The great thing about living in a national park, which was true at Isle Royale and true here as well, is that every other minute you’re having a wilderness moment, whether indoors or out. Just yesterday, I looked down at my desk and there was this rather large spider with a flat abdomen strolling past the phone. I immediately made her a little house without a floor out of Play-doh (this is the new thing, Ashley and I are constantly playing with little stress balls of Play-doh) and set it over top of her. She went very still while I leaned over and peered at her and finally I let her go, after not being able to identify her. Our kitchen at home is constantly full of bugs – crickets in the granola, fish flies over the stove, moths perched around the bathroom sink, Jerusalem crickets handing out on the stoop. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a children’s picture book about bugs.

It keeps raining here lately – it’s still monsoon season, thunderstorms still very common. A few days ago, this meant the monument was draped in low-hanging clouds. It was breathtakingly beautiful.