all the big trees.

work carried christopher to san diego last week and i practiced a bit of self-care and planned my own way west, first to the mountains of utah, then to california for a dose of desert and coast.

first things first was salt lake city. amanda flew in from palo alto with baby leo and we spent days exploring angie's new homestead, dazzled by leo's serene spirit and benjamin and nora as toddlers and angie's six month bloomed belly and the nearness of the natural world.

it's good to lay your eyes on mountains smothered in wildflowers. it's good to stretch your legs -- your body -- with alpine hikes. it's good to fill your lungs with bright air spiced with pine woods and wildflowers and the curl of smoke from a faraway chimney. it's good to take walks in the woods with wee ones, to take pause and notice every flower, bird, squirrel. it's good to pluck your fingers through a trickling brook and delight in something so small -- so big -- as water, and where it comes from. it's good to spend time together as women, to have the sorts of life-giving conversations that have been had between women across all of time.

how these days ministered to my soul.