Going In

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising.

Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

I merely went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, was really going in. 

{John Muir}

Sanctuary

 

I savored the book I just finished by Deborah Carr entitled, Sanctuary. I discovered Deborah's writing by hitting the "next blog" button on the top of my blog one night. She, like me, hikes in the forest by her home and records her journeys. Her book is stirring, it is the story of Mary Majka, a Polish woman who emigrated to Canada after World War II. At points in her young life Mary was separated from all that she loved: her family, her home, her land. She was even a prisoner at one point, captured on the way to reunite with her mother upon leaving boarding school. Yet, through it all Mary found solace in nature.



Caledonia Mountain {via}

As a young woman she relocated to North America, married, and after some searching found  Caledonia Mountain to call home. Once settled in, she became the founding member of the Moncton Naturalists' Club in her new town of New Brunswick, Canada. She went on to be a well-respected naturalist, a national activist, and a historical  preservationist. Mary has spearheaded many, many projects, with many groups, to help preserve countless wildlife habitats, as well as the beauty of the land in New Brunswick. Her mission has been to share what she has learned, particularly with children, to get them interested in nature and preservation; she has always been a teacher throughout all of her work with the land. She has also lead restoration projects for many historical sites in and around New Brunswick.

Mary's home for years was in the mountains, surrounded by acres of land she became intimately acquainted with over time. The land and its wildlife became her teachers. She and her husband named their mountain home Aquila meaning eagle, Poland's national emblem. Mary also has the good fortune of having a cottage at a point along the Bay of Fundy, "Mary's Point," named for Marie Bidoque, a half Mi'kmag, half Acadian woman who inhabited the land in the mid 1700's and was buried there. Later, Mary restored a larger home on the point, and moved there along with her husband. All of Mary's homes have served as meeting places for all types of naturalist groups, historical groups, and many friends who became family.

Mary retreats to her cottage, Calidris, for respite. It is named for the sand plovers that flock there in the thousands on their migration journey from the artic to the muddy, nutrient-rich marshes of the bay. Mary has spent many years of her life protecting these birds, and even got Canada to turn the area into a protected reserve. Deborah depicts special moments in Mary's experience on Mary's Point:

Mary's Point Bird Sanctuary {via}

The beauty of the landscape and her intimate interactions with the birds invoked profoundly altered states of being. She felt as if, for a heart beat, the lines of separation between her and her surroundings vanished and she was granted a glimpse into another realm of experience.

I know how Mary feels. I too, feel like I enter other realms when I hike the forests near my home. Just last night, I took my last walk in the woods until fall (deer tick season is upon me.) On this walk, I felt I accessed another world. The light was falling on and between the twisted brambles along the beginning of the path and I felt captivated by these magical places. I entered into bramble houses, walking along Kelly green moss stones, and felt renewed. By the end of the walk, I felt certain I had been in another world.

 

 

 

sanc·tu·ar·y  

/ˈsaNG(k)CHo͞oˌerē/

Noun A place of refuge or safety.

Simplicity

{via}

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital “S” - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”
— Frank Lloyd Wright

Enough

Each day as I walk, I remind myself I have enough. I am enough.
I mean what do I need really? Not much.

In terms of material I have enough. Do I have clothes for every day, no matter what the occasion? Yes. Do I have shoes for every season? Yes. 

My house is enough. It is warm and cozy. It is pretty and sits along a brook. Beautiful gardens surround it in the summer. Pretty trees catch the snowfall in the winter; I see all of this from a big picture window that overlooks my yard. Is my house a big house? No. But it is enough.

My house is full of things. My favorite pieces of furniture are my couch and my bed, they are the most comfortable. My house is full of art. My favorite pieces are art I have made and art that has been gifted to me: paintings, photographs, sculptures, teacups. There are enough things in my house. I don't need a single thing more.

Suffice it to say, I have enough equipment, my trusty laptop to compose my stories and record my dreams.

My family is enough. There just 4 of us, including our dog. Because we are small we always know what is going on with one another. We like being home together; we share a comfortable routine with one another; we have fun traveling together.

I have an extended family, through the years I have lost some who were really special to me. I mourn the loss, but the family I still have supports me and loves me, and I them, and they are enough for me.

I have a few really good friends. A few really good friends is more than I could ever ask for. They are enough to me.

My days are filled with walks, and chores, good food, mothering, laughter on most, meetings, reading, dreams, yoga, art and writing.

I have enough, I am enough.

Shadow Dream

I am reading The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford and it is an amazing body of work. In this, her first of many books, Ford describes about how she overcame drug addiction and experienced a slew of therapies that spanned eleven years and included everything from a twenty-eight day treatment program, twelve step meetings, co-dependency therapy, acupuncture, rebirth, Buddhists retreats and jumping off mountains. She had read hundreds of books listened to hours of tapes  and yet she knew she was still not done. 

Then one day when she was at a retreat something clicked for her. She describes it this way, "Suddenly this part of myself which I'd tried desperately to hide, deny, and suppress--was set free." What she is describing was an exercise she had been lead through by the facilitator of a workshop she was attending. The teacher challenged her to embrace a dark part of herself. In spite of years of therapy, recovery, and steps to healing, this was a new concept to her. She says, "After that day, my life was never the same. Another piece of the healing puzzle had fallen into place. 'What you resist persists.'"

She also said her whole body felt different after the experience. She proceeded on a journey of teaching hundreds of thousands of people what would become her technique, the Shadow Process: embracing the very parts of yourself that you disowned in an attempt to be a 'better person.'



Ford uses the analogy of our self being like a castle. When we are young we roam the castle exploring every nook and cranny without judgment, in awe of it all. Then, our first teachers, in an effort to teach us how to fit in, teach us to hide or deny undesirable aspects of our personality. Slowly, room by room, we close the doors until our castle becomes a tiny, manageable, two room house. And then we forget about the other rooms altogether--those once expressive, now silenced, aspects of our self--for a time anyway.

Until they surface. These aspects surface as shadows, scary sometimes, dark sometimes, lurking, threatening, so we do our very best to hold them at bay. Sometimes it feels too scary to look at them. We keep the doors closed--until a crisis occurs--and we must look them straight in the eye, one by one. Maybe the crisis is we become depressed, because holding back parts of our true nature is depressing. It takes all of our energy.

But, there is a gift in this, because looking at the dark side is really nothing more than embracing your whole self, the parts you had shut down, locked away. Who wouldn't want to discover they had a whole castle full of rooms and possibilities? Maybe when we do discover them the timing is exactly as it was meant to be because we are at a time in our life when we are ready for full expression once more.



New Path

Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult,

 but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, 

which is not nurturing to the whole woman.  

 

{Maya Angelou}

Five Books That Became My Best Friends

At the end of each day I turn to reading to decompress and let go. For me, good books are like returning to an alternate universe, nightly. The writers and characters become my friends. I especially love books with awkward situations, like real life has, and good humor. The books below have that. These are just five of my favorites, two of which I have read for a second time!

 Good Grief by Lolly Winston

Winston's portrayal of thirty-six year old Sophie Stanton, in the dense fog of grief over her husband's death, is rendered in sharp-witted form. At times the details and descriptions are hilarious.  Lost and alone, Sophie stuffs herself with sweets, absentmindedly shows up to work in her pink bunny slippers never noticing, crashes into a stupor that lasts for weeks--on a blow up mattress in her living room, and sleeps with her deceased husband's sweater. She then reluctantly gets back up one day and rebuilds her life. All 286 pages will have you cheering for Sophie, and by the end Sophie will be your new best friend.

Belong to Me by Melissa del los Santos

From the minute you meet Cornelia Brown, meticulous, educated, yet still insecure, you want to get to know her better. Del los Santos has a way with words, her writing is developed and facile. Her characters are passionately crafted, their stories engagingly laid out. This book contains the trials of redefining marriage, friendship, career, parenthood and ultimately lifestyle, with many surprising pivots and yanks.

Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos

Kallos depicts two women's parallel journeys of emotional and physical trauma, and healing. Aging and ill, Margaret is nearing the end of her life; Wanda is a young displaced actress trying to build one. Margaret places an ad for help in the local newspaper as she knows she will eventually need it. In her rambling, stately, old home, inherited from her parents, she is alone. But that is not all Margaret inherited, the home is replete with prized porcelain, gifted to her piece by piece throughout her childhood into her adulthood by her now deceased father. It is only in her later years that Margaret figures out that the exquisite collectible figurines, in childhood she so held precious, were stolen from Jews during World War II in Germany, and purchased by her father through the black market. Now, what were symbols of a love between father and daughter, have become the bane of her existence. All of that changes when Wanda responds to Margaret's newspaper ad, what transpires is an utterly magical transformation, mending what had become weakened, by breaking it all. Reading this will inspire you to change an old pattern and create something anew.

 She Got Up Off the Couch by Haven Kimmel 

This is an uplifting, drolly written, memoir about Kimmel's childhood growing up in the sixties in Mooreland, Indiana, a town of three hundred, she tells us. Told in jocular fashion, her story centers around the journey of her mother from a stay-at home, pork rind-crumbed, couch potato, taken to looking for signs on television commercials, to accomplished college professor of English--it's a journey you don't want to miss! You will love Kimmel and her self deprecating way of expressing her viewpoint of her often zany world--I guarantee that you will relate to something in this story!


The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh

It is wonderfully inspiring watching the way Victoria triumphs as she evolves from an abandoned adolescent, who comes of age after living in foster homes, and finally a group home for teens, to a self-sufficient young woman on her own. But this story is not told in simple, flowing fashion. Diffenbaugh takes you on a circuitous path of entering the rite of passage into the adult world while living in a public park, and then a crawl space, as Victoria learns to stand on her feet and bring her passion, the language of flowers, to life. But before she gets her footing, she falls deeper than she ever has. Flowers tie her whole mismatched existence into one cohesive garden of experience that will have you rooting for her and glad for the strength of the human spirit.

Dream Catcher Soup

I was rambling around the grocery store, my heart, but not my head, really in it, trying to 'discover' what would be for dinner. I wanted to find something suitable for my family, as well as my neighbor, and my brother's family, all with different tastes and requirements. I was hoping to come up with a soup, but could not think on my feet. I whipped through the freezer section and blew by some frozen tortellini and almost got a little motivated, but couldn't formulate a healthy version in my head. I walked to the end of the isle but then did an abrupt about face and headed for the glass door with the tortellini behind it, drawn to it for some reason. (I have a gluten allergy so am not supposed to eat pasta.)

via

As I arrived I noticed a woman with a salt and pepper hair in a bun standing directly in front of my door. I sidled up next to her and slipped the door open as she seemed to glance to the next door. Furtive, I grabbed a bag of tortellini, pondering briefly whether it should be meat-filled or cheese-filled when she looked at me and said, "I put those in a delicious soup I make." My stress melted away as she faced me and looked me in the eye as she spoke, giving me each of her soup ingredients, and telling me when to add them.

Of course I knew this woman had been sent to me, but the best part was when she told me she made the soup for pow wows and that she also made dream catchers and moccasins. She was Native American! How cool is that? I hope I bump into her again, but in the meantime I have her soup to feast on. And everyone who has tasted it told me they liked it.

via 

Dream Catcher Soup

One bag of frozen tortellini (meat or cheese filled)

One bag of frozen stir fry vegetables

One 32. oz. carton of beef broth

One package of beef stew meat

One chopped onion

1/4 cup of tomato sauce

Saute the chopped onion in some olive oil. Cut up stew meat into bite size pieces and add to translucent onions. Add a cup of beef broth and the 1/4 cup of tomato sauce, simmer for an hour to break the beef down. Add the bag of veggies and the rest of the broth. Simmer for 20-30 minutes, add tortellini, simmer for 10-20 more minutes. (I can take a cup of soup out for me, before adding the tortellini.) Serve. 

 



No Thing

In the beginning of each year, for the past several, I have chosen a word to become my theme for the year. Last year the word was self-love and out of it came a project to make a heart each Monday.

This year, as I have walked, I have considered various words and possible projects for the new year, but nothing has felt right.

So I have decided this year, the word will be "nothing". However, I think of it more as "no-thing". As in I need not focus on any particular thing, instead whatever comes up, is where my heart will be.

My heart right now is in supporting my brother through chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer. Every day on my walks I send him a prayer.

This is today's prayer, for Rich~*

 

Monday's Heart 52, Best Part

"Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with the dream."  

{Josephine Nuese}