This summer feels a lot different from last. About the only thing they have in common is that I’ve been eating a lot of cocoa puffs again this summer.

Last summer, I was in the high desert of Nevada and it was cold until July. I spent most of my time alone, or with an elderly Native American woman who taught me so much in just a few months. I was brave, and I rambled—across Utah’s salt flats and into an ice cold river in northern California and up the sides of mountains in Oregon, Washington, Montana. Last summer, I was so lonely I could barely stand to speak to anyone on the phone without crying. Home felt very far away.

This summer, I am in my beloved Atlanta, with my sweet friends. Nothing is quite the same as it was my first summer here—it feels different, somehow, but it’s nice. My heart beats in a different way. I hope you know what I mean.

I have too much to do and I scarcely feel that I have a second to catch my breath. The summer is hot and the air is stifling and sometimes I feel like I can’t move, but it’s not really a bad thing.

The slightest thing evokes it, this feeling of neither here nor there-ness. A photo of the sleepy Pacific coast, or the smell of sage, or the quick flash of a firefly’s glow. The too-sweet chocolate milk left over at the end of a bowl of cocoa puffs. It’s about the only thing that reminds me I am the same girl I was this time last year.

photo by isobelle