Fall at The Lot

I spent two nights at the cabin this week, which hasn't happened in a long while. Friday, I was with my family. Every year I think it can't possibly be more beautiful than the last.
But the sky turns an indescribable shade of blue on a Saturday morning. And the aspen trees mingle with the evergreens above the sagebrush, the combination of which takes your breath away.

It's especially fun when we get to be with this little one.
I gave her a taste of my s'more and it was over.

She went on several small hikes with Papa in her jammies on Saturday morning.

Last Tuesday, Karli called me in the late afternoon. We've been trying all summer and fall to get up to The Lot. It was a spur of the moment decision neither of us could pass up. We hustled to finish work, met for dinner in the city, and then drove up to the cabin. We started a fire and were roasting s'mores by ten.
We accidentally stayed up until 3:30 in the morning chatting (part of that time I was working, which helps me justify it.) We wanted to see the sunrise, something well worth getting up for--even with only three hours of sleep. We drove to the top of the canyon before heading home.
The snow on top of the Uintahs faded into the pale grey of the morning sky. The sagebrush was covered in frost. Everything was quiet. (Until we got out at the reservoir and started playing around with the camera.)

Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa. We love The Lot.

grace from a bottle

It's the first day of fall. Not officially, but it's the first day I don't grab an extra layer just in case, I actually plan to wear one. Along 19th, leaves pool in the gutter. They are the brave ones. The early birds, the ones not afraid to let go. Floating down like feathers, they land on top of one another forming a brilliant puddle of orange. They'll stay that way until the rain comes and they begin their long dissent downstream into their watery grave, a pond in the center of the city.

I draw a bath after what feels like the Longest Day. I grab a bottle from under the sink with the word Grace in big black letters and pour pink liquid out of it and into the hot water which stings my feet the first few seconds. I bring a book of essays into my boat of bubbles. I read about grace amidships my pool of grace. I read about love. And God. About brothers. I read that stories live forever, stories are how we shuffle quickest toward the Mercy greater than the ocean and denser than the stars in the sky. That telling a story is like reciting a prayer, thanking God for his good grace, but not the kind that comes from a bottle.

The drain slurps the water out like a thirsty child. Bubbles, thousands in throng, cling to white porcelain until they pop and vanish, like fog along the foothills in the autumn morning.