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    • Coming to Light

      “If a man has any greatness in him, it comes to light, not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work...

      ‘All the pieces are put together, and the whole is yours …’ A word grows to a thought — a thought to an idea — an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveller loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.”
      – Beryl Markham, West With The Night

      This coming to light through the sluggish Present, changing over years of work, is the tricky part. It’s the part you don’t always see in yourself and in the work you do. It’s the grind, the paying of dues, the 10,000 hours, the sweat equity of life. We gain experience in our work, and with a bit of luck, grow in prominence. But really we grow either way.

      Experience is a devilish word. We gain experience through doing the work, and we chase experiences outside of our work. Really, shouldn’t they be one and the same? Not to live for your job but to have your work be an integral part of your life. Writing a blog reminded me that the living part is every bit as important as the writing part. You don’t offer much in prose without experiencing the world a bit.

      The mistake most people make is in making the work their life, instead of an integral part of their life. “Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living Barely gettin’ by, it’s all taking and no giving” as Dolly Parton put it. That’s not meaningful work, that’s checking your soul at the door and inserting your self as a cog in a machine. Trading life for dollars.

      What Markham writes about is different from what Parton was writing about. Markham saw that spark of light, imagined something bigger and built it for herself. That’s the coming to light over a lifetime. Of course, Dolly Parton did the same thing, her life hasn’t been the character she played in a movie. And neither is ours.

      And here’s the thing, the dream isn’t about work at all, it’s about the vision you have for yourself and the world around you. The work is what you do to realize the dream – not a trade-off of hours away from living your dream at all, but the building of it one small step at a time. It all starts with a spark of light, your “why”, and then filling in the work necessary to reach for the vision.

      “Without effort, your talent is nothing more than your unmet potential. Without effort, your skill is nothing more than what you could have done but didn’t.” – Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

      Duckworth jabs us in the ribs with that statement: what you could have done but didn’t. Don’t let your vision die on the vine. Whatever your vision – sailing around the world, hiking a summit or a list of summits, breaking a time in a marathon, building a company from scratch, writing a novel… it requires change and wading through the sluggish Present to get to that Tomorrow you want. Do the meaningful work that gets you there.

    • Finding the Magic Behind the Ice

      There’s something uniquely foreign about the experience, akin to visiting an ice palace in a fantasy movie. Humans aren’t supposed to be in such places. At least that’s what we tell ourselves when we look at a waterfall from the front. And when it’s frozen in winter? Well, there’s something chillingly locked away in… there.

      Now, in case you’re wondering, this isn’t the first time I’ve been behind a waterfall. Like countless thousands, I’ve walked behind Niagara Falls and for the price of admission seen the roaring waters dropping away from the safety of a dim, well-engineered if soulless tunnel. Interesting, to be sure. But not magical.

      It’s clearly the ice. It forms a wall over the falls that announces, “sorry, closed for the season”. There’s beauty in the frozen stillness of a waterfall in winter, of course, but there’s a small part of you that feels betrayed by the ice. You hear the muted sound of water falling deep inside, and want for more.

      Enter Beede Falls in Sandwich, New Hampshire. In warmer months it’s a 35 foot horsetail of falling water with a popular swimming hole. In winter it’s an ice bulge, beautiful but seemingly as inaccessible as other frozen waterfalls. But this one offers a secret for those who dare. You can duck and crawl in behind the falls on the left or right side, and even crawl all the way through if you wanted to. For some less tall than me standing up is even possible.

      I wondered at the characters over the years who have crawled behind the falls in all seasons. I wasn’t the first on this day, and other hikers waited patiently for me to finish to have their own turn in the tight tunnel between granite, water and ice. How many humans have made this crawl over the thousands of years that this cave and waterfall have danced together? A lot, I suppose. But for a few minutes, there was only me and the ice and water.

      That’s where I finally saw the magic locked away behind that frozen blue skin. Deep behind the water is indeed falling, forming icicles and frozen bubbles successively grown upon each other to form otherworldly sculptures. And through it all that shower of water penetrates the center, surrounded by its icy shield and backlit by the daylight beyond. An incredible wonderland so foreign to me, so delightful, that I felt I’d gone to another world. And indeed I had.

      Beede Falls, behind her icy shield

    • Twice the Fun: Mount Israel & Beede Falls

      Not every amazing hike is over 4000 feet. In New Hampshire there are other lists besides the 4K list, lists like 52 with a view, which offers some beautiful views with a bit less effort than the 4000 footers. For a warm Sunday with snow melting into snowball-making consistency, a couple of friends invited me to join them on a hike of Mount Israel and for a bonus, a visit to Beede Falls, one of the waterfalls on my personal checklist to see in 2021.

      A bit of history is in order. Mount Israel is named for a settler named Israel Gilman, who lived near the trailhead for this mountain. There’s still an active farm near that trailhead, and it’s easy to imagine the land in the 1760’s when Gilman was walking around this place. Mount Israel is located in Sandwich, New Hampshire, which also has a bit of history in its name. The town of Sandwich is named for the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, supposedly the inventor of the sandwich. Given that, I made a point of packing a sandwich for the hike, in honor of the Earl (or whomever it was, lost to history, who made sandwiches for him).

      The hike began at Mead Base in Sandwich, with a straightforward two mile hike up the Wentworth Trail. For those wondering about the name of the trail, a bit more history for you: Sandwich was founded in 1767 from a grant by Governor Benning Wentworth. Another name you’ll come to know is Daniel Beede, who was chosen to lead the settlement of Sandwich and granted 100 acres. Place names usually betray the history of that place, and if you look hard enough you’ll find Easter eggs like these on maps and street signs.

      I quickly fell in love with the Wentworth Trail. It winds through old growth oak and pine trees, with some tree trunks four feet in diameter – exceedingly rare around here. The snow cover acted as a spotlight on the biggest trees in the forest. I was smitten with one oak tree that had to be a witness to the transition from Native American land to English settlement. Further up, the trail wound around granite ledge and hemlocks, offering glimpses out to Squam Lake and the surrounding ridge line.

      The summit of Mount Israel is 2620 feet with 1900 feet of elevation. Despite its modest height relative to some of the other mountains in New Hampshire, it didn’t disappoint in views or the stunning beauty of the trail itself. Steep enough for a workout, short enough to give you time for other adventures. We made short work of the trail and before we knew it we were back at the trailhead at Mead Base and Act II.

      A half mile from the trailhead is another wonder worth visiting, Beede Falls, which is named after our friend Daniel Beede. The walk itself is wonderful, with granite ledge and scattered glacial erratics lining the edge of the trail. A large cave named Cow Cave offered a quick distraction. It was so named by some cows that decided to shelter inside the cave one day deep in the past. The cave was interesting, to be sure, but the real show was Beede Falls.

      In late February the falls were largely frozen, and we walked out on the ice that must be a lovely swimming hole on a hot summer day. The amazing part of Beede Falls in looking at them from behind. The falls froze solid in front, but you can access the back from the left and right side, and crawling behind them offered a magical trip into an icy palace. Water cascaded from the granite ledge, plunging between the icy wall you see on the outside and the cave formed behind. There’s just enough room to go all the way through it if you’re adventurous and don’t mind getting a little wet.

      In all our days on this earth, how often can you say that you got to see the world from the summit of a small mountain and from the crawlspace behind a waterfall in the space of a couple of hours? If you’re blessed with good health and mobility, then surely life is to be lived fully. Adventures like this one are within reach of most of us. All you’ve got to do is get out there.

      Frozen Beede Falls
      Ice wall in cave behind the falls
      Summit of Mount Israel

    • Be a Thoroughbred

      “What is courage? Let me tell you what I think it is. An indefinable quality that makes a man put out that extra something, when it seems there is nothing else to give. I dare you to be better than you are. I dare you to be a thoroughbred.” – Herb Brooks

      It was purely an oversight on my part to ignore the 40th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice that took place at Lake Placid when the upstart kids from the United States defeated the USSR hockey machine at the Olympics. I’ve been to Lake Placid twice since those Olympics, and stepped inside that rink the last time. It was a quiet summer day that time, but the rink was lit up and church-like.

      I didn’t play hockey growing up in Massachusetts, but it felt like everyone else did, especially after that Olympics. Everyone knew who Jim Craig and David Silk and Mike Eruzione were, and everyone knew Herb Brooks. The gruff coach with the incredible wisdom bombs dropped on his teams. Sayings like “Legs feed the wolf” and “You’re playing worse everyday and right now you’re playing like it’s next month” were made famous by Brooks and parroted by coaches and athletes alike. There’s something about an underdog pulling off the miracle upset that inspires a generation, and we were all inspired by that team.

      I watched the movie Miracle again last night. They mostly got the Boston accents right, as right as Hollywood ever gets it anyway. And I suppose the folks in Minnesota cringed at the accents on their side. But the soul of that movie is in honoring Herb Brooks and what he created out of a bunch of kids. Herb passed away before the movie was released, but he was certainly aware they were making it. I think he would have appreciated the whole of it, even if reluctant to be celebrated himself.

      It’s hard not to be inspired by Herb Brooks quotes like the one that opens this blog and the one that follows. They make you want to go out and create your own miracle, really. And isn’t that the point? If a bunch of kids can pull off an upset like that why can’t you and I dare to be thoroughbreds ourselves? And what are we waiting for? It’s not like Herb hasn’t kicked us in the ass with his words. The rest is up to us.

      “Let me start with issuing you a challenge: Be better than you are. Set a goal that seems unattainable, and when you reach that goal, set another one even higher.”

    • The Angel’s Share

      Take a tour of a Scottish distillery and you’ll see the black stains on the sides of buildings and wonder. This is the residual build-up from centuries of evaporation of the angel’s share, the percentage of scotch that evaporates through the casks to go where it will. I’ve often thought of this evaporation process and will offer up a bit more to the angels in my own particular life when having a dram outdoors.

      Yesterday I scanned my to-do list, drew an X in every bullet I’d finished and put an > to every bullet that I simply didn’t get to and had to push to another day. This process of organizing tasks is from the appropriately-named bullet journal method, which transformed my way of managing my to-do lists a few years ago. There’s something satisfying about drawing an X through a nagging bullet, getting it done and knocking that bullet to smithereens. Crossing off the bullet is a supremely satisfying way of patting yourself on the back without making the words disappear as they would if you’d simply crossed out what you’d completed. Why diminish what you’ve accomplished?

      X Wash the dishes (Done!)
      X Write and post the blog (Done!)
      X Row 5K (Done!)

      Simple, yet effective.

      But then there are the arrows (>). Tasks moved to another time, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a week. But they’re moved on anyway, to be written on another page.

      The punted tasks, like:
      > Call Rick to schedule meeting (punt)
      > Go to store for printer ink and paper (punt)

      Make no mistake, these punts tortured me for years. I simply couldn’t turn the page and let the day’s tasks be. No, I’d beat myself up for not getting everything on my list done. That voice inside your head that reprimands you for not being more focused, or not working hard enough on what was important… or whatever. Head noise.

      In reality, I tend to put too many things on the list in the first place. By learning to live with them, to kick them forward to another specific day, I’ve stopped beating myself up about what didn’t get done. More frequently now, I think of these punted tasks as the angel’s share. Sorry, internal critic, that one wasn’t meant for me today, that was the angel’s share. Or maybe a future version of me. But since tomorrow isn’t guaranteed we’ll call it the angel’s share.

      Either way I’ve learned to smile a bit and close the book on another day of tasks and events. I’ve done my part for today. And that, friends, is enough. Slàinte Mhath!

    • To Roam the Roads of Lands Remote

      “To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
      To gain all while you give,
      To roam the roads of lands remote,
      To travel is to live.”
      – Hans Christian Andersen

      Good God I’m ready to roam remote lands again. Exploring faraway places in a world that has shaken off the pandemic and opens its arms in welcome. We aren’t there just yet, we know, but every day we get a bit closer. A year into this and I’m chomping at the bit for the quirky randomness of faraway travel.

      Such thoughts are low agency conspiracies, for the world is right outside, awaiting our arrival. Crossing borders to lands remote may be just out of reach, but crossing thresholds is still very possible. And so the question isn’t the roaming, the question is the focus. I can row a million meters away (and be a different person when I arrive) right in my house, I can time travel in the chair behind me, and I can fly above the earth on snowshoes just outside the door.

      The secret all along? To push through our own borders, wherever we are, is to live. To become by working through. To move. To breathe… to gain all while you give.

    • A Blessed Unrest: Martha Graham in 7 Quotes

      “The only sin is mediocrity.” – Martha Graham

      I only know of Martha Graham, and associate her appropriately with modern dance, which admittedly I wrestle with. I’ve witnessed way too many angst-ridden dance competitions on the journey of my daughter dancing from kindergarten to High School Senior. But I respect the beauty of formal dance (while struggling with the abundance of teen angst), and wanted to understand the genius of Graham through her words. As with other geniuses, her brilliance transcends her art and her life. Speaking of the sin of mediocrity speaks to her passionate pursuit of the exceptional.

      “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

      Do you feel the urgency in those words? I do. I read a quote like that and understand. What is your quickening? Are you translating your vitality through action or wasting it in the trivial pursuits? Graham lived to 97 and packed those years with transformative action. What of our life force?

      “‘Age’ is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years.”

      Growing older but not up is a state of mind; to remain young at heart. But it can also be an excuse for not getting to where you want to go. The glory of years is an accumulation of life and accomplishments and the ripples that resonate well beyond our time. It’s something to aspire to, not “getting older”, but accumulating maturity.

      “Practice is the means of inviting the perfection desired.”

      There’s no secret in how people reach mastery. We know it intuitively even if we don’t see the hours upon hours of work that go into muscle memory. These are the layers of competence that stack up to brilliance. Put in the time, do the work, make the mistakes, and reach for the next level. It’s the only way.

      “Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can”

      What is your why? Why are you doing all this in the first place? What whispers in your ear and prods you along? Without your why you’re just going through the motions. And what a waste that is.

      “Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.”

      For all our words, our thoughts are betrayed by our bodies. You see it in how someone greets you, how someone answers a pointed question, and in how they dance with the world around them. We frequently won’t listen to what our gut is telling us, instead only believing what the mind is telling us to believe. Not wanting to be ignored, the gut tells the world what we won’t hear in ourselves.

      “Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It’s a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

      I’m not much of a dancer, not like those well-choreographed, practiced dancers people naturally circle on the dance floor in reverence, but I like to dance my own clydesdale celebratory dance anyway. Someday when the pandemic is over and weddings and other such gatherings seem appropriate again, we’ll find ourselves on a dance floor somewhere and we will rise up to celebrate life in all its glory. The celebration of that miracle – our being, our aliveness, the magic of it all, was the why in Graham’s life, and shouldn’t it be in our own lives as well? For we dance with life in all its complexity, pain and joy. There’s magic in being alive, and that’s reason enough to dance. And to rise up to more.

    • What Are You Waiting For?

      “Dare to be wise; begin! He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.” – Horace

      When you really think about it, what are we waiting for? The right time? That river keeps on flowing by and never runs out. We run out.

      Of time… opportunities lost watching it all run by. So then what of this hour? What shall it launch?

      Begin. Do you feel the urgency of time? Do what must be done.

      “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can” – Arthur Ashe

      Easy for me to say, right? Who am I to challenge you? Make no mistake, I’m dipping a toe in that water myself. For I have my own chasms to cross. The only way across is by putting action where words are and getting to it.

      I like a good challenge. Do you? What can you accomplish, see, or become in ten days? Focus on living rightly in each moment, getting across whatever your river is. From today to March 4th and written about right here on March 5th. Comment on that post if you’ve taken the challenge yourself. What are we waiting for? Hurry! For it’s already slipping away.

    • And Yet it Moves

      The secret of the illusoriness is in the necessity of a succession of moods or objects. Gladly we would anchor, but the anchorage is quicksand. This onward trick of nature is too strong for us: Pero si muove. When at night I look at the moon and stars, I seem stationary, and they to hurry. Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

      This phrase, Pero si muove, mentioned in passing by Emerson, is famously Galileo Galilei’s. Forced by the Catholic Church to recant the truth of the matter that the earth revolves around the sun, Galileo dropped this little truth bomb after recanting. “Pero si muove” or, “And yet it moves”.

      I think about Galileo’s mic-dropping truth in a particularly dark time for truth in history as reality-based people of the Earth coexist with the buzz of maddening conspiracy theories, flat-Earthers and rigged election believers. The simplicity of truth seems lost in the escalating rhetoric of these online screamers. Imagine for a moment Galileo and Emerson returning to the world of today and listening to this din of despairing dolts. They’d lose all hope in humanity and throw up their hands in despair. There are days when I want to myself. Aren’t we past all this nonsense?

      It’s ironic that all this craziness is happening at a time of brilliant scientific advancement. We see images and hear sounds broadcast from the surface of Mars. We embrace the heroic efforts of the scientific community to develop viable vaccines to fight off COVID, and to stand up a delivery system to get it into the arms of the billions of people on the planet that desperately need it and a return to “normal”. We see the smartest among us looking at the problems humanity has created on this fragile blue ball rotating around the sun and tackling climate change and plastics and clean water and the related list of short-sighted gains that created long-term problems for future generations.

      There’s hope in the world, but there’s also a healthy dose of self-inflicted despair and rage. And we won’t get past it without facing the truth. Pero si muove. Or consider again Emerson’s words: “Our love of the real draws us to permanence, but health of body consists in circulation, and sanity of mind in variety or facility of association. We need change of objects.” I think all of this social isolation has stirred the pot of madness a bit too much. Sanity of mind seems to be a real issue for way too many people looking for something to cling to in the swirling uncertainty of the age.

      I find hope in Galileo’s phrase. For all the forced dogma of his time, the truth prevailed. And it lives on in the majority of people in the world today. There have always been laggards on the bell curve of reality, they just happen to have a louder voice at the moment. Pero si muove. Truth finds a way to shine through in the end. So long as people have the courage to stand for it as Galileo did.

    • To Live is to Function

      “In this symposium my part is only to sit in silence. To express one’s feelings as the end draws near is too intimate a task. But one thought that comes to me as a listener-in. The riders in the race do not stop short when they reach the goal. There is a little finishing canter before coming to a standstill. There is time to hear the kind voice of friends and to say to oneself that the work is done.

      But just as one says that, the answer comes: The race is over, but the work never is done while the power to work remains. The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest. It cannot be while you still live, but to live is to function. That is all there is. And so I end with a line from a Latin poet, who uttered the message more than fifteen-hundred years ago, Death, death, plucks my ear, and says, ‘Live. I am coming.’”
      – Oliver Wendell Holmes (from a radio broadcast when he turned 90)

      This image Holmes painted of cantering after the race is over, living but not quite in the race anymore, lingers. I’ve seen a few people who’s cantering ended sooner than we all wanted, but bless them, they were cantering to the end. Their work was done, and they functioned as best they could until they left us. And whispered a reminder that soon our own race will end, so best run it well.

      The canter that brings you to a standstill need not be only coming to rest.

      My own race took me around a snowy loop in the woods again yesterday, snowshoeing in deep snow, following cross-country ski tracks in a quiet patch of woods that doesn’t see a lot of action from the conservation land walking crowd. Just me and a trusty map, making my way alone in the woods, working up a sweat with a brisk pace as I broke trail next to the ski tracks. This, the morning after, I stepped out of bed gingerly to test the legs and found myself doing okay. Looking back on February so far, I’ve gotten out to snowshoe or hike most days. For I’m still very much in the race, after all, and far be it from me to start cantering now.

      To live is to function – to be out there in the world doing. A challenge to us all from Holmes, all those years ago. To be engaged with those around you, to be charging around the track of life all frothy and full of joyous exuberance at full gallop. Holmes was a Civil War veteran, wounded in battle, a Harvard-educated lawyer who rose up to the Supreme Court and the oldest serving member of that court. A living link between Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He lived in Mattapoisett and Beverly, Massachusetts and by all accounts lived a rich, full life during his own time in the race.

      Death, death, plucks my ear, and says, ‘Live. I am coming.’

      How do you read these words spoken by Oliver Wendell Holmes nearly a hundred years ago? As a reminder to get out and live while you’re still in the race? Or as a dark reminder that death is coming for us all? To me the only choice is the former. To have Holmes quote the stoics near the end of his own life, well into his cantering years, is a wake-up call for the generations lining up for the races after his own. Fast forward to today and now it’s our race. So how shall we run it?