• leaves,  Plants,  quotes,  winter scenes

    Participation with life…

    November 30, 2023

    Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.

    David Whyte

    Will meet my friend Dennis this morning at 10:30 for coffee and conversation. We will meet at a coffee shop I have not been to in years called the Alley Cat Cafe ( be sure to play the opening video) 😂.

    Back in August during my physical they discovered my PSA numbers were high. Since I had a UTI the previous week and was on antibiotics they waited a week then retested. Still high. So we scheduled an MRI rather than do an invasive biopsy. Had an appointment with the urologist yesterday to discuss the results of that test. From the MRI results all looks good and he is not concerned about prostate cancer. We’ve come up with a plan to do another PSA test in 3 months, just to keep track of those. If the PSA numbers go up, then he wants to see me about changing our plans. He reminded me the PSA numbers are not the most exact test for prostate cancer. Otherwise, I have an appointment to see him in 6 months. For me this is all good news. So, I plan on continuing my participation with life as David Whyte says; coffee shop adventures, Natural Area adventures, reading and journaling, daily walks, blogging, photography and taking the steps necessary to stay healthy. And, it all takes courage. Stay warm and thanks for being the online community you are!

    Today is my oldest daughters birthday. Hoping she knows she is the gift! Happy BIrthday Christine!!

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  • landscape,  natural areas,  Plants,  poetry,  sunsets,  writing/reading

    The Journey

    November 28, 2021

    Above the mountains
    the geese turn into
    the light again

    Painting their
    black silhouettes
    on an open sky.

    Sometimes everything
    has to be
    inscribed across
    the heavens

    so you can find
    the one line
    already written
    inside you.

    Sometimes it takes
    a great sky
    to find that

    first, bright
    and indescribable
    wedge of freedom
    in your own heart.

    Sometimes with
    the bones of the black
    sticks left when the fire
    has gone out

    someone has written
    something new
    in the ashes of your life.

    You are not leaving.
    Even as the light fades quickly now,
    you are arriving.

    David Whyte

    As David Whyte’s poem suggests I arrived in time for the sunset offered by Nature.

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  • insects,  quotes

    Courage

    September 28, 2021

    “Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.”

    David Whyte
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  • landscape,  natural areas,  quotes,  sunrises

    The World We Belong In

    December 10, 2020

    “When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up on all other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”

    David Whyte

    I looked at my watch, it read 1:00 am. Looked again later, now 3:15 am. I really was not tired but knew my night was more of light sleep and little deep sleep. Weather forecast was for partly cloudy skies in the morning and snow this evening so I heard that voice inside whisper of the possibility that the eastern sunrise would have some red to it. I got up and dressed at 5:00 am. I felt the tiredness of my eyes from the lack of deep sleep. After quiet time I grabbed coffee and camera and drove to Pineridge Natural Area. I was not disappointed. Had the place to myself except for a couple of magpies and one of the park rangers. We all just watched this new day come alive and stayed present in this world we belong in. Probably need a nap later today. 😴

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  • landscape,  natural areas,  poems,  sunsets

    Sometimes

    August 21, 2020

    An late afternoon walk at Arapaho Bend Natural Area in 2017

    SOMETIMES
    by David Whyte

    Sometimes
    if you move carefully
    through the forest,
    breathing
    like the ones
    in the old stories,
    who could cross
    a shimmering bed of leaves
    without a sound,
    you come to a place
    whose only task
    is to trouble you
    with tiny
    but frightening requests,
    conceived out of nowhere
    but in this place
    beginning to lead everywhere.
    Requests to stop what
    you are doing right now,
    and
    to stop what you
    are becoming
    while you do it,
    questions
    that can make
    or unmake
    a life,
    questions
    that have patiently
    waited for you,
    questions
    that have no right
    to go away.

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  • frost,  leaves,  Plants,  quotes

    A journey impossible to accomplish alone

    February 15, 2020
    Leaves with frost near campus

    “But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.” David Whyte 

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  • clouds,  fog,  landscape,  quotes,  sunrises

    Simply being alive…

    September 18, 2019

    Morning sunrise and fog along the Poudre River

    “What we have named as anger on the surface is the violent outer response to our own inner powerlessness, a powerlessness connected to such a profound sense of rawness and care that it can find no proper outer body or identity or voice, or way of life to hold it. What we call anger is often simply the unwillingness to live the full measure of our fears or of our not knowing, in the face of our love for a wife, in the depth of our caring for a son, in our wanting the best, in the face of simply being alive and loving those with whom we live.”  David Whyte, Consolations

    Had a friend share how they enjoyed the writings of David Whyte, an English poet. So I bought and read his book Consolations and have enjoyed it. At this time of my life much of what he writes in this book has touched something within me. I read more now but not everything I read resonates with me and I no longer expect that from an author. What I like is when the author makes me think. I can read something and hear an “Aaahh” come out of my mouth then a need to read it again. It may be how they say something rather than what they say. Or, they use a word that sets their thought or idea apart. His writings have done that for me. At this stage/age of my life reading is one of the keys helping me to awaken to simply being alive. 

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