Patrick Kelly

The most important lessons I can give my daughter are not through me, but instead those found best in the wild.

When you don’t have the energy or time to be upon the land from which has given life to your family, our nation, and all species, consider setting out sunflower seeds, nuts, raw meat, or even jams for the birds. Set them someplace you can catch yourself noticing who’s visiting out of the corner of your eye through a window at any moment.

Winter is the season of withholdings come free and taboos undone. Those things we tell ourselves which are not for the warm months come to roost, and our allowances to ourselves grow as the season’s light shrinks.

Summer’s heat is now just warmth as the sun sets lower in the autumn sky. I listen to the last rumbles of lawnmowers and leaf blowers and reflect upon the high hot season gone by.

My wife and I, but mostly my wife, honestly exclusively my wife had our first child in June. A daughter born this spring. Living through this summer. Her first. She’s seen the hottest days since records began. And not just her records. All of them.

"Regardless, as I dream of spring and the chlorophyll which shall abound like a shoot from that onion you forgot about in the back of the pantry, I find eager joy in the challenges I am to face as much as the possibilities in their being overcome."

One of the greatest magics of these late autumn evenings is that of midges, gnats, flies, mosquitoes and bugs that flitter about in the humble stratosphere of their world between the intermittent cold snaps.

This world, this here, this beautiful now, I choose and choose nowhere else, because today I see beavers, and grasshoppers, and eagles and get to wonder when the ducks will again fly south.

As your summer progresses and perhaps you find yourself in need of a sigh of relief from woe, leave your flashlights, glowing rectangles and worries inside.

A few weeks ago, while brushing my teeth for the evening, I spotted a small spider. They're about 1/4 the size of a raisin — and my new roommate.