I recently made a photo book for my friend Eleanor. She has lived on a hundred acres of land for 50+ years with her husband Rolf, then tended it for another 15 or so after he died. She’s been a woman in love with the land – has tended it carefully, known when the hay was set to bloom, and when the deer would slip out of the woods to feed in the clover field at dusk. She knows, even now, when the road needs to be repaired, and where the chanterelle mushrooms grow, and when the ticks will be bad. She loves the pin oak they planted decades ago, and the linden that hums with bees in the spring, and the hydrangea whose blushing creamy flowers will bend down to the ground. She has made a marriage with this place, watched it change, tended it carefully.

She loves the photos I’ve taken over the years; the birthday book that says, “This has been a marvelous world, and I have loved it fiercely.” And even though she’s been lonely since Rolf left, who knows how wonderful a lonely woman’s life can be? How many pearls of love and joy and care she scatters along the way?

I think your life was like that too, in a way. All those years of adventures and explorations, happy wanderings and passionate concerns; all those people and places, ideas and creations. All those wonders. And then later, your solitary and thoughtful years. Maybe you needed a quiet and smaller spot where you could celebrate, pore over, reflect on, the grace of your travels and the people you knew. Even though you were alone, you were still sharing your own pearls of love and joy and care.

I’m pretty sure that is still true.