Words, Music, & Outdoor Adventures

“an hour here or there when our lives seen, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imaged.”

There are no remote places. The center of the world is where you are alive and happy.

I’ve been listening to a Melissa Ethridge CD in my car. When this song came on #10, I remember listening to it over and over on my drive to Colorado. Some times I think it’s a justification for my actions but somehow it soothes my inner turmoil:

Don’t be afraid
Close your eyes
Lay it all down
Don’t you cry
Can’t you see I’m going
Where I can see the sun rise
I’ve been talking to my angel
And he said that it’s alright

I’ve always had to run
I don’t know just why
Desire slowly smoking
Under the midwest sky
There’s something waiting out there
That says I’ve got to try
I’ve been talking to my angel
And he said that it’s alright

This town thinks I’m crazy
They just think I’m strange
Sometimes they want to own me
Sometimes they wish I’d change
But I can feel the thunder
Underneath my feet
I sold my soul for freedom
It’s lonely but it’s sweet

Two Feet of New Snow

Loss and Gain

When I compare
What I have lost with what I have gained,
What I have missed with what attained,
Little room do I find for pride.

I am aware
How many days have been idly spent;
How like an arrow the good intent
Has fallen short or been turned aside.

But who shall dare
To measure loss and gain in this wise?
Defeat may be victory in disguise;
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Went skiing today for the first time at Winter Park. 2 lifts, 2 trails.

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http://blahblahblahwriter.blogspot.com/2007/11/that-novel-youve-been-working-on.html

The way forward is with a broken heart. I thought of this phrase clear out of blue while falling asleep last night. It’s the name of a book by Alice Walker. In the past ten years I’ve left plenty behind: friends, places, family, and jobs. In the back of my mind I knew it wouldn’t be forever; that there was always a chance I’d come back. Nothing is forever. There’s the phrase ‘onward and upward’ that I’ve kept in the back of my mind to justify my actions, but now I don’t think of it that way thanks to Ms. Walker. Now it seems that truly the way forward, in my life, is with a broken heart. Leaving places, friends, and jobs always leaves a twinge of heartbreak; no matter how bad the situation. Six months ago I left Steamboat and was eager move on, to start the next adventure knowing the path would include leaving behind friends and a landscape I really liked. It was sad to leave my first home out west; and the place where I became a triathlete.

Four years ago I left my family behind when I decided to move out west. Leaving the drive way that morning, I’ll never forget the feeling in my heart and the look on my parent’s faces.

I’ve left boyfriends and jobs. Charles, who I loved and brought me Dunkin Donuts Coffee and Donuts on Valentine’s Day morning, Nathan, my soulmate who showed me a different way of life in 1987, a ski industry job where I met so many cool people and a property management job in Steamboat where I learned so much.

We each find our own way to move forward through change and dislocation; and dealing with the ramifications of daily decision making. I think of my blogger tri-friend who lost his wife to cancer. His way forward was competing in triathlon and starting an organization that helps fight cancer.OoOhmOoOhm

My way forward is with a broken heart.

Tracy Kidder said, “To write you have to have stories you want to tell, you have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.”

In November-* by Lisa Mueller

Outside the house the wind is howling
and the trees are creaking horribly.
This is an old story
with its old beginning,
as I lay me down to sleep.
But when I wake up, sunlight
has taken over the room.
You have already made the coffee
and the radio brings us music
from a confident age. In the paper
bad news is set in distant places.
Whatever was bound to happen
in my story did not happen.
But I know there are rules that cannot be broken.
Perhaps a name was changed.
A small mistake. Perhaps
a woman I do not know
is facing the day with the heavy heart
that, by all rights, should have been mine.

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must some how take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

I’m reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I’ve never been able to get very far reading this book. I’ve owned it for over 10 years. But for some reason, unknown at the moment, the first 3 pages brought me into the story. Maybe it’s the changes in my life that brought me to it at this moment.

I live by a creek, Tinker Creek, in a valley in Virginia’s Blue Ridge. I think of this house clamped to the side of Tinker Creek as an anchor-hold. It holds me at anchor to the rock bottom of the creek itself and it keeps me steadied in the current, as a sea anchor does. It’s a good place to live; there’s a lot to think about.You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.

This is how I feel about living here, in my tiny condo on the hill. It’s a good place to live and there’s time to think. The mountains are home, my chosen home. And it is good.

I just heard an interesting collaboration from Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. I really like the sound and lyrics:

Caught out running With just a little too much to hide Maybe baby Everything’s gonna work out fine Please read the letterI pinned it to your door It’s crazy how it all turned out We needed so much more Too late, too late A fool could read the signs Maybe baby You’d better check between the lines

Please read the letter, I wrote it in my sleep With help and consultation from The angels of the deep Once I stood beside a well of many words My house was full of rings and Charms and pretty birds Please understand me, my walls come falling down There’s nothing here that’s left for you But check with lost and found

Please read the letter that I wrote Please read the letter that I wrote One more song just before we go Remember baby All the things We used to know Please read my letter And promise you’ll keep The secrets and the memories and Cherish in the deep

Ah -Please read the letter that I wrote