Coming back.

I finally spent some time at the prairie in the middle of last week.  Once the dog (not the Monster anymore--I'm on a different dogsitting gig now) had knocked me to the ground by taking off after whatever shadow of a something she saw up ahead as we rounded a corner, and once I'd reprimanded her sternly enough for having helped me fall hard onto my knees and then on forward some more, she was quiet and repentant enough that I was able to get a few more pictures before we headed home. 

This morning, recruitment for the study-abroad program I'll run next year officially got underway.  In the midst of ongoing adventures, the next adventures are already making themselves felt.

Officially:

Here at the end of week three of this hiatus, I'm finally going to call it what it is: a necessary quiet, one I'm not ready to bring to a close yet.  Lots of things are realigning right now, largely in good ways (though there's also been ample sadness in some lives near mine, of late), and at the end of the day I find myself not really wanting to write about it all.  And even when I do feel like writing about it, I end up deciding that I don't want to after all.  Suffice it to say that I have moved (or am in the final stages of moving now) and have been moved, literally and figuratively, and that our newest students arrive en masse in exactly one week, which means that the summer is hurtling on out of here.