I have always loved fall.

Bright blue skies with cotton-ball clouds provide the perfect backdrop for trees dressed in shades of golden yellow, brilliant red, and burnt orange. The mornings begin with a crispness in the air, but the afternoons are still holding onto a little warmth. And all of that is accompanied by a feeling of renewal, while most of nature is preparing for a long winter’s nap.

It’s a bit of a paradox, isn’t it? A feeling of new beginnings in a season that largely is about things coming to an end.

It’s also the time of year when Penny and I do a lot of hiking. While the evenings get shorter, our hikes get longer. The woods are also quieter as the summer crowds thin out. We often see deer walking through the trees, squirrels and chipmunks rustling through the fallen leaves, and occasionally even a porcupine. Of course Penny is busy following every interesting scent she can find with her nose. Meanwhile, I’m usually looking for one of my favorite things.

Mushrooms.

They fascinate me endlessly. The amazing variety of shapes and sizes and colors and textures. Some are so small you could pass right by them without noticing; others impossible to miss. They are weird and wonderful and sometimes downright strange. It was really everything I love about the woods in one strange little being.

This love affair with autumn, hiking in northern Michigan, the natural world, and our odd little mushroom friends seems like a good place to start this blog.

I have been blogging on and off since 2009. The original version has long been lost into the depths of the internet, probably living somewhere alongside abandoned MySpace pages and questionable early Facebook posts.

But lately I have wanted something else.

I’m in a season of life where I want a little change. Not a dramatic reinvention, but a new beginning. A space that feels like mine, where I’m not worried about the algorithm or if instead of taking pictures, I made a reel instead.

A quiet corner of the internet, where I can post photos from a hike, a painting I made that I happen to really love, or a book I can’t stop thinking about. A place to talk about a movie or TV show I just watched, a new creative obsession, or whatever strange little trail my curiosity takes me down.

I don’t really want this space to be about one thing. My interests have never been strictly categorized and I see little reason why I should start forcing them to be now.

Maybe that is what this new beginning is all about. Creating space for all the things that make life interesting, without feeling compelled to turn them into something else.

A bit less noise. A little more curious. And probably lots of mushrooms.

Welcome to my small corner of the internet.