a change in the weather.

Spring has sprung! And it's about time!

This weekend saw a shift in temperatures and finally the blossoms and buds are out in full force and the sun seems to have a bit of warmth in its rays again. (Unfortunately the heating/cooling system at work doesn't shift quite so easily so we've still got the heat blasting to counteract the unseasonably cool temps.  Translation=work felt like a sauna.  And not in a good way.)

But the scenery more than makes up for that.

words of wisdom.

I've been in the process of making some life altering decisions for the past few months.  Each time I think I've got it all figured out something comes up that makes me rethink everything and I find myself starting over. Needless to say it's left me feeling very, very frustrated.  I've had a couple of conversations recently that have given me much to think about and have me leaning more and more in one direction than I have for awhile now. And then today I came across this article that a friend had posted on facebook and I had a bit of an aha moment. While there are a lot of factors at play and it's in no way a black and white choice, I've realized that, in many ways, this issue is at the heart of my decision making.

I love living in Washington, DC. It's vibrant and colorful and filled to overflowing with opportunities to be enriched through food and culture and art and politics and knowledge and life. But it's a busy place. And the people I associate with are a busy people. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but I think, like the author of the article, I am a basically lazy person. It's not that I don't want to do important and productive things, because I do.  And I'm a hard worker.  But at my core I long for a slower pace of life, time to breathe and connect with people and sometimes just do nothing. And that is at odds with the life I'm currently trying to live.

There's a peer pressure (as was more eloquently stated in the article) to be 'doing' all the time. If your calendar isn't packed then you are obviously failing as a person. Why aren't more people clamoring for your company or skills? Why are you not taking advantage of all that life has to offer? You are missing out on hundreds, thousands of opportunities at any given moment.  Have you no conscience?!

Part of me needs to be fed with the energy and diversity and experience found in a city but my deepest soul needs respite and quietude and downtime and I find that I don't have the chance to fully appreciate and absorb the experiences I have when I'm multi-tasking, mentally going over my lengthy to do list and rushing from place to place, event to event.

And in case the stress alone isn't enough there's science to prove that we are doing damage to ourselves when we fail to give ourselves time to do nothing.  I read the book Last Child in the Woods a few years ago when it came out and it talks about the detrimental position we are putting our children in by not giving them unstructured time, specifically in nature. Again, as was more eloquently stated in the article, how many of history's great discoveries and creations were birthed in those moments of 'idle dreaming'? Our minds and bodies are not programmed to be deprived of those moments.

Eastern religions/societies are much better at this than we in the west tend to be. Zen and nirvana and all that. And while I'd made a resolution to start a daily meditation regime I have yet to actually do anything about it. So, as I continue to try to make decisions and find peace in my existence I will be striving at the same time to recommit myself to meditating, to breathing, to recreating myself more as a human being than as a human doing, even for just a few minutes each day. Join me, won't you?

Here's a bit of inspiration for you. Breathe deeply and imagine yourself here. Since most of us are suffocating under gray skies and feet of snow at the moment this is almost guaranteed to be an improvement. (See, the sun does still exist!) Feel better yet?

a poem to match the mood.

I've been trying to get a little more poetry in my life and made a goal to read a poem a day. It hasn't exactly worked that way, some days I read 5 or 6 and some days I don't read any at all.  But yesterday I was flipping through my Dickinson collection and came across this poem.

Frequently the woods are pink,
Frequently are brown;
Frequently the hills undress
Behind my native town.

Oft a head is crested
I was wont to see,
And as oft a cranny
Where it used to be.

And the earth, they tell me,
On its axis turned, --
Wonderful rotation
By but twelve performed.

And then today this was my view during my lunch walk. Fitting, yes?

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communing with nature.

Don't tell my family but sometimes the thing I miss most about not living in Utah is the mountains. Or the red rocks. It's a toss-up. And yes, some days my family tops that list. It's sort of a revolving top three depending on my mood, the weather, or what I've eaten for breakfast. I never can tell which will win out. But last week after my bout of missing my fam I recovered and quickly moved on to missing the mountains. Out here in Virginia there are at least a bazillion trees and its super green and the nearby Shenandoahs masquerade as mountains but it's just not the same thing. With the weather turning cool and the leaves beginning to turn I was aching for the smell of pine, grand vistas and the golden whispers of aspen leaves rustling in the breeze. Alas, it was not to be had. But we are lucky enough to have a ton of nature trails and preserves and state parks in the vicinity and Saturday morning I got up nice and early and drove about 15 minutes from my house to Huntley Meadows Park.

It's a marshy area beloved by birders with wooden boardwalks spanning the boggiest of land and dirt trails surrounding it. I spent a little over an hour wandering under lacy green canopies and clear blue skies seeing the first hints of autumn. I watched a family of turtles sunning themselves on a log, a family of white tailed deer bounding through the underbrush and a gaggle of birders watching some nesting hawks and herons (I was too far away to see the birds myself but the birders were a rather entertaining bunch on their own.) It was the perfect way to start a weekend.

 

 

 

Happiness is...a burst of color.

So, last week before the mini-heat wave hit wilting and bleaching everything in sight, I took a walk around the neighborhood basking in the gorgeous weather and the brilliant flora.

The hydrangeas were particularly vibrant...

like an avalanche of cotton candy colored snowballs cascading over hills of emerald green...awesome!

Happiness is...having a natural sanctuary.

Every now and then you just need to avoid reality.  I would have given anything to take a drive up the mountains today. To wind slowly to the pinnacle, to rise above it all, to look down on everything below, to gain an elevated perspective, to clear my head.  But as I'm hundreds of miles from anything that can realistically be termed a mountain I had to make do with what I have at my disposal...a river.

This afternoon I bailed from all of my duties and responsibilities and drove down the George Washington Parkway along the Potomac River. I pulled over, found a bench and spent a couple of hours letting the breeze blow through my hair, the sun kiss my face and my worries float down stream with the rest of the debris in the current.

Some days you just need to commune with nature and empty your mind of everything else. Today was one of those days.

Happiness is...a road trip!

I had a wild notion to go camping. It's been years since I've gone actual tent camping and I convinced my roommates and a few others to join me.  We decided on Ohiopyle, a state park in Pennsylvania. The planning fell through on several stages, we lost participants along the way and nothing seemed to go as we'd hoped.  All in all a typical camping trip!

In the end it was just the roommates. We drove up in two shifts Friday, one group setting up camp, the rest of us getting there just late enough to crash into our sleeping bags. Saturday we started our excursion at Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece. 

We followed that up with some lunch at a local grill and some fabulous hikes around the area. The weather was perfect, the company was fabulous, the food was amazing. It was a lovely day!

 The next day was a bit more adventurous. We lost one who went home early and then the rest of us set off to explore some of the waterfalls and trails. There were near death experiences (yes, that was plural), moments of absolute serenity, a lot of sweat and sun, gorgeous scenery, loads of laughter and the kinds of conversations that only come about after minimal sleep and hours of silence. It was fabulous!

We made it back to camp thoroughly exhausted and ready for our delicious campfire dinner. But the weather had other plans. It all started with thunder that shook us to our bones. I've never heard anything so loud! And then came the lightning, followed by, you guessed it, the rain. We spent an hour or so trying to keep the fire from dying and eventually seeking shelter in the car, abandoning camp for pizza in town. The rain stopped and we assessed the damage, finally deciding that things were far too wet to be comfortable. So, rather than staying til Monday afternoon as planned we did the best we could to dry things off and pack them up. We left about 11 and drove the 3 1/2 hours back home, chasing one storm and being followed by another.

The lightning storms lit up the sky all around us, sometimes coming down in sheets throwing reflections off the clouds other times reaching out great electric fingers along the horizon or down to the ground.  We had an incredible show for nearly two hours of our drive.  It was quite distracting! (But also helped keep me, the unprepared driver, awake.)

It didn't all turn out as we had planned or hoped but it was a terrific trip nonetheless. It's always nice to have a chance to commune with nature and get away from it all. Now, where should we go next?

Happiness is...a bird in flight.

Birds have always fascinated me. (Disclaimer* Solitary birds or those in small groups. Anything larger than 5 or 6 birds and I start to have visions of myself as Tippi Hedron with no Rod Taylor to rescue me!) I think it probably comes from growing up with a mother who would point out the window at the various hawks and eagles and other 'exciting' birds as we would take family vacations and an uncle and grandfather who carried binoculars on every camping trip so they could search the skies and treetops for feathered friends. In any case, I love watching birds flit through the air or catching a glimpse of a bit of color or movement out of the corner of my eye and being rewarded with a bird song. Even better is when my brain is working enough that I can identify what it is I'm seeing.

There's a small run near my work that I like to walk along during my lunch break. There's a bit of green space and a walking path lined with trees and a small bridge over the water. It's provided many a moment of solitude, reflection and re-grouping during my workdays and gives me a chance to breathe deeply and enjoy nature a bit. Earlier this afternoon we had a small spring shower so when I took my walk the air was filled with the sounds of various birds enjoying the cooler weather and the moisture. I walked past puddles filled with splashing sparrows, a raven/crow/blackbird (one day I'll learn the difference) sitting on a post eying who-knows-what in the water below, robins tugging worms out of the damp earth, along with various ducks and a gaggle of Canadian geese swimming across the water.

I've seen cardinals and blue jays, pigeons and doves, and all manner of small nondescript brown birds in the finch families, woodpeckers and hawks and in the summer we even get herons and egrets. But today I stood in awe as the geese, alerted by some unseen and unheard signal, took flight, falling instantly into a V formation, wing tips trailing patterns across the formerly glassy surface of the water as they lifted in unison arching above the bridge where I was standing, and soaring into the sky directly over my head. They cut a dark wedge across the blue sky, reaching higher and farther until they were nothing but specks in the distance. It took just over a minute and yet I seemed to see unlimited glimpses of the possibilities of life, the future, and human potential unfold with each flap of wing. If God could create beings as majestically simple as these birds, imagine what we are capable of doing and becoming as human beings formed in His image. The possibilities are astounding and something I needed to be reminded of today...I only wish I'd had my camera!

I firmly believe that when we get to heaven we'll be able to soar and fly as free as the birds. (Please no one talk me out of this idea. Flying dreams are my favorite!) But until that day we'll have to be content to soar a little closer to the ground basking in our dreams and imaginations and future possibilities, leaving the actual flying to our winged friends.


BTW-Happiness is also allergy medication. Lots and lots of allergy medication!

Happiness is...a vacation!

·     I’m baaack! Did ya miss me?  I missed you! (Wait. Is there anyone still out there?! I know.  I've been quiet a long time.) It’s been a great couple of weeks and it’s been tough settling back into reality.

It gets a bit harder every time I leave my family; each time I hug my Grandpa I’m afraid it will be for the last time and my nephews grow so much I hardly recognize them. But it’s nice to be back on a bit of a schedule and catching up on my sleep (sort of.)

I’m also looking forward to some new entries and a little revitalization of the blog after the inundation of book/reading entries the past couple of months. But today I’m still working on jet lag and I have way too many photos to sort through so you get another list; just a quick highlight of some of my favorite vacation moments. Enjoy!

• Baby hugs and kisses
• Mr. Potato Head (my little nephew is obsessed--it was great fun to watch him play with one for hours on end!)
• Weddings (while ½ of me is depressed by them the other ½ of me finds them strangely hopeful and I love seeing what people do with the colors, flowers and such...the free food’s always nice too! ;)
• Amazing food
• Pickle pie, pinto bean pie (specialties of this fun little diner in Bicknell, UT)
• Shakes (thick enough to eat with a spoon, just like I like them…every single day!!)
• Jackfruit sticky rice (even better than mango if you can believe it!)
• Dark European chocolate
• Perfectly ripe, juicy watermelon
• Being pampered; a main-pedi, massage, haircut, and some much needed retail therapy
• A deep breath
• A couple of fun re-reads (I rarely allow myself the luxury of re-reading because I feel guilty I’m not doing something to make my TBR pile a little shorter, but I ran out of the books I brought with me and was left to choose from my mother’s book shelf. So, I spent a few hours indulging in a trip down memory lane while reading Dealing with Dragons and The Prisoner of Zenda….good times!)
• Fun movies (finishing out the Summer of superheroes with a viewing of Captain America)
• Listening to my Grandpa reminisce and tell me he loves me
• Staying up until 2 am catching up with an old friend
• Afternoon naps and sleeping late
• Dinner with my Grandma
• Josh Groban, live!

Are you jealous? You should be!!

• Crazy pianists (this guy opened up for Josh Groban and he was pretty darn amazing)
• Exuberant air keyboard players (the guy sitting next to us at the concert was REALLY into it and REALLY entertaining)
• My first author comment on the blog!!! (it’s nice to know other people read this, even if they do it just because of signals/alerts for web mentions of their books)
• Riding a carousel (being with 2 cute little boys didn't hurt much either)
• The astoundingly glorious nature of nature
• Red rocks
• Geysers
• The endlessly deep blue skies you can only get in the desert
• Big horn sheep, bison, elk, bats, pikas
• 10 gazillion stars (at least!)
• The crisp, clean scents of pine and sage in the air
• Shifting, luminous clouds
• Absolute silence

You can see why it’s been hard to come back.  Who wants reality after all of that?!

Thanks for checking in again after my hiatus.  Hopefully I’ll come up with enough to keep you coming back for more on a regular-ish basis. Have yourselves a fabulously wonderful weekend and then share with me what you did. Can’t wait to hear about it!

Happiness is...environmental art.

I wish I had artistic ability.  Sometimes I like to pretend I do but really it's more of a talent for mimicry than anything else.  I am not very creative, but I'm appreciative. I can spend hours wandering through museums or galleries marveling at everyone else's talent to think and create.

I also love nature. You've already had to endure my waxing rhapsodic over the colors and sights and sounds of gardens and mountains and whatever else happens to be floating my boat at the moment so I won't make you go there again. But I want to sing the praises of a few artists who use the best pieces of nature to create pieces of art. (This is by no means an art lesson, merely my own ramblings so forgive me if my terminology or anything else is off.)

My current obsession is environmental art. To me, an environmental artist views nature as a palette of possibilities. They take the picture that the rest of us see, shatter it to pieces and then put it back together mosaic-like, creating something wholly new and yet familiar and recognizable in its strangeness. Sometimes the piece is removable and separate from the world around it, something that becomes its own individual creation to be enjoyed of its own accord.  But more often it is left where it began to return back from whence it came with only a photograph to remember what it was, its other life lived for a short time.

Here are a few of my favorite artists right now.  All of the images are from their websites unless otherwise noted below.

Andy Goldsworthy was my first introduction to the genre. He has an installation at the National Gallery here in DC that's rather impressive but I find some of his other pieces far more breathtaking.

Rowan Leaves and Hole 

Pebbles Broken and Scraped

(images found at the morning-earth website, here)

Then there's Jim Denevan. His pieces are larger and even less permanent, often brushed onto dirt and sand like this...

There's just something haunting and otherworldly about these creations. Crop circles anyone? Love them!

Stuart Ian Frost tends to follow somewhat in Goldsworthy's footsteps. I see a lot of similarities in their styles and materials though Frost's don't seem to stay in their natural habitats. Instead he pulls out of nature  items to create very geometric sculptures.  This one is made from seagull feathers.

Another artist is  Strijdom van der Merwe.  I'm not as familiar with his works but again there are familiar tendencies and flavors here reminiscent of the others. He is also more what I would qualify as a 'modern artist' meaning that rather than just geometric shapes or designs there are abstract forms and images that I feel should represent something that I just don't understand. These are probably my least favorite and yet some of his pieces are enchanting in their own right. (I can't find any linkable/borrowable images to post but take a few minutes to check out his gallery on the website. I love the rocks stuck on toothpicks floating over the water...yeah, not technical at all but that's what it looks like!)

I love that so many of them look as if they are something you might happen upon in your own travels if you were lucky enough, quick enough, special enough to be in the right place at the right time. There's a touch of magic and sorcery to them, as if elves or fairies or woodland creatures have been at play. Just for the moment you can believe that maybe it all happened naturally and absolutely anything is possible.

Do you have a favorite artist or medium? Are you more partial to abstract or realistic images? Paintings or sculptures? Modern or classic? Do you have artistic skills or inclinations of your own? I'd love to hear about them!

Happiness is...a hike up a mountain!

Well 'mountain' may be a strong term. They don't really grow mountains out thisa-way. But it's about as close to a mountain as you come East of the Mississippi.

I got up oh-so-early Saturday morning to drive to Harper's Ferry, WV and after being thwarted several times by road construction we finally found a path that we could take and still be on the same side of the river as our car when we were done. We ended up walking up to the view at Jefferson's Rock. At this overlook of the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers the former president made the audacious statement "this scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic." (We all begged to differ just a bit. Though it is a nice view I'm not sure it quite lives up to the presidential hype.)  What do you think?

Next, we walked back down to the bottom of the hill, crossed the Shenandoah river by way of an old railroad bridge to meet up with the Appalachian Trail and then up to an overlook looking back onto the town. We killed ourselves (though it did end up being nearly 7 miles all told so we weren't quite as wimpy as we'd thought we were) seeing as how none of us were in the shape we used to be and this being the first hike of the season. (Yeah, let's blame it on that!)

Regardless, it was a gorgeous day.  The weather couldn't have been better if we'd ordered it ourselves.  And it was great to be out and about enjoying nature and laughing it up with good friends. Thanks for the memories ladies (you know who you are) and let's not too long go before we do it again.  I swear my knees and lungs will get used to it if we do it enough, right? I refuse to believe it's just that I'm old! :)

Happiness is...a mud puddle.

Spring has been a bit elusive around these parts, as I think it has been just about everywhere this year.  Our temperatures sky rocket to 80+ degrees one day then plummet back down into the 40s the next.  Our sky is nearly always a steely gray with nary a hint of blue in sight.  Sunshine in its truest form is but a memory.

But things have been looking up the past few days.  Saturday I went hiking with a good friend and while it was still overcast and a bit gloomy, once we got moving we were warm enough in just our jackets.  Plus, we'd had rain by the buckets full the day before so everything had that just-washed look about it, the colors brighter and crisper, the air fresher. One could almost begin to believe that spring was on its way.

And then today, summer hit.  My light sweater turned me into a soggy, sweaty mess by the end of my lunchtime walk and my roommate convinced me we should have ice cream for dinner.  (Never fear. Though I'm sleeping with the windows open tonight tomorrow is supposed to be back in the 50s...bi-polar much?!)

But back to the mud.  A puddle incites thoughts of splashing and childhood.  There's something tempting, alluring, forbidden about puddles as an adult.  There's no rule that says I can't splash about in a puddle (and I have been known to do so on occasion) and yet rarely does one succumb to the urge. (Please tell me I'm not the only one to have those kinds of urges!) It's silly. It's messy. You can't expect me to walk around in wet shoes/pants for the rest of the day. And fill that puddle with mud instead of the relatively harmless rain water and the danger factor grows exponentially. And everyone knows that more danger = more temptation.

Mud puddles also hold a bit of mystery.  Regular puddles are open and honest.  There's no doubt about what they hold at their depths. You almost feel as if you could lean down and drink from them or put the water to good use nourishing a nearby plant or animal.  Mud on the other hand is opaque and murky. Who knows what lies at the bottom? And because of that opacity you get a unique reflection of the world around it.  It's not a true mirrored reflection with realistic colors and recognizable features but a monochromatic Wonderland or Looking Glass world, bent and rippled and a little less known than our own. They always seem a bit more magical to me, like a goblin or elf is hiding just below the surface looking back at me without my knowledge, safe in his muck and mire.

Here are a few of my mud puddle mirrors and proofs of my springtime rambles.  Enjoy!

Now, go out and find a natural wonder of your own and don't forget to tell me all about it!