On the way home this morning

Last night Sue and I laughed at ourselves till we were breathless and weak from laughing...and during the night we both woke from dreams that made us laugh out loud. This laughter is a gift I never expected. It overflows, surprises, gushes forth like a great crashing waterfall. As I wrote in my journal at Yellowstone, we are two holy fools, bumbling along dazzled by everything.

This morning, heading back to my little apartment across the river, chuckling to myself behind the wheel of my old car, I found the drawbridge raised to make way for the last cruise this year of the Oregon Maritime Museum. That reminded me of Mr. Chalmers, who volunteers to help maintain that museum-boat. He urged me nearly three years ago to stick with what I love. At that time I thought that what I loved was writing and photography. Since then my capacity for love has grown. Old as I am. Hilarious.

The day I posted that portrait of Mr. Chalmers, I quoted Mark Twain: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." I'm 69 years old. This IS twenty years from now, in the sense that Mark Twain meant it. Maybe it's even forty or fifty years from now/then. The trade winds are still full in my sails. Boundless gratitude.