Field Notes #3

The Life I Keep Choosing

July 8, 2026 | 7:19 am

The coffee was already stepping. I woke up at 5:17 am to make the coffee in our french press for Greg before he left for an early day on the river. He'll be gone until this afternoon if the storms don't catch him first. I don't particularly enjoy getting soaked, but he never seems to mind. In fact, he says a summer rain feels good after sitting in the boat all day.

Before he left, we had one of those quiet mornings I never want to rush through. Just two mugs of coffee, the house still dark enough that I had to switch on the lamps.

Well...tap on the lamp. One of our old lamps came from my parents' house sometime in the late '90s or early 2000s. Somewhere along the way it developed a short. Now it works like a Clapper-except instead of clapping, you gently tap the pole and hope it decides whether it wants to turn on or off. It makes us laugh every single morning and night.

The only rule is don't accidentally turn the switch. If you do, you're in trouble. Sometimes it refuses to come back on and suddenly you've got two people standing in the dark tapping a lamp like fools. Some things are worth fixing. Some things are funny because they aren't.

Before Greg walked out the door he asked what I had planned today. For the first time in a while, I didn't have an overwhelming answer. I've been off work for several days, and instead of feeling behind, I actually feel... caught up. Well, almost.

Bookkeeping still waits for me, and I dislike bookkeeping with impressive consistency. Between the Airbnb, rental house, Girls Who Fly Fish, and The Leaky Wader, there always seems to be another receipt, another spreadsheet, another account to reconcile. Every year I tell myself I'll stay on top of it. Every year I wonder why I don't just hire my esthetics bookkeeper to do all the other businesses.

Instead of thinking about spreadsheets this morning, I'm thinking about the garden. Yesterday's rain should make the weeds pull easily, so that's where I'm headed after this cup of coffee. I'm planting another round of sugar snap peas, kale, and bush beans for late summer and early fall.

I'll pick tomatoes, check on the volunteer pumpkins that surprised us (not really a surprise actually, we get many re-spouted plants) by sprouting from the compost pile, and figure out what vegetable is joining dinner tonight.

We're having steak with crispy smashed baby potatoes, but the garden usually decides the rest. Most likely another Caprese salad.

Summer seems to know exactly what our bodies need. Bright tomatoes rich in lycopene, colorful vegetables full of beta carotene, herbs that somehow taste like sunshine. There's probably a reason nature grows these foods when the days are longest and we're spending more time outside.

The garden has a way of reminding me that seasons always know what they're doing.

Later today I'm planning to sit down and tie flies. Not many. Just enough.

Greg got excited when I told him I wanted to practice again. Last night he quietly pulled together everything I'd need to tie Frenchies, the hooks, brass beads (I'm apparently not trusted with the expensive tungsten yet), wire, thread, and dubbing. He even made me a step-by-step video months ago so I could follow along.

I'm still intimidated.

I always have to ask which hook, which bead, which color. But that's part of learning. Next week I'm taking a good friend and her kids into the Smokies for a Fly Fishing 101 day, and I'd love to have a handful of flies that I tied myself.

The Smokies aren't an easy place to learn. In fact, they're often considered one of the more technical trout fisheries in the country. Small streams. Tight casting. Wild fish. Rhododendron reaching for your fly line every chance it gets. But maybe that's why I love teaching here.

Once people understand the basics, how to read water, pack their gear, choose a fly, move quietly through a stream...they realize they can come back on their own. That's the real goal. To create people who feel confident enough to walk into the woods by themselves.

There's a certain kind of pride that comes from getting back to your car after a morning alone in the Smokies. Maybe you caught fish. Maybe you didn't, but you did something that once felt intimidating. You figured it out. You spent a few hours listening to water instead of notifications.

Lately I've been wondering why life feels slower. Appointments have been lighter. The calendar isn't packed. For a while I worried something was wrong. Then I realized something. How many times have we all said, "I just need a weekend to catch up," or "I need a vacation so I can finally clean the house"? Somehow we've accepted that life should always feel one step behind. I don't want that anymore. I could probably trade all of this—the bugs in the windows, the hot church, the endless weeding, the volunteer pumpkins, the broken lamp—for a bigger house and a full-time job.

But I don't think I'd trade up. I'd be trading away something else. Freedom. Creativity. The chance to watch August run through the house with the doors open because it's simply too hot to stay inside. The quiet mornings with coffee before daylight with the all the doors open listening to the birds. The afternoons spent learning something just because I want to.

I spent a lot of my thirties feeling like my nervous system lived in fight-or-flight. I don't want to spend my forties there too. Tomorrow—or maybe the next day—I think I'll head into the Smokies myself. Greg will probably be working. August is spending time with his grandparents. So it might just be me, a handful of homemade Frenchies, and a mountain stream.

That sounds like a pretty good day.

Today's Notes

• Inside: 82°

• Outside: 71°

• Garden: Tomatoes ripening, pumpkins growing, weeds waiting.

• Learning: Frenchie flies... with brass beads.

• Thinking About: Freedom isn't always found by doing more. Sometimes it's protected by choosing less.

• Grateful For: Slow mornings, old lamps, and a life that still leaves room to wander.