smell of tomatoes on the vine, in the sun, can you stand it?

Swimming naked in lakes... watching sunsets fade slowly over cornfields... music festivals filling my head with what will be deep fond memories... running along the river, racing it to sea but losing each time that I have to turn back home.

I rediscovered some of my own soul, listening to the sweet sound of gospel knock on the door of my own ideas about what I like and don't like, then kicking it down like a blast of cool wind and rain that just tore across a desert. Guitars and drums thumping, compelling beyond strumming and inviting the gently rowdy crowd to their feet. I clap and sway, the old man with the beard wailing on the mandolin, the deep voice ringing cosmically true from the black man in small black glasses, the country girl on guitar closed her eyes so she can't rightly open them but she sways with something, you can see the hand of someone moving inside them, fingers wiggling behind the eyes and pushing lightly on their backs in time with the unstoppable maple sap they just tapped...

I got to drive a tractor across some farm fields. A big one, hard to shift but with surprisingly responsive steering. So much fun! Then I ground some spelt (similar to wheat, but with less gluten so wheat-sensitive people can more often eat it) berries into flour by hand which was great. Planning to bake with it soon. Banana bread...

I made some pottery on a wheel with a great teacher who let me screw up only a bit but left me feeling like I did it all myself. That was divine, feeling the soft clay turn in my hands, feeling the centrifugal and centripetal forces, getting in touch with the rotation that makes up all of us down to our atoms and apples, watching evolution unfold as my stationary fingers meet the smooth rotating surface to etch new possibilities and ancient patters to old to be trite. Creating useful things...hmmm... that's certainly part of my calling... tangible objects crafted with only patience and an unimagined future that will last as long as people love well-made things.

Loving the place, loving the people, working on loving myself and learning to wait...