Affected by Ice

 

This is my first selfie for the year of 2026. I think it indicates that this will either be The Year of the Brain Freeze or The Year of the Mouth! I am hoping for the latter. 

The past few months I have not been writing on the blog, silenced by the task of mulling over my fall’s continent-wide travels. I am often asked if I worry about traveling and camping alone. In the coming weeks, I am hoping to post a more thoughtful answer than the one I often give to that question. I also want to describe how wandering the world with an open heart and wide intentions lifts mere sightseeing to another dimension.

In the meantime—within a hundred yards of my doorstep, I am grateful to find the natural world carrying on with its diverse cycles of water-nourishing missions. One waterfall and one stream’s work. Enjoy!

"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions."

                —Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, To an individual (Bahá'í) believer, 17 February 1933