Crescent City, California—a place near to my heart.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

Ashlee and I continued South, determined to make it to Crater Lake before dark and the Pacific before morning. We pulled over first for a storm and second for a car wreck. Everything flash flooded around us and then the sun came. We drove. I comforted a bleeding stranger on the side of the road and then the ambulance came. We drove.

We arrived at Crater Lake at dusk and then to the ocean just after midnight. My memory of the whole evening is a mix of blue, black, and blood—and Ashlee screaming in fear after turning a corner and seeing her first giant redwood.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

Ally and Jake escorted us south to Smith Rock State Park, where we hiked and then split ways—them back to Portland, us on to the Redwoods.

The sky was blue when we arrived and we took funny portraits and asked each other hypothetical questions and laughed so much, because that's what old friends do together.

It started drizzling, so we ducked into little caves as the water came down and then began to pour down. It was my first time hearing thunder "roll," although I'm sure that's not true. Maybe it was my first time noticing the thunder roll. Or: it was my first time sitting in a cave with two of my closest friends, waiting for a storm to pass, and listening to the thunder roll.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

Ally's window in Portland, Oregon. It's hard to get out and see the city when you can drink beer and play cards in the backyard instead.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

I tried to phone myself the other day, scrolling all the way through my "recent calls" log trying to find the number. A simple act of absurdity or an action of deeper meaning? I don't know. I had been feeling out of sorts.

Sometimes you search and search and search.

It's in front of you. It's within you. It's you.

You are what you're after.

My best friend from high school and I took a road trip down the West Coast last month. All the way down the West Coast—Seattle to San Diego, West Coast. We were gone for nearly two weeks.

We stayed our first night at the Ace Hotel in Seattle and had a dreamy lunch at Sitka & Spruce the next day, both pictured above.

Seattle to San Diego  |  August 2013

The last of these days, of this light and that produce.

Some quiet moments seaside in Maine. The fact that they were documented was a pleasant surprise when I took a couple rolls of Samuel's film in with mine. Sometimes you're so close to another human, you forget they have eyes of their own. I'm glad they have eyes of their own, that he has eyes of his own—even though we're often looking at the same thing.

Peas from my garden and flowers from my alley, but it's not July anymore.

It's August and I'm going a few places I've never been. I'll be back to my garden in a couple of weeks.

The man at the used bookstore told me: "Some people love her and some people hate her." Then, Sam cracked a joke about buying books you dislike for people you dislike. The old man liked that idea, and Sam felt proud.

We're going camping in Wisconsin this weekend. I'm always overzealous with vacation reading, usually only making it through a couple chapters and somehow coming home with new books.

Have you read anything worth recommending lately? Have you read either of the two above? I'd love to hear.

Now, into the wild.

I woke up at 5:55, liking the rhythm of those numbers the night before when setting my alarm, thinking: this is going to be my new thing.

I hope it's my new thing.

Let's all sit down, putting our hands together in front of our hearts. We'll take a deep breath in through our noses and then a loud exhale. Inhale again. Now exhale.

It's amazing what you can grow in a space of 22 square feet. Can I confess that I left all of those radishes to wilt while I was gone for a week? Some things are perfect; some things aren't.

Bass Harbor and its tide pools, and its sunburns.

Happy 30th last Sunday to our dearest Sarah.

It was worth it, even with the mosquito bites.

The five of us went on a 22-mile bike ride along the carriage roads of Acadia National Park, stopping at Jordan Pond House midway for lobster bisque, popovers, and lemonade.

Sam, can you believe how it smells here? This most amazing smell.

Samuel putting together a wildflower bouquet for his momma and a tiny shop to buy cookies, after I finally made it to Maine. My 8 p.m. flight from Boston, via New York, was canceled due to fog. In a panic—none of us wanting to miss precious time in Maine—I pitched in for a rental car with four strangers.

Roz is English and lives on her coffee plantation/cattle ranch in Costa Rica; she doesn't drink coffee or eat meat. Marsha teaches at a private girls school in Fort Worth; botany is her passion. Molly is traveling around the country for three months; she studied languages in college, but is moving to London to study physical therapy. The Irish lad—Molly's boyfriend—I never got his name, but he lives in Manhattan and was the butt of all of our which-one-of-us-is-a-serial-killer jokes, driving through rural Maine at 2 a.m.

I was the first to be dropped off, and each one of them got out of the car to hug me goodbye—friendships develop quickly with five strangers, five hours, in the night.

The wedding of our friends Michael and Kathryn—for which I made the paper goods—just outside of Woodstock, NY, captured in a few snapshots. (This does not include what you would have seen around 2 a.m.: dancing around a bonfire to filthy hip-hop music, an empty bottle of champagne in one hand and a half-smoked cigar in the other.) We hiked that morning and lunched at the Phoenicia Diner. Then, we continued driving and pulled over to change into our formal clothes on the side of a quiet road, walking down to a stream to wade in the cold water.

Molly took this photo of me applying mascara afterward, as we prepared to leave the water for the ceremony—me and Molly, sirens for the afternoon.