June brought what it usually does: golden light, long days stretched further into the evening. But it’s rare to see a thick white blanket of dense snow glittering in the summer sun—a white terrain of dormant past.

and throughout the mountainsides, a blackened forest glowed: trees charred by past fires, leaning to the right and left where they once stood tall. Signs along the trail read, “careful of falling trees.” Proof that the past few months had been unkind to the land. 

But jagged ice seeped into void, carving thin rivers like veins through the soil. Green unfurled from hollow chill. Life began to flourish in the charred seams bark—still ugly, but doing the quiet work of becoming something more.

Reminding us: everything in bloom, leans on what withered, and all that rises, roots in what fell.