Guten Tag, Reader,

There is a spaciousness inside my soul that I have not felt in a long time.

I can tell that my intellect wants to fill the emptiness with wordy thoughts. She is not entirely convinced of the power wielded by wordless thinking. (Instinct, intuition, heart math…she calls those irrational as if irrational were bad. I guess she is just worried about job security).

So, in her best attempt to resist change and get everything back to normal as quickly as possible, my intellect has turned into the worst bouncer ever (asshat thoughts don’t even need a fake ID to get past her right now).

Meanwhile, my Self with the capital S has been busy putting up a second line of defense. She is not only checking IDs under the UV light; she turns each thought around and upside down, sniffs it for undesirable substances, and has even made inquiries about family histories to ensure that nobody else’s thoughts come in masked as ours.

She even detected some of the thoughts burnt in a bonfire ritual on the last night of the Salmon River Slowdown. Zombie thoughts are tough and seem to require extraordinary measures to extinguish. Luckily, they are also quite stupid and slow, which makes them easier to spot than the fresher, nimbler, sneakier ones.

Here is one right now: “You have to make up your mind!” I am not even sure what about. And is there lipstick for the mind?

The thought was triggered by a young man who just walked into the coffee shop wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I have decided.” No, actually, it reads, “I HAVE DECIDED,” like the shirt is yelling at me that I must, too.

And suddenly I have a whole letter’s worth of things I HAVE TO DECIDE right THIS INSTANCE:

• What’s for dinner?
• Will I quit social media? When? For how long?
• Should I write more? Fiction? Poetry?
• Another coffee?
• Acupuncture or massage? Or float tank? All three?
• Which COVID booster? When?
• Next river retreat on the Salmon or the Missouri? Or Utah? The Rogue in Oregon?
• Restart this whole letter because it’s stupid?

By the almighty river gods, this isn’t even the end of the list, but just writing it all down helped reveal the ridiculousness. Most certainly, this thought does not pass the three-question test.

Three-Question-Test for Suspicious Thoughts

1. Is it true?
2. Is it interesting?
3. Does it feel freeing in my body?

This whole process of parsing thoughts, claiming authority, and taking responsibility for the ideas allowed to take hold after the cleansing that was the Salmon River Slowdown takes time and energy—more than I had anticipated, perhaps more than my inner manager had allotted.

It’s time to conserve some energy and return to wordless restoration and reconfiguration. To sit under a tree.

If you are in Missoula for the autumn equinox, you can do the same with me. I will guide a Forest Therapy Walk at Council Grove State Park on September 22 at 4 p.m. The theme will be LISTEN.

Wherever you are, if you have been craving some gentle guidance through the wilderness that is midlife womanhood, please consider the fall season of the Midlife Wilderness Expeditions:

• Invitations to re-connect with your intuition on your own time
• Monthly group activities (remote nature therapy walks and group coaching)

If you are curious or have any questions, please respond to this email, and you will be the first to know when registration opens.

I will see you back here in two weeks. Until then, I invite you to bring your intention and discernment to the transition into fall:

• What do you want to harvest?
• What do you want to compost?
• What must be burned to create more fertile soil and fresh habitat?

Let me know what you discover, and if you liked this letter, please forward it to a friend.

Always on your side, truly,

p.s. If you got something from today's letter, why not buy me a coffee? In real life, or you can leave me a tip here.

p.p.s.: If you want more of me than a letter every other week, you might enjoy hanging out with me on social media:

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