On Wednesday morning, I went for my usual solo hike, the one I try to do three times a week. Right where the trail starts sloping down toward a set of rock stairs and a little bridge over a creek that runs only about one week of the year now, I saw it, about 40 feet away.

I’m visiting my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania this summer for the first time with my boys but without a partner. We’re here at the same time as my sister and her family, also for the first time. And because there isn’t enough room for all of us at my mother’s condo, I volunteered to get an Airbnb.

Morning light danced off wide smiles, shining on the lips and teeth of a group sitting next to me at a dark blue metal table on a small porch at Seafolk Coffee in Rockport, Maine. The sky was pale blue with a slight haze on the horizon and a wispy now-and-then breeze, the broccoli trees lining the harbor. People read their books over coffee, even if they were with the company of others.

This summer hasn’t been a writing one in that I haven’t written much. But can’t living and collecting moments also qualify as writing? If so, that’s largely what I’ve been up to this summer. “Writing” a lot.

Remember those push / penny pencils? The ones that had a stack of short lead tips inside, and when one wore down you'd pop it out, put it in the back, and click a fresh one forward? I remember two things about them: their smell (I swear some of them came with a fake strawberry scent) and how the fresh tip felt to write with.

In our first meeting with the miracle doctor in June of 2011, I looked around the waiting room at the gaunt bodies, the ghoulish faces. A gray-stubbled man hobbled to the glass separator to speak to the person at the front desk through the small window, the outline of a cigarette pack a silhouette in the back pocket of his jeans. My father sat beside me…

In my homesteading immersion, we were recently asked to name a few plants, flowers, or trees we’d like to deepen into relationship with.

I’m back on the homestead this spring, a sweet and intentional piece of land between Boulder and Lyons, deepening my connection to nature, community, and my roots in a nine-month immersion.

On the urge to look back, the instinct to reach, and learning to trust the walk forward.