Climate news around the world is hard to bear. The fires are making their own weather now. Closer to home, parts of the city of Spokane are on fire. Meanwhile, we are in the Yukon. I feel like we are in a dream.

The Yukon River is high this year, the result of a cold winter and big snowpack. Out fishing the other day, it was hard to find the main channel within all the shallow water. We saw eagles and beaver. We fished into the long twilight.

There is no normal, not really, but there is a scale of easy to difficult to impossible. We are on the easy end of the scale now while much of the rest of the world is in the difficult to impossible.

This time is a gift. The kids (all grown ups, to be clear) arrived yesterday. We are all together, camping by a glorious creek, delighted by the antics of squirrels and other forest creatures. The air is crisp, cool, and clean. The twilight lasts for hours. Nights are luxuriously cold.

And my awareness of this time as interstitial is constant. I’m the only one awake right now. I have noted more than once in my writing about how we humans are rarely aware of when something is happening for the last time. Life changes in the instant. I know this as well as anyone. I don’t know if this is the last time we will experience our lives like this, but I’m going to appreciate it like it is. We are living what I call a “hyphen” moment. We are in between. I’m grateful. Here’s a photo of twilight on the Yukon River.