Last year when we spent time out on the road I became attracted to thistles - even cutting a huge bouquet of them on the roadside in Idaho and taking them with me from place to place.

This morning, we woke up again and it was a fresh new day. Nothing from the previous day had to linger and draw itself into the freshness of this new beginning.

This is what I am noticing today. This idea of new beginnings and freshness. Unchartered waters that are waiting to be explored, instead of holding on to our nets from the previous days difficulties. We can release them and let them stay in the past.

And what does this have to do with thistles? I am thinking and meditating on how thistles are thorny and prickly. If you want to cut a huge bouquet of thistles you have to watch out for the thorns - and you will most likely get a few scrapes and cuts along the way. But it doesn’t make them any less beautiful. They remain - even in the midst of the cuts and scrapes - something for the eye to behold in wonder and curiosity. As does this new day.

At the beginning of this month I drew this simple picture on my monthly calendar. And I wrote at the top “a season of thistles in bloom”. The words had felt like a metaphor for what we are taking on in this new adventure of living on the road. And they have come back to find me this morning as I drink my cup of tea and sit quietly thinking about the day ahead.

We are in a season of thistles in bloom. And if you want to harvest a huge bouquet of thistles you are bound to cut and scrapped up from time to time. But it doesn’t make them any less beautiful. In fact, maybe it makes them even more wonderous because they require a bit of blood and sweat. A little bit of work.

Easy is just easy. Something that takes a little skin in the process of becoming might just be worth more than you can even imagine. So here is to this new day. May it bloom wildly wherever it may go.