Good question. Nancy and I have been on the go since early September. We checked off an item on our bucket list by visiting Bruges, Belgium the first week of the month. It is a splendid medieval town with buildings from the fourteenth century still used in every day life. Then we cruised Belgian canals for a week before returning home. Here’s a nighttime view of a canal in Bruges.

That’s when I began an essay about images that give us ease and comfort. Things like crackling fires, foggy mornings, sparkling meadows, fluffy clouds, and sunsets. I believe such things are wired into our unconscious cerebral cortex and that they are  essential to our well-being. So, here’s one of my sunset images, taken from a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. Comforting?

Later that month, we visited the National Parks in North and South Dakota. The Badlands are wildly beautiful and we were up close and personal with big herds of buffalo. The golden glow of cottonwoods and aspen enhanced some of the pictures. I took over 700 photos, which are still being edited, but here are some that made the cut.

Finally, we volunteered through my college alumni program to work with the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe in Nevada . It was an intense and valuable experience, and I hope our Indian friends found it as worthwhile as Nancy and I did.

Back to sunsets! Here’s one on a tributary to the Amazon River in Peru.