Miles has been fairly consistent in his quest to eat one new fruit a day.

Here he is savoring a julie mango.

The boys are settling into their friendship here, like an exclusive set of three,  attached at the hip inside a circle of adolescence, enjoying each others company in a way that only sixteen year old boys can.

Elias has been watching his two friendship circles combine, like a venn diagram. Set Vermont and set Trinidad intersect,

The union of the two circles have elements from both set V and set T.

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Meanwhile, over here in set T, we are settling into the fact that we are on vacation from school and work, and doing some serious staring into space that is much needed and most welcome.

.

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Those in the sixteen year old set have also been finding their solace time,

alone

and

simultaneously

together.

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The other venn diagram, consisting of three circles, the adult set, the 7-year old set, and the teen set, do at times intersect, as they did while hiking to the Three Pools in Blanchessuise.

Crossing rivers,

 braving jungle terrain

sharing the path with other, more purposeful hikers,

to find ourselves being serenaded by these three woodland musicians who practice

alongside these magical three pools deep in the jungle.  They don’t need an audience, they told us.  They just like to play out there so that they can hear the sounds of the waterfall and the rustle of trees and the gentle whistle of the breeze incorporated into their own song.

Isn’t that why any of us decide to venture out?  Out into nature, out of our comfort zone, out of the box, out into the world, out of bed?  To continually widen and expand our own venn diagram until that little intersection in the middle gets bigger and more colorful and more surprising?

To sing our own little song and feel like we are part of a larger choir?

To play our music, knowing we are singing a cavatina, a short and simple melody sung by a soloist that is part of a larger piece?

 To croon our mortal aria, knowing that it will be washed away with time, but while we are here, we can combine the beat of our footsteps with the melody of ocean and sand. And let the intersecting circular refrains of our lives’ venn diagrams play away, sometimes miraculously harmonic, sometimes screechily out of tune.  But always our own tune, our own intersections.