Seasons

The Brutal Beauty of Winter

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

We’ve reached that part of winter where South Dakota stops pretending.

The forecast has settled into a long stretch of below zero temperatures, the kind of cold that doesn’t care how tough you think you are or how many layers you pile on. This cold is brutal. It cuts straight through coats and sweaters like they’re suggestions, not protection. The wind doesn’t knock. It slams into you, steals your breath, and leaves you staggering for half a second while it whips loose snow into tiny glass missiles that sting your face and hands.

Any exposed skin burns instantly. Not metaphorically. Actually burns. Raw and angry and aching within seconds.

The cold doesn’t stay outside either. It seeps through the windows, through the walls, through the cracks you didn’t know existed. It settles into every room like an unwelcome guest, making the idea of leaving a warm bed feel almost offensive. Even inside, there’s always a chill riding the air, a reminder that winter is very much in control.

This is the kind of cold that makes your whole body ache. Your nose runs, and before you can even wipe it, it freezes, an uncomfortable, ridiculous reality of arctic temperatures. If your gloves get wet, they stiffen and harden, crusted with frost, no longer flexible or warm, just cold armor against colder air. Everything feels sharper. Heavier. More exhausting.

And yet, somehow, this depth of cold brings beauty with it.

Winter sunsets feel more vivid, like the sky is making up for everything it’s taken away. Colors burn brighter and linger longer, purples bleeding into pinks and oranges in ways that feel almost unreal against the frozen landscape. The air is clearer, crisper, and the light carries farther.

Frost clings to trees and fences, delicate and quiet, turning ordinary branches into something almost sacred. Every twig is outlined in white, every field dusted and still. The world feels paused, held in place by ice and breath and silence.

On days like these, the sky sometimes gifts us sun dogs. They’re bright spots of light that appear on either side of the sun, caused by sunlight refracting through ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Basically, the cold is so intense that the air itself sparkles. Halos form. Light bends. The sky shows off.

I saw them on Saturday, soft and glowing, but the sky was thick with clouds and I couldn’t get a good photo. Still, just seeing them felt like a quiet reward for enduring this kind of cold. Like winter saying, I know this hurts, but look what I can do.

I hate this level of cold. I really do. I hate how it makes everything harder and slower and more painful, how it drains energy before the day even starts. But I love what winter creates. I love that even in the most unforgiving conditions, there’s still beauty pressing through, still light bending and colors burning and frost turning the world gentle.

Maybe that’s why it sticks with me.

Because winter doesn’t soften. It doesn’t apologize. But every once in a while, it lifts the veil just enough to remind us that even here, especially here, there is something worth noticing.

And I hope I see it again soon.

Constellations Beneath The Surface

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I think I am in my whale shark era.

It began small, a stuffed whale shark in a zoo gift shop, its skin dotted with tiny white stars, and I felt something in me recognize it. Not joy, not comfort, not surprise, but recognition, as if a part of me that had always existed far below the surface had finally surfaced just enough to say, yes, this is what I am. Something immense. Something patient. Something that moves slowly and carries the weight of its own existence without asking for notice.

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the ocean, and yet they do not dominate. They move like time itself, deliberate, mouths open, letting the water pass through them. They do not chase. They do not fight. They do not hurry. They do not need to be understood. They glide through currents that would crush anything else, and still they are gentle. I have fallen in love with their enormity, with the quiet certainty of their being.

Their backs are painted with constellations, a thousand tiny stars scattered across vast, dark skin. No two patterns are the same. They carry the sky on their bodies, a universe in motion, traveling alone through oceans that stretch farther than the mind can hold. And I think of myself like that sometimes—alone, yes, but not lost, marked with constellations that only I can see, carrying my own silent light through waters that are deep and unknowable.

I have carried so much already. Loss, exhaustion, nights where the silence pressed against me and I thought I might break. I have braced myself for the world to take what it wanted, and still, here I am. Still, I am moving. Still, I am learning how to let the weight exist without breaking me, how to float in it, how to let the current carry me.

There is awe in that stillness. There is awe in being so large, so slow, so deliberate, and so alone, and yet so fully alive. There is awe in the constellations that mark a creature’s skin, in the way the stars travel with it even when no one else can see. I want that for myself. I want to be immense and quiet and star-marked, to move through the dark water and let it hold me, to let the depth exist without shame or explanation, to let the currents trace the shape of my body and the shape of my scars and the shape of everything I have learned to carry.

Even in the silence, even far below the surface where no one notices, the stars still take note.

I want my life to feel like that. I want to glide through it with the vastness of the ocean in my chest, carrying constellations across my back that no one can ever fully map but that are there anyway, that shine anyway, that mark me as real and enduring. I want to move slow, I want to hold weight without apology, I want to exist with patience, with awe, with quiet light, with the kind of presence that does not need to be witnessed to be real.

This is my whale shark era.

Vast and patient, gentle and immense, alone but full of constellations, moving through dark water without spectacle. Letting the stars mark me, letting the ocean hold me, letting the silence shape me. Letting myself exist without explanation. Letting the awe of it reach me, all of me, until even I can see it, even I can feel it.

Even here, far below the surface, even in solitude, even in silence, the stars still take note.

Things I Still Believe In

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Dear Santa,

I know it has been a long time since I wrote to you, but something in me felt pulled back to this small tradition, this quiet magic. Maybe it is the season itself. Maybe it is the kind of year I have had. Maybe it is the part of me that is still trying to believe good things can find their way to me. I do not know exactly why, but I do know I wanted to write.

This year has felt heavy in ways I never expected. It held moments of beauty, too, but also a kind of tired I cannot always explain. I think you understand that sort of thing. I think you have seen many hearts trying their best to keep going, even when they feel worn thin. Mine is one of them.

I am not writing to ask for anything extravagant. I think what I want most is a little steadiness. A small piece of peace that stays long enough for me to breathe again. I want warmth that lasts even after the lights come down. I want hope that does not slip through my fingers the way it usually does.

There are a few real things too. Simple things. A winter that is not too harsh. A soft morning to rest in. A day where my body does not hurt and my chest feels light enough to carry. A moment of laughter with the people I love. A reminder that I am not as alone as the dark sometimes tells me I am.

I would also love something symbolic. A sign that the year ahead will be kinder. Something small that tells me I am still allowed to believe in goodness, even after everything. Maybe it comes in the shape of a sunset or a handful of stars. Maybe it is a quiet reassurance I do not have to fight as hard as I used to. I would be grateful for whatever form it takes.

I know many people ask you for big things, impossible things, and maybe this letter is strange. But I think the heart of Christmas has always been this gentle honesty. The kind that shows up in simple words and quiet wishes. So here is mine.

Please bring a little light to the places in me that have been dim for a while. Please bring kindness to the people who need it most. And if there is room, please bring something soft for me too. Something that reminds me I am still growing, still healing, still here.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for listening to the small voice in me that still believes in wonder. I hope you have safe travels, clear nights, and warm cookies waiting wherever you go.

Sincerely,
Kelly

The Night The Sky Couldn’t Hold Itself

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, these are star trails.

They form when a camera stays still long enough to notice what we usually rush past. It holds its breath, holds its place, and lets the Earth turn beneath it. We’re the ones moving, but the long exposure makes it look like the stars are the ones wandering, sweeping their light across the night like they have somewhere gentle to be.

I think that’s why I love them.
Because they prove something I keep forgetting.
That movement doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like staying in one place long enough for the truth to catch up to you.

What I can’t stop staring at is the reflection in the water.

That doubled sky.
That echo of light.
Like the world was so full that it overflowed and spilled itself into the stillness until even the dark had to carry something bright.

There is something almost painfully tender about that.
How the sky didn’t shrink itself or dim itself or apologize for being too much.
It simply became two skies instead of one.

And maybe that is what hit me.
The reminder that even in silence, even when my days feel stuck or small or swallowed by their own shadows, things are shifting.
Healing is shifting.
Grief is shifting.
I am shifting.
Not loudly. Not obviously. But undeniably.

The water didn’t move, but it mirrored the stars anyway.
And some days I feel like that.
Quiet, unmoving, like nothing is changing at all.
But maybe I am reflecting things I can’t see yet.
Maybe the parts of me that feel still are actually catching light I didn’t know was reaching for me.

I stayed out by the water longer than I meant to.
The grass was cold.
The night smelled like winter trying to arrive too early.
And I felt that familiar ache in my chest, the kind that comes from wanting more than I can name, from missing things I can’t explain, from holding hope and exhaustion in the same trembling hand.

But the stars kept tracing their slow arcs across the sky.
They didn’t hurry.
They didn’t need to.
They simply kept going, one thin line at a time, drawing proof of their persistence in the dark.

I think I needed to see that.

Because lately I have been feeling like I am barely moving.
Like I am suspended between worlds, South Dakota and Virginia, past and future, memory and whatever comes next.
But the camera caught movement my eyes couldn’t.
And maybe that is true for my life too.

Maybe I am changing in ways I won’t recognize until later.
Maybe this season is a long exposure.
Slow, quiet, honest.
Capturing shifts I won’t understand until I step back and see the trails.

Maybe you are in one of those seasons too.

If you are, I hope you remember this.
Stillness is not stagnation.
Quiet is not failure.
And even on the nights when you feel like you are holding your breath, the sky is still moving, and so are you.

After The Rain

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

This was April.
Mud season in South Dakota.
The kind of spring that doesn’t arrive all at once. It shows up in pieces. A little green here, a little sun there. Then rain. Then snow again. Then more rain. The kind that smells like thawed dirt and wet air. The kind that makes you believe something new might still grow.

We wait for it all winter.
We wait through the deep freeze, the dark mornings, the quiet that settles into your chest. We hold out for the day when the ground softens. When you can walk across the field and feel it shift under your boots. When you can breathe a little easier, even if nothing has bloomed yet.

That was one of those days.
It had just rained, and the sky cracked open for a minute. A rainbow stretched itself across the farmland like a whisper. You had to look up to see it, but it was there.

That’s our Gator in the front. Mud-streaked, worn in, still running. And the John Deere behind it, a little older, still waiting to be needed. Out here, the work never really stops. The equipment doesn’t ask what season it is. It just keeps going.

Spring felt like a beginning.
We watched goat kids find their footing in the mud. We hoped the frost hadn’t killed the roots. We looked for the first wildflowers on the edges of the fence line. Life returned quietly. Slowly. But it returned.

And now, months later, we’re preparing for winter again.
The sun sets earlier. The mornings are colder. You can feel it coming.

We check the machinery.
We fix what needs fixing.
We stack feed.
We make lists.
We brace ourselves.

This is the rhythm.
Hope, followed by work. Life, followed by stillness. We wait. We begin. We prepare. We do it all again.

But I still remember that day in April.
The softness after the storm.
The rainbow over the field.
The reminder that no matter how long or harsh the winter is, spring will come again.

The land always circles back.
And so do we.

Will I Ever See You Again?

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I’m writing this from the sky.
Somewhere between what was and what comes next. I boarded the plane, found my seat, and now I’m watching the clouds blur into something I can’t quite name.
And still, somehow, I feel stuck.
Suspended. Like I am paused in a doorway.
One foot in the past and the other not sure where it is going to land.

Over the last few weeks, I said a lot of goodbyes. Some short. Some silent. Some that felt like the kind of goodbye you don’t come back from. And somewhere in nearly every one, the same question found its way to the surface.

“Will I ever see you again?”

And the truth is, I do not know.

I wanted to have a better answer. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say of course. I wanted to say absolutely. I wanted to make promises, even if I was not sure I could keep them. But I have learned that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it breaks your own heart.

And the truth is that life is not a straight road. It loops and turns and takes you places you never expected. And I do not know where this chapter is going to lead me. I would love to come back to Virginia. To the porches and backroads. To the trails and the tucked-away corners. To the places that held me when I did not have words. To the people who stood by me through all of it.
To the mountain views, yes, but also the little things. The streetlights and sidewalk conversations. The small-town moments and quiet kind of love I found scattered across this state.

But I have also left something behind. Something heavy. And not all returns are healing. Some just reopen wounds that have not scarred over yet.

There is a version of this story where I do come back. Where I visit in the fall or the spring. Where we sit on couches or church steps or trailheads and pick up right where we left off. Where the leaves still change.
Where the air still smells like woodsmoke and memory. I hope that version exists. I hope I get to live it.

But if I do not, please know this.

I loved this place.
I loved these people.
I loved this chapter of my life, even when it broke me.

And I will carry it with me.
All of it.
The memories.
The quiet hellos.
The brave goodbyes.
The moments I was seen and the ones I never found words for.
The laughter I will replay. The silences that taught me how to stay.

Virginia will keep breathing without me. That is how it works. The wind will keep moving. The leaves will keep falling. The sun will keep setting over the ridges and rooftops. Over the porches and roads and places I may never stand again.

But I hope you remember I was here.
I hope you know you mattered.
I hope we find our way back to each other in some season or some sky.

For now, I am flying.

And part of me is still there. Curled up on Megan’s couch. Watching the leaves dance. Wondering if maybe, just maybe, this is not an ending. Just a pause.

The Porch, The Leaves and Me

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I came back to the house yesterday after running a few tasks nothing major, just the usual mountain things and for some reason, when I stepped up to the porch, I stopped.

The vines were hanging down just right over the roofline. The light above the door had kicked on even though the sun wasn’t fully gone yet. There were leaves scattered everywhere across the steps, all orange and crinkled and loud under my shoes.

And I don’t know, something about it felt really beautiful.
But also really sad.

Because I’m leaving this.
Soon.

I’ve walked through this door a hundred times. Maybe more.
Usually in a rush. Usually with something in my hands.
But today I didn’t move.

I just stood there.
Staring at the way fall had dressed the porch in color.
And I thought,
This is what goodbye looks like sometimes.
Soft. Quiet. Beautiful. Subtle.

No one around.
No big speech.
Just me and a house that’s held so many versions of me.

There are thirteen days left until the 40th.
Thirteen days until I leave this mountain.
Thirteen days until I close this door and it doesn’t open for me again.

And I know it’s right. I know I’m ready in the ways that matter.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.

Because this isn’t just a building.
It’s been a home. A hiding place. A launch point.

This porch has seen me exhausted and giddy and crying and singing and eating dinner on the steps at midnight. This door has welcomed me back when I felt like I had nothing left to give.

So yeah.
Looking at it yesterday, with the leaves and the glow and the chill in the air.
It hit different.

I think I just needed to write this so I don’t forget how it felt.
The stillness. The beauty. The grief.
That weird ache in your chest when something feels like home and a memory at the same time.

I don’t want to rush past these moments.
I want to let them matter.

Even if it hurts a little.
Even if it makes me cry later.
Even if no one else ever sees that porch the way I did today.

Because I saw it.
And I felt it.
And I’ll carry it.

When The Seasons Turn

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

I keep thinking about the trees.

How they do not fight the seasons. How when the air shifts and the light tilts, they do not cling to what was. They turn bright burning gold and red and fire and then, when it is time, they let go.

I wish I was more like that.

Because the truth is, this season has been hard. Harder than I can say out loud most days. Full of change stacked on change until I could not tell where one ended and the next began. Everything I thought was steady cracked a little. Maybe a lot.

And in 21 days, it will be my last day at Crossroads.

I keep packing my things. Sorting piles. Deciding what goes home, what stays, what gets handed off to someone else. But it feels heavier than just boxes and belongings. It feels like I am saying goodbye to a version of myself I did not expect to lose this soon.

Because this was not the season I imagined.

I thought I would leave here full, overflowing with memories, with joy, with a sense of belonging I could carry with me. But instead, it feels like I have been scraped raw. Like this place took more out of me than I had to give.

And yet… Jesus was here.

Not in loud, obvious ways. Not in ways that fixed everything or stopped the ache. But in the smallest mercies—like how the sky kept burning with sunsets even on the worst days. How the trees whispered of endings that could still be beautiful. How there was always just enough strength to make it through one more long, ordinary day.

And maybe that is what fall teaches us.

That endings can be holy. That letting go is not failure. That there is a strange kind of grace in the falling, the emptying, the trust that winter will not last forever.

The leaves do not fight it. They do not hold on, afraid of what is next. They blaze for a moment, and then they release—quietly, simply, like they know the same God who wrote spring into the world will keep His promise again.

I wish I trusted like that.

But right now, it just feels like goodbye.

And goodbyes have never come easy for me. Because it is not just leaving a place. It is leaving pieces of myself here, the laughter that came when I least expected it. The prayers whispered on nights when the silence felt heavy. The version of me that made it through even when she did not think she could.

Fall does not ask us if we are ready before it comes. It just sweeps in, shifts everything, strips the trees bare, and somehow calls it beautiful.

Maybe that is what this is.

So I am letting the days count down. I am watching the leaves turn and scatter. I am packing what I can, carrying what I must, and leaving the rest in God’s hands.

Because if the trees can trust Him with their seasons, maybe I can too.

Edges of Autumn

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

It’s a lazy Sunday. One of those early September days when the sun moves slowly and the sky hasn’t quite decided whether it’s done with summer yet. I was doing the usual, taking out the trash, scrubbing out corners of the house that are ignored on busy days, and trying to clean the week off my hands so I could step into the next one a little lighter. The kind of cleaning that isn’t just about wiping surfaces but about finding control in the little things. Breathing room. A fresh start.

Once the house was reset, I grabbed my empty Yeti bottles and made my way to Hunt Hall. Everyone knows that Hunt has the best water. We’re on a well system out here, so the water isn’t processed or filtered down to nothing, it’s cold, crisp, and tastes like it came straight from the heart of the mountain. And somehow, the sink at Hunt always hits better than the rest. Maybe it’s superstition. Maybe it’s just the way comfort attaches itself to places we return to often.

And that’s when I saw it.

The tree outside Hunt Hall. Tall and quiet and waiting, like it has been all summer. But today, the sun caught the very top of it, just right. And in that light, I noticed it: the first blush of autumn. Just the top leaves. Just a few. Stained in red and orange like someone had taken a match to the edge of summer.

It stopped me.

It shouldn’t have. I’ve lived through enough Septembers to know the signs. The crispness in the mornings, the way the light hits differently, the first leaf that crunches underfoot when you weren’t even looking for it. But there was something about seeing it here, outside Hunt, in the middle of a chore I’d done a hundred times, that made me still.

Maybe it was the contrast. The way the top leaves flared with color while the rest of the tree held onto green. Like it wasn’t ready to let go yet. Like it was trying to hold both seasons in its branches for just a little longer. And maybe I understood that more than I wanted to.

There’s a lot we carry into fall. The weight of what we didn’t say over the summer. The tiredness that lingers even after we sleep. The goodbyes we didn’t mean to say but ended up whispering anyway. And still, we move forward. Still, the days get shorter. Still, the leaves change whether we’re ready or not.

But this tree, catching the light, reminded me that change doesn’t always arrive all at once. Sometimes it begins at the edges. Quietly. Slowly. With just a few leaves turning red while the rest of you tries to stay the same.

I think that’s how I feel right now.

I’m not fully in fall yet. Not ready for the rush of endings or the turning of pages. But I’m starting to feel it. The shift. The Knowing. That something is coming, and I won’t be the same once it’s here.

So I stood there, for a moment, water bottles forgotten in my arms, and let myself just be. With the tree. With the change. With the soft, burning light of a lazy Sunday.

And maybe that’s enough.
To notice.
To pause.
To begin to let go.

Even if it’s just one leaf at a time.