Whispering Wyrd

I haven’t written anything in a while because we were traveling. It’s so good to be back home! I turned 60 yesterday. That number sorta makes me pause for a moment. Not out of fear or anything like that, but out of reflection. Sixty years of living, learning, falling down, getting back up, and continuing on. And I’m still here!

After the week I just had, that means more than I can ever easily put into words. Last week was… hard. One of those stretches that tests you pretty hard. The kind that stirs things up inside you that you thought had settled. The kind that leaves you tired in a way that sleep alone doesn’t fix.

But yesterday…

Yesterday was something else entirely. I woke up to find the house decorated for my birthday. My wife had gone out of her way to make it special, decorations, warmth, care in every single detail. She even made me a low-carb birthday cake, which meant more to me than I think she knows. It wasn’t just a cake… it was love, thoughtfulness, and understanding all wrapped into one.

Throughout the day, I heard from people I love. Calls, messages, voices reaching out to me just to say, “Happy Birthday.” Simple things like that, but they carry a lot weight. They remind you that you’re not alone in this life.

Then my wife and my youngest son took me up into the mountains, my favorite place. There’s something about those mountains that always brings me back to myself and heals me.

I took off my shoes and socks and stood on the earth. Just stood there for a moment, feeling the ground beneath my feet. Solid. Real and steady. Then I walk around barefoot. After a week that felt like anything but steady, that simple thing of walking barefoot in the mountains felt sacred.

We sat by a bubbling mountain stream, listening to the water move over the rocks and breathing in that clean, pine-scented air. The kind of air that feels like it’s doing something good inside of you with every breath. And for a while everything just… settled. No rush. No noise. No pressure. Just presence, being fully there and alive in that moment.

After that, we went to my favorite restaurant and shared a meal together. Good food, good company, and the quiet sense of peace that had started in the mountains carried right along with us. It was an amazing day! And I don’t take that lightly, especially not after the week that came before it.

This birthday didn’t feel like a celebration of achievements or milestones. It was far deeper than that. It felt like gratitude. Gratitude for my wife, whose love shows up in a hundred thousand quiet ways. Gratitude for my family, for being there, for reaching out, for caring. Gratitude for the mountains, the earth, the water, the air reminding me that peace is still here, even when I lose sight of it for a while.

And maybe most of all… Gratitude that I made it through. Not perfectly by any means. Not without struggle. But I made it. Sixty years in, I’m really starting to understand something more clearly… It’s not about having a life without hard weeks. It’s about coming back from them. It’s about days like this, days that remind you who you are beneath all the noise.

Sixty doesn’t feel like an “ending” to me. It feels like a new beginning. It feels like a deepening. A softening. A finding peace that I never knew in my younger years. And today, I can say this honestly, I am grateful to be here! And after a day like yesterday… I’m reminded that there is still so much beauty and peace here.

Amituofo
~Buck