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“Returning to the rolling farmland and bare-boned woods of Lancaster every solstice is always strange for me after so long away. But this year it’s been especially odd; instead of snow, everything has been squelching mud and wet with rain.”
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“After a few days, when I’ve gotten over the dislocated feeling of too many newly-built strip malls and too much horizon, I start to notice again all the little details of this landscape that shaped my childhood sense of the sacred.”
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“The warm weather has meant days of softly intimate fog mingling among the bare trees and leaving its dew on everything. Whenever the constant noise and bright lights of family time get to be too overwhelming, I step outside to feel the misty breath of the land on my face.”
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“Tonight, we were up till 1 AM talking, lounging sprawled out on the couches in this old farmhouse where we’re staying. We had the front door open wide with just the screen door because the weather is so unseasonably warm and wet. I felt like I was back in college again, staying up late having deep conversations with good friends.”
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“I wish life could be like this more often, comfortable and real and important and in the present moment. Seems like we spend a lot of life filling our time up with things we think we ought to be doing and worries that we’re not doing enough, when really all most of us want is to feel connected like this…”
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“…Or maybe it’s just me. (That’s the worry, isn’t it, I guess — that it is just me, and that this other busy life really is what everybody else wants.)”
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“I’m looking forward to the long train ride back to myself and my sense of home.”
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“It’s funny how family can bring you back to yourself because they know you so well and for so long, they treat you as if you were always just the same…”
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“…which is exactly what can drive you out of yourself, too, after a while. Because of course, you’re not.”
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“What I want keeps changing.”
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“Sometimes, I feel like the world must be so impatient with me…”
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“…asking always, Am I precious to you? Is the memory of me a treasure that you draw out during an idle moment to examine — running your fingers along its edges, turning it in the light to watch the way its textures ripple and shift, how what it is and what it wants keeps changing?”
“Can you remember me in a moment of stillness, when you are safely alone with yourself and nearly whole again, and in that moment hold me in the palm of your hand, like a soft river stone or a tiny beast carved out of sweet-scented wood?”
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“Can you hold me in your heart this way without flinching?”
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“Is this something that you practice, getting a little better each time?”
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“Is this even something that you want?”
All photos, excerpts from letters and journals by Alison Leigh Lilly ©2015
Alison Leigh Lilly 
Lovely. All of it.
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That last line…oh gods. It punched me right in all the feels and thoughts as I’ve been struggling to decipher just what is I DO want instead of just doing what everyone else wants.
Beautiful post and pictures. Thank you for sharing. ❤
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