Good morning to all – It’s great to be back!

I took some time away from this blog because I was completing the final edits for my book, Wonder and Joy for the Wired and Tired – A Guide to Finding Inspiration and Well-Being in a Wonder-Filled World. The deadline was yesterday, but thankfully, the final proof has been submitted and – (drumroll, please) – the publishers tell me the book will be launched on August 12, 2025, and will be available wherever books are sold.

But more about that in future posts.

More importantly, I want to tell you what else I did while I was away.

Needing to be in the right headspace for the editing task ahead, Marty suggested we take a trip to the West Coast of Northern California and Oregon to re-charge our batteries. Having never been to that area of the country, I was expecting to see some incredible nature.

But wow – I was literally brought to tears when I saw the giant redwoods. If you haven’t seen a sequoia up close, you really need to, because photographs simply don’t do justice to their truly massive size and beauty.

After driving along the Avenue of the Giants (an incredible must do drive), we stopped to have lunch in Armstrong Redwoods State Nature Reserve on a day when, unbelievably, no one was there. Standing in a forest with trees that are thousands of years old, I imagined the history they must have seen and experienced over the last 2,000 -3,000 years. These trees existed before we became a nation in 1776 and they were here when the last of the great megafauna still roamed North America.

To be honest, I was overcome with emotion. I stood in wonder of each redwood’s mass, height, and smell, the way dappled sunlight found its way through 300-foot-tall canopies to the ground below – and the forest’s overwhelming silence.

That was something I didn’t expect.

Walking in that redwood forest, all I heard was – NOTHING – literally nothing, except the occasional crunch of twigs beneath my feet or a bird or squirrel moving between branches.

After lunch, Marty and I sat at our picnic table, held hands, and took in the magical grandeur or those incredible trees without saying a single word.

Because we didn’t need to.

The forest spoke for us.

I put together a carousel of a few photos from our trip through the redwoods and further north to the beautiful peony, rose, and iris gardens of Oregon.

Enjoy, and have a joyous and wonder-filled week.

Pam