Our car was packed – in fact to the hilt. Our daughter was wedged between the ice chest and the door. My son’s seven year old legs were propped up on top of one of the sleeping bags. No room was left in the trunk nor the camper shell atop the car. We were headed for banff and lake louise. It was a long way from where we lived. My mind needed a rest. A three week trip to the canadian rockies, camping in the wild seemed just the ticket.

I put the car into park and let it idle. It was October in New York, and the apple harvest was in full swing. We visited an apple farm and went picking: Honey Crisps, Pink Ladies, Red Delicious, and Granny Smiths. We wandered up and down the rows of trees still laden with apples, making our selections. The corn harvest was mostly over, but the stocks still stood tall. What an abundance! We took our finds to the checkout counter, eyeing the squash and pumpkins. More abundance! There were rows of berry preserves. We passed on these. We had our own cooking to do at our vacation rental. We filled the car and headed back up to Slide Mountain.

Five o’clock in the morning is too early to get up anymore for a road trip, so we set our sights on leaving by 10:00 a.m.  Last minute details took us a little longer than expected.  But at last we were on our way from California to Yellowstone National Park.  It was the fall of 2021.

Monday on the islands brought torrential rains to what should have been a balmy day in early September. We stood our ground, determined to make the most of our Hawaii vacation. A museum seemed like a good idea for the day.

The sun was trying to make a way through the cloud cover and occasionally succeeded. We reached for our cameras, chasing the waves with our lenses, hoping the rain that had splattered the windshield on and off this afternoon would hold off for awhile. The surf was creamy with foam. The wind buffeted our hats and whipped our hair. We realized the tide was coming in. The sky was darkening, and a few minutes later large drops of rain began to fall. We decided this lovely deserted beach would have to wait for another day.

One glorious morning in summer, I was making my way out the back door when something ripe and delicious tickled my nostrils. Apricots! We had two huge apricot trees, and it was picking time. Out past the fence the assembly line from trees to jams and pies was already underway. Dad was out picking, and Mom was in the kitchen canning and preserving for the year ahead from morning ‘til night. I came around to get a handful to eat and a bucket to take in to the kitchen. I ran back out, past the rows of corn and tomatoes growing tall in the summer sun, out to smell the divine apricots waiting at the end of the fence.

The days when I could pluck petals from daisies, one by one at Grandma’s house, ended when I was two, maybe three years of age. But blossoms of every sort have tugged my heart all my life. I never found a flower I did not like, and most of them I loved. Why? Well for one thing, they are beautiful. For another, they are symbolic.

Lower Antelope Canyon took me by surprise. We were walking in the searing wind over flat white rocks tinged in pink and gold when a tiny crevice in the earth appeared. Our Navajo guide, Gabriel, announced our arrival. “We are going into Mother Earth. Each time we do so is a rebirth. We believe the Earth is our mother, and we are going back into her. Each time we emerge, we are reborn.” The space between the rocks was no bigger than the width of my foot. We slithered between the surface rocks following Gabriel down steps and ladders into rooms of cool stone that could not be seen in the blazing sun above ground.

The world changes each year when the sun pokes through the clouds and shoots of green poke through the soil. It grows warmer, and breezes blow a little softer. The water is cold, running fast now. The windows to the soul open wide. All who have been sleeping in winter begin to awaken. There is a quiver of new life in the air. The fruit bearers start budding.

I set up the camera, readying myself for the morning. It was still dark. I ran through my settings and decided they would do for low light. Sunrise seemed awfully early today. We threw our bags in the jeep and were off, cresting a small hill shortly before the sun came up. Our guide told us we could get out of the jeep up here, a sort of unlikely predator zone. We were in Africa on safari. I felt joyous to be walking on tierra firma on this little hilltop in southern Kenya.

The Masai Mara is a wild place. A stretch of land known as the Mara Triangle was the part of the Mara we visited in 2019. Rolling hills, savannah, marshes, and river banks on the Mara River, filled with zebra, leopards, elephants, giraffes, cape buffaloes, wildebeest, and lions make up this place in the Kenyan wilderness. It was there we watched a cub emerge from its whelping den for the first time and come close to death his first day out in the world.

The water was cold, ice cold in fact. We dipped our feet back into our socks almost as quickly as we had shed them. Rocky Mountain spring water at its best! We had been hiking several miles, and our feet were hot and sticky. We were a sight to behold, wading into the stream, and then flinging ourselves onto the sand. The cold was astounding! Mountains in summertime hold traces of winter.

It’s two o’clock in the morning. I feel the call to wake up. I stumble out of bed, head for the bathroom; I wonder why I am up at two in the morning. I had been in a deep sleep. I climb back into bed, but something is niggling at me. I close my eyes, but it won’t go away. So I tune in. Nothing is in my mind. I tune into my heart. There’s a message there, a message that someone needs attending. I tune into my spirit. Suddenly it is crystal clear who needs my prayers. There are two in fact. I pray for them, listening to the words of spirit that are needed.

The wall between this world and the next is really only a very thin veil. Spirit dwells in both places. The veil is thinnest about three o’clock in the morning. The other side can reach us most easily at that hour. It is the hour of encounter.

How was I to know that things would turn out the way they did? Sometimes we can predict; sometimes we cannot. I was eleven when my Grandma died, suddenly, without warning. I was devastated. My siblings also grieved. No more weekends with Grandma. No more of her kindness and love. No more of her dinner table side-splitting laughter. In an instant, my life forever changed.

The world began, so I am told, in wonder and awe. Can you imagine a primordial universe, a mighty gaseous nursery spewing forth light and power, a blaze of galaxies hurled forth to the ends of time and space? Can you imagine the light of creation, how impenetrable it would have been, how unreal to our eyes?  What if you could glimpse a tiny fraction of that light?  Our forefathers were treated to such a glimpse most nights of the year.

How does it feel to be loved? It feels like slipping into something silky, like slipping into honey, like slipping into a deep breath of fresh air, like slipping into wondrous warmth. I began my life with my mother’s tender love. Her face was soft, curved, smiling. Her hair was brown, lighter brown in fact. Her smile could render all that was wrong, right again. She made me glow inside.

The clouds covered part of the sky in Likely, a small town on the Modoc Plateau where we stargaze every year. Once in awhile, nature intends a different display. We were listening to a fascinating lecture about star formation projected onto a large outdoor screen at twilight. We had been treated to pictures of star nurseries ejecting volatile gases in unstable regions of space, whirling stars from the raw stuff of nature.

First Story in The Rivers of Our Delight Stories Collection: At six o’clock in the morning, I wonder if I will be able to turn off the alarm fast enough to not awaken my husband. Nighttime is a tremendous comfort to me, so much so that I would sleep an extra hour in a heartbeat, given half a chance. I slip from my slumber into endless reverie about the night’s dreams. Who was in that dream? Why? What snatches of truth do they bring me from my soul?

The Flow Stories Collection No. 3 — Life on the Danube drenches the soul in our eternal joy, the joy that emanates from quite literally going with the flow. The day was dark with heavy rain clouds when we boarded the bus that would ferry the four of us from Vienna to Melk Abbey. Well, technically from Vienna to the port where we would pick up the riverboat.