Late July

Bright sun-drenched days broken up by a day of rain are of the best times to be alive.  For some reason, I find that July seems to be filled with, even heavy with, an extra dose of hope in the air, and some years it seems to get  stronger with every passing day of the month.

At the tree tops, there is a very certain, resonating, even wild, kind of hope that floats up there.  Some years in the monts of July of my life, I embraced it fully.  Sometimes I couldn't find a way to.  There is one July day I remember when I worked downtwon and I kept catching glimpses of sun spilling onto the streets throught hte windows.  All day I desperately wanted to go walk in the sun, but when I finally made it outside late in the day, it slipped behind a high rise and the clouds quickly covered it up.  That was the kind of summer where I was so wrapped up in my fears, and my worries, and the daunting stack of paper in my inbox that I almost forgot how to embrace the wild hope. 

This wild, resonating hope comes when the sun pours down as the rain evaporates.  It comes when the sun has warmed up the soil deep down into the earth.  It's the kind of hope that comes when you've been desperately looking for it - and it's the kind of hope that comes when you're not looking for it at all.  It's the kind of hope that you might want to consider fully stretching out your arms to embrace, and it silently waits and washes over you if you'll let it...especially in the middle of an afternoon in late July.

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(c) 2012 photography and writing by Chloe - all rights reserved