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I've been enjoying that bright broad-faced full buck moon rising above the sea with such aplomb, beaming into my window at night, spilling its extravagant light all over us. I'm delighted too by the singing of the canyon wren, sometimes several performances in succession, heart-rending cascades of descending notes, and by the crowd of California quail that forage in the brush near the orchard, their topknots bobbing as they scratch around, their noisy bursts of whirring flight, and the hummingbird at this very moment hovering above the cape honeysuckle. Long hot days, fragrance of sage, progression of golden hues upon the hills...ah, how summer comes to here!

Meanwhile, I've started a new project with my friend Lori, and I'll tell you more about this soon, but for now we're laying the groundwork, building a website, gathering content. We're calling it the Living Stories Collective, and our plan is to interview people and create an enduring, online archive of their stories, recording the wisdom and lessons life yields, documenting personal observations and details that might otherwise be forgotten. We want to provide the space and opportunity for individuals to share their memories and be heard. We'll learn from one another.

This coming weekend, Monte and I are going to the wedding of a friend's daughter, where we'll be seeing a few people we haven't seen in many years. I imagine it's going to be sweet, but also strange to see the changes the decades have wrought in each of us. I think it's fair to say we were an unusually fit and active group back in the day, and even when the kids were little, we used to camp and ride bicycles together, pulling the toddlers along in trailers.

In fact, the bride-to-be whose wedding we're attending was born just a month before my own daughter, and we figured those two little girls would be best friends forever, which didn't turn out to be the case. The years sped by, and I haven't seen the bride since she was a child, and on Saturday I will be watching her get married. There's a disconcerting suddenness to it. It's like time lapse photography, a fast forwarding of events, a free fall into the future.

Or maybe it's just a reminder of mortality, and how fast everything happens. And there's something morbid about that, but in a weird way it's also exhilarating. Look at us. We're all rolling without brakes towards the edge of the cliff, picking up speed. It's a hell of a ride.

I want to gather some stories along the way.