Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Real Joy
We are up at the lake for our US holiday weekend closest to Independence Day and large numbers of family are in attendance. That makes for special times. Even though the earth is shaking in California and stupid statements fly in Washington, D.C., our attention is localized in the here and now.
Last night the cousins and friends gathered around a table for a rousing game of “Catch Phrase” which blossomed into a classic manifestation of unbridled joy.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It’s as much fun to watch as it is being a contestant.
Today, the seven families of our Wildwood Lodge Club will congregate at the lodge for a flag raising and National Anthem followed by a parade up and down the driveway. Then, the games commence. Fierce competitions of coordination and silliness between teams labeled “bats” and “mice” as we toss balloons, kick shoes, and gobble watermelon.
Next, there will be a massive community feast in the lodge and maybe a few fireworks after dark.
Laughter abounds throughout it all.
Extended family, and friends and neighbors who have always been close as family, sharing time and activities together in the glorious lakeside summer sunshine.
Even though there are harsh realities in the world, moments of our freedom and independence can be celebrated among smaller communities who know how to show love to others and be loved ourselves.
We are very lucky, and I absolutely cherish these times when we get to be at the lake with the people who know us best, experiencing real joy and sharing so much genuine love.
.
.
Starting Early
Cyndie and I left for the lake after I got home from work yesterday. We had no idea that Wednesday night the 3rd of July would be the time when towns would hold their fireworks shows in Wisconsin.
It seemed to me that traffic was flowing fairly well for the night before a holiday that was providing a 4-day weekend for most folks. Maybe the people who were going to be out of town had already left. We only ran into two backups.
The first one was at a roundabout, of all places. The very system that was created to minimize congestion at an intersection was not achieving its potential when we arrived. There was no zipper merging happening because someone in our lane was intent on waiting until no other cars were anywhere in sight before executing their right turn.
The second backup happened as we approached Shell Lake. Several hours before darkness was to arrive, officials had already closed Hwy 63 and were detouring traffic through town to create a safe zone for the fireworks show. We didn’t wait around to see the spectacle. It seemed a day early to us, but maybe it had something to do with the holiday falling on a Thursday.
We stopped for dinner at a local diner/gas station that won our hearts after our first visit there last year. In this case, the second time wasn’t the charm. It seemed so dang impressive the first time we ate there. Last night, our experience was surprisingly underwhelming.
It’s all relative, I tell ya.
Makes me want to try seeing things with the joy and wonder of the first time, regardless of how familiar it may have become. I’ll have a good chance to practice this over the next few days. We are up at Wildwood for the annual 4th of July festivities, including the long tradition of games between the “bats” and “mice” teams.
Water balloon toss; shoe kick; watermelon eating contests; relay racing.
We’ve been through this routine so many times, it is easy for me to become jaded over it. When it was still fresh to me and I was much younger, I was so moved by the experience that I wrote a song about it. The excitement has faded as I have aged.
This year I have a new goal to look at the weekend with the wonder I felt the first few times I came up here and to send a lot of love to all who show up to participate. What’s the worst that could happen? I might have as much fun as the year I wrote that song.
Go, team, go!
Happy US Independence Day everyone!
.
.
Epic Ride
It started out nice enough at six in the morning yesterday. Five riders rolling through Paul’s Linden Hills neighborhood, fresh and ready for the symbolic 60-mile bike ride from Paul’s house to mine. None of us had asked for a day with a heat index at or above 100°F.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
But that’s what we got. I’ll just say this: it was the kind of heat that saps your energy while you are just sitting there, let alone intensely exercising. I’m not going to mention the error in judgment I made in the last miles near home when I said to go right when we were supposed to turn left.
I blame it on oxygen deprivation. I plead insanity.
On the good side, it was brand new pavement that rolled smooth as silk.
We paused in Prescott, WI for refreshments and the ice cooler turned out to be a treasured perch.
At one point, Paul stepped out of the Holiday Station store and gushed, “Have you been in the beer cave?”
Three of us hustled in to check it out. Oh. My. Gosh. There was a temperature drop of about sixty degrees. I thought, “This can’t be good for me,” but it sure was refreshing. We walked around the stacks of bottles and cans for a while and dropped our body temperature a shocking amount.
As I stepped out of the cooler, I asked the attendant, “What do we owe you for ten minutes in the cooler?” She just gave us an odd look and shrugged us off.
We finally arrived at Wintervale in the waning moments before almost 100 guests were expected to start arriving. I’d share pictures with you here, but I didn’t take any. In fact, even though I don’t drink any alcohol, most of the afternoon and evening is pretty much a blur. Hours passed like minutes, I barely had a chance to complete a thought in conversation, and I had a wonderful time basking in the glow of love bestowed upon me as one of the birthday boys.
Thank you to all who showered us with love yesterday. I’m feeling particularly blessed and looking forward to laying low today in recovery from riding for hours in humid heat and finishing the day with a massive dose of social interaction.
I’m almost feeling my age this morning.
.
.
Intangible
.
and then I remembered
something that matters
to no-one but me
the kind of thought
that never gets said
about one thing or another
only existing
inside my head
it’s a wonder that ‘never’
lasts so incredibly long
and ‘ever’ is expandably intangible
like a part of some song
floating in our brains
for curious moments
its the place where I think
about how I truly felt
outside of myself in love
with a sensation I sensed
of good things in life
like certain precious people
and fresh breezes
in trees
.
.
.
Celebrations Begin
I think I’ve mentioned before that birthday dinners are a staple tradition in Cyndie’s family, and we doubled up yesterday, dining out twice. Barry and Carlos were sweet to travel all the way from Boston to help celebrate my big 6-0 milestone, and Cyndie brought them directly from the airport to take me out to lunch.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Salmon salad! One of my favorites that won out over fish and chips.
For dinner, the whole crew, minus nieces and nephews, met downtown in Minneapolis on the rooftop of UNION Bar & Grill. As the sun dropped below an adjacent building, they rolled back the glass roof so we were able to dine under the evening sky.
Festive!
Thank you to Barry, Cyndie, Steve, and Sara for contributing photos!
.
.
Still Ely
Having a day off in the middle of our week of riding is a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, it wreaks havoc on the organization system I had established for keeping track of things in my duffel bag.
Yesterday was a chance to sleep in, pick our own restaurants for meals, and shop Ely.
After an early hike to get coffee with Laura, which scored me a chai, a larger gang formed for breakfast at Insula restaurant.
Breakfast salad was my choice and I was not disappointed. Poached eggs and smoked salmon! Mmm. It was delicious and just what I wanted.
Look at that morsel of blue sky!
We shopped the main drag and I got to visit my two favorite outdoor gear retailers: Wintergreen and Steger Mukluks.
One of our riders from California, Bob Murin, paints watercolors and I came upon him mid-picture.
In the afternoon, we visited the International Wolf Center and were lucky to spot the four males that made an appearance right before we left, three of whom are visible sprawled out in the image I captured.
It was all good, but paled in comparison to the social-hour surprise we got in the park where we tented.
An Ely cake baker, Susan Laine, showed up with a treat she baked to welcome us!
That is love, I tell ya.
Little Love
So, yesterday’s lesson was that hens might lay a “Fairy Egg” that has no yolk and is a fraction of the usual size. I had no idea. Funny how easily we jump to our own conclusions on what a situation might be, while being entirely off base.
I was also convinced that our property had been walloped by damaging wind and flooding rain Tuesday night, but that wasn’t the case at all. Apparently, my intuition is a little out of calibration.
That doesn’t surprise me. There are many disparate issues rattling around in my wee little brain of late, and I’ve not stopped to clear thoughts and ground energies in quite a while. If I can improve my sleep schedule and achieve a better feeling about several challenges taxing my peace of mind, I could focus better on preparations for a week of vacation in the great outdoors. That will do me some good.
Then I just need the government to start functioning in a productive way, the climate to reverse this race toward disaster, the human race to get over its ugly in-fighting, and love to fill the world. Wouldn’t that be nice?
What if we actually learned from mistakes and never repeated them?
What if people purposely took action to invert a pyramid of increasing mental and physical ills and converted it to a pyramid of increasing health and wellness?
What if governments and societies never allowed interference from financial entities (corporations or individuals) that seek to influence solely for their own gain at the expense of any others?
Fifty years ago this month, Jackie DeShannon sang it.
Put a little love in your heart
And the world will be a better place
And the world will be a better place
For you and me
You just wait and see
Send some love out into the world today. And while you are at it, put a little in your own heart, too.
.
.
Look Again
Reposting a poem from March 2014 that I titled, “Look.”
.
is it true
or do we assume
truth happens
only when
we need to hear it
the rest
is illusory
allegory
a vague story
told as a tale
tall
beneath urges
longings
daylight dreams
happening in real time
filled with love
laughter
and a feeling
that lingers just out of frame
begging to be viewed
but invisible
if you look
directly
into its eyes
.
.
.
Hippocampal Neurogenesis
Secret weapons. I have two of them. One is love. Okay, that one’s not so secret. The other one is my new favorite phrase: hippocampal neurogenesis. Isn’t that just the best? It’s fun to say and it describes the mental health benefits available from exercising.
You can read about the details in this March 2018 Psychology Today article, “How Your Mental Health Reaps the Benefits of Exercise,” by Sarah Gingell, Ph.D.
I just discovered a link to the article earlier this week, and the marvel of new growth of neurons in the hippocampus has me giddy over this hidden benefit of exercising. In particular, the insights of these three paragraphs:
Evidence is accumulating that many mental health conditions are associated with reduced neurogenesis in the hippocampus. The evidence is particularly strong for depression. Interestingly, many anti-depressants — that were once thought to work through their effects on the serotonin system — are now known to increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus.
What does this all mean? Theories suggest that newborn hippocampal neurons are likely to be particularly important for storing new memories and keeping old and new memories separate and distinct. Thus, neurogenesis allows a healthy level of flexibility in the use of existing memories, and in the flexible processing of new information.
Much mental ill health is characterized by a cognitive inflexibility that keeps us repeating unhelpful behaviors, restricts our ability to process or even acknowledge new information, and reduces our ability to use what we already know to see new solutions or to change. It is therefore plausible that exercise leads to better mental health in general, through its effects on systems that increase the capacity for mental flexibility.
Exercise increases blood flow to our brains, bringing oxygen and nutrients to create new neurons in the hippocampus. As a result, we are rewarded with increased ability to process new information, and deal with change because of increased mental flexibility.
That means a lot to me because I can look back at some of the struggles I dealt with under the weight of depression and vividly recognize a particular inflexibility of my thinking, as well as an aversion to the stresses of change.
Today, I am all about hippocampal neurogenesis. You might say, it’s my healthy drug of choice.
.
.
Visiting Horses
Yesterday we made the drive west to reconnect with our horses in their new (old) location. For me, it was my first opportunity to see them since the day they were relocated. It was wonderful, …and a little heartbreaking.
I was beginning to adjust to the void left by their absence. It was a treat to hold them again and breath in their smell, but it also touched a sensitive nerve.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Dezirea looked great. When we arrived at the far side of the big pasture, we weren’t sure how the groups of horses had been arranged. It was the middle of the day and the horses were looking ready for a nap in the sun. There was a group of seven horses in the big field, most of them far enough away that we couldn’t make a positive identification.
After we started approaching the closest group, two geldings made a point of coming to greet us. In an instant, we made new friends. Slowly, others wandered near, but without crowding us uncomfortably. Meanwhile, one horse stayed against the far fence, focused on horses in the paddocks below.
None of the six that had come toward us were ours, so my attention was on that last horse. We kept walking. Eventually, we spotted that freshly trimmed tail. It had to be Dezirea, but, surprisingly, she didn’t turn around to show us her face until we had gotten very close.
Once she did, it was an emotional rush to see her reaction of recognition.
After spending some time with her and her posse of geldings, we headed off to check on Cayenne and Hunter. I think they are who she was fixated on as she stood against the far fence. The younger two horses had been moved down to a paddock by the barn.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hunter approached us right away, but soon decided he was more interested in some hay on the far side of the paddock. We soaked up as much of Cayenne as possible in the time we had.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Finally, we headed across to pal around with Hunter. He was very much his old self, showing us the yummy hay was just as valuable as our surprise visit.
It was really great to see the three of them again, despite the renewed pangs of loss we feel over their absence from our place. I’m glad they had this chance to know we are still connected to them, even though won’t see each other every day.
I very much appreciate their ability to live in the moment. They accepted our time together without concern for the past or the future. It made for a very precious visit.
.
.
Relative Something 