Field Notes: Between Skies and Shadows

June 30, 2025

Some weeks don’t unfold — they blur.

Like a memory returning mid-sentence.

This week, the haze came back. The Rhodopes vanished into it, and with them, something in me softened. I don’t feel lost. I feel between. Like the thread is thinning again — but this time, I’m not pulling it. I’m letting it hum.

Here’s what I want to remember from this week — in sky, in soil, in soul:

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Monday morning- 16th of June

Lately, I can barely see the Rhodopes.

There’s a haze now — constant, low-humming — like a veil draped across the shoulders of the mountain. Not heavy, not violent. Just... present. Lingering.

They say it’s Sahara dust. But I’ve heard that before — year after year, like a tired chorus trying to explain something ancient away.

But this is different.

This haze doesn’t just blur the edges of the land. It carries a feeling. A thinning. A hush. A pressure in the air like a great, silent breath being held by the Earth herself.

And sometimes, if I’m still enough, I swear I can see it — a soft red glow in the sky, not from the sun, but from something else. Something hovering just beyond perception. A body. A memory. A watcher.

I’ve dreamt of it, too.

A planet — massive, red-tinged, hanging low in the sky. Visible even in daylight. Not a harbinger of doom, but a signal. A presence so immense it shifts the frequency of everything around it. In the dream, people reacted differently. Some saw it and wept. Some laughed with joy. Others refused to look up at all. The split wasn’t caused by the planet. The planet revealed the split that was already there.

I’ve had other dreams, too — dreams of timelines collapsing like scaffolding, of the sky peeling back to reveal a starless black pierced by memory. I’ve seen Michelle in a world under red light, awakening with a single phrase on her lips: "I remember."

I’ve walked through the fields barefoot as people around me either blinked out of this reality or stepped fully into it.

These aren’t just dreams. They’re retrievals. I know that now.

Something is returning — not just a planet, but a memory of a sky before the veil. A sky where stars spoke. A sky where every orbit sang.

I don’t know what kind of universe this truly is. I no longer believe it’s gravitational. It feels electric. Vibrational. Conscious. The kind of universe where planets are not just rocks but beings, where the sun is not just a star, but a living portal.

And I wonder — when this other body becomes visible to all — not just to those of us remembering, but all — what will it undo? What will it awaken?

I do not fear it. I feel honored to have seen it early.

And so I write. I remember. I bear witness.

Because the sky is coming back. And with it, everything we thought we had forgotten.

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Thursday afternoon - 19th of June

I woke up a little better today. Not full of energy, but not the bone-deep exhaustion that’s been clinging to me. Sleep came slowly again last night, but once it did, it was restful. I can’t recall the dreams, but I woke with the feeling that something in me had been strengthened.

The dogs were calm this morning — even Lucy. No pulling, just steady movement. But the flies were already relentless. Summer's weight pressing in early.

Franzi started the day worrying about money again. I get it — I know she’s the one keeping us just above the tide — but I’m done carrying that frequency. That’s not mine anymore. I resonate with flow now. With the abundance that's already rising like a wave just offshore. Not playing small anymore.

And then — that moment. A message: my YubiKey is arriving on the 24th. Tuesday. Solstice week. I almost cried with relief. It means I’ll finally be able to start. I’ll be earning again — and the best part? I can do it on the road.

Because yes, I need to leave. The haze is creeping back over the Rhodopes. I watched the peaks disappear before my eyes. The sky is strange again. Something’s off. Something’s coming. And still — I’m not worried. I know how long these things can stretch. It’ll come when it’s meant to.

For now, I keep walking.

I want this to be a pilgrimage. Not just escape, not just travel — something sacred. Me and the twins. I’m dreaming of a rooftop tent. Nothing fancy. Just something that lets me sleep beneath the sky again and wake with them curled against me. Dora and Lucy — two halves of Marshall’s spirit, walking me forward.

And I think of Michelle. Not with longing, not anymore. Just a hum. A pulse that never quite fades. I’m not pulling the thread. I’m just riding the current of its memory.

I’m not sure what’s happening to me lately. I don’t even feel called to stay near Little Cork. The place that once felt like home now feels… distant.

Josh, what’s happening?

All I know is: something’s shifting. In the land. In me. In the sky.

And in the middle of all of it — this liminal weather, this strange stillness — I keep thinking of color.

—

Franzi was the green.
The soft of moss and early spring.
The steadiness of something that stays — even when it doesn’t know how to grow anymore.

She loved me like a forest might love a river: calmly, conditionally, with roots tangled deep beneath the surface… but leaves that turned away when the wind got too loud.

I was the blue.
The sky-reaching, soul-singing ache of it all.
The boy who learned to speak grief fluently — and mistake it for devotion.

Water that couldn’t sit still.
A voice that broke in half, trying to explain why silence was never enough.

And then there was Michelle.

Red.

Not just color — pulse.

She didn’t offer grounding or calm.
She offered recognition. Combustion. Return.

She didn’t say, “I’ll stay.”
She said, “I see you.”
And that was somehow more dangerous.
And more divine.

Green kept me safe.
Blue kept me soft.
But Red?

Red kept me alive.

And now I walk between them.
Between moss and flame.
Between the one who stayed… and the one who left, but never really let go.

—

Some days I don’t know where this path is going. I just know I’m not walking it blind.

I carry memory like a compass.
I carry the sky in my chest.
I carry the thread.

And I’m not lost.

I’m just listening.

— Alex
Threadwalker and barefoot prophet

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