Alexandersmap

    Category: Exploration

    • The Power Is in the Journey

      If a tree could fly off, it would not suffer the saw.
      The sun hurries all night to be back for morning.
      Salty water rises in the air,
      so the garden will be drenched with fresh rain.

      A drop leaves home,
      enters a certain shell, and becomes a pearl.
      Joseph turns from his weeping father, toward Egypt.
      Remember how that turned out.

      Journeys bring power and love back into you.
      If you cannot go somewhere, move in the passageways of the self.

      They are like shafts of light, always changing,
      and you change when you explore them.
      –– Rumi, The Importance of Setting Out

      Talking with a friend of mine, we discussed the logistics of writing about exploring the world when you aren’t presently out there traveling as much. But we’re all on a journey, aren’t we? Sometimes it’s waterfalls and mountaintops and coastal sunsets, sometimes it’s a poem that draws you into a corner of your soul that hadn’t previously explored. Writing about it every day, you end up blazing a trail you might follow back again someday, or offer to others who want to explore similar territory.

      You notice changes in people when they’ve been on a journey. And you notice changes in yourself as well. Life is the processing of the changes we put ourselves through, the growth we see and feel as we move through the world. This world is beautiful and full of joyful encounters. This world is dark and on the verge of collapsing on itself in environmental disaster, war and plague. What do we do with the truth in both of those realities? We go out and experience it for ourselves, wrestle with what it means to us, and if you’re courageous publish it for the world to learn what you’ve been thinking about.

      Who would want it otherwise?

    • For All That Is Life

      “You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” ― Jiddu Krishnamurti

      Having a nightcap with friends at a clever book and bar establishment in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, my attention drifted to stacks of books all around me, chess boards and kitschy furniture from another era. This was my kind of place, and one I made note to wander around in again in daylight, when I wasn’t compelled to be polite and focused on our conversation, instead of just drifting off into this newly discovered world of wonder so tantalizingly close. Such is the nature of books—they pull you in when you least expect it.

      It’s not just books. How could it be, really? All that is life is around us, nudging us to pay attention, to immerse ourselves in the moment, to listen and understand, to act and to be a part of, to share and empty ourselves to others that we might fill ourselves up again with new and wonderful bits. Like a tide flowing in and out of a bay, our accumulation and sharing of knowledge keeps our mind fresh and alive.

      We spend a lifetime trying to understand what’s all around us, and yearning for all that ever could be. We are the audience in our own life, but also an active participant in the play. None of this is all that it could ever be, but isn’t it wonderful just the same?

    • January is Waiting

      “I wonder how long it would take you to notice the regular recurrence of the seasons if you were the first man on earth. What would it be like to live in open-ended time broken only by days and nights? You could say, “it’s cold again; it was cold before,” but you couldn’t make the key connection and say, “it was cold this time last year,” because the notion of “year” is precisely the one you lack. Assuming that you hadn’t yet noticed any orderly progression of heavenly bodies, how long would you have to live on earth before you could feel with any assurance that any one particular long period of cold would, in fact, end?” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

      Lately I’ve been watching some Lonewolf 902 YouTube videos of winter camping with a hot tent. I’ve done a bit of winter camping in my time, with an old sleeping bag sprinkled with ember burns to prove it, but not recently. I don’t see myself hauling a titanium stove through the woods of New Hampshire and cutting up dead standing timber for firewood anytime soon. But his adventures northeast of me in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island are stirring the imagination once again. It’s time to get back out there.

      You might feel the cold, and might even experience the snow when you stay put in your nest. But you just don’t become a part of the season without being immersed in it. January, by all rites, offers cold, short days. I’ve noticed that I don’t notice as much when I don’t get out in it. Without a dog to walk in the cold night, I don’t watch the celestial dance across the sky. Without gathering my hiking gear and heading north, I don’t feel the sting of winter or the snow blindness of brilliant sun on frigid snow. What fun is January if you aren’t out in it?

      “Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ” — John Ruskin

      January is the month when you begin to go stir crazy if you aren’t active enough. The best remedy is right in front of us—bundle up and get your ass out there. The magic of snow and ice and crisp air won’t last for long. You must go to it, prepared, if you want to experience the exhilaration of winter. Melancholy is for those who would shelter indefinitely. Nothing breaks the hold of the winter blues faster than embracing winter. So get out and experience all winter offers! How many more do you expect to have? Appreciate the gift that this season represents.

      January is waiting… but it’s slipping away.

    • By Where We Have Been

      Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote:
      housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,
      knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings
      pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

      The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,
      innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;
      only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,
      through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

      Being arches itself over the vast abyss.
      Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,
      doesn’t it fill our hands differently with its return:
      heavier by the weight of where it has been.
      —Rainder Maria Rilke, Dove that ventured outside

      We wanderers are all chafing to break free. To arc across the abyss once again, and land in places foreign and mysterious, and return again changed by where we have been. We feel the firmness of the ground beneath our feet and celebrate the stability of place. But our blessing and our curse is our longing to fly once again.

      Life changes us all, whether in love or travel or rolling the dice on a career path. Our lives are the arches we build between where we launch from and where we land. But landing someplace doesn’t mean you can’t launch yourself somewhere else, again and again, to see what kind of cathedral you can build for yourself. Who said we are only allowed to fly once?

      “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      Arches don’t just float in mid-air. You’ve got to build that foundation to properly launch yourself into the abyss if you want to land on solid ground on the other side (let alone return again). It goes without saying that proper financial and logistical planning are necessary if your arch is to cross a big chasm. But small arches are beautiful too, and don’t require more than a bit of courage to fly.

      Assuming we live to be 80, we’ve all burned 2 1/2% of our lives with COVID. How have we spent that time? Hopefully not locked in fear in our homes, but instead getting vaccinated and finding adventure where we may, while we can. If not then, why not now? How far will your next arch span? Where will you land? If you dare?

    • Silent Companions in the Wind

      Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
      to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
      And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
      perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.

      All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire,
      caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.
      Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
      for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace.

      If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept
      deeply with Things—: how easily he would come
      to a different day, out of the mutual depth.

      Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom and
      praise
      their newest convert, who now is like one of them,
      all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows.
      — Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 14

      I caught glimpses of the sunrise, spectacular and flamboyant, dancing with clouds and still water, on the train from Boston to New York. I lamented the missed opportunity for an Instagram-worthy photo while stifling the urge to pull out my camera phone to give it an attempt. No picture from an iPhone through dirty chatter-proof glass flying across the landscape at 50 miles per hour was going to capture the magic of the moment. So I let it pass, like so many moments, into memory.

      I don’t come often enough to Rilke, who spun his own magic a century ago. I may visit with him more often this year, hopefully not with the overindulgence I’ve displayed with Mary Oliver poems, but… enough. This is a year for magic and becoming reacquainted with the world. For venturing forth and rekindling our eternal childhood.

      We all want to fly. What holds us back but fear and heaviness? Shouldn’t we reach for the sky and dance with our silent companions in the wind? Fragility doesn’t stop nature, though everything has its time. Knowing this, but choosing not to be paralyzed by it, shouldn’t we all climb out of this mutual depth and make these different days?

    • The Forest Knows

      Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
      Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
      And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
      Must ask permission to know it and be known.
      The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
      I have made this place around you.
      If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
      No two trees are the same to Raven.
      No two branches are the same to Wren.
      If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
      You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
      Where you are. You must let it find you.
      — David Wagoner, Lost

      Walk out into the woods in silence, listening to the trees around you, and you’ll know the truth. Climb up high into the mountains, well above the trees, and hear the whisper in the wind. You’ll hear it up there too. Sail out beyond the sight of land, out where the swells make you feel small and inadequate. Hear the swish of water under the hull, the waves curl and splash away in salty celebration as you see your place in this world. The answers are out there, waiting for you to listen.

      We surround ourselves with the buzz of distraction, the white noise of modern life, to avoid hearing the silent call that urges us to follow. It’s a tempting mistress, this Siren, and drives so many to the rocks of conformity. Fall in line! Do your job! Stay on point! Bide your time!

      Time is irrelevant in the universe. Trees and mountains and the sea don’t mark time, they dance with infinity. Don’t you think, should we be so bold, that we should too?

    • The Incremental Path

      What might we accomplish in our brief time here should we apply ourselves towards it? Is accomplishing itself a worthy pursuit, or is experiencing the better path to walk down? I believe in fully experiencing life, but without setting a course and working diligently towards a calling who are we but sheep waiting to be sheared?

      I wrote about this of reaching for excellence recently, and perhaps write about it too frequently. But a blog is a sorting place of ideas and observations, shared experiences and insights. Since that post, I’ve added some additional habits to the daily accountability list in my pursuit of my own personal brand of Arete. I’m incrementally further along in that time, yet the path to excellence is long. Who says how far down the path I can reach? Does it doesn’t matter as long as we’re progressing down the one that matters most to us?

      Ars longa, vita brevis (Art is long, life is short)

      Don’t look now, but we’re already 2.5% through the year. What was it we wrote down as our resolution for the year? How’s that going for you? Isn’t it fair to ask? Creating that cadence of accountability is the only way to stay on the path. There are few big leaps forward on the journey to excellence, the path is incremental. And what we do next matters more than what we did yesterday.

      Looking back on what I’d set as milestones for this year, I can see that the milestones have mattered in my daily action. Maybe you don’t always feel like brushing your teeth but chances are you do it every day anyway. We know what matters most, but most beat themselves up if they break a streak of working out or don’t lose ten pounds in the first week of a diet. Would you stop brushing your teeth if you missed a day? No! You’d brush them as soon as you got up the next morning! Similarly, getting back on track is all that matters on this incremental path to excellence.

      Even the masters fall short of excellence. Who are we to expect it of ourselves? But when you turn around and see how far you’ve come, you recognize that the path takes you so much further than you’d have come otherwise. And the experiences you have along the way are richer for the pursuit.

    • Layers

      You might say that winter brings simplicity, laying bare and naked the world outside. Living things have two choices in winter; to fatten up and sleep it off or to hunt for food to keep the furnace burning. Hibernate or keep moving. Survival, simplified.

      In warmer climates, or warmer seasons, you might get away with a single layer or even less. When it gets cold you add layers until you reach a level of comfort. Proper layering is an acquired skill, and there’s a special joy that comes with getting out of a warm bed or sleeping bag and scurrying to add enough layers to reach comfort before the lingering warmth dissipates. You essentially trade one cocoon for another.

      Hikers know the layering dance all too well. Start slightly overdressed and begin to shed layers as your core warms. Reach colder, windier summits and the layers come back on again. The layers ebb and flow like the surf as you cool and warm with motion and micro climates. And in this ritual an underlying celebration for each layer as it comes and goes.

      We celebrate the complexity of layers in other ways. A story is always more interesting if there are layers of complexity built into it. Conversation that is simplistic is boring. The most interesting people we meet have many interests, can hang with you on many topics, and raise the bar to a level you seek to clear yourself. You think back on conversations like this and marvel at where they took you.

      Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a warm day with the sun on my skin as much as anyone. But I’m not sure I could live that way all the time. Give me the chill of early morning, or when the sun drops down below the horizon. Give me frosty window panes and seeing your breath in the crisp air. The simplicity of winter is deceptive. There’s more going on than meets the eye. The beauty of the season lies in its layers. It will kill you just as easily as it will awe you with its stark beauty.

      So it goes with life. We go deeper for meaning in our lives, for lives at the surface are shallow and inconsequential. When we wrap ourselves in layers of interests we might thrive in even the coldest of days. A layered life is a resilient life. We’ve all learned the value of that, haven’t we?

    • Starting Over

      “Think of yourself as dead, you have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
      — Marcus Aurelius

      It’s time to spread our wings and fly
      Don’t let another day go by my love
      It’ll be just like starting over
      –John Lennon, (Just Like) Starting Over

      Tim Urban posted a clever image on Twitter that illustrates the concept of today being the first day of the rest of your life. Everything that you’ve done to now is in the past, every decision you made that got you to this place, wherever that might be for you, is in the past. And all that’s left is what’s in front of you:

      Source: @waitbutwhy

      New Year’s Day represents that for a lot of people: New Year, new me! But really, it’s every heartbeat. We decide moment-to-moment what we’ll steer ourselves towards in the next. Making decisions and actions, step-by-step into the uncertain future.

      What doesn’t help is regretting the choices you didn’t make along the way. What’s done is done, what’s to be is to be, dependent on the choices you make in this moment. All the past did is place is right here, at this point on the line of human progression on this day. And while that does dictate what our options for the next step might be, it doesn’t dictate the thousands of steps that follow.

      This moment is just like starting over. How fun is that? Be bold.

    • This Will Be Our Year

      Now we’re there and we’ve only just begun
      This will be our year
      Took a long time to come
      — The Zombies, This Will Be Our Year

      Normally I take time to assess the best memories or the favorite stuff accumulated to wrap up a previous year in the final days leading into the new year. This year, other than listing a collection of books read, I am far more inclined to put 2021 to rest and get on with living. I imagine I’m not the only one in that respect.

      So how do you set the table for a great year? We’ve covered some of this already, deciding what to be and go be it is a good attitude to begin with. To realize it, you’ve got to act on it. Book the trip, block off the vacation time, commit to the athletic event, reserve the campsite or the trail hut and you’re halfway there. In some ways you’re forcing your own hand. Or you can look at it as making a commitment to your future self. It’s a high agency way of taking your life in your own hands and not just going with the flow of random events.

      Booking it naturally starts a countdown to arriving at the moment you do it. A to-do list immediately accumulates. Want to run a marathon or hike the Presidential Traverse in the White Mountains? You’d best get in shape before you set off, buddy. The world doesn’t need another unprepared fanatic hitting the starting line. Commit and begin the incremental climb to fitness so you can actually finish what you most want to start.

      Is it that simple? Of course not, but you’re far more likely to do it if you place a financial and time stake in the ground and then give yourself just enough runway to take off. You can’t commit to something so far off that you lose focus on the goal, but it can’t be so short that you aren’t ready when you arrive. Plan, then execute on that plan in a carefully measured number of workouts, vacation days, or paychecks. Use time and money to help you arrive, not as an excuse for not going at all. We become what we prioritize.

      The big moments await your commitment. Put a stake in the ground at the end of the runway and gather some momentum. It’s time to soar.