The road into the valley was still wet from last night’s rain, and every turn held a new kind of green. I stopped before sunrise to watch the fog lift off the pines and felt the day arrive in layers: birds first, then the low hum of distant tires, then light settling across the shoulders of the hills.

By noon I had found a quiet cafe with chipped blue tables and a window facing the river. I wrote postcards I may never send, drank coffee that tasted faintly of orange peel, and let the afternoon pass without trying to organize it into anything more meaningful than a good place to sit.

Travel feels gentlest when I stop asking it to perform. Some days the memory is only a color, a weather pattern, the sound of a chair dragging across stone. That was enough for today.