bluejay squawking.

And somehow that makes me smile.

Apparently even solitude has its hecklers.

My coffee mug has just been refilled. Steam rises from it, carrying that familiar fragrance that has become part of the ritual of morning. Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on “Greensleeves” drifts through the wee cottage, its beautiful, wistful melody seeming perfectly suited to this hour.

Nature.
Music.
Coffee.
Quiet.
And me.

Last evening, after supper, I settled into my usual comfortable place with music playing softly and a book in my hands. Eventually my eyes would grow heavy, the book would close, and another ordinary day would come to its gentle conclusion.

Sitting there, I became aware of something I have known for most of my life:

I love solitude.

Not loneliness.

Solitude.

There is a difference.

Loneliness is the ache of wanting connection and finding it absent. Solitude is the discovery that being alone need not mean being empty.

I am single, but I am not lonely. My life is filled with love—with people I have loved, people I love now, friendships that have shaped me, animals who have shared my life, memories that still warm me, conversations that remain somewhere inside me long after the voices themselves have grown quiet.

And yet I need solitude.
Perhaps some of us simply do.

We are constructed differently, each of us—some combination of temperament and experience, inheritance and circumstance, all the mysterious influences that gradually make us who we are. Some people flourish amid activity and conversation. Others need intervals of quiet in which the scattered pieces of themselves can come home.

Neither is better.

They are simply different ways of being human.

Some of the people who have influenced me most have been strong, independent men and women—people who understood that a meaningful life does not require a constant audience. Perhaps I learned something from them. Perhaps life itself taught me. Perhaps this tendency toward solitude was simply there from the beginning, waiting for me to recognize it.

Whatever its source, I no longer think of solitude as something that needs explaining.

It is one of the places where I find myself.

And perhaps that is one of solitude's greatest gifts.

When the noise recedes and the conversations stop, when the television is turned off and the obligations of the day are finished, we encounter the person who has accompanied us through every single moment of our existence.

Ourselves.

And what an extraordinary companion that person contains.

The child we once were is there.
So is the young person who dreamed impossible dreams.
The person who made mistakes is there.
The person who survived heartbreak.
The one who laughed until tears came.
The one who loved.
The one who lost.
The one who began again.

All our former selves somehow travel with us, carrying their memories and lessons into this present moment.
Perhaps that is why genuine solitude can feel so surprisingly crowded.

We sit alone beside a window and discover that we are accompanied by an entire lifetime.

And more than that.

Outside my window, leaves move in the morning breeze. Somewhere a bluejay continues his noisy commentary. Trees breathe. Insects move through grasses. Water reflects the sky. Miles away, oceans rise and fall against distant shores.

The same living world surrounds all of us.

We breathe its air.
We belong to it.

Perhaps the boundary between ourselves and everything else is not nearly as solid as we sometimes imagine.

Look at the still water in this morning's picture.

The lake does not clutch at the trees along its shore. It does not need to possess the clouds above it.

It simply becomes quiet enough to receive them.

And because it is still, it reflects an entire world.

Maybe solitude can do the same for us.

When we become quiet, we begin reflecting things that hurry ordinarily obscures: gratitude, memory, imagination, wonder, sorrow, love.

We discover that emptiness and spaciousness are not the same thing.

An empty room may contain a chair, a lamp, a book, and one solitary person—and nevertheless be filled with music, memory, imagination, peace, and love.

A morning may contain nothing more dramatic than coffee, Vaughan Williams, cool air through an open window, and one opinionated bluejay—and somehow contain everything necessary.

This is not an argument for being single rather than partnered, solitary rather than social. Love takes countless forms, and there are as many ways of making a meaningful life as there are people living one.

It is simply a celebration of something our noisy world sometimes forgets:

There is wonder in being alone without being lonely.

There is strength in becoming comfortable with our own company.
There is freedom in discovering that silence does not have to be filled.

And there is profound peace in realizing that sometimes we need not go anywhere, accomplish anything, or become anything else.

Sometimes it is enough simply to sit beside an open window and inhabit our own life.

So this morning I raise my steaming mug to solitude.

To quiet evenings with books and music.
To early mornings before the world becomes busy.
To lakes still enough to hold the sky.
To rooms filled with memories.
To the people who taught us independence.
To the people whose love remains with us even when they are elsewhere.

And even to bluejays who apparently have never heard of quiet contemplation.

May we cherish those we love.
May we welcome companionship when it comes.
May we offer companionship when it is needed.

But may we also learn not to fear the quiet places within ourselves.

For perhaps solitude is not withdrawing from life at all.

Perhaps it is entering life more deeply.

Becoming still enough to notice.

Quiet enough to listen.

Open enough to receive.

And peaceful enough to discover that when the world grows silent around us, there is still an entire universe within us—and an entire universe just beyond the open window.
​
And for this moment,
that is more than enough.

~Wylddane

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same."
~Flavia Weedn

This morning the breeze stirs the maples outside my window, their leaves answering one another in soft whispers while the birds welcome another August day. The fragrance of fresh coffee rises from my favorite mug, and for a little while the entire world seems content simply to be.

Beside me is a photograph I took yesterday of one of the rose begonias blooming in the garden. I have always loved these flowers. Their petals seem to gather the morning light and quietly return it to the world, as though they have learned that beauty is never something to keep for oneself.

As I sit here, the Rose Ensemble's beautiful rendition of Aloha ʻOe fills the wee cottage.

It has always been a song of farewell.

But perhaps more importantly, it is a song of love that refuses to end.

Yesterday, while listening to it, tears came quietly.

Not because I wished to dwell in sorrow, but because music has a gentle way of opening doors we sometimes keep closed. It carried me back to conversations shared over countless mugs of coffee with a dear friend whose laughter still echoes in my memory.

When she was coming over, she never bothered knocking.

The front door was simply left unlocked.

She would walk inside already talking, picking up a conversation as though we'd only paused it moments before. We shared stories, wisdom gathered through years, mistakes that somehow became funny with enough time, and the kind of laughter that only old friends understand.

I miss those mornings.

There is an old saying that grief is simply love with nowhere to go.

I have come to believe something a little different.

Love always finds somewhere to go.

It slips into the stories we continue telling.
It softens our hearts toward strangers.
It teaches us to listen more patiently.

It reminds us to leave our own doors unlocked—not merely the ones with hinges and locks, but the invisible doors of kindness, welcome, and friendship.

Across many traditions, birds have been seen as messengers moving between the seen and unseen worlds. Whether that is literally true hardly matters to me anymore. What matters is what their songs awaken within us.

This morning, as I listen to the sparrows and chickadees beyond my window, I find myself smiling.

Not because grief has vanished.

It hasn't.

Grief changes its shape, but it does not disappear.

Over time it becomes less like a storm and more like a familiar companion who quietly reminds us that someone was deeply loved.

Perhaps that is one of life's hidden blessings.

The people we lose never truly stop changing us.

Their patience becomes our patience.
Their generosity becomes our generosity.
Their humor suddenly escapes from our own lips at exactly the right moment.

In ways both mysterious and ordinary, they continue living through the kindness we extend to others.

The light they carried does not go out.

It is simply entrusted to new hands.

As I finish this first mug of coffee, I look once more at the rose begonia outside.

Its petals catch the morning sun.

Its beauty is no less beautiful because one day those blossoms will fade.

If anything, their briefness makes them even more precious.

Perhaps friendship is much the same.

We are never promised forever.
We are only given today.

To share coffee.
To tell our stories.
To laugh until we forget what made us sad.
To leave our doors—and our hearts—open for one another.

And if we are fortunate enough to have known a friend whose footsteps still echo through the rooms of our lives, then perhaps we have not truly lost them at all.
​
Perhaps we have simply become the place where their love continues to bloom.
☕🌼

~Wylddane

"The world is made new each dawn. The miracle is not that the sun rises, but that our hearts can rise with it."
~Wylddane

The world is only beginning to stir.

Outside my window, sunlight slips quietly through the trees, turning ordinary leaves into stained glass. Gold and amber shimmer where only moments ago there had been shadow. Somewhere beyond the open window a cardinal offers its bright, fluted greeting, followed by the gentle voice of a mourning dove and another bird whose song I cannot name. It reminds me that not every beautiful thing needs to be understood before it can be appreciated.

A different arrangement of the Harry Potter Suite drifts softly through the room as Angela Dubéau's violin gives familiar melodies a new voice. Perhaps that is the true magic—not spells or enchanted castles, but the way music can transform an ordinary morning into something quietly extraordinary.

My coffee is especially good today. It always seems that way when I slow down enough to notice it. I smile as I lift my mug, for this one bears the photograph of Harry curled asleep in his favorite blue chair. For just a moment, memory reaches across the years. I can almost feel the softness of his fur beneath my hand, and I realize that love never truly leaves us. It simply changes its address, living now in photographs, familiar objects, and the gentle corners of our hearts.

The rose begonias blooming outside always remind me of my father. Every blossom seems to carry a whisper of gratitude, as though the flowers remember hands that once tended gardens and lives that quietly shaped our own. Love has a remarkable way of blooming long after those we cherish have stepped beyond our sight.

Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that entering the woods allows us to shed our years as easily as a snake sheds its skin. Standing beneath the trees, we are no longer measured by calendars or birthdays or titles. We become children again, filled with curiosity, wonder, and trust. In Nature, he wrote that all selfishness vanishes until we become "a transparent eyeball," seeing the world without the weight of ego, feeling ourselves part of something infinitely larger than ourselves.

Perhaps that is why mornings possess such quiet power.

Each dawn offers us permission to begin again.

The mistakes of yesterday need not dictate today. The worries we carried to bed can be set down beside the coffee cup. The expectations of others grow strangely small beneath the cathedral of trees and the vast blue sky. Nature never asks us to be anything except present.

And perhaps that is the greatest enchantment of all.

The magic is not hidden in distant castles or ancient forests. It is here—in sunlight touching leaves, in birdsong greeting the dawn, in flowers blooming faithfully, in music filling a quiet room, in memories that warm rather than wound, and in one more cup of coffee held between grateful hands.

So today, before the busyness of life gathers around us, let us linger here for just a little while longer.

Listen to the music.

Notice the light.

Remember those you love.

Receive this day as the gift it already is.

For every sunrise quietly whispers the same timeless invitation:

"Begin again."

And so I shall.

Perhaps after one more cup of coffee.

Perhaps after one more beautiful piece of music.

Or perhaps...right now.

For this magical morning has already reminded me that every new day is not simply another page on the calendar.
​
It is grace, waiting patiently to be noticed.

~Wylddane

"The wave does not need to die to become water. She is already water."
~Thich Nhat Hanh

This morning my mug of coffee sits close at hand, steam rising gently into the warm pool of light cast by my desk lamp. Beyond the open window the northwoods are quiet beneath a cool August sky. A breeze stirs the canopy of maple and pine, and somewhere a bluejay announces the beginning of another day.

Yet, as often happens, my thoughts have wandered far from Wisconsin.

They have carried me back to Rockaway Beach in Pacifica, California.

Many years have passed since those long walks along the shoreline. Still, I find myself returning to them, especially when I look at an old photograph. I can almost hear the waves rolling toward shore, smell the salt carried on the wind, and feel the cool sand beneath my feet. There was something about walking beside the Pacific that always quieted the restless corners of my mind. Problems seemed to dissolve into the rhythm of the tide. Questions became less urgent. I never came away with answers so much as with peace.

Perhaps that is the ocean's oldest gift.

The shoreline has long been considered a "thin place"—a meeting point where the visible world brushes against the invisible. It is where solid earth surrenders to living water, where certainty meets mystery. Standing there, gazing toward the horizon, the mind instinctively loosens its grip on small concerns. Infinity has a way of doing that.

The ocean gently reminds us that we are not the center of the universe.

And strangely, there is great comfort in that realization.

Eastern wisdom teaches that a drop of water does not disappear when it reaches the sea; it discovers what it has always been. Looking across the endless Pacific, I often sensed that truth without having words for it. My life, with all its joys and sorrows, successes and failures, was only one small wave upon an immeasurable ocean. Beautiful for a moment. Never separate from the whole.

I think now of the tide itself.

It comes.
It goes.
It always returns.

The universe seems to breathe that way.

As I sit here this morning, another thought gently arrives.

The ocean is not as far away as I sometimes imagine.

When the wind moves through the trees outside my window, it carries the same whisper I once heard rolling through the surf. The rhythm is different, yet the song is familiar. Scientists tell us that the water flowing through our own bodies still carries the memory of the ancient seas from which all life emerged. In a very real sense, each of us carries the ocean within.

Perhaps that is why I can still find the same quiet here in the northwoods that I once found beside the Pacific.

The landscape has changed.

The peace has not.

I remember watching my footprints disappear as each wave reached the sand. At first it seemed almost melancholy that they vanished so quickly. Now I see something else. There is grace in leaving no permanent mark. The sea accepts each step, blesses it for a moment, and gently lets it go.

There is wisdom in that.

There are memories we hold forever, and there are burdens we were never meant to carry beyond the tide.

The music drifting softly through the wee cottage calls me back to this present moment. My coffee has cooled just enough to become perfect. Morning light is spreading through the windows, and another ordinary day is quietly beginning.

My walk along the Pacific has ended.

Or perhaps it never truly ended at all.

Because wherever we learn to be still…wherever we first discover that deep and abiding peace…we carry that place within us for the rest of our lives.
​
And sometimes, all it takes is the memory of an old photograph, a quiet room, and a good cup of coffee to hear the ocean once again.

~Wylddane

A rain shower is drifting through the woods outside my window. I pause in my typing and listen—the soft patter of drops upon the deck, the whisper of rain among the leaves, and somewhere nearby, a blue jay squawking his indignant commentary upon the weather.

Inside the wee cottage, Brahms’s music for clarinet moves gently through the room, accompanied by the irregular percussion of raindrops. My coffee is warm in my hands. The morning is cool. Quiet has settled over everything.

And yet, within me, there is a restlessness.

August has barely begun, but already I seem to have entered what I think of as the August doldrums. Perhaps it is because this summer has been so uncomfortable—too much heat, too much humidity, too many days when the very air felt burdensome. Perhaps I have simply grown weary of summer and find myself yearning for change.

For crisp mornings.

For leaves beginning to turn.

For that first unmistakable breath of autumn moving through the woods.

Nothing much seems to be happening right now, and I must remind myself that nothing happening is not necessarily a bad thing.

We live in a world that has taught us to measure our lives by activity. We are encouraged to produce, accomplish, improve, and hurry onward. Stillness is treated as a problem to be solved. An unproductive day is regarded almost as a failure.

But perhaps the August doldrums are not a failure of spirit.

Perhaps they are a sacred pause.

Late summer does not rush. The leaves have grown heavy and dark upon the trees. The air often hangs motionless over fields and gardens. Even the birds seem quieter than they were in May and June. Nature has entered a deeper rhythm—not lifeless, but unhurried.

The trees do not panic because they are standing still.

The garden does not question its worth because it has nowhere else to go.

Outside my window, the flowers are offering their grandest display. Coneflowers bend beneath their vivid pink petals. Black-eyed Susans hold their golden faces toward the light. Tall purple blossoms rise behind them like candles in some green and living sanctuary.

They are fully alive in this moment.
They are not longing for tomorrow.
They are not mourning yesterday.
They simply bloom.

Thoreau withdrew to Walden to live deliberately, to step away from noise and discover what remained when striving ceased. Emerson wrote of the Oversoul—that vast spiritual unity in which the boundaries of the individual self begin to dissolve and we recognize that we belong to something immeasurably larger than our own small ambitions.

Perhaps August offers us a little of that same wisdom.

In the heavy stillness of late summer, the frantic ego grows tired. The need to prove ourselves softens. We remember that our worth is not tied to how much we accomplish. We are part of the same quiet universe as the rain, the trees, the flowers, and the blue jay complaining in the woods.

We belong even when we are doing nothing.
We belong even when we feel uninspired.
We belong even when our minds wander without a destination.

There is no need to fight the fog of late summer. No need to repair every empty space or fill every quiet hour. Sometimes the soul needs to drift. Sometimes we must sit beside our yearning without demanding that it explain itself.

There is wisdom in watching dust motes dance within an afternoon sunbeam.
There is grace in listening to rain.
There is healing in allowing a day simply to be a day.

And still, I understand this longing for autumn. Already the light is changing. The shadows are stretching a little farther across the lawn. The mornings carry occasional hints of coolness, and somewhere beneath the green abundance of August, the earth is preparing for its next turning.

My garden is living entirely in the present, while my heart has begun to lean toward the future.

Perhaps both can be true.

I can cherish the fierce colors of August and still anticipate the burnished beauty of October. I can be grateful for this rain-washed morning and still yearn for the crisp embrace of autumn. Contentment does not require us to stop longing. It asks only that we not allow longing to steal the moment already before us.

So this morning, I will not try to escape the August doldrums.

I will sit within them.

I will listen to Brahms and the rain. I will savor another mug of coffee. I will look upon the flowers that are blooming without hesitation, and I will allow their quiet confidence to teach me.

There is nowhere else I must be.
There is nothing I must prove.

This pause is also part of the journey.

And perhaps this seemingly uneventful morning—cool, rain-softened, and wonderfully ordinary—is not empty at all.

Perhaps it is life itself, gently reminding me:

Stop striving for a moment.

Be still.

You are already here.
​
And here, on this early August morning, is a beautiful place to begin.

~Wylddane