As I’ve started studying the geology of the lands I hike, I’ve really come to love the size and the scope of the story I see.

I’ve started sleeping with a stuffed animal. It’s a miniature dachshund with the words Be Mine embroidered on it’s side. I have no idea who bought it for whom. Me for my late wife or her for me.

When the waters come, mountains bow down before it. When the waters come, shorelines turn their back and recede.

I have vanquished the darkness. New lights are in my ceiling. They are flush to the sheet rock rather than dangling down. I have them on at the moment just to see how I like them although I’m not really sure they serve any purpose.

Two lights fell out of the ceiling yesterday. I brought in the ladders and figured out why. The junction boxes failed. The plastic crumbled. I guess fifteen years of hanging around in my ceiling was just too much for them.

Things are easing up. My sore hip and leg, tweaked during a week in the Black Hills and Badlands, are recovering. A massage on Monday and a visit to my doctor on Tuesday seem to have done the trick.

I like it that I can step into my back lots, look up, and see the stars. Maybe not as many as I might see at Big Bend Bend or the Guadalupe Mountains, but still stars in the night sky with the Milky Way clearly visible.

Things are changing. You might recall in 2023, after climbing to the top of Guadalupe peak and returning, I felt my life was entering a new period. I called it my Guadalupian Period, being as I’m a newborn fan of geology. And I was right.

I usually refer to my Barbados Cherry in the singular. But it is time to admit there is now more than one. In fact, I find it hard to really put a number on the number of plants that now comprise what I should rightly call my Barbados Cherry grove.

On my recent trip to South Dakota, I visited Wall Drugs and the Corn Palace. I expected kitsch. I got art and history. Nice surprises in both cases.

I remember when my daughter first went to visit Maine with her new husband. It was summer and Maine was beautiful, and she opined that they could live there. And her husband said, no, because of winter.

It used to be that only the wealthy could flee the seasons, and mostly it was summer. Houses in the Hamptons. Hotels in The Catskills. Mansions in Newport. Then came the car and a burgeoning middle class. And people started fleeing all the seasons.

I am back from the badlands, from the black hills, from the wide waters of the Missouri. I stood at the spot where Lewis and Clark first raised a US flag in the newly bought Louisiana Purchase.

My old roof is removed, and the new roof installed. There is still work to be done, but my house is dried in and safe from the elements.

Today, I get a new roof. Hail damaged my old one. The new one will be metal, as was the old. But a different style. Standing seam.

I feel as though this has been another year of living sickly.

On Wednesday of last week my intestinal system went on the fritz and became a water works.

It stormed at my house yesterday. Twice. The second time harder than the first. The rain was horizontal, flying along on the wind. There was a veritable river running down the dog run.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. It is oddly invigorating to dig, trim, and work with trees and plants. I did it again yesterday and I’ll do it again today.

I weeded in the garden yesterday. It was satisfying. I’ll do more today. The rains came. The dirt is soft. The air is cool as well, and that’s good, too. I’m in the mood. The mood. The garden mood.