How to live? Simplicity is so rich. My unremarkable days might seem infinitely uninteresting to a youthful person. But older age has given me permission to do what I always dreamed of doing: sit around reading, walk, putter. Busyness and fear constrict us in youth; fresh air and nature free us in old age.

My pastor said you can trap bees at the bottom of a Mason jar without a lid because they don’t look up and fly away. So I look up. Today, darker fog covers the lower part of the mountain but becomes a soft, heathery gray where it meets the deep green of the hills. – Annie Lamont