Collin goes back to school tomorrow already! I don’t know how that can be possible. So it will be my crazy life of commuting back and forth all the time again. It seems so ridiculous.

We’re getting a slight drizzle as I sit here now and I was just thinking about how much I love the smell of damp earth—I was thinking damp Pennsylvanian earth, since it has such richness—not damp Coloradan earth. But then I remembered something. At John’s the summer, pulling weeds after a rain, you could just smell ocean. It was so strong coming up from the sandy soil. I often forget this was once a shallow sea, yet the sea lives on here and is part of the energy of this place. I get stuck in my impressions of this place as always having been arid. I dislike the dryness so much. And yet sea is part of the personality of this place too—an ancient part yet still so strongly held here I’m able to smell it, to breathe that old identity in, right here in this time.