Soon…

I can’t wait to be up at camp and I’m hoping my body is going to cooperate and I’m going to take some Imodium with me just in case. I’m not supposed to take it since for a person with gastroparesis, it’s kind of counterproductive and quite frankly can hurt a lot even the children’s dose but if I have to I will.

There is nothing in this world that can compare to morning at high altitude up in the forest. The air is different. It feels differently to the skin. The sounds are different. The wind in the trees sounds like nowhere else I know. The air and the earth feel more alive and that quality is evident everywhere you look. The earth smells wonderful and clean even at the end of a summer on the cusp of winter. Fall is fleeting and short in California mountains. The oaks may turn colour and aspens and alders but mostly the cedars and the pines and the evergreen oaks don’t change much but you can tell the quality of light is changing. The sun is lower in the sky.

Morning begins at the tip tops of the trees over the eastern ridges and the dawn chorus raises its voice. You pass from a moment of absolute silence to the screams of Stellar Jays and the dee dee dee of the chickadees and the tapping of the woodpeckers hiding yet another acorn to farm for the winter.

The sun creeps up and then spills over the trees into the valley and it’s magic to watch it move. All nature in the valley is part of a giant sundial charting the sun’s morning path

I always raise my face to the sun’s morning kiss in the mountains, there is nothing better in the world.