June Spotlight - A River in Conversation

A River in Conversation - Listen as it Settles Into This New Season

There’s a week — sometimes just a few days — when the Chehalis seems to exhale and settle into summer. The air carries something different: warmer, thicker, laced with the faint sweetness of something blooming just out of sight.

The trees that spent April and May unfolding their leaves now hold them open to the sky, casting the kind of deep shade that invites you to linger. The delicate wildflowers that lit the river bank are quietly stepping back now, making room for the bolder colors of summer. The animals that moved restlessly through spring — following blooms, insects and their instincts — have found their summer rhythms. A doe holds to the same meadow edge each evening. Osprey return to the same snag above the water. Even the birds seem to have quieted from their spring urgency, though if you listen closely, you’ll hear why: the soft, persistent calling of fledglings, hidden in branches, learning the world through sound before they see much of it.

You don’t need to be fearless to reach your goals, you just need to be willing. Willing to try, willing to learn, and willing to believe that you’re capable of more than you know. The road may not always be smooth, but growth rarely is. What matters most is that you keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in the version of yourself you’re becoming.

The river hasn’t stopped changing. It never does. But right now, it has settled into itself — and it’s worth settling in alongside it, pausing and listening long enough to hear the whole river in conversation.

*Kyayak image courtesy of Thurston Talks