Tuesday Morning.

I read somewhere that a stand of aspens, those beautiful shimmering trees, are connected by a common root network, and so they are, in fact, just one organism. Even their leaves decay at the same rate. Their white bark glimmers in the sun, and sometimes to my untrained eye, even their trunks look similar.

This is not like their cousins, the paper birches. We hiked through a stand of paper birch trees last fall, just about a year ago, and I'm thinking of the peacefulness of that stand of trees now, this morning, for we are close to fall once more. I can feel it in the edge of cold that morning brings, that cold that's more than a respite from a hot summer day, but the cold that says your bones will know winter.



I found an interesting online writers' resource at The Muse Online Writing Conference, starting in October. The conference promises a series of handouts and chats, and so I registered.

This morning, Rachel and I will have breakfast at Frank's Diner (she menioned blueberry pancakes), and then she'll go on to teach her violin students. I'll return to begin seriously packing. Maybe today is the day I take down my office. Do we really have 40 books to return to the library?

Allen and I worked over the Peru itinerary last night -- so much to see in only six weeks. I think we'll be tired, as the timing brings us to Peru at the end of our six months in South America, BUT we will be able to visit some of our favorite sites we've only read about so far. I did knock those places off the list that indicated "treacherous roads", and there's one place during Semana Santa (Easter Week) that features locals throwing pebbles at tourists (somehow that doesn't sound fun), but I still want to fly in that little plane over the Nazca lines. And I started a planning web site for Allen's famous Bike-Across-America trip planned for 2010.

And can you tell, I couldn't write this morning! Maybe tomorrow. One writing muse (of conference fame) says write 500 words a day, every day. Why do I feel good if I only write 300?