Never mind how I got back home. Never mind that there are enough construction barrels in Illinois to cover the earth 30 feet deep. Never mind that the fastest drive from Minnesota to Michigan is due west via the Pacific Ocean across Africa and through NYC, thereby missing the whole concept of Chicago. I have great friends in Big Chi, great adventures and fun times there, but if they ever decide to build a prison around Illinois, I’ll volunteer the labor free. For those determined to drive the tollways anyway, I recommend bringing a PortaJohn, a lawyer, and large $$$ (wanna handle huge sums of cash, become an Illinois tollbooth operator).

All by way of saying I have only a vague recollection of how I got home from Michigan a few days ago. But I do remember it was a great trip, especially seeing my beautiful daughter and vibrant grandson Super Seamus. Add bonus adventures for the alternate route thru Iowa coming back.

Hello, Minnesota, my perfect sanctuary where I am daily renewed in the waterfall of existence. You have provided answers to the two quests we should all have: finding that there is a person who makes our heart go “giddyup”; and discovering a refuge that inspires and centers us – our personal 8th Wonder of the World where walls and façades vanish and we can be our undisguised selves.

The winds of spring have combed the prairies and spread garlands (choose your throbbing color) in every quarter of my hideaways. If God paints with watercolors in June, the media for July is rich oil paintings in shaded glens and lacquered lanes. Not to mention, if you breathe the heady aromas too deeply, you can be arrested for doing drugs. Yes, I’m a winter guy, but I love ‘em all – the seasons, that is. Give me the rumpled meadows and silver moons of summer, if that’s the plan, but if the Little Ice Age (a.k.a. Maunder minimum) returns by 2030, as top solar scientists are predicting, I shall ski 12 months of the year.

Photo record for June-July is woefully inadequate, but the few snaps I managed to take are below, as follows: #1-3 magical little pond at a place called Eastman where Mickey and I keep tabs on swans and other fin, fur and feather life; #4-5 Seamus and Sully in Jackson, Michigan; #6-7 prodigy musical talent Cyndi Heck at her party before she left for performing in Europe; #8-12 Jurassic canoe/kayak adventures in some hidden canals near my house.

This month’s archived column on StorytellersUnplugged takes on polarization in fiction. Here’s the link:  2015 06-16 Thomas Sullivan ABIGAIL & BUCK GET MARRIED

Are you learning to sort through the sock drawer of your life, same as me? Living outside the box (or the sock drawer) will help you do that. The more intense and unscripted your life experiences, the more info you collect to connect the dots and create benchmarks that help you find your way both forward and backward in Time. Forward, because life only goes in one direction; but backward too, because going forward incorporates the meaningful parts of your histoire (little French lingo there). I like to think of it as two clocks running at the same time but in opposite directions. Each of them stores pieces of my heart, my mind, and the blood of my soul. I need to consult them both in order to correctly define and maintain the magic of the moment. Here’s how I put it in a recent Facebook post:

“…The changing of the guard is underway, those twilight moments when the swift silver clock that marks the bold, free moments of my days abruptly stops. There is a timeless inhalation, and then the delicate mechanism of that other clock begins. The one that runs backwards. The one that marks the magic of my warm, cozy house as the moon arrives at the window and memories are set loose…”

Your emails share the dilemmas of modern living with me from soul-killing boredom to being overwhelmed and depressed. I hear the relentless ticking of predictable clocks in your lives or see the slow flow of hourglass sand or squint in the flicker of digital time dancing insanely through the numbers. Wish I could get it all in sync for you; but that’s the maze we each have to solve, isn’t it?

I can only tell you that finding sanctuaries that suspend Time is part of my strategy for keeping it real. And I say this fully appreciating that timeouts can conflict with roles we have to play – must maintain appearances! I think sanctuaries only work when you come to certain conclusions about life. Specifically, you have to fear doing nothing more than you fear failure. Which is to say, risk at some level is vital to being fully alive. I’m not talking about physical danger – some of you think of me as that crazy adventurer who used to say, if you’ve never cheated death, you’ve cheated life – I’m talking about the need to not embalm yourself in a psychological cocoon while you’re still alive.

Perspective is everything in your journey, and it usually arrives in the rearview mirror too late to make fundamental changes. And even if you gain precious insights early enough, you still have to muster the courage and inner honesty to act. Many of us just run out the clock instead, half-paralyzed by fear and inertia. So I wish you the courage of dreams – mid-summer night dreams – dreams that linger on into day! How else can you keep faith with your true and total self? Savor the summer!