It occurred to me the other day as I stepped past this patch of alfalfa on my land, how I often take for granted so much of what went before. Horses and cattle all love alfalfa, particularly when it is flowering.

Nearly as quickly as I had arrived, it was time to leave the island—very bittersweet to be sure. I was reminded of my teenage years when the end of the summer would come around and we would drive away from the beach for the last time that year. It was always, always hard to go and this leaving was no exception.

Most of you know by now that I’ve just returned from the northwest where I traveled to celebrate my mom’s 90th birthday. I love birthdays because they mark the passage of time in a life. They are our personal, annual, rites of passage.

I arrived at my family’s beach on Vashon Island on a Friday early evening. My mom was already there and, along with my sister and brother-in-law, we shared a wonderful dinner in our dear little cabin. Carol and Rolly left soon after for the mainland and I went to walk on the beach.

I am home, again, in the mountains, standing beneath Truchas Peaks, reveling in the fact that, in my life, I’ve been given two deeply meaningful places–the one of my youth and the one where I will likely end.

Sometimes I get lost. I don’t mean out in the world, out in landscape. But, rather, lost in terms of any sense of how I fit within the world—unclear about what gives my life meaning or why I exist, where I belong.

I used to worry about beauty all the time. I never felt marginally attractive, let alone beautiful. I grew from being a gangly tom-boy into a very tall, rather plain-looking woman–this in a culture fixated on beauty.