Detail Diary, Vol #2

An ongoing joy

September 28 - October 7, 2023

Dear friend,

I’m about a month into my Detail Diary on Substack Notes, and I’ve continued to relish it. I’ve decided to do a biweekly recap of the Detail Diary Notes for all my email subscribers, because they’re just too fun.

So here are my favorites from this fortnight, featuring signs of autumn (reluctant here in southern France this year), glorious sky art, nature red in tooth and claw, and some truly stunning mountain tableaux from the field (which, to be fair, were more than mere details).

Some have photos, some don’t. Don’t forget that you can click on the embedded Notes to view them on the webpage or app if you want to get a closer look at the photos (or potentially see additional ones) or longer captions. And if the whole post is too big for your email, follow the “View in brower” link to the webpage.

Not a Detail Diary entry, but a continuation of the sky saga:

And one more sky:

In that vein, another predatory insect from the field (wasp spider), whose web I almost put my hand through :

And from my three days in the field at Lautaret, which I plan to write a whole post about next week (you can read more about the location in “The garden and the glacier” if you missed that post):

(To email readers: the above has four photos.)

(That one has four photos and a longer caption.) And here is that evening’s fruit:

The grand finale:

Perhaps got a bit carried away with that one, but at the same time I think it was merited. Here’s the full caption:

A goddess-eye view of a gossamer sea lying between the mountains, having filled the river valley overnight, and not yet vanished by the climbing sun's sorcery.

Alternate caption 1: Am I dreaming?*

Alternate caption 2: Discovery of a new element, one that traverses dimensions before your eyes, brimming a transparent other-space below you, calming more and more of the real world into soft oblivion the farther it spreads. It has weight and volume and surface but no substance. It can't be captured or contained, except by ancient beings such as mountains. It's not dangerous unless you try to swim in it.

*My dreams do sometimes bring me gifts like this one. Landscapes or creatures so saturated with color and light and exquisite detail, so vibrant with otherness and intelligence, that my whole heart opens with gratitude. When I wake up, my grief for the illusoriness of the place is softened by the fact that it was spun from real encounters with this world. These are real neural pathways I've had the privilege and luck to forge every time I realize fully what I'm looking at, every time I'm stunned awake by the earth showing itself to me like this.

I think this represents the underlying spirit of the Detail Diary, albeit less dramatic, usually.

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That’s all for now! As always, feel free to follow along with new entries on Substack Notes or Instagram stories, or wait until the next recap. And if you’re inspired to make your own notes, I’d love to hear about them in the comments or email!