Archive for February 2015
Rinse, Repeat
February is beginning to feel like a lot of the same thing over and over again for me. It’s all good, so I don’t want to complain, but I’m finding myself increasingly thinking that a little more variety in the weather would be nice. I need to be careful what I wish for, or I could end up facing the kind of epic weather that Boston has been enduring.
To keep things interesting, I have taken to purposefully trying to widen the trails Delilah and I walk everyday, by tromping down the edges on each side so it becomes about 3-times wider than just a single person walking footpath. Most places that is pretty simple to do, but out in the open the trail keeps getting obliterated by drifting snow. It’s like starting over each time when I run into drifts, and it packs down on top of the previous path, so the trail gets higher and higher instead of deeper. If you step too close to the edge, it becomes a dramatic drop through all the unpacked snow to a level much below the packed trail.
Delilah doesn’t like to walk in the drifts, so when we come to them she will move over to a nearby ridge and trot along easily as I bullheadedly try to forge my way straight through the deepest part. I’m sure we make quite a sight.
The later sunsets are becoming very noticeable now and even though it is still very cold, the added light seems to be enticing the animals toward shedding already. Information about Delilah’s breed, Belgian Tervuren Shepherd, suggests she should be brushed weekly, which I don’t come close to achieving. We prefer brushing her outdoors because it creates a blizzard of dog hair, but it isn’t much fun in the extreme cold.
I tried to do just a small bit inside, grabbing hair off the brush at every stroke, but soon the air flowing through our heat vents was carrying stray hairs aloft in spectacular numbers. One of those comical disasters.
Can you see Legacy’s breath in the cold air?
Unlike this picture, the horses are currently wearing their blankets. I think Legacy’s blanket is really bugging him. I keep spotting him trying to scratch his itches and he hooks the blanket on everything possible, making it look like he is trying to rip it off. He rarely tolerates me putting hands on him, but the other day he leaned hard into my hand as I scratched his neck and chin for him. There was plenty of hair floating loose, so I think the horses are on the verge of changing their coats.
Other than issues of shedding, our routine is on repeat from the day before, and the week before that. Walk the dog, feed the horses, clean up after the horses.
Not that I’m complaining, mind you.
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Soul Collages
On Saturday, our friend Julie came over, despite the frigid outdoor temperatures. We were able to go for a short walk and then visited the horses twice, but the majority of time was spent indoors. Spontaneous inspired conversation blossomed and we soon found ourselves watching a prized “TED talk” video of Brené Brown giving her Power of Vulnerability speech. If you have never watched/listened to this talk, I hope you will find a way to claim 20 minutes and click the link. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
“The other thing that they had in common was this: They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerable made them beautiful. They didn’t talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they really talk about it being excruciating — as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say, “I love you” first…”
Later, Cyndie was thrilled for the opportunity to go into the basement and pull out her extensive collection of crafting resources in order for us to make individual soul collages. We were in a mode of being mindful and in the moment, and this was an exercise in creating a collage that captures and reflects messages both from and for our soul.
Delilah was so thrilled with Julie’s presence, she made every effort to be near her. You can see in this image that she had laid down to nap, making sure to hold a paw in contact with the tray Julie was using.
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We shared a couple meals of great food and strengthened our bonds of precious positive energy and inspirations. In what felt like just a blink of an eye, evening arrived and our day with Julie was over.
Now, two days later, what is lingering with me from the day is having been able to again re-watch Brené Brown’s message. There is a good portion of it that resonates with the depressive tendencies in me.
It’s too good not to include an additional excerpt, but please, if you at all can, do watch her give this talk. She describes her research with wonderful humor and the insights she uncovers are valuable and revealing.
“We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is we numb vulnerability. …you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can’t say, here’s the bad stuff. Here’s vulnerability, here’s grief, here’s shame, here’s fear, here’s disappointment. I don’t want to feel these… You can’t numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable…”
Here’s to embracing our vulnerability, and to sending love into the world with our whole hearts, despite a lack of any guarantees.
Thanks, Julie, for blessing us with your presence for the day! We love you!
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Line Up
Some days I come inside from a walk that involved picture-taking and discover I unintentionally captured something of a theme. Like, lines…
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So Windy
Not today, please. It’s too cold. All night long the wind has been making its presence known with gusts that cause our log home to creak.
With a little sunshine and calm air, the bitter cold of arctic high pressure systems is tolerable this time of year. Sure, we would prefer to bask in the warmth of mild waning winter days, but we are still in cold-mode around here, and it is February, after all. We can do extreme cold.
But the wind, that is another thing. It literally puts the bite in biting cold. Today, that bites.
We have company coming to soak up the vibes of Wintervale Ranch, be with our horses, maybe do a chore or two, and definitely play with Delilah. I’m afraid the wind may just push the activities indoors where we will sit by the fire or work in the kitchen on something that involves baking in a warm oven.
Since taking ownership of a property that involves multiple acres of wooded land, I have gained a new awareness of how significantly the blowing wind impacts trees in a forest. I feel an increased trepidation about the well-being of our trails and fences.
Not a day goes by that I don’t find evidence of new pieces of trees laying in the snow. Usually, they are small, probably snapped off by the activity of an aggressive squirrel. After a windy day, the size of branches finding their way to the ground increases dramatically.
There is no mystery as to the phrase “winds of change.” Our woods are changing constantly from the gusts of moving air. That is a new perspective for me. The growth of trees happens slow enough that we often don’t even notice. I tended to see forested land as protected space, preserved from development.
On the contrary, the woods are probably developing more than the grassy fields around them.
Even the dead and dying trees have a little life left in them. Outside our sunroom door on the side of our house that I refer to as the front, there is a tree that is folded over in two, after the upper half snapped in a fateful wind. In even the slightest breeze, that tree wails and moans from the wound. It makes a wide variety of eery sounds, especially at night.
The ability of wind to change the trees of a forest causes me to feel increased marvel over the majesty of the oldest and most grand of our trees. For a hundred years or more, these trees have braved countless gusts.
It occurred to me recently that in the years of life I have remaining, I will not see any new trees on our property achieve the grandeur and majesty of a hundred-year-old tree. What we have now is all I get. It makes them all the more precious.
It also makes the gusting wind all the more ominous.
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Who Cares?
Life is pretty great when it involves staying home everyday and taking care of our animals, but there is no denying a sense of isolation that shows up on occasion. My world is horses, a dog, and occasionally a cat. Currently it is also snow and snow plowing, wood splitting, and walking our snow-packed trails. It is pretty idyllic.
I scan news headlines and feel far removed from everything I see. Issues like the struggles in Syria and Ukraine, Islamic State terrorists, Boko Haram mass kidnappings, epic snow storms in and around Boston, measles outbreaks, and million dollar lottery jackpots. If any ripples from the daily top news events are making it to the middle of our country onto our precious property, they are so dampened that I cannot detect them.
I live in the luxury of not needing to notice. At the same time, I can’t help being influenced by struggles in other places. Closer to home, there are ongoing difficulties that family and friends face which have some measure of influence on my psyche. That is something that I can more tangibly grasp and contribute my thoughts of love toward.
Most difficult for me is when the person I am closest to is heavily burdened by the ongoing challenges of her professional responsibilities. I think that is my Kryptonite.
One of my defense mechanisms for dealing with all the world’s ills is to not care. It seems like a poor choice of reaction, but it is a superficial method of saving myself. Deep down, I really do care, and am moved by the suffering of fellow human beings. What I mean by superficially not caring is that I move past the tough news without dwelling too long on any one issue.
When I have the strength to do battle for people or causes, I become active in those with which I am connected and which are within my reach to help. As a person living with depressive tendencies, I need to pay attention to maintain a healthy balance in my “reason to live” file. Feeling like you can do nothing to help others in this world is a dangerous mindset to allow. Even if my only contribution ends up being that I send love out into the world, that is significant for me. It reflects that I am healthy enough to make that choice.
A depressed person generally wouldn’t be so inclined.
Who cares? I do. Really, I do. Even if I pretend that I don’t.
I’m sending love.
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Never Question
Well, we have another classic canine carnivore story for Delilah’s scrapbook. I don’t know why I ever question her nose. Over and over again she has keyed on something when I see absolutely no evidence to support her suddenly manic focus. My tendency to doubt her level of excitement comes from the endless number of times she has torn up a good part of our grass in her quest for a mole or pocket gopher, and come up with nothing but a dirty nose and messy yard.
However, each time she surprises me with an unexpected success, I am led to believe the likelihood of a critter having been mere centimeters away from her bite all the other times is probably high.
Monday, it was her tenacity that had me fascinated enough to give her all the time she wanted as I stood patiently and observed. We were almost back to the house after a long walk around the property when she inexplicably diverted off the trail through some trees. There were no tracks in the snow and her nose wasn’t to the ground, so I couldn’t tell why she was straying course.
There was a portion of a tree trunk coming out of the ground at an angle that had been cut off about 5 feet up. The amount of bark that was sloughing off indicated there wasn’t much life to it. Wait a minute, that’s the wrong way to describe it, because according to Delilah, there was definitely some life there.
She got increasingly worked up over her find and searched for some access to the prize her nose indicated was inside. She started peeling the bark off, getting a flap in her teeth and ripping it loose, then spitting it out emphatically before going back for another piece.
There were two knot holes where branches had once been that she could stick her nose in while balancing on her hind legs. Doing so just fueled her zest for this conquest. There was definitely something in there.
I walked over to get a closer look. Sure enough, when Delilah put her nose in one hole, I spotted the face of a mouse as it peeked out of the other hole. I think it saw me and decided to retreat in hopes of riding out the attack.
Had Delilah seriously smelled this mouse from over on the trail? I can see why this breed is often used in police work for bomb or drug sniffing. Something kept her fixated on harassing that tree until the rodent had no other choice but to bail and make a run for it.
There was a frantic scramble as both creatures dashed, turned, leaped, and ran, but Delilah got her prize in the end after the mouse made an oddly fatal decision to loop back and head directly toward Delilah’s menacing jaws.
Yesterday, I gave her a chance to return to the scene, curious as to whether she would show the same interest. Nope. Not this time. I guess that tells me there were no more mice in there. I’m sure her nose would have brought on a much different response if it had been otherwise.
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February Shadows
We have been enjoying a pretty meek winter this year. Today the forecast is for some new snow, but yesterday the sun was shining and I brought the camera on a walk with Delilah. She was kind enough to stop every so often to allow me the chance of capturing some images of February shadows.
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Relative Something 