First, six hour drive. I arrive in Allentown, PA, at Muhlenberg, with tight hips, stiff legs and back. Now, for my walk in a favorite landscape, Cedar Creek Park, my third summer walking here while teaching at The International Women's Writing Guild Summer Conference. There is heat and sun again after rain, and my walk is fast in the humid air, past the weeping willows at the creek and through the well cared for rose garden. Now, I have walked, and so I am home and happy and grateful to be here for the week. 

I have brought more than what I will teach to work on. I have brought my matters of my own heart and mind to sort through. I am in the heat and psychic upheaval of turning sixty this fall. My mood swings low to high to low within minutes. My youngest child is 21, my roles are shifting in this age. I am between who I have been and who I will be. One minute I am blissful and high and hopeful and thrilled; the next nostalgic and grief-stricken with a vague sense of loss. 

As I walk around the creek I breathe. I breathe and focus on breathing. I ask myself to notice this: a moment. Colors. The way my legs, arms feel swinging and the sun on the top of my head and the sound of children playing happily in the park. Be in this moment. Be in this moment. Be now. Awake, aware, breathe. Every moment is arrival.