feeling the edge of summer. It's still hot here, and it will still be hot. But summer is starting to crumble.

grieving the end of summer. I don't really know how to deal with this feeling; my whole life is either looking forward to autumn or enjoying autumn. Maybe because this was Nathan's last summer before graduation, and I didn't accomplish almost anything I wanted to? Or maybe because I've had two traumatic autumns in a row, and my psyche can't imagine that it might be a calm and lovely and happy fall? Or it might even be that if fall comes, can winter be far behind, and last winter was so dark that a new winter feels impossible to get through? I don't know. I just know the thought of summer ending gives me a lump in my throat and a sadness I don't have a name for. It almost feels like fear.

savoring, then, the end of summer. Putzing around my yard a lot, pulling weeds here and there, stopping to smell flowers, pruning and admiring and touching. Sitting on my back porch, admiring the last green of the mountains and feeling the last hot sunshine. Sitting on my front porch, soaking in the summer light in my trees. Walking barefoot in the grass.

discovering that I actually do like salads. I've always preferred soup. But I've discovered that I like non-boring salads with lots of different ingredients that (this is the key) someone else makes. Current favorites: the California cobb at Zupa's and the raspberry chicken at Costa Vida. The thought of buying and prepping all of those ingredients exhausts me. But picking one up for lunch or dinner? OK! (I am still a microdipper though: I only like a tiny bit of dressing.)

eating lots of berries and peaches and the heirloom tomatoes my neighbor let me pick last night from his yard. And watermelon—I try to have a diced up watermelon in my fridge at all times, all summer long.

appreciating the late-August blooms. Daylilies, purple bells, columbine, cone flowers, clematis, daisies: all done blooming. But I still have petunias, which are like limpid puddles of fragrant velvet. And zinnias! I always plant pink zinnias, but this year I also planted some mixed-color seeds. I have a beautiful yellow zinnia that I can’t stop admiring! 

drinking Simply limeade and/or raspberry lemonade. This is on sale at Target all summer so I break my usual don't-drink-your-calories rule. It's sour and sweet and so delicious; another summer-long staple at our house.

reading. My house book is The Last Neanderthal (a prehistory crossed with a contemporary) and my purse book is The Promise of Shadows (Greek mythology retelling of a YA novel about a harpy/human girl). Wait, what? You don't have a house book and a purse book? I like to always have a book in my purse so I can read whenever. Yes...I could switch to e-books and stop carrying a book around with me. But I just like print books better.

listening to Bastille, Bleachers, and Bush. Also Lorde. And yes: Depeche Mode has been on heavy repeat.

listing a bunch of stories I want to get scrapped in September. I didn't do much scrapbooking over the summer and I am ready to get back to it.

writing an essay based on an ah-ha moment I had when we were in Hawaii, and feeling determined to polish it and submit it somewhere. It's got dolphins and stretch marks and turquoise water and fear and sadness and joy. Too much drama?

thinking about all of the travel I’ve done over the past 15 months and wondering why I haven’t written much about it. I want to blog about those experiences!

practicing Spanish with Nathan. He is loving the language and picks it up quickly. It's good for me to remember it and speak it as it's helped me be brave enough to use it a few times at work. I enjoy our Spanish conversations, even if they're sort of halting and filled with gaps while we try to remember a word (or Google it!).

celebrating (very quietly) that Kaleb seems like a new kid now that he's started school. He is so much happier as a junior high student than he was as a sixth grader—I hadn't realized how unhappy he'd grown until I saw him start being his happy self again.

recuperating from taking the shingles off of our roof last weekend. It was hard work; my arms are covered in slices and scratches and bumps from the fiberglass; I have a bruise on my right shin and my left thigh from bashing the shingles against my legs, and my hands are stiff. But it was an experience I will never forget (and will likely blog about).

finishing up a few summer TV shows: The Strain and Turn ​both had their final seasons this summer, and then there was that newest season of Game of Thrones, which left me pretty conflicted.

driving our Corolla because we sold our minivan and haven't bought anything new. We can't decide if we should just drive the Corolla or get what we want (a Highlander). Are we being indulgent to get such an expensive vehicle? We can't decide. I might decide for us, though, once it starts snowing. Anyway, plenty of test driving and discussing our options and I can't decide: if we do get the Highlander, do I want silver or pearl?

training for a late-fall half marathon, although I haven't actually signed up for a fall half marathon. I really want to run the Rimrock Half but the logistics are giving me stress. Or maybe Snow Canyon again? And am I even strong enough anymore?

pondering my faith. Some recent experiences have left me heartsore and frustrated and unsure of what I believe. 

missing Jake but feeling like we've gotten closer and repaired some things that needed to be repaired, and feeling like he's finding a stronger emotional place for himself. Things are getting a little bit better.

missing Haley but feeling so proud of her—she's doing an extra year of college but will have two majors and three minors when she graduates next year. She's handled a full load of difficult classes and lots of hours of working with strength and courage.

appreciating the structure of our at-home family. Which isn't to say I don't miss my kids who have grown up and moved out. I do miss them! But as they have​ moved out, I am trying to enjoy how our family at home is structured and how it works. Haley visits, Jake visits, we still see each other and talk on the phone and text; they’ll always be my kids and I still worry about them. But my life feels different now that I am not actively taking care of their needs. Four people make a lot less laundry than six did! Seriously, though. One of my friends wrote on Facebook about how she felt like her world was ending because her oldest was moving out. I remember feeling that way, too, when Haley left for college, but finding on the other side that the world doesn’t end, it simply changes. The only way you can make peace with the changes is to embrace them.

wondering (hoping? dreading? anticipating? fearing?) if some long-pondered and discussed changes might finally be in the works. Time will tell!

How is your world currently?

I wish I had a photograph of myself from those days—black shirt, black mini skirt, my favorite silver-toed black boots and my earrings shaped like snakes and my ankh necklace and my crystal necklace both strung on black suede chokers. My white-blonde hair and that look on my face, a vulnerable snarl that was part smile and part lifted eyebrow.

Me in what my mom called "Amy's black years": before cell phones and digital photography, we didn't take as many pictures anyway, even my parents who took a lot of pictures for the time. But I think she didn't want to capture it on film at all, the crazy, moody mess her used-to-be-normal daughter became. As if taking pictures of me might've encouraged me to continue waving my goth freak flag, as if not photographing me would discourage my efforts and make me want to wear color again (and go to school, and be kind, and stop stomping around angry all the time).

I don't really blame her, even though I do so desperately wish I had a photo or two. How does a parent know what to do with such a daughter, who curses and screams and rebels any way she can, who, when she's not out who-knows-where with her friends (also dressed in black) spent most of her time sitting in front of her stereo, as if the machine were an altar and the music the voice of God?

As if that strange music could do anything but make her feel worse.

There was a lot of Depeche Mode seeping under my bedroom door during my black years.

And yes: my mom told me more than once that if I'd just listen to something cheerier, I'd feel a whole lot better. (Imagine our conversations when I discovered Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy and Clan of Xymox and all of the other Goth bands I listened to.) What I could never put into words for her was that yes: the music that I loved was dark and gloomy, and I​ was dark and twisty, but it lifted me, somehow. It gave me a mirror to gaze into, where I could look at myself in my own eye but I could also look back over my shoulder and see others reflected there. Listening to music, I wasn't alone.

Did the dark music make the darkness or did the darkness resonate with the music?

Probably a little bit of both.

But whatever my mother's objections and however cliched it might be, it's one of the defining things about me: I am a Depeche Mode fan. Their music in the 80s and early 90s was a voice for me; it gave me a way to say what I couldn't and to understand what I felt. It's equal parts dramatic and truthful to say that Dave Gahan's voice is the sound of that time, and whenever I hear it I am transported back to those years which were both horrible and ecstatic. They were intensely painful but also intense in every aspect: friendship, affection, love, pain, hunger, the texture of grass on bare feet. I felt everything, as hard and deeply as I could feel.

(Maybe everyone feels that way in adolescence? I don't know.)

It was the way the music itself sounded. And it was the lyrics, too. Some of the lyrics were like ropes to cling to, and others were like little pieces of light that made the darkness bearable.

The Cure, The Cult, Peter Murphy, The Smiths, New Order, the Violent Femmes, David Bowie, Yaz, Siouxie and the Banshees, Nick Cave, Berlin, Erasure, Throwing Muses and dozens of other obscure bands; alternative and punk and synth and new wave and whatever else people called it: it wasn't only Depeche Mode that helped me make sense of that time.

But it was always Depeche Mode.

It was Depeche Mode because the precise mixture of sin, guilt, redemption, and a quest for something spiritual (but not religious) that imbibes their best songs is exactly what I felt caught in. Because they sang about rain and Princess Di and the meaning of love and the meaning of lust. Because Stripped, because Dressed in Black, because But Not Tonight. Because Catching Up with Depeche Mode was the best tape to listen to when I was forced to clean the kitchen. Because Black Celebration was the subtitle of my life. Because whatever he insisted upon, he was trying to be like one of the boys. Because of the summer of 1987 and Music for the Masses, which was the soundtrack for every exquisite, sweet, painful second. Because for many years I thought "Strangelove" was the only real love song, because "I give in to sin because you have to make this life livable" was the only way to make sense of anything that happened.

Because that voice made my jaw hurt and my throat grow a lump and my skin prickle; because of those words. ​Because of those words.

I'm thinking about Depeche Mode and about that version of myself (when I was sad but passionate and so afraid of people finding out I was strange that I wore the strangeness right out in front of me like a shield but I was never afraid to stand up and do what I wanted, especially when what I wanted wasn't acceptable) because as I'm writing this, Depeche Mode is playing a concert in Salt Lake City.

And I, the person who every one of my high school friends knew loved DM more than just about anything, didn't go.

Partly I didn't go because who would I go with? If I'd made them, my husband would've gone or my sister would've gone. But they would've been going for me, not for the experience. I wanted to go with my best friend from high school, but she was being a responsible parent tonight. She would've gone for the music. I could've looked at her and remembered how we were together before we had to be responsible parents, when we knew what was in each other's closets as well as our own, when sometimes I would wear red, but only her magical red jeans. When we still intimately knew every ache each other had. She could've seen the Amy I used to be like a figure drawn on vellum, right over this older and wiser but less brave and interesting and wild version I've become.

And that's the other reason. Going to a Depeche Mode concert will remind me of how much I have changed. In good ways—I have many mediums, now, for understanding myself and my experiences. Music, yes, but also art and writing and poetry and hiking and running and even opening my mouth to talk, to tell, to speak my story. I understand that pulling the darkness over me like a cloak is a sure way to lose myself in darkness; I know that I don't have to be sad to be good. I know what I need forgiveness for, and redemption, and I am at last learning what I don't have to carry guilt for.

She was reckless, the Amy I used to be. But I think she was also braver. She cared less about what people thought. She was willing to dive in and do anything. And she—I—was passionate and ambitious and certain the world had something waiting. Back then I thought I was exceptional and the world just hadn't noticed yet, and bumping into that old belief with my current, mediocre self might've just been more than I could stand.

(But I still would've gone if Chris could have.)

I do know this. If I had gone, I would've worn something black, especially my black Docs that've been everywhere with me for a decade. I would've bumped into old friends and old boyfriends and none of them would've been surprised to see me there. I would've sung along because I still know all the words, and that voice would've made my teeth hurt and my skin prickle.

And I would've taken pictures so I didn't have to wish for one.

Some books are easier to write about than others; The Book of Joan by Lydia Yuknavitch falls, for me, into the extremely-difficult-to-write-about group. When I posted a photo of myself reading it on Instagram, my friend Karen said she'd started it but it didn't grab her interest, and to let her know if it was worth reading.

Which also falls into that difficult-to-do category, because I have such mixed feelings about the book.

The novel takes the stories of Joan of Arc (who, in late medieval France, lead men into battle after hearing the word of God and then was executed for claiming to hear the word of God), Christine de Pizan (a contemporary of Joan of Arc and one of the first women to make her living by writing; one of her last pieces was a poem about Joan) and Jean de Meun (whose book Romance of the Rose was important in the medieval French culture and was criticized by de Pizan) into the future. The society and the world in the book have been ravaged by wars over water and other resources; as the story begins, earth is mostly a floating ball of dirt, and what is left of humanity is living in CIEL, a space station circling the dead planet.

Well, "humanity" in a sense. People have devolved; they are hairless, pigmentless, and sexless beings who cannot recreate. Yet they still value stories; without trees there is no paper, so they write stories on their skin, adding grafts when they run out of room. Like voluminous dresses or ostentatious jewelry, the skin grafts are symbols of wealth. On CIEL, the leader is Jean de Men, who was a general in the wars on earth but now is famous for the romance story written on his skin grafts. The main character telling the CIEL story is Christine Pizan, who writes on her skin a rebellious counter-story to de Men's rape-fantasy: the memoir of Joan of Dirt, her hero from the wars on earth.

The CIEL-sanctioned story is that Joan of Dirt was a rebel, a child soldier whose inhuman powers—she could kill but was never killed, and a blue light at her temple allowed her the strength to control the earth—turned her into a terrorist who ruined the earth. Her story ends in execution by fire, but that is only CIEL's story. In actuality, she escaped the pyre with help from her life-long friend Leone, and is living a hardscrabble life in the caves of the earth.

There was so much I loved about this book. One of my favorite novel devices is the switching between points-of-view, and The Book of Joan does this with a vengeance: sometimes the story is told from Christine in first person, sometimes in third, and then it flips to Joan in first or Joan in third. This is easy to follow as not only the setting but the language between Joan and Christine is drastically different. I liked Joan's story better but I loved the lyrical writing of Christine's voice. I liked the interplay between the historical French people and the future fictional characters, although I think it only added depth (you could, in other words, not know anything about the actual historic figures these characters are based on and still enjoy the story).

More than anything, I loved the connotations the story makes between women's bodies and the natural world. "What if," Christine wonders, "a woman's story could be untethered from what we need it to be in order to feel better about ourselves?" We continue to insist on women being the source of creation, which we can be, but what if the story of women's body was a story of destruction? The historical Joan of Arc heard the voice of God, but the Joan in this story hears the voice of the world—mother earth, if you will. The voice of the earth is a song, but it isn't joyful; it's full of rage, sadness, and betrayal.  Within her hands and that mystical blue light at her temple, Joan has the power of both creation and destruction. She loves the earth but she hates what people are doing to it, and so she saves it by destroying it; in a sense, she is, in fact, the terrorist that CIEL makes her out to be because she did​ use her power to cause geocataclysms that ruined the earth.

She did this not out of a thirst for power or the hunger for resources, as Jean de Men did as he fought the other side of the wars against her, but because she wanted to hasten the inevitable end—to shorten the suffering the wars were causing. "There is a new kind of resistance myth emerging...the world ended at the hands of a girl." Christine realizes that Joan of Dirt's goal to end war which "meant to end its maker, to marry creation and destruction rather than hold them in false opposition." War would never end while humanity was in control—and so she ended humanity.

Which sounds fairly brutal.

Which is fairly brutal, especially for a woman who loves the earth.  For a woman who loves. Joan does, in fact, realize that love itself is a force. "It isn't that love died," she comes to see, "it's that we storied it poorly. We tried too hard to contain it and make it something to have and to hold. Love was never meant to be less than electrical impulse and the energy of matter, but that was no small thing. The Earth's heartbeat or pulse or telluric current...the stuff of life itself...We made it a word, and then a story, and then a reason to care more about ourselves than anything else on the planet."

In the end, that's why Joan destroys the earth that she loves and can hear: because humanity will never do anything other than destroy it.

Even with the brutality, I could follow and appreciate this story. But where it lost me was the last fifty pages or so. Joan's story on earth draws up to Christine's story on CIEL in a mystical sort of way, and it felt so absolutely unsatisfying to me. She travels around the earth with one of Christine's compatriots in a magical sort of way and then is suddenly transported to CIEL, where she manages to rescue Leone who's just had her uterus forcefully removed and eaten by de Men—but doesn't die. The suggestion at the end (and, this is a spoiler but I'm not sure anyone is still reading anyway) is that through dying, Joan can restore the earth. So she and Leone return to the earth (and CIEL is in havoc, as Christine has sent it on a new trajectory toward the sun), Leone slits her throat and reads a letter out loud to her.

And then eats the paper.

"What is the word for her body?" the novel ends. One of those endings that made me think an entire signature was missing from my copy of the book.

I didn't need the world to be regenerated by her death.

I didn't need Christine to be saved from CIEL.

I didn't need Leone to survive. (But I did need to know how​ she survived an un-anesthetized hysterectomy without, you know...some stitches.)

But the scattered plot and the unanswered question—can​ Joan restore the world?—made the book feel almost pointless to me.

In theory, I understand what Yuknavitch is doing. She is saying "this is the mess we created, and as you are part of the mess, you don't get a reprieve. You don't get a miracle because none of us deserve a miracle." Which I can totally go along with.

But the lack of an answer, while perhaps appealing to the High Literature Folk (of which I am a fringe member), felt weak to me. An easy trick rather than a difficult literary decision.

In the end, I keep going back to my friend Karen's question: Is it worth reading? I'm glad I stuck it out and finished it, if only for the experience of the writing itself, and for something I can't quite name yet that it taught my writerly self. But I'm not sure there are many readers I could recommended it whole-heartedly to.

Even though some of its images are indelible in my memory.

All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater. I'm not quite​ the rabid fan of Stiefvater that some of my librarian friends are. It seems that everyone loved The Scorpio Races but it didn't grab me. I did like her Raven Cycle series quite a bit though. I'm hoping the writing style of this one is similar, even though (obviously!) the story is much different.

The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. I didn't ever read his NYT bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. That's because I tend to resist reading what everyone else loves. I mean...is a book a bestseller because it's really, really good? Or just because it's accessible and fluffy? Sometimes it's hard to tell. But this new one looks good enough for me to trust the bestseller lists (I'm assuming it will be popular since his first book did so well): A boy who was adopted as an infant in post-war Dublin tries to figure out his identity as he searches for his birth mother. Not just Ireland but Amsterdam as well. (Obviously I have a promiscuous attachment to books set in Ireland, but I'm starting to love the ones in Amsterdam, too.)

So, tell me: are there any new releases you're looking forward to? Or something you're reading right now that I should check out? (I mean...I cannot promise I will read it. But I will check it out!)

Sometimes it seems like I’ve been recuperating from an injury constantly. Since I sprained my ankle (and likely tore a bunch of ligaments…wish I would’ve gotten an MRI and a proper diagnosis then) at Ragnar in 2013, my running hasn’t been the same. It’s hard for me to trust my ankle to and to feel that I won’t fall again (especially since I have!); my back was painful for a long, long time and sometimes the pain flares up again, and now my knees are bothering me. I spend so much time thinking about getting my bones, joints, and tendons back in good working order that I forget I’m not the only one who is recuperating from something.

Maybe because his injuries are mostly internal (except for that thrice-cut scar on his chest), but I forget that Kendell is also coming back from injury. Severe injury, not just a dumb sprained ankle and swollen knee pits. In the space of a year, he had his chest cracked twice and part of his heart replaced with something foreign. Between those bookend surgeries, he had a v-fib episode that should have killed him and was in a medically-induced coma along with undergoing having his body temperature drastically lowered. He had to have a pacemaker/defibrillator installed. In the months leading up to the surgery where his bovine valve, slowly choking with scar tissue, was replaced with a porcine valve, his heart was having to work harder than normal. Then, after his surgeon installed the porcine valve, he never felt entirely better. Still had low energy, and the exact thing I was worried would happen was happening: more scar tissue was growing.

All of which means that for almost two solid years, his heart wasn’t working correctly.

The external evidence of so much trauma has healed. His sternum doesn’t pop and crack anymore. His scar is his scar, healed as well as it ever will. But he is still recuperating. Still trying to come back from an injury. And sometimes I forget that.

Our weekend hike reminded me that he’s still in the healing process.

We decided to do a test run of a trail near us, Squaw Peak. We’ve hiked this trail five times together. It starts out with a fairly gentle incline; almost two miles up Rock Canyon. Then there’s a split in the trail; you turn left to hike all along the east (back) side of the peak, come around to a saddle on the west side, and then up again until you reach the summit. It’s one of my favorite hikes, partly because of the way it opens up when you reach the saddle; until then, you’re mostly hiking through trees, but you turn a curve and everything opens and you can see the other mountains, the lake, and the sky again.

But it is a steep hike. Nearly 3000 feet in four miles, but most of that is the last 2.5 miles after you leave the Rock Canyon trail. Kendell wasn’t sure how it would go. His heart and breathing have been fine, but his energy and stamina are still low. So we hiked the trail this time just to see how far he could get, not with the goal of getting to the summit, but with the goal of seeing how his body is doing.

He made it all the way to one of my favorite parts of the trail. This is a meadow you cross while you’re still on the east side of the mountain. After 45 minutes of steep uphill hiking through trees, all of a sudden the trees and the uphill end. It’s a dramatic transition and also fantastic to move through a flat space. You can see the ridge of what I think is Provo Peak from the meadow if you look behind you, and a bit of Cascade Mountain in front. I imagine that sometime in the summer, the meadow is full of wildflowers, but I’ve never timed it right to see that.

We took a breather sitting on a tree stump, and talked a little bit about how Kendell felt. I know it’s discouraging to him, especially since we were on a trail we’ve hiked before. I’ve experienced this same thing—it’s disheartening when your mind knows how to deal with a certain distance, but your body can’t. And even though logically you know that if you keep being patient and keep working you’ll eventually be able to again do what you used to do, it is so easy to feel overwhelmed.

In some ways, I think that coming back from an injury is harder than just starting out with exercising. When you’re just starting, you don’t know what you can do yet. It’s exciting and new to push yourself another half mile of running, another twenty minutes up a steep trail. But when you are coming back, it’s the very fact that you know what your body has been capable of, but isn’t right now, that is maddening. It makes your spirit feel restless and unsatisfied; it tugs and prickles at that part of you we think of as the “heart,” but that isn’t the muscle that moves our blood around. It’s the part of the psyche that moves the spirit, that gathers and disperses energy, that is troubled and uneasy.

It requires so much patience.

As we were hiking back down, I was out in front of Kendell for a while, and just as I reached the end of a particularly steep and rocky part of the trail a deer suddenly crossed right in front of me. Maybe twenty feet away from me. So close. A beautiful tawny doe.

I froze and watched where she went. She picked her way about 15 yards away from the trail, and then started walking downhill. So I kept walking. Kendell had caught up with me by then, so we hiked together, quietly as we could, and the doe kept our pace. For about six or seven minutes, she walked downhill, parallel to the trail, close enough for us to see her through the trees.

Eventually she paused and looked right at us. We took a few pictures (so wish I had taken my Canon, as I felt like I should, instead of only my cell phone), and then she slowly turned around and headed back uphill.

Kendell and I have hiked quite a few miles together over the past decade since he had his hips fixed. We once came upon the entire herd (or what seemed like) of mountain goats that live on Timpanogos. We’ve seen moose, elk, wild turkeys, racoons, skunks, and more than a few snakes. Once an infant bighorn sheep was drinking by a stream next to a trail. Once we caught just the very tail end (literally) of a cougar crossing the trail. And yes: more than one deer.

But that encounter with that doe was magical. To have her walk next to us for so long, her body moving peacefully through the trees and grass, the delicate way she placed her hooves. The calmness she carried.

I always feel, when I see a deer in the wild, that it is my dad saying hello from the other side. But this time felt like something larger. Yes, a hello from my dad. But also the universe telling us: be calm. Keep moving. Be patient. It will all be OK.

I don’t know what that OK will look like. I don’t know if my husband will ever have the energy he used to have. But we will keep heading out into the wilderness together (and by “together” I mean: me in front when we’re going uphill, him in front on the downhill), keep moving, keep being here in the world.

Keep healing and rebuilding our hearts.

We are Okay by Nina LaCour is the second YA novel I've read this year which I will, I believe, eventually forget about completely, except for a few vivid impressions. (The first one was Sara Zarr's Gem and Dixie.) My favorite scene is the one where the main character, Marin, and her best friend/love interest Mabel are in a taxi together, discussing the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude with the driver. (Novels with characters who love books are some of my favorites, but they often make me pause and wonder. I've been a reader and a bibliophile my whole life, and I strove to be an English teacher who inspired my students to read big, to read hard, to push themselves. I believe that teenagers can read difficult books not just for an English assignment but because they love them. But I also know it's fairly rare that they actually do read them.)

The taxi driver says that he cannot love Garcia Marquez's work, only admire it. Not because of the sex or the difficulty, but because "there are too many failings. Not enough hope. Everything is despair. Everything is suffering. What I mean is don't be a person who seeks out grief."

This becomes an important conversation for Marin after her grandfather, who's raised her since her mom died when Marin was three, dies. This happens during the summer before she leaves for college, and his death pushes her over the edge. She doesn't talk to anyone, especially not Mabel or her parents, who have supported Marin as sort-of surrogate parents, but uses some of the money her grandfather had saved and flies to New York. Essentially vanishing from her life in California.

The blurbs about this novel hint that something tragic and dramatic happened between Marin and her grandfather that caused her to leave so abruptly and then stop communicating with her friends. What happened​? was the thing that made me want to read this book and the question that compelled me to keep reading. But I confess that while what happened was haunting, I was thinking it would be something more dramatic. I wasn't really let down exactly...but I just wanted it to be bigger. 

This a book that unfolds fairly quickly and I read it in only a couple of days. I enjoyed the story, the characters, the setting—flashing back and forth between California and Marin's dorm room in New York state. I liked the discussions about books, reading, art, and creativity. How could I not like a book that includes a character reading a book of essays about loneliness?

I liked Mabel's mom and her relationship with Marin quite a bit.

And that scene with the cab driver—that will stay with me. Having gone through my Narnia winter this year and struggling with depression (and some experiences similar to what Mabel and Marin go through), I am learning that my proclivity to seek out grief—to read the darkest, twistiest books because they resonate with my darkness—might not be the healthiest way of coping. That I hold on to the sad and difficult more than I need to. Resonance between darknesses sometimes makes the darkness darker. This novel reminded me to also seek out light, and that the dissonance between darkness and light is where the energy comes from to move away from the darkness.

That said, I think it will be the only thing I remember from this novel. In fact, I totally forgot about reading the book altogether, until I spotted it on my overdue list at the library and had to hunt it down to return it. (It was under my bed, next to a pair of running socks and my pink headband.) Some books are like that: they bring you a little piece of knowledge, and the story itself is secondary. The knowledge is what stays, and that is okay.

Almost every Wednesday in the summer, I hike the Y. This is a hike on the west side of the Wasatch front, wherein you hike up a steep, 1.15 mile trail with 13 switchbacks to get to the giant Y that's painted on the mountain. This is a popular hike in Utah, but honestly: it's not very scenic. It's too hot and dry for many wildflowers to grow, or the tall trees that grow in the canyons. So I mostly hike it just for exercise; I put three big dictionaries in my back pack as ballast and then I go as fast as I can, trying to get faster every Wednesday.

In theory, this is a solo hike, because I'm not "with" anyone. At least: not anyone I know. But plenty of people hike the Y, so the trail is never deserted. (Unless you keep going past the Y, which is a topic for its own post.) I've been thinking, though, that I really want to do an actual solo hike, one on a trail that's far less popular, so I can experience some real mountain solitude and peace.

So today, instead of hiking the Y, I decided to hike up Battle Creek Canyon, past the waterfall and on to Curley Springs, a place I know exists but have never hiked to. I knew the trail would be crowded up to the waterfall, but I was expecting to not see many other hikers past it. Which is exactly what I found.

The trail up Battle Creek Canyon stays close to the creek the entire way, which is something I love. Even when it's sweltering, it just feels cooler when you can hear water. I got my pack on and headed up, passing families with little kids right and left (and not a few piles of dog crap, why can't people clean up after their dogs?​). The trail starts out with a  pretty gradual incline, but as you get closer to the falls it gets steeper and steeper. 

There was so much water coming down the canyon today. Usually by August (by July, honestly!) there's been enough snowmelt that the smaller creeks and streams are not much more than trickles, but the water was still raging. I passed three other waterfalls that I don't think are usually there (I've only hiked this trail a couple of times, and both were in the fall). At a couple of points the trail was literally right next to a temporary waterfall, with that refreshing spray (and quite a few wasps, which I had to be brave about, as anything in the bee family freaks me out) cooling me off. For most of the time I didn't listen to any music, just the sound of the rushing water.

About 15 minutes past Battle Creek Falls, I came down a little curvy incline and discovered that the trail was on the other side of the river.
I think this is normally an easy crossing, a few steps across on dry rocks with a little water around them. But with all of this year's water, that wasn't the case. I stood and looked at the crossing for a little bit, trying to figure out if I could go across (and wishing I'd remembered my hiking poles, which would've made it much easier). Then I looked at my boots and I thought trust your boots. So I did: I clambered up onto that log, balanced across it to the shallower water near the river stones, and then splashed carefully over to the other side. My boots are waterproof, but I’ve never actually gotten them wet (and I’ve hiked in the same style of boot since 2007! The consequence of having a fastidious husband) so I wasn’t really sure if it would work.

But it did! My socks stayed dry and I made it across the stream, despite the mental images I had of me falling and then tumbling down the rocks and drowning.

The trail across the stream was mostly wet stone. I scrambled up the incline—and then I lost the trail. I’m not sure if it was right next to the stream and so underwater, or if I needed to cross again, or go around the craggy cliff, but since I was hiking by myself I decided not to chance crossing the river again. (This spot was much deeper than the first spot, with steep banks on both sides.)

(The cliff on the right side of this photo is where I turned around.)

On my way back down, I took the little detour down to the base of the waterfall. It's really a gorgeous waterfall, especially this summer with all of the water. There were about twenty people there, so I couldn’t really relax and enjoy any solitude. Plus I didn’t feel like I’d gone far enough that I needed to relax—I’d turned around at about 1.25 miles, which is not nearly far enough. I was just getting in to my groove!
So to extend my hike, I turned south when I got out of the canyon and kept going along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail that runs along the west foothills of Timp. This wasn’t exactly a pretty spot of trail—more like the Y trail, with scrubby brush and lots of dry, yellow grass, and no shade. But I put in enough miles on that trail to push my distance over four, which was my goal.

It wasn’t exactly the solo hike I wanted, but it did give me a bit more hiking confidence. It’s maybe a little bit lame that I discovered at age 45 that I can cross a river on a tree…but it made me think that I can do a little bit more than I thought I could before. Here’s to more solo hiking!