When you arrive someplace new and it’s at night, you smell those smells of combustion and you’re tired and you’re not sure if it was worth it, this Risk, this Leaving you’ve done. But registered in your olfactory is the memory of what happens next - the new morning.

 I wonder if he still looks at life as hard as he once did. I wonder if it’s possible to slap our hands against the present and shout ¡Mira! on a daily basis or if we must lose the blueness, if we must lose the wonder.

There are difficult things to do and when we do them, maybe they get ahead of us and anchor themselves in the future so we can get older and move along with some bruises and see something and remember when we did this hard thing so we could come home in the evening and have something to say.

We see that slow aging in others and we're afraid to admit it. We're afraid to admit that, yes, us too - life happened to us too. We lost some of our invincibility. We lost the rubber in our bones. Somewhere along the way our tears got hot. 

Sometimes when I walk along the water I imagine myself from above, my presence a lone dot there along the edge of the mapped world. When the waves come in, I'm lost to the sea, I think. Way up above it would seem my shallow footing in the white surf was the end of me - for a time at least.

And maybe you’ve lived with this family, but never known them until now. All of the sudden, this is your responsibility as well. All of the sudden you remember losing your dog. So you become part of this family. 

I co-owned a fish tank for a year, with fish in it. We were just two guys from Texas with some tropical fish - doing our best to traverse snow drifts and decipher Midwestern accents. It was like we needed this population of strangers to help us feel home.

Keith determines the living room is the proper place to have an aquarium that could house adolescent alligators. We set it up and then deplete the water supply for Todd County by spending the next hour dumping 65 gallons into a glass container resting two inches away from our leather couch.

It is possible to begin something difficult, I believe. Many times, we try to emulate those who have the innate ability to start – to initiate. But I think it's easier to press forward when we force ourselves into a risk. When we commit to an idea already in motion – a movement underway.

In complete silence, I felt nostalgic for a time I never knew. For a mid-century place I've never been. For a people and an existence that may have existed, but not in the way I could ever understand.

In the hill country of Texas, the stars press hard against the night sky - like they're coming from behind it and the harder they press, the greater their diameter. I see faintly the icy crevice that is the Milky Way and I think of South Dakota.

How differently might we react or respond to one another if we were allowed to peek through a hazy looking glass into a past that reveals others, like us, are simply trying to figure things out, heal wounds and find a sliver of an answer?

From behind the Austin stones they come, three hops and long pauses as they crane their necks, vision on both sides of their heads. Occasionally, you'll hear the quick releasing and retracting of a tongue against the air searching for the same insects the bats glide for.

Maybe that's what the summer reminds us of – and why it weakens us. And why it strengthens us. It was a time when we were free to strike out to the wildest place we could reach on foot or by single speed bike and, with scraps of lumber and forest debris – build the answers. Construct the truth.

Why do those auras of courage choose to shine the brightest in the last moments? Why do our most powerful, dangerous and important human emotions and traits – compassion, reflection, honesty, courage, patience – only surface when on the precipice of change? 

The things we're passionate about just don't work out right away. In between the excitement of shipping a product and the joy of making one comes the work and sacrifice required to support something new.

I think when we transition, the excitement comes with the possibility of change. There is always potential for the life we want, but we're met with the same barriers we have now, they're just in a different place. After all, we are the same person. Our locale can't change us on its own.