"The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it."
Annie Dillard

It is not that the summer is so uninteresting that I have nothing to write; it is only that I am living, that I am breathing, that I am recording with my eyes and ears and nose and not with my pen and scrolls.

Cherries ended, I thinned the apples, and peaches start tomorrow. I live my life in seasons, in waiting and biding and breathing and releasing. So here I am, 5 weeks in and 5 weeks out. I've been working lot, to be honest. Cutting weeds and pruning and picking fruit and rooting out flower beds, moving the winter's firewood and cleaning windows and walls. My back aches and my body is tired, my arms are tanned and strong. I fall asleep easily at night, going to bed late and rising early because this is summer, and this is the north, and you can't miss all this daylight and sunshine.

We take moonlit walks and we share fresh fruit and longboard in the late nights. I read a lot.

A little girl drowned Friday night. A best friend's niece. So death touches the circle, always and ever at the lapping fringes. And it's true, we don't know what to say. I don't know what to write in summers like this, in beauty and pain and freshness like this. Life is too real for my silly poems. I used to eat storebought fruit and think it was good, but since trying the local and picking it myself, I can never go back (and is this like life?).

And I don't know when I ever chose to give away my heart, but somehow the North, the earth itself, holds my heart, holds all of me in its beauty and its unpredictability. And I tremble.