30 May From The Editor: On a Delicate Day

During summer afternoons in the Northern Rockies, it’s nearly impossible not to ponder what writer Rick Bass calls “the power of spaciousness.” Cumulus clouds shift within a cerulean sky, their shapes illuminated by gentle rays of sunshine, casting darkened shadows on the ground. Somewhere, a thunderhead gathers, swells, and forebodes, but for now, those gossamer clouds soar, propelled by a breeze that still knows winter’s touch as it slides over snow-capped mountain peaks.

On a day like this, blades of grass made tall and wide by cloudless skies are already amassing, practicing the united sway that will become an amber wave by August. Here, in a place so defined by the four seasons, the moments of yesterday are clearly woven into the presence of today. Snow melts into rivers that nourish the roots of trees where birds and all manners of life take refuge — grow, become — before moving on with the season’s shift. These, as Bass describes in “A Life and Journey Such as This” (p. 154), are the “delicate days that exist between the four seasons,” the interludes between the goodbyes and anticipations.

A cloud obscures the sun, and a gentle shadow moves across the meadow. The change of light is nearly indiscernible but the brightening that comes in the cloud’s absence, as its shadow passes on to blanket the trees downwind, alights my skin in a euphoric glow. It’s a momentary opening up, a beckoning and becoming rush of all that’s beloved of the summer season.

In this issue, many writers explore what it means to be in and of a place. What does it mean to exit in a moment? What does it mean to belong? What do you hang onto, and what do you leave behind? These storytellers draw from the nostalgia of old photographs, reminisces of an earlier era, handwritten letters. They observe. They listen. They feel.

A lingering break in the clouds, and the grass is illuminated, brilliant in its youth. Somewhere, a bee buzzes in the calm until its hum becomes the whisper of the wind as it, once again, propels the clouds across the blanket of blue sky.