My Summer 2026 Reading List

Here is the list of books that I have accumulated these last few months and that I want to read over the summer. Most are about climate and the environment, but I also include Michael Pollan’s latest book “A World Appears”, my friend and teacher Lee Klinger Lesser’s first book “Return to Our Senses”, and “Muskism” that gets deesp into Elon Musk’s worldview and vision for the future. I also highly recommend the novel “A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki that I just finished.

In alphabetical order with links:

The Climate Wayfinding- Healing Ourselves and the Planet We Call Home by Katharine K. Wilkinson, co-editor of All We Can Save

Climate Justice- Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice

Human Nature - Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet by Kate Marvel, climate scientist and science communicator

Muskism- A Guide for the Perplexed by Quinn Slobodiand & Ben Tarnoff

Return to Our Senses- A path to Stability in an Unstable World by Lee Klinger Lesser

Under the Sky We Make- How to Be Human in a Warming World by Kimberly Nicholas, PhD

The Water Remembers- My Indigeneous Family’s Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life by Amy Bowers Cordalis

We Are Eating The Earth- The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate by Michael Grunwald

A World Appears- A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan

Happy Reading! Happy Summer!

The Good Ancestor by Daverick Leggett

Every day I walk a hundred years

to the hill where my great great granddaughter sits.

I carry words of blessing

and reach to touch her back.

But feeling me near she turns

sad eyed and heavy with grief

“What was it like?” she asks

“when the great whales swam

when the birds sang you awake

when the rains came soft

and the soil smelt sweet underfoot?”

And the blessings

catch in my throat.

On darker days she turns,

her famished face charred and eyes,

sunk in their bony orbits,

burn with curses.

And the blessings

froth at my mouth

with the poisonous

spume of betrayal.

On the darkest of all days

I walk the hundred years

and find no one there.

Let today be the bright day.

Let today be the bright day

I lay my hand upon her back

And, feeling me near, she turns

and blesses me, saying

“Your love was fierce enough,

sweet ancestor,

your love was fierce enough.

Matsuri No Ato- A Reflection at the End of My Pilgrimage

I have been home for over a month now, having returned from Japan after completing the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage, and I am finding myself in a hero’s lull or a matsuri no ato moment.

This is a moment after completion of a meaningful project when energy drops, motivation thins, and what was meant to feel like arrival feels strangely flat. In Japanese culture, this moment has a name: matsuri no ato, literally “after the festival.” In the Hero’s journey, it’s called the Hero’s Lull that follows the quest. In psychology, it’s sometimes referred to as “completion depression”.

Have you ever encountered such a moment and feeling?

On November 12, I visited Temple 28 on the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage, completing the journey I had started in 2016. It took me four trips to the island of Shikoku (in 2016, 2023, 2024, and 2025) to visit all of the 88 temples, roughly twenty on each trip, visiting some more than once.

This matsuri no ato moment I am finding myself in, describes the quiet that settles once a festival ends, lanterns are taken down, crowds have dispersed, streets have returned to ordinary rhythm. The celebration was real and meaningful, and precisely because of that, its ending leaves a noticeable stillness behind. If you have attended any matsuri or festival in Japan, you can understand the profound meaning of the term.

However, matsuri no ato is not a problem to fix. It is a natural emotional phase: my nervous system is settling, my mind reorganizes after intensity, the identities I had left behind return, not quite fitting anymore. The emptiness or boredom is not evidence that something went wrong—it is actually evidence that something truly mattered. It’s a natural pause that deserves acknowledgement before the next rhythm of life begins.

Similarly, using the stages of the Hero’s journey, the Hero’s Lull comes when the quest is completed, the dragon is defeated, the treasure is secured. During the quest, purpose is supplied externally by danger, challenge, and necessity. Once that forward pull disappears, the nervous system downshifts, and the psyche must reorganize without the scaffolding of urgency and survival. The lull is a threshold for transformation, a time to reflect on who we have become in the course of the journey. Modern culture often skips this chapter of integration, rushing straight to the next goal.

As a coach, I know this, and yet, I have to work hard to resist jumping onto another goal or project, skipping over this integration phase. So I am taking my own medicine and reflecting.

Using the metaphor of matsuri no ato, here are the reflection prompts I am using to stay in this liminal phase a little longer:

• What part of me was most alive during this “festival”—beyond outcomes or tasks?

• What am I missing now: the goal itself, the structure it provided, or the version of myself it called forth?

• If this quiet could speak, what would it name?

The festival does not end so that something better can begin—it ends so that something different can take shape. The next direction will emerge naturally, once the stillness has been honored.

That is what the coach in me says: Pause. Breathe. Acknowledge.

Once the feeling has been acknowledged, the bridge is not “What’s the next goal?” but “What wants continuity?” and “What doesn’t?”.

Let me know how this lands with you and if you have ever been in a hero’s lull.

Nichinichi-kore-kojitsu- at Moss Temple plus Fall Colors, Kyoto

Nichinichi-Kore-Kojitsu or Every Day is a Wonderful Day.

As I visit Saihoji Temple -also called Moss Temple, a Zen temple at the foot of the mountains West of Kyoto, and sit down for my lunch in the rest hut that is provided to that effect, I read their article “Zen Words for Everyday Life”.

The first sentence reads:

Life is not about what is“good” or “bad”. What is important is to consider how to make each day enjoyable.

According to Zen practice and as told in a famous koan from the Blue Cliff Record, life is not about what is“good” or “bad”. What is important is to consider how to make each day enjoyable.

SKY ABOVE

Earth Below

Kizuki