Fleeting Light and Familiar Places

The Quiet Ways We Carry What We’ve Lost

I wrote this just over a month ago and had planned to share it at the time, but, as often happens, life got ahead of me, and I forgot. In the midst of this busy touring schedule, I’ll carve out some time today to write and share updates about everything I’ve been up to over the past month. For now, here’s this post I meant to share earlier.

On Friday night, I went to a friend’s holiday gathering, just a handful of us who’ve known each other since high school. Three of us have lost our moms in the past year, and with the holidays approaching, there’s an undercurrent of grief none of us really need to say out loud. It’s there, like a thread we’re all holding, invisible but strong. Around one o’clock in the morning, we bundled up and walked down to the lake. At first, we weren’t sure we’d find the path—the steps down to the beach can be tricky in the dark—but the freshly fallen snow glowed under the moon, lighting our way easily. The lake was alive, waves rolling in and catching the light, flickering like silver shards or the faint glow of phosphorescence. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it. We stood there for a long time, the stillness wrapping around us, all of us quiet, all of us breathing.

The next day, I stopped into my childhood home—the house I purchased from my parents before they died. I’ve been renting it out for the past year, but the house feels heavier now, layered with so much I haven’t fully faced. During renovations, in the middle of the grief, I didn’t have the strength to sort through my dad’s woodshop to see what I might want to bring home. But this time, while I was up there, I called the tenant and asked if I could come by. On January 5, I’m heading to Perth for a woodworking course at The Rosewood Studio and I wanted to bring something of my dad’s with me

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The woodshop is still as he left it. I picked up his router and the router table he built out of our old kitchen counter—my dad never wasted an inch of anything. I took his scroll saw, the drill press, and little boxes filled with bits and bobs, all those pieces that only he would know the purpose of. Each tool holds something for me, not just their function but their weight in my hands, the feeling of him still there.

I can’t describe what it is to hold his tools, to carry them forward. My dad was always a maker, and I feel him most when I’m building something. These tools, worn by his hands, carry his care, his ingenuity, his quiet resourcefulness. They remind me that the things we create can outlast us, not just physically but in the stories they hold and the way they continue to shape the lives of those we leave behind.

Today, I was reminded of something David Whyte said his conversation with Rick Rubin, about the way we can feel unmoored when the moon disappears from the sky. When the moon cycle changes, and we can’t see its light, it can feel like we’ve disappeared too—like we don’t know what’s what anymore, and that can be unsettling, even a little frightening. I think I’ve been in that place lately. I’d just come out of a magical stretch of time where my spirit felt so high, in flow, doing the things I love. And then, all of a sudden, it was like I was wading through fog. I’ve been tired, my mental state a bit numb.

But rather than resisting it, or waiting for the brightness to come back, I’m going to try something different. I’m going to ride it through and observe it—to sit inside this darker moment and see what it has to teach me. Because maybe this, too, is part of the rhythm, the cycle of receiving and releasing, of holding on and letting go.

That night by the lake, under the bright moon, and in the woodshop where everything still smells like sawdust and memory, I felt it—this life of ours, fleeting yet full, shaped by both the light and the dark. The lake, the tools, the people I love—they’re all reminders that we’re like the moon itself, changing, disappearing, and returning. And in the spaces where we feel most lost, there’s a quiet invitation to pause, to breathe, to trust the unseen rhythms carrying us forward.

. If you’d like to hear more stories about the woodshop I’m building—or if there’s something specific you’d love for me to share—let me know in the comments! And if you have friends who are into building, creating, or just love following creative journeys, feel free to share my profile with them. I’d love to connect with more folks who are passionate about making things.

(Here’s a picture of me cleaning up the router table in my airstream woodshop)