Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.
—Ansel Adams
Welcome to the latest installment of the Fog Chaser newsletter.
To start, I’d like to share this recent interview I did with
. Ryan asked me some really thoughtful questions that allowed me to share some personal reflections about who I am and how Fog Chaser came to be. I invite you to give it a read:
🎵 This month’s piece is in D minor.1
📷 This month’s photos were taken in Yosemite National Park.2 3
I invite you to sit with this month’s song, photos, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.
As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.
Thank you for being here.
Our Valley
by Philip Levine
🔈 A reading (by me):
We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.You have to remember this isn't your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.
Listening to
Turnham Green by Adam Melchor (Listen)
🎧 I put all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist
Reading
Sharing
Some updates from friends:
Artist
just announced his new book WILD WONDER, which comes out later this year. It looks gorgeous, and there are some nice pre-order goodies, including some exclusive playlists that might just include some Fog Chaser. Go get it.Writer
also has a new book coming out called Chasing Fog, which, as you can guess, is right up my alley. Laura and I are collaborating on some music for her book launch, which we should be sharing in the coming weeks. In the meantime, I encourage you to go pre-order her book here.My friend
published a deeply personal and informative piece about her experiences with IVF over at Today. (Today.com)
My heartfelt thanks to the folks over at The Good Trade, who included my newsletter in their recent roundup of the best email newsletters of 2024.
Last year at this time:
June 2023:
Light Through The Valley in D minor / Written, performed, and produced by Fog Chaser
Half Dome / 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / Yosemite, California, USA
The area we now refer to as Yosemite National Park is the traditional homelands of the Ahwahnechee people, a Southern Sierra Miwok Indigenous Nation who lived in the Ahwahnee (Yosemite) Valley. Ahwahnee was a Miwok word to describe the open mouth of a bear, similar to how the First Peoples viewed the open end of their valley. (More here).
The Fog Chaser Bookshop is hosted on Bookshop.org, where over 80% of gross profits are distributed to independent bookstores. As an affiliate, I earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Light Through The Valley