Alexandersmap

    Category: seasons

    • Observations From a 20K Day

      Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest, and I’d planned to do just that. There shall be no hiking or waterfall chasing for you, I told myself. But when you believe that we aren’t built to be sedentary beings, eventually those rigid thoughts of who we ought to be evolve into action. I wrapped my mind around 20,000 steps as a goal for the day, no matter what. What is the first rule with any goal? Putting ourselves in the best position to achieve that goal.

      The path to a 20K day really began a few years back, when I decided I was going to buy a push mower and walk the lawn instead of driving around on it. Would it be nice to sit on a cushy seat with a cup holder? Of course! But my work has me sitting entirely too much already. Mowing, trimming and leaf blowing the yard easily knocks off 4000 steps in roughly an hour. Is that the equivalent of hiking a 4000 foot mountain? Of course not, but it’s a starting point for an active lifestyle, and a head-start towards my activity goal for the day.

      I’ve hit 20K just doing yard work, but a change of scenery was in order. On a beautiful Sunday afternoon there were many choices available, but I opted for the local rail trail. As with beaches, I favor the rail trail when few people venture onto it, during snow or light rain, in the early morning or dead of winter. The rail trail in the middle of the day during peak season is an entirely different experience.

      A rail trail is popular because you’re safely removed from automobile traffic, but there are other hazards to consider. As on a highway, one must skate one’s lane and be predictable to avoid collisions. Hoards of cyclists, joggers and walkers descend on the trail, making it near impossible to be on a spot where there isn’t someone in your line of sight. e-bike Andretti’s zip past at breakneck speed, and clumps of independent teenagers on bicycles ride towards you shoulder-to-shoulder leaving you the choice of standing your ground or stepping aside (there’s magic in the moment they realize that you’ve—responsibly—put the choice back on them).

      In the off-season on this rail trail, I would immerse myself in the nature around me. There’s surely a lot more to witness when sharing the path with hundreds of people on a long walk. Inevitably, you begin to people watch. Humans are quirky. Fashion on the path runs from traditional breathable fabrics to bold statements of individuality. Of all the travelers, the e-bikers seemed to be the most outlandish, fully kitted with fishing poles or picnic baskets, small dogs poking out of backpacks, and fat tires announcing they’re about to pass you from 100 meters away. It was an impressive display, and reminded me of the parade of custom golf carts seen at 55 plus developments and campgrounds around the country. But I was here for walking, not powered transportation. There’s relative simplicity on a rail trail: you walk one direction for as long as you want, then you turn around and walk back.

      The thing about goal-setting is that we know the obstacles before we begin, but we don’t always account for them in our bold declaration that we’re going to do this thing. The only things that get in the way of completing a good goal are available time, resources (like health) and willpower. Hitting fitness goals usually comes down to simply beginning and not stopping until we’ve met our objective. On a day of rest I decided to hit 20K, not exactly a bold number but high enough that it required my time and attention. It also served as a reminder that I’m not ready to retire to an e-bike and backpack dog just yet. There’s still so much to do.

    • Stillness Instead

      Have I lived enough?
      Have I loved enough?
      Have I considered Right Action enough, have I come to any conclusion?
      Have I experienced happiness with sufficient gratitude?
      Have I endured loneliness with grace?

      I say this, or perhaps I’m just thinking it.
      Actually, I probably think too much.

      Then I step out into the garden,
      where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man,
      is tending his children, the roses.
      — Mary Oliver, The Gardener

      Just this morning, I opted for the garden instead of a hike. I’ve done that a lot recently, choosing just about anything instead of a hike. Last week it was finishing a book I’d wanted to dive into, and I celebrated my time not doing something else I love. For it isn’t that I don’t love hiking, I surely do, it’s more a case of wanting something else instead. When you have free will you get to choose, within reason, such things as where to be and what to do.

      When it comes to such things as checklists of books read and summits climbed, we sometimes opt for none of the above. Life is a series of days where anything is possible if we just persist, or nothing gets done if we resist. What leads to resistance in a world that rewards action? Are we the lesser for having opted out? Or do we find something else in stillness?

      Lately I’ve wanted nothing more than time in the garden. It’s June, after all, and even a raw and wet June is still a month of growth and possibility. Slowing down enough to find the beauty in my own backyard seems the best use of this time.

      “It is the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us. The question is not what you look at but what you see.” ― Henry David Thoreau

      That old expression, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”, applies equally well with the geraniums as with the mountains. When this student is ready I’ll attend to that checklist of summits once again, or perhaps I won’t. For today there are other lessons to learn.

      Geranium

    • Begin Every Day

      If I flinched at every grief, I would be an intelligent idiot.
      If I were not the sun, I would ebb and flow with sadness.

      If you were not my guide, I would wander lost in Sinai.
      If there were no light,
      I would keep opening and closing the door.

      If there were no rose garden,

      where would the morning breezes go?
      If love did not want music and laughter and poetry,
      what would I say?

      If you were not medicine, I would look sick and skinny.
      If there were no leafy limbs in the air,
      there would be no wet roots.

      If no gifts were given, I would grow arrogant and cruel.
      If there were no way into God,
      I would not have lain in the grave of this body so long.

      If there were no way from right to left,
      I could not be swaying with the grasses.

      If there were no grace and no kindness,
      conversation would be useless, and nothing we do would matter.

      Listen to the new stories that begin every day.
      If light were not beginning again in the east,
      I would not now wake and walk out inside this dawn.
      — Rumi, Wake and Walk Out

      Perhaps the rain has kept me from waking earlier than normal today. Perhaps the grogginess that accumulates inside over a long and productive week is best expressed with sleeping in. Or perhaps it was staying up late, not wanting the day to end, conceding it at last as the calendar turned to a new day. Perhaps… or surely it was all of those things.

      No matter if later than before, we must rise once more. There’s work to be done each morning, to set up the day for success, whatever that means to each of us. Life is about meeting our purpose and being productive with our time to fully realize our potential. Nothing matters but this dance with life.

      And what is life? It’s the stories we write in these moments of clarity and awareness, days stacked one upon the other, until we cease beginning. Is every story a page-turner? Of course not, but doesn’t it help set up the next chapter?

      Each morning I’m struck by the wonder of being, but isn’t that wonder grounded in the awareness of ending? Our story will end. That may be someday, or it may be today, but it isn’t just yet. Knowing this, don’t we owe it to ourselves to properly rise to meet this day?

      In this quest to be more productive and purposeful, sometimes we don’t see the things that sparkle in our days. Things like poetry and a walk through the garden and the tickle of the breeze. What is a breeze but the change of the air? So it is with us, feeling the tickle of change within us. We must always be aware of the sparkle, and lend it our light, that it may offer reflection.

    • Buds of Fire

      And in the shadow of our human dream of falling,
      human voices are Creation’s most recent flowers,
      mere buds of fire
      nodding on their stalks.
      — Li-Young Lee, Dying Stupid

      Working through the gardening shed, I found a terra cotta pot sporting hints of old root filaments, betraying its previous occupant from last season. Each life takes their place in line, lives their season and moves on for the next to take their turn. The keen observer sees hints of past lives all around us, ghosts whispering that they once turned their gaze to the sun too. Gardeners know a thing or two about the tenuous hold we have on our time. So do writers and poets.

      May mocks the meticulous gardener. Put your best foot forward and the trees crap all over it, again and again, until you admit you aren’t in control of anything. Life offers lessons for the attentive student. Seasons come and go. So too do we. We are only here for a brief dance with our best intentions.

      Life is change—this we know. Some of those whispering ghosts are us, telling tales of past seasons gone forever, of who we used to be. Sometimes there’s just wisp of filament that betrays our past life, sometimes it’s the whole pot. Still, there’s work to be done in the now. While there’s time in this season, fill an empty pot with something new.

    • All Perfect Light and Promises

      Sleep baby sleep
      Now that the night is over
      And the sun comes like a god
      Into our room
      All perfect light and promises
      — INXS, New Sensation

      The days of May grow longer and full of daylight, which means that the early morning hours are brighter and full of their own promise. These are the days when I wake up feeling like I’ve missed out on something special if it’s already light out. I thrive on astronomical twilight and the hope of the coming day. Each morning ought to be celebrated for the ripe potential it offers.

      These are all days to remember, but memories are built on action and an underlying purpose. We aren’t here to make it through the day, but to make something of the day. We feel this most intentionally in the early morning light. For it truly is the start of something new.

      I dwell on early starts and dabble in productivity, for each are a bridge to fulfill the promise of the day. We owe it to ourselves to meet our purpose and potential head-on and make something of each in the brief allotment of time offered. The trick is to be nimble and open to everything that comes our way, without being bogged down by distraction. When you get up earlier than most people you find elbow room to process such things as priorities and purpose.

      What would we give for one more day? Someday we’ll wish for it, won’t we? Get up and greet the morning, and bring to the day everything that would be answered in this question. As the expression goes, this new day wasn’t promised to us, but it is a gift. Feel the energy in the promise, the vibrancy of place, the potential of the start. Amplify that feeling with full awareness and hope. And dance with it.

    • Nothing More Than This

      I could feel at the time
      There was no way of knowing
      Fallen leaves in the night
      Who can say where they’re blowing?
      As free as the wind
      Hopefully learning
      Why the sea on the tide
      Has no way of turning
      More than this
      You know there’s nothing
      More than this
      Tell me one thing
      More than this
      Ooh there’s nothing
      — Roxy Music, More Than This

      Life keeps happening, one day to the next, as we so very quickly make our trip around the sun. It’s easy to wrap ourselves in this—to stress over the passing of time and people and things out of our control. Alternatively, we might simply take the days as they come to us. For things come and go as they will, and after all, there’s no stopping the tide, friends. The best we can do is anchor ourselves in something true.

      Each day offers something. We are each collectors of memories, built to savor and reflect if we give ourselves to such things. Shouldn’t we? For life is nothing more than this: the people and places that make us who we are in our time. We know deep down that it will all scatter one day, but not just yet.

    • Mining for Gold

      “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need” — Cicero

      My attention comes back to the garden this time of year. It’s too soon for annuals, too early for most perennials, and my sinuses are reminding me that the cool air is filling up with pollen. We celebrate the great awakening of the garden and surrounding landscape, even with a few sniffles and sneezes to punctuate the season.

      I know a few things about awakening. I came into this world in April, so I mark the end and subsequent beginning of another trip around the sun this month. Take enough of those trips, and reinvent yourself enough times, and you begin to see patterns of behavior. Learning who we are is like reading the current in a river, finding the deepest channel and accelerating downstream towards our destiny.

      I mostly write in a home office with a solid library of books patiently awaiting discovery. There are books I’ve read many times and books I’ve told myself I’ll get to someday. For better or worse the convenience of a Kindle tends to dominate my reading selection nowadays. So why keep books at all? For the same reason I plant daffodils. Daffodils are planted once and reappear in your life regularly to punctuate the moment. Books tend to do the same. I’ve turned to my collection many times over the years since I’ve planted them on the shelf.

      What we plant in ourselves tends to grow. Will we amend our minds with rich content and labor, or simply lean into whatever other’s grow for us? Give me dirty fingernails thumbing through favorite books. We mine for gold in the garden and in the library. These are our days to dig deeply and plant that which will live beyond us.

      Daffodils

    • Serving Joy

      “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” — Rabindranath Tagore

      As spring usually goes this time of year in recent years, we seemingly went right from winter to summer, fooling the daffodils and hyacinth into blooming quickly, lest they miss their moment with the sun. There’s something to be said for rising to meet the fragile moment. Flowers know this instinctively. What of us?

      Traveling all week, I almost missed the fragrant offering altogether. This was a long week full of work and follow-up and more than one’s fair share of absence from those one loves. We each have our dues to pay in this transactional lifetime, but there ought to be joy in the work too. What are we here for but to serve our compelling why? Life is service to others, or it is nothing at all.

      We know it when we find our joyful service. It’s work that matters a great deal to us. It’s stirring words together just so, words that stir something deep inside of us, words better shared than jealously sheltered. And it’s doing the quiet daily offering that mundane chores represent, moving us forward in our progression through life.

      Talking quietly in the early evening hours, shedding myself of road weariness, talk moved to the garden and work still to be done. There’s always work to be done in a garden, isn’t there? What mattered wasn’t the weariness of the work week, or the prospect of more chores ahead. What mattered was the why: growing something more, together. Serving our fragile moment with joy.

    • The Gestures With Which We Honor

      the path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles.
      It’s in the imagination
      with which you perceive
      this world, and the gestures
      with which you honor it
      — Mary Oliver, The Swan

      Heaven is right here, friends. Whatever comes later is unknown to all of us, no matter how much faith we hold. The trick is to be here, now, and love what we have (Amor fati). What comes next has never been in our control, but how we react in this moment is all ours. Not impetuous, not cynical, but earnestly open to all that comes to us in this lifetime.

      I’m excited about the day ahead. Are you? So full of potential, so ready to be experienced. Full of challenges and tests of our will to be sure, but also full of wonder and fresh perspective. That wonder is all around us, a spark of insight into the universe instantly recognized when we pay attention. Pay attention, for it’s there we find delight.

      Don’t wait for heaven. We must find what we can of it today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It always does.

    • The Rising

      Today being Easter and this blog never about religion, per se, but philosophy and nature and the bold act of reaching for something more than what we were yesterday, it seemed appropriate to talk about the rising. Not Jesus, for this I defer to the experts of stories written in the Bible (and only the true believers, not the posers and charlatans). There’s a smugness that punctuates religion on both sides of the conversation, but the true believers and the truly open non-believers find a way to meet in the middle. Whatever you believe, believe me when I say I hope it motivates you to do positive things in this world. We need it more than ever.

      Anyway, I digress. The rising I’m talking about are the daffodils, for they are rising in earnest to meet their moment even as I write this. Daffodils remain one of my favorite flowers for their simplicity, fragrance, and reliability. Deer and rodents don’t eat them, so they’re especially handy plants for those of us dealing with an abundance of each. Mostly, they’re a sign that spring is coming, often just when we needed it most. Daffodils represent hope and perseverance and resilience. They signal that beauty can rise from even the coldest and darkest of winters.

      Whatever we take from this day, we ought to focus on the ascent to beauty and love that we’re all capable of at our core. We just have to have the courage to rise to meet our moment. For there’s a place for us in this cold and indifferent universe. The evidence is right in front of us.