hope to your god your good heart knows how to swim

Some dark spaces don't budge, no matter the sequence of events or arbitrary brand of good or bad day or particular mood. So you just have to choose the good things, ride them out; bring your own sun.

....sun such as spending every waking moment outside, scrambling up ridges or turning over stones. Taking a crazy load of close-up pictures of certain threatened, native spring ephemeral flowers to show off to one's botanist kid-brother. Another of these is cutting one's favorite pair of washed-out jeans from middle school into yet another obnoxious pair of daisy dukes. Or buying an unnecessary viking mead horn and blackberry wine to break it in because damnit, I can, and I will, and I did.

I still feel scared and grim and uncertain, but also I found a wonderful wad of salamander eggs. They were laid, I believe, by this type, which I feel especially akin to because they are about as long as my hand, and also once, on a 20-dollar-dare/because he could, my dad ate a whole one live.

(My favorite thing about this picture, in case you were wondering, is not the disgusting mass of live salamander eggs I'm holding with such relish, it's the fact that you can see from my hips I'm physically caught in the act of wiggling with happiness, which is a little embarrassing, but would probably make my dad feel he'd raised me up right.)