Last week before he left, Howard and I took the pup for one last walk together on the slope of the hill behind our house. We followed a path that is one of Howard's favorites, though it is one that I don't often travel myself. I'd been heading for the cover of the woods instead, enchanted by the bluebells that had bloomed among the trees and were now pale ghosts fading back into the green. "Ah, but I know a place where the bluebells are just now hitting their peak," he told me; and he whistled for the dog, and led the way, and this is what he showed me:

There's a lesson for me here. Sometimes the things you think you're losing aren't really gone at all. You just have to come at them from a new direction...and then there they are, stronger than ever.

So I'm out of the woods, in the literal sense, and maybe in the creative sense too. As I push ahead with creative work, I am, metaphorically speaking, walking farther afield with each passing day, and if the work is not exactly easy, it is oh so interesting, which is even better.

These pictures come from the bottom of the hill, bordered by some sheep fields and an old stone wall. Tomorrow, pictures from the very top. On Thursday, down the other side.

May your own journeys be interesting too, wherever and whatever those journeys may be.