I want to tell you my wonders

and I also want to tell you about my book ; )

May 02, 2026

The next time you are facing change and feeling unmoored, distraught, confused, frustrated, terrified, or just plain out-of-sorts, go outside, take a deep breath, and look around. Then, tell of your wonders.
Courtney Ellis, Weathering Change

My wonders:

The dogwoods glow in the woods on our drive up Little River. I’ve never lived where there were fireflies, a phenomenon I’d love to see, but buttercream blooms dot the darkness of the forest and catch my breath every time, every one. I am like a kid at a theme park, wowed by the spectacles.

Little bursts of exclamations and sighs escape me and Tim doesn’t think I’m silly for it.

We follow the river for an hour and I cannot get enough of it. I am gaping at green moss-covered rocks impeding the waters, making a black and white river. It smooths out flat in places, and a lone goose paddles in a green quiet. “Why is he alone?” I wonder aloud, and Tim reassures me his mate is probably on her nest somewhere nearby.

Everyone needs their hour of solitude.

We reach the lake by 8:30 a.m. and it is flat as a pancake, still as silence. Fish are jumping, and we’ve barely gotten our boats out of the truck before Tim has his fly rod out, whipping the line in a graceful curvature. He will catch and release multiple rainbows this morning, trying out his several poles and flies and lures.

The trillium at the edge of the lake are fading to pink, bruising as they die another seasonal death.

We put our boats in the water, adjust our oars, and smile our happiness out as a goodbye! have fun!, parting ways like contented old people in love. We are together in our solitude.

I row myself to all the edges of the lake, investigating. I haven’t been here since I was a kid and I’m sure I didn’t appreciate it this much, back then. I’m sure I didn’t absorb every shade of green into my soul, through my eyes, like I am now. But maybe some came in through my skin and without notice. Maybe I was so soaked in it that I never worried it could all disappear—like a fish in his water, a bird in her air.

Ten years ago my dad stood in my living room alone, watching all 9 minutes of my daughter’s senior slideshow that I’d spent weeks making. I was in the kitchen prepping for her grad party, stressing for everything to be just so, and I had turned on the slideshow to run in the background.

Dad watched and I peaked around the corner at him, catching his watering eyes. This reminds me of taking you fishing at Skookum Lake, he said.

A year before this—60 pounds ago, before a new liver—he’d been bones and a weak heart in a hospital bed for months. His memories were still sketchy because of the prolonged illness, but they were coming back as energy, and only the antidepressants were keeping him from breaking down, he told me, as he watched videos of my daughter in her daddy’s boat and remembered me, in his.

I stopped scrubbing my house to its bones and came to stand next to him, as he watched a second round of the slideshow. His beard stretched and rolled and hid maybe a smile, as he remembered how I’d reeled a fish right up to the tip of my fishing pole; swung it right, swung it left. I doused it on each side of the boat and its possible I never really landed it at all. But he was smiling as he remembered, I’m sure of it, both of us watching the pictures of my daughter roll across the screen.

I row to the middle, where the three small fingers of Hemlock Lake stub out from. Two ducks glide by, unbothered, sliding stillness over the water. I pull up my oars and just sit, just look. Tears come to my eyes because it is so unbelievably beautiful, perfect, peaceful, felt, tangible, ease-y, enchanting, tranquil, mesmerizing, arresting, glorious, dark in a good way, light in the heavy sense, calm, wild; a pulsing cacophony of natural noises; a solitude that creeps in through my soul and skin and settles in my bones; deep depths. I cry. I am happy.

I have a book and a pen in my boat with me because that’s how I like to go fishing.1 I have two reads going on my Kindle—Emma M. Lion: Vol. 7 and Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies2—but I don’t trust myself to bring the Kindle out on the lake. On my desk at home are two towers of books, three of which are unread, so I grabbed the one that seemed appropriate for the day: Weathering Change: Seeking Peace Amid Life’s Tough Transitions by Courtney Ellis.

I open to the forward Lore Wilbert has written for the book and read, “I hope you bring this book along with you on a hike, or a kayak through still waters…” Well played, well chosen. I read from the center of the happiest place on earth. I am only distracted by squawks and croaks, a bald eagle overhead, ducklings bobbing on the border of the lake, and a distant cheer from my fisherman.

I think about how lucky these ducks are, the frogs, the fish—to be born here. To live and die here. And how lucky am I?

“Every pilgrim walks a path marked by beauty, adorned with hope,” Courtney writes. I underline it, drop my bookmark into Hemlock Lake by accident, and smile big and goofy.

Three hours later, we pull our boats out of the water. I look out over the lake, thankful for the perfect morning, and I think of the last line of the obituary I wrote for Dad in 2020:

“He is deeply missed and forever remembered by his family and friends, who will hunt and fish and hike this world in his memory.”

How you can help

For now, you can “like” this post by clicking the heart. If you read my posts in your email, you’ll find the heart in the top right hand corner (or maybe at the bottom?). More likes = more eyes on my work, and that’s one of the necessary ingredients for this book to launch properly.

Sharing my posts in your socials or on Substack is another way to support me.

I am grateful for you, friends, and the ways you have encouraged me over the years. Thanks for being you. I am me and not a machine, not AI, and not a writer who will use AI to do the human work of creating for me—I am here for the resistance. Your readership means you are here for it, too. ✊

“…my mother was insistent that ribbons caught more husbands than novels.” And hooks catch more fish than books, but fortunately I have a husband who fishes. IYKYK

I highly recommend both books (obvs the whole EML series) and will probably end up buying hard copies of them.

I am working with Joy and Amelia from Punchline Publishers and they are so wonderful! Very thankful.

More Beautiful Than Necessary

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