Vision Quest

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.

Henry David Thoreau
US Transcendentalist author (1817 – 1862)

Imagine your life as you wish it would be. What would you see? Where would you live, who would be with you, how would you spend your time? Do you have a vision for your life, or do you live one day at a time? Does it make a difference which way you proceed?

The vision for our lives is always evolving. What we wanted 5 or 10 years ago is much different than that which we seek today. Today we seek simplicity, not complexity; authenticity, not status; and meaning, not money. Well, maybe meaning and money, rather than not.

Napoleon Hill wrote that you were not given dreams and desires without the capabilities to fulfill them; so the mere presence of those dreams means they are truly possible for us.

One time each year where we go off and spend a weekend talking about what we want in our lives. We call it “Let’s Pretend Day” and it is a powerful animating and celebratory event in our partnership. We review what is good, what is not, and modify the vision for our future.

I wish that we had kept an entirely separate journal of just those weekends. We are coming up on our 20th Let’s Pretend Day.

Maybe I will begin that journal this year.

Back On Whidbey

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
US poet (1874 – 1963)

We have been back on Whidbey Island since October 2007, and my voice has been quiet since then. Why silence? I am not totally sure, but likely a cocktail of emotions and circumstances.

My new job and our house remodel project both demand time and attention; the job during the week and the remodel on weekends. These two things have tapped my time, attention and energy, leaving relatively little time to think and feel.

But feel I do, feel I must. My feelings are still there, and the words will resume soon. I have promised myself that.

I have miles yet to go before I sleep.

The Book of Changes

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”…Nelson Mandela

We are approaching seven months since we moved back to the San Juans.

For those of you who may read this, and do not know our story, we lived in the San Juans for ten years, left for seven years and just returned this past Feb. Those intervening seven years were spent mostly on South Whidbey Island where we had a beautiful home, a few very close friends, a wide circle of aquaintances, a thriving real estate business, and were involved in our island community.

So why did we leave? Why would we surrender that life?

We left for love. We love living in the San Juans, it is a place of striking beauty, with tender moments of isolation and quiet. It is also the place of the beginning of our marriage, and it holds many of our most wonderful, and a few of our saddest memories. It is a place that touches us in a way we do not fully understand; only feel.

We visited the San Juans a number of times over the past years, and each time, it was more difficult to leave. Each time we felt a sadness upon returning home to Whidbey followed by a few leaden days before we re-entered the atmosphere of our daily life.

And yet, we find we must now go. This is our place no longer. For these San Juan Islands are our furnace, the one that melted us down those many years ago. We remember now the heat, the flame, and this time we choose to not be melted. This time we choose to remain who we are, and not be transformed. We know the moth is destroyed by the flame; while the steel is made hard. Like the moth we have been drawn to this flame – like the steel we are hardened now and resist. So this time, we do not surrender, and we cannot stay. There is no flame without heat. The beauty remains, but we cannot hold to it, it is not enough.

And so we go, as we must. We are no longer of it unless we surrender our steel, and this we shall not do. We are not glad about this, but we are not sad about it either. We just are, with it.

We have changed in an unchanging landscape.

History On Other Side

“Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.”….Dwight D. Eisenhower

I found this sign on the roadside outside of Helper, UT. It made me laugh and I had to turn around to read it. Little did I know then, that what I would be seeing the rest of the day was the real version of “History on Other Side.” My destination was Nine Mile Canyon (a misnomer, it is really about 40 miles long) well known for its many Indian petroglyphs and pictographs. Nine Mile Canyon was home to the Fremont peoples from about 900 – 1300 AD, and then European settlers from about the mid 1800’s.

For me, this story begins when I was 7 years old, driving across country with my parents for the first time. The combination of no freeways (this was 1954) and being 7 made this a very, very long trip. When we reached the desert Southwest, the landscape outside the car window was like a fantasy land, something I had never seen or really even imagined. Hard to believe, but this was also before television, and I had no images of the West in my head. This was my first experience with the impressive land forms of the SW and I was awestruck. For two days, I sketched and drew what sped by the car window. We never got close, and that landscape of mesas, painted rock and stunted plants, remained at a distance, but I never forget the beauty or the awe.

In the course of my adult life, I have been across the desert SW many times. But it has always been a repeat of my childhood experience. Always at a distance, always viewed in passing and though the barrier of a car window. This trip today would be my chance to come face to face, not just with the landscape, but also with the art of the ancient people of this land, and through that, their lives. At least that is what I hoped for. And I was not disappointed.

Nebo Loop

Me and the Mo Man took another drive today (Saturday). We headed south to the town of Payson, UT and then east into the Unita National Forest and the Nebo Loop Scenic Byway.

From Wikipedia: “Mount Nebo is the southernmost and highest mountain in the Wasatch Range of Utah, in the United States. Named after the biblical Mount Nebo overlooking Israel, which is said to be the place of Moses‘ death, it is the centerpiece of the Mount Nebo Wilderness, inside the Uinta National Forest. Mount Nebo is crowned by three peaks, with the northern peak reaching 11,928 ft (3,636 m).”

Persian Film Festival

“Use your enemy’s hand to catch a snake. “….Persian Proverb

There were no snakes in the movie, Baran, and there were really no enemies either. For the four weeks of August, the public library in this little town of Orem, UT is conducting an Iranian Film Festival. Could have pushed me over with a slight breeze when I first heard about it.

Honestly, I have been very surprised by the nature of this Mormon community. The people are social conservatives, in the context of American culture; but they are also internationalists. In my experience that is an oxymoron; social conservatives tend not to be internationally inclined.

Backyard Escape

“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”…..John Muir

 

 

The old pioneer towns of northern and central Utah are tucked up tightly against the western flank of the Wasatch Range, where they linger in the cool shade of the morning. The mountains are dramatically present and provide a natural compass as you wander about. Deep canyons cut into the range, and they feel like an alluring escape; like being able to step into the wilderness by simply walking out your back door.

Tired and weary after the two days of driving and first day on the job, I wandered out into that backyard yesterday for the first time. Within 5 minutes from the hotel, I found myself on a winding canyon road with sheer rock walls on both sides. The lack of vegetation is the first thing a Northwesterner notices. The mountains look naked and raw, as if they had been created yesterday.

Desert Swimming

“Nobody trips over mountains.”…Unknown

When you live in the San Juans, trips to the mainland are referred to as “Going To America”. Usually they are brief trips for us, but not this time.

I have just started a three week visit to Orem, UT courtesy of a new job. This will be my first time visiting Utah, other than a few drive thru’s in past years, and I am looking forward to exploring this beautiful area in my spare time. I drove my FJ Cruiser (aka Mo) here so I will be able to do a little off road exploring.

If along the way there is a little sandstorm or two, well we will just be swimming in the desert, won’t we.

Orca Singing

“A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.” … Chinese Proverb

Linda’s mom and aunt visited us in late June, and we had a wonderful time showing them around the island. It had been quite a few years since either of them had been in the San Juans. Linda’s mom used to come and work with us each summer when we owned Deer Harbor Resort and Marina, and we all have really fond memories of our time together here in the islands.

One evening we had the opportunity to go to Lime Kiln Point State Park to watch a beautiful sunset and to hear the City Cantabile Choir who perform at the park each year around the summer solstice. They may be the only group who sings to an audience that may not attend because they sing to the orca whales. Unfortunately this year the “audience” didn’t show, but we humans all enjoyed the performance anyway. The evening closed with all of us singing Amazing Grace, and even though we did not see orca whales that night, I could not help but feel how grateful and graced I am to be able to live in this incredible place.

Here is an example of orca whale vocalizations – these are calls and whistles used by orcas when communicating between family members. This is a link to a really incredible webpage with more information and examples of different types of whale songs.

The orcas too have a song to sing. I hope we are listening to them.

Spiderwebs

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars… Jack Kerouac

Whidbey and I were headed for an early morning walk a few days ago, up to the top of Mt. Finlayson, about a one hour loop walk. Linda had to leave for Seattle on the 8 am boat, so there was no conversation that morning, just walking. We three take this walk about 3 maybe 4 times a week, and it is one of Whidbey’s favorites.

She likes the wide pathway, lined with grass full of bugs, the occasional deer or fox to get really excited over, but mostly she practices her kangaroo hops into the grass chasing bugs and mice. It was a beautiful start to the day – warm, calm, blue skies, a perfect summer day lay sweetly before us. We had been having an unusual wet spell and this was the first really nice day in a while. It made us feel good.There was dew on the grass, courtesy of the week’s rain, and the sun was just peeking up over the trees to the Eastern slope ahead when I suddenly noticed that the field was full of small spider webs, visible from the dew and the sunlight. They looked like a patchwork quilt of shiny silk, and they covered the fields before us. My first thought was, wow, those little spiders sure were busy last night, and then I realized how ignorant that was. The spiders didn’t weave all of those webs last night, they are there all the time, we just don’t see them. It took just the right combination of sunlight, moisture, and time of day for them to be visible to me.

I love these little “ahas”. They are a delightful metaphor for the things we don’t know of because of our narrow perspective or limited field of experience. We go through our normal day, without any thought to the wonders of the world we live in, it’s small miracles and little beauties. And then the stars explode, and it is all right before you. There all the time, you just didn’t see it. Thank you little spiders; thank you for the gift of surprise and delight. Hope to see you tomorrow morning.