Remembering Harmony Falls
Because children grow up, we think a child’s purpose is to grow up. But a child’s purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn’t disdain what only lives for a day. It pours the whole of itself into each moment. . .Life’s bounty is in its flow. Later is too late. Alexander Herzen I have…
Remembering Simple
As my regular readers well know I made the decision to stop backpacking about a year ago, my aching back complaining loudly each time I hoisted my ultra-lite pack. I feared doing more damage to my crumbling spine. Ultra-lite, as it turned out, was not lite enough for this aging woman. I knew though that…
Bighorn Memories
How many people who will die today even know that it is the last day of their lives? Joan Halifax I moved to my new Wyoming home in early September many years ago. It was a beautiful warm day, the sun shining but not too hot. I had of course been reading and studying maps…
More about Memories
What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it. Antoine de Saint-Exupery in Wind, Sand, and Stars The memories I described in my last post apparently resonated with readers, for I received many gratifying comments, including this one from my…
Duckabush Memories
Whenever I hike a trail that is familiar to me after many years of returning, I am of course flooded with memories of past trips. Recently I revisited the Duckabush River Trail, which I first hiked in 1971, the year before I graduated from college. My friend Patty and I had planned to hike a…
Finding Strong
A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness. Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickeled and Dimed Recently I purchased a home on the Olympic Peninsula, a place that is familiar to me and has felt very much like coming home. I wanted to be closer to my family, to…
In Praise of Pink
The photo of the beautiful rhododendron you see above was taken on one of my last backpacking trips two years ago. I love hiking the river valleys of the Olympics in June when the woodland flowers are in bloom. They bring light that filters through the forest canopy after a long gray winter in western…
Swinging in the Lane
And like Billy Bray I go my way, in and out of Shadow Creek, dancing, in a daze, to the twin silver trumpets of praise. Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek In my early twenties when I first started backpacking alone I got into the habit of tucking my thumbs underneath the shoulder straps…
Rising Above
Recently I departed on a flight from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Flying out of Seattle, I always expect low clouds, a brief experience of turbulence as we pass through them, and then. . .suddenly. . .blue sky and mountain peaks rising above the clouds. It never fails to amaze me, this experience of rising above, and…
Thursday We Hike
When I moved to my rural home in northeastern Washington several years ago I learned that there was a women’s hiking group that met on Thursdays and explored the many trails nearby, often getting together after the hike to share a beer at a local pub. The group intrigued me, but it took me a…
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