Drawn to the Light....

 

By Marilyn Moore

Early this fall I was part of a small group walking through the wonder that is Wilderness Park.  It was a nature walk; we had a wise and caring guide, who stopped at points along the path to talk describe the precious moments of summer becoming fall.  We walked together for a time, then our wise leader suggested we choose a path and go at our own pace, or perhaps find a comfortable spot to stop, and look, and listen, and feel the breeze.  

I headed out, continuing on the trail, especially noticing the berries that were hanging by a thread, waiting to fall to the ground and become a new seedling next spring.  It was a warm day, and there were shady spots along the trail, where it was tempting to stop.  But I didn’t stop, much as the shade would have felt good.  As I reported back the group when we gathered again, I could see the trail ahead, and I was drawn to the light.  I kept walking, drawn to the light.  

Kind of how I live my life, drawn to the light.  The approaching winter months awaken anxiety within me…I do not look forward to those long winter nights.  I know…darkness and cold are the conditions needed for rest and restoration of all living creatures in the forest and the prairie, but a remnant of the fear of the ancient people that perhaps the sun isn’t coming back still resides in my DNA.  I will breathe a sigh of relief, and gratitude, on the day of the winter solstice, knowing that a minute or two more of daylight each day will get me through January and February.  

But more than the darkness of night, which has the blessing of stars and comets and which triggers our circadian rhythms to let us fall asleep, it’s the darkness of prejudice and poverty and damage to our planet and lack of compassion that is most unsettling to me.  Those are the dark places where I most crane my neck in search of light…the writers, the poets, the volunteers, the caretakers, the teachers, the policy makers, the inventors, the health care workers, the astrophysicists, the artists, the lovers of life, who light candles and draw a wide circle and shine a light on the shadows and into the dark corners, making the world a better place.

I’ve thought of that path in Wilderness Park, that beckoning light, often in the weeks since then, particularly in the turbulence of the time leading to the 2024 election, now just days away.  In the midst of violent rhetoric, accusatory and blaming language, loud and divisive voices, I’m drawn to the light.  Light that shines possibility, a hopeful future, an affirmation of the value and dignity of all people, an assumption that collectively we can do more and be better, that chaos  and disruption need not be the new normal in our political life.  Like the light on the path ahead, I’m drawn to the candidates whose language conveys light, not darkness.  

In a town hall meeting with Republican women earlier this fall, Kamala Harris was asked a poignant question.  The woman started by saying that she was anxious, so very anxious about the election, and she wondered if Kamala was anxious, too.  She asked her, “How do you sleep at night?”  And Kamala’s response was empathetic, compassionate, and hopeful.  She acknowledged that she wakes up most nights at two in the morning, worrying about something.  Then she said that she manages anxiety and worry with all the healthy things we know about – she tries to exercise daily, she tries to eat wisely, she stays in touch every day with her family.  And then she said that what gives her hope is the goodness of the American people and the democratic systems in our country, the US Constitution, the opportunity and responsibility to participate in those democratic systems, that by doing so we affirm our commitment to something bigger than ourselves.  

It was a stirring response, for several reasons.  She acknowledged what every woman I know has experienced, waking up at two in the morning, anxious and worried about something, knowing that it won’t be so frightening in the light of day, but in the dark, it is.  Watching the women who were in that room with her, you could see that every one of them had been there, too…lots of head nods.  She affirmed the daily health habits we all try to maintain, knowing that sometimes it’s a “tried, but couldn’t make it” day.  And then, she shined the light of possibility and belief in American people and democratic systems in this very dark and stormy time.  

Our choir sang an anthem last week, “Can we sing the darkness to light?”  The text describes “chords of compassion and peace.”  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that hate does not drive out hate, only love does.  In these days that are fraught with darkness, my heart and mind and soul are asking… 

* Can we sing the darkness to light?

* Can we love the darkness to light?

* Can we vote the darkness to light?

And my heart and mind and soul, drawn to the light, say, with a whisper, sometimes, and with my big girl voice, sometimes, yes, we can.  Yes, we can.  Yes, we can.  We must….

Finding promise in one tenacious line of citizens . . . in the ten-day countdown to our election

By Mary Kay Roth

I went looking for hope this week.

I’m guessing most everyone feels like I do right now, bone weary from the bombardment of noxious commercials, the chill of toxic politics and the heavy shroud of doomsday hovering above our heads.  

So, I roamed and meandered about the city, initially thinking of destinations like green space and walking trails. Yet somehow I was drawn to the Lancaster County Election Commission on Friday – the final day that people could register to vote.  

 

Lo and behold, the place was overpacked with nary a parking space in sight, a long line of people literally wrapped around the Election Commission building: People registering to vote, casting early ballots.

Upon arrival, I simply and directly walked up and said I was curious about why they were there – why they were willing to wait in line.  

• “I’m here because I want my voice to be heard.”
• “There’s a lot going on right now and I’m worried.  There’s just no excuse for anyone not voting this November.”
• “Voting is important every year. But this time it feels different … Somehow there’s an urgency.” 
• “This is a democracy, so my daughter and I are exercising our right to vote – our privilege – our obligation.” 
• “I would argue this is the most consequential election in my lifetime.” 

I didn’t ask anyone about their politics. I didn’t want dogma or debate. I only explained I was writing a blog and was looking to find some faith in the election season this year.  Somehow their answers started to thaw my icy-cold soul. 

Oddly – and I know this is something of a weird analogy – the sensation was much like my mindset when I approach fall chores.

Each year at this time I cut back my perennials, mulch, clean gutters, stack up precious new piles of firewood.  I put my garden to bed for a long winter’s sleep, saying goodbye to my last geraniums as they yawn and nod.

And I find satisfaction in the wisdom that I’m protecting my little world from the coming cold, wrapping everything up in a blanket of warmth.

I’m feeling much the same way about that line of voters and their tenacious belief in democracy. Unexpectedly – now ten days until the election – that frosty shroud of doomsday is feeling much more like a cozy blanket of promise and possibility.

Sure, this was only one line of voters in one county in one state. But somehow it isn’t hard for me to imagine such lines forming in counties and states across the country … with folks who sound just like the citizens of Lancaster County.

• “I’m here today because I live in a democracy. That’s what voting is all about.”
• “I only need to officially change my address this morning … But I’ve voted in every election in Nebraska for the past 50 years and I’ll vote again this year.  It’s the way we make a difference.” 
• “The United States is at a crossroads.  And we get to have a say in which direction we will go.” 
• “Yes, I procrastinated.  But I don’t care how long this line gets. Voting is not just a right – it’s an honor.” 

Now, I’m not completely naïve. Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible, yet in recent years anti-voter bills have erected unnecessary barriers for people to register to vote, vote by mail, vote in person.  Suppression efforts range from strict voter ID laws and cuts to early voting, to mass purges of voter rolls and systemic disenfranchisement. 

Trust me, I worry.  I will continue to stay vigilant and advocate.

Nonetheless I found people of all walks of life at the Election Commission on Friday, people of various ethnicities, ages and sensibilities.

Granted, there was the inevitable funny guy who claimed he thought this was the line where he could order a double whopper.

And the man who – I truly don’t know why – felt it necessary to call me by that ugly pejorative reserved exclusively for females.

But just when I was about to head home, I encountered three eager students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who were practically bouncing up and down in line. One of them boldly stepped forward to talk with me: “My dad is from Poland and my whole life I was raised with the belief that the right to vote in this country is special – precious – sacred. My dad was passionate about voting.  So, I am passionate about it too.  I’m here to register to vote for the very first time and I brought my two best friends along.”

Be still my heart.

This coming week I’ll replace the furnace filter and drain gasoline from my mower. I’ll trade out hoes for rakes and snow shovels.  

And I’ll tackle my very favorite fall chore, planting bulbs. Because I know this spring those bulbs will poke their heads out of the ground and bloom.

Yeah, I could always lose everything with a really hard freeze.  But I try my best to keep the faith. 

I plant. I mulch. I vote. I believe. 

I believe this spring we’ll look back upon a November election when record numbers of voters made (mostly) wise choices about their community and their country.  

I went looking for hope this week.  I found a glimmer.

***Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.  Vote. Encourage others to vote. Wear your “I voted” sticker proudly. Volunteer to offer rides to polling places.  And keep the faith.

October is the fallen leaf . . .

 “October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.”   

 - Hal Borland

***

Marilyn Moore

Wilderness Park

***

JoAnne Young

Root Beer Falls, 

Tahquamenon State Park, 

Upper Peninsula, Michigan 

***

Penny Costello

Black Hills of South Dakota,  Sacred Paha Sapa 

“These granite spires ground me and recharge my soul in a way no other place can. There's no place like home."

***

Mary Reiman

Outside my window

***

Mary Kay Roth

Holmes Lake

Life disrupted in one step

By JoAnne Young

I took a step one night in September. I thought it was the right step. But just as I tried to take another, a step forward into my normal future, I discovered a second step, hidden in the dark, that stopped time. 

 

Here I was, missing that step, landing hard on concrete. My future, over there, where normal time continued with the second half of the Husker football game and pizza and chatting with friends, was lost to me. 

 

I entered a time warp, a painful one, involving a high stakes surgeon, lots of ceiling views, an existential stroll through the narcotics cabinet, and an apprentice’s introduction to new people, new ideas. 

 

Quantum physics all around me, acting on every scale. (Hmmm, is that the hydrocodone talking?) 

 

Long story short, when I crashed hard on the concrete my femur pushed through its familiar territory and into my pelvis, breaking it into Humpty-Dumpty pieces. Thus the need for the royal surgeon to put me back together again. 

 

Now, here I sit in rehab, trying to regain some hard-fought control and some faded strength and conditioning. Not waving the white flag, mind you. Learning the one-legged human role that has been assigned to me for 10 weeks. 

 

Along the way, I have been handed lessons. May I share some with you? 

 

* When you leave your home on any given day, with only your wallet or purse or backpack, you don’t usually consider you could be separated from your belongings – your clothes, your phone charger, your favorite books or teas – unexpectedly, for days or weeks. How would you describe to someone what you need and how to find those things to bring to you while you are temporarily cut off? Especially when you are a bit shaken. 

 

Maybe many of you are more organized than I am, but when I had to tell my husband what I needed and where it was, it took many more brain cells than I had available at the time. Clothes are scattered in a couple of closets and numerous drawers on two floors. While I know all the nooks and crannies I would look in to find things quickly, it’s a much bigger chore to explain it to someone else. 

 

* I have many caring friends and loved ones and while I know that, I don’t appreciate it often enough, like every day often enough. I know I need them, but I frequently forget they need me, too. Please don’t ever let that thought slip away. 

 

* I met so many good people, both experienced and just starting out, in health care. I spent nine days at Bryan Medical Center West, waiting a couple of days for my first major surgery ever and then recovering from that surgery.

 

During those days I talked to several dozen nurses, nursing assistants, health technicians, physical and occupational therapists, and several doctors. They were both women and men. Some were travelers, some students, others working to move up to higher positions. They talked about how nursing and hospital work has changed, especially in the past four years, to become more stressful and demanding, and how patients have become more disagreeable and at times combative. I found almost every one of those health workers to be caring and helpful and their stories to be compelling. 

 

They all start out with the motivation to help people. They learn far too quickly how much more complex the motivation must be to stay in the field. We, as patients, need to show them how important they are to us and to our daily lives. 

 

* When you spend hour upon hour in a hospital room, you have a lot of time to think about your life and the lives of others. In the predicament I found myself, my mind often drifted across the ocean to places like Ukraine and Gaza. How awful would it be if we were injured and in pain and did not have competent and available paramedics, doctors, nurses, well equipped hospitals, skilled surgeons, sterile operating rooms, ambulances, emergency rooms with immediate treatment options?  We are so lucky to have such good access to care in our city, our state. I spent more than a few minutes each night thinking about the people in those war zones who are suffering, and pondering the what ifs. 

 

* Lastly ... during my stay at Bryan West I was able to get a close look at the nine-foot mosaic pillars at the entrance to the hospital created by UNL’s Eddie Dominguez to commemorate the experiences of medical personnel, hospital staff, patients and families during the Covid 19 pandemic. In those pillars he recreated the reflections, efforts and emotions of all those affected by those years of connections and disconnections, suffering and fears the pandemic brought to our community. 

 

The feelings expressed in Dominguez’ art aren’t confined to the Covid years, but can be felt now, here and universally by those seeking and giving safekeeping and care. 

 

Those words he engraved in mosaic: “Exhausted, sensitive, sympathy, resilient, confidence, abandoned, challenging, overwhelming, friendly. Happiness. Amazing. 

 

We can turn these experiences into gratitude, into pieces of our personal narratives. 

 

I wish you all good health. And please, no quantum leaps. 

Follow us on Facebook at 5 Women Mayhem. 

Unexpected Moments

By Mary Reiman

Travel brochures give trip highlights, but last week I found the best part of the journey to be the lesser known, unexpected glimpses capturing my attention, my admiration, my oh-my-heavens-I-can't-believe-I-am-here-moments. The scenery. The ocean. The passion of the people who shared their deep love for their beloved country.

The adventure began in Portland, Maine, famous for lighthouses, of course. But I had never known that on April 23, 1945, the U.S.Navy’s Eagle Class Sub-Chaser was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat

only 9 miles off the coast of Maine. 49 U.S. servicemen were killed. It was a misty morning when we were looking out over the ocean, giving the area an ominous feel of the history that had taken place there. Yes, 9 miles from where we were standing. 

And then on to Canada:

Halifax, Nova Scotia. 121 victims of the Titanic buried in the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in 1912. The number on each headstone indicated when their body was recovered from the sea. Some were never identified. Others were never claimed. The community continues to support the upkeep of this final resting place.

Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Picturesque fishing villages with a rugged coastline. Look what I found. Boats with great names. Snails making their way across the coastal walkways. 

In the midst of Sept-Iles (Seven Islands) was a sculpture garden tucked along the edge of the park.

Over 100 pieces created by Jean-Pier Synnott, local industrial welder/artist who uses recycled metal to create a variety of creatures, all shapes and sizes and designs. Fascinating! 

Saquenay, Quebec, has three major industries. 

#1 aluminum. The bauxite is shipped from Brazil and other international locations, using the hydroelectric power plants in the area to create the aluminum (think Alcoa) that is then often shipped back to the U.S. 

#2 black spruce, for the pulp mills. The paper was often sent to the United States but the mills have been cut back due to less print newspaper production. We also visited Baie-Comeau, a community built in the 30s by the owner of the Chicago Tribune, specifically for the paper industry.  

#3 blueberries. The largest blueberries I’ve ever eaten! 

Quebec City, the walled city with such a rich history, famous for British-French battles in the 1700s.They were also prepared to defend themselves against the United States. 

No voyage to this area would be complete without viewing Montmorency Falls.

They are indeed as majestic as described in every tour book. Indeed, a must see. The view, the sound, the magnitude of the force of the water. 

And then the final chapter. 

Morrin Centre in the middle of Quebec City. There we were.

The setting of Louise Penny’s book, Bury Your Dead.  

As it should be. 

The end of the journey.

Do You Remember....

 By Marilyn Moore

From the National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools

Gimikwenden ina

Aanin ezhinikaazoyan

Aandi wenjibaayan

Gimikwenden ina

Gimikwenden ina

Nindedeyag nimaamaayag

Nimiseyag nisayeyah

These words, from a song in Corey Payette’s Children of God, are written in the Ojibwe language.  The Ojibwe are part of the Anishinaabeg group of Indigenous peoples, the second largest in North America, still found today in Canada and the area around the Great Lakes in the US.  The words translated into English…

Do you remember

What you are called?

Where you are from?

Do you remember?

Do you remember

Our fathers and mothers,

Our sisters and brothers?

You might have wondered as you read the English words if they reflected the experiences of Ojibwe children, taken from their parents and placed in government boarding schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  If you did, you were correct.  

A reminder of that horrible time in our nation’s history, and in Canadian history, too, when deliberate and intentional efforts were made to extinguish Indigenous history, language, religion, food, tradition, clothing, culture…indeed, extinguishing Indigenous peoples altogether.  The diabolical means?  Start with the children….  Separate children from their parents, from their extended families, from their villages, from all that’s familiar, and enroll them in residential boarding schools. Forbid them to use the name that had been given to them at birth, to speak the language they know, to eat the food that is familiar, to wear the clothing that is theirs, to practice traditions and religious practices they’ve known all their lives, to even mention their parents or family members, or the land and people they were forced to leave.  Then give them an “American” name, force them to become child laborers, teaching them the barest minimum level of literacy, along with basic skills which would be useful in an agricultural/manufacturing economy.  And require them to practice Christianity.  The stated policy goal was to remove the Indian from the child…that bold, that daring, that disrespectful, some would say that evil.

The children learned not to speak where they could be heard by those who were in charge about their families, their land, their names, their beliefs.  They also suffered, physically, emotionally, socially.  There were deaths, by accident, illness, and suicide.  Some remembered…some of what they were not supposed to remember.  But they were children, and details disappear from memory after a while.  Eventually, language and culture and custom and tradition mostly disappeared.  Except…while the details may have disappeared from children’s memories, the sense that something important, something essential, something at the very core of their being, lingered.  They did remember that something else had been a part of their lives, and was still a part of who they were.  

It's a long, sorry story, an embarrassing and cruel part of our nation’s history.  Today we would say, “That’s not who we are….” But we were…. This was not just a northern US/Canadian story, it was a Nebraska story, too.  One of those Indian Boarding Schools was in Genoa, Nebraska.  It operated from 1884 to 1934, housing more than 4000 students over those fifty years…4000 children, wondering in their souls if they remembered.  And wondering if their mothers and fathers, and sisters and brothers, remembered them….

There are many ways of remembering.  There are stories, and tales, and pictures, and poetry, and artifacts, and music.  Somehow, in some way, the elders kept these alive, though keeping the language alive has been hard.  There are other ways.  Indigenous women sewed seeds of plants and grain into the hems of their skirts when they sensed the village where they lived would soon be forced to move, either by warfare or yet another treaty.  They would be able to take something of their homeland with them, perhaps to be able to grow the plants in a new place.  (I have recently read that women captured in Africa, bound for slavery, did the same, weaving seeds into their hair, so they could carry something of home with them.  Women are amazing, aren’t we….) Aliyah American Horse, Nebraska’s Youth Poet Laureate, wrote a poem for National Day of Remembrance for US Indian Boarding Schools about the significance of hair in Indian culture; hair is a carrier of story and history and identity. When officials at the Indian Boarding Schools, or school officials in Nebraska today, cut the hair of Indigenous students, they are cutting that child’s identity.   

Remembering who we are, what we are called, where we are from, our mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, is important to our identity as individuals and as members of a community.  Trying to blot out that memory, to suppress it, in the name of unity, or superiority, or ethnocentrism, is harmful.  It’s hurtful.  It’s antithetical to the belief that every person is a person of value and worth, a bedrock value in our nation’s founding documents.  

While the Indian Boarding Schools have closed, though the effects are still reverberating through Indigenous peoples today, there is a modern-day effort to suppress remembering.  This is on a larger scale, an effort to not tell, to overlook, to forget, the chapters in American history that are uncomfortable.  Like enslavement.  Like the Indian Boarding Schools.  Like the Tulsa race massacre.  Like the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, more than half of whom were American citizens.  Like the Jim Crow laws for nearly a century following the Civil War.  In the eyes and minds of some of our political leaders, anything that might make students uncomfortable should not be included in school curriculum, nor in school libraries.  Once again, start with the children, and see if we can erase these ugly parts of our history.  

It won’t work, of course.  There are many sources of information, way beyond textbooks and library books, and anything that is “forbidden” is all the more interesting to learners of any age.  So these chapters won’t disappear from our national story.  But the efforts to make them unseen and unheard and unremembered are damaging to our national psyche.  Trauma that has been suppressed, whether in an individual or a nation, has a way of emerging later with great power, great disruption, and often tragic results, unless it’s confronted, remembered, and dealt with in such a way that the person, or the nation, emerges healthy and whole.  

I don’t know how we as a nation, or we as individuals, ever compensate Indigenous families for the great harm that was caused by the Indian Boarding Schools, or how we compensate Black Americans for the harm that was caused by enslavement, or how we compensate other groups of people that were intentionally and deliberately harmed.  In 1988, Congress provided reparation payments to Japanese families that had been incarcerated during WWII.  Proposals have been made for reparations to Black Americans for four centuries of discriminatory laws, statutes, and actions…but they have not been enacted.  One has only to look at quality of life indicators, like life span, education level, health, income, home ownership, for Indigenous people compared to others in this nation to conclude that whatever treaties may have been signed, whatever governmental support services may have been put in place, have not begun to repair the damage that was inflicted on the first people of this land.

I don’t know what it will take to repair the harm.  I do believe that it starts by remembering….

(A personal note.  I learned this song as a member of a choir invited to sing at a service on the National Day of Remembrance for US Indian Boarding Schools.  It was a powerful experience to learn the language, to learn the meaning of the words, to feel the beat of the drum that accompanies the song. It is beyond my comprehension how much more powerful, like a thousand times more so, it must be for Indigenous people to sing this…it is their story.)

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A simple plainsong, floating into autumn

 

By Mary Kay Roth

Scrambling into my kayak on this balmy September afternoon, the craft inevitably endeavors to reel over with a precarious teeter. I pause for a moment to find my balance, then push off from a shore of russet grasses and weary sunflowers. Scooching the boat through the shallows, I paddle unevenly for a few strokes, drifting away from solid ground.

Eventually I straighten out and find my tempo, a consistent dunk and splash, dunk and splash. Breathe in, breathe out.  The kayak glides over the still, sparkling lake, out of sight, out of reach.  

I promised myself one more warm boat ride before the chill settled this year. And on this gorgeous day, clouds are high and proud, reflecting off the surface of the water as if I’m paddling through the sky. 

Carried on a whisper of a breeze, dry yellow leaves sail atop the lake and brush against my boat.  Forest green lily pads drift everywhere, but the water lilies have long since faded.  Here and there, the tips of tree branches have been dipped into autumn’s paint bucket.

Curious herons linger nearby. Young ducks and geese – now gangly, overgrown adolescents – come crazy close to my kayak, right along with newly arriving migratory intruders of various stripes and persuasions.

Fall is now upon us, the season of plainsong.

Dawn comes later, dusk comes earlier, bringing an inescapable sense of time passing – a mist of drowsy, sweet melancholy and meditation. 

A kayak seems to melt seamlessly into the golden landscape of fall, somehow perfectly suited to the season.  Unsteady for some, the seat of a kayak is where I find my place of equilibrium in this wobbly world. 

Once upon a time I loved speed boats.  My daughter has one now and she calls it, “BOB,” named after my dad who loved fast cars and fast boats.  I can close my eyes and still feel the rough texture of ski rope in my hands as my dad’s boat pulled me along the face of the water, skimming back and forth over the wake.

When my daughter bought her speedster a couple years back, I managed to haul myself up on water skis and feel that power once again. Yep, ski boats roar and rev through the summer with a hearty, raucous blast. 

But these days, thank you, I’ll take fall and a kayak, stunning and still, spinning a spell for searching souls.

Kayaks were invented at least 4,000 years ago by the Inuit and Aleut people of Arctic North America who created a design that differs from a canoe.  A kayak has a lighter hull, covered deck and shallow base, resulting in a boat that proves more agile and nimble, as well as ensuring icy water doesn’t enter the boat.  

I learned how to kayak during COVID when there were few other lessons to learn.  I had tried canoes but struggled with the bulk and frankly the necessity of paddling in sync with someone else. I have always been more of a solo gal, so going out in a kayak better matches my spirit.

It was love at first float, an intimate ride, sitting atop the water separated only by one slim layer of fiberglass.  

After I took those initial kayak lessons, I first dipped my toes into the water with an inflatable – but soon wanted something more substantial.  Next, I toted an array of kayaks around sports stores, walking laps to see which one I could carry – finally brought one home and named her Scuttle from The Little Mermaid – bought an ancient Ford pickup truck to haul her.

In the past few years, I’ve kayaked in torrential rains and through windswept currents – in spring, under the glowworm-lit caves of New Zealand and in summer, alongside whales in Canada. 

And as autumn arrives at Nebraska’s lakes and rivers – firesides, crisp apples and a simple quiet quite different than any other time of year – the stillness practically calls out for my kayak. 

Sure, each June I will salute summer’s sun-baked glow and riotous splash.  

But I’ve come to terms with the reality that I’ll never be a “California girl.” I’m a child of autumn who belongs in the arms of a kayak, rowing softly into the sweet surrender of chillier waves.

So, on this very first day of autumn, my wish is this: May you all find your own place of peace, somewhere out there.

As for me, I’ll be pushing out from shore into the hushed, gilded tapestry of this most precious of seasons, paddling unmoored with the rhythm of an open heart.