Posts Tagged ‘remembering’
Powerful Thoughts
Remembering things that have long ago faded from view is an art to be cherished. It does many things for us, but most significantly, it keeps alive those who are no longer physically here. Our mental processing happens the same for information arriving through our open eyes as it does for conjured memories. When we think about those who are not with us, it turns out that they actually are.
Arriving yesterday afternoon for a funeral service, Cyndie and I could feel the love and the grief before we saw it on the faces and in the hugs. Love and emotion radiates from the intensity of powerful thoughts.
Last night my dreams were as real as ever and traveled to one of my childhood homes, accompanied by faces and personalities of my present day. This morning the aroma of wood smoke from the warm flames in our fireplace reaches deep into my being and magically mixes the present moment with hundreds of equally pleasant fires of my past.
Most powerful of all, I get to choose where I will direct my thoughts to go. Shall I nurture the angst I feel over disturbing news reports and harrowing unethical prospects of late, or will I focus the power of my imagination on virtually hugging the globe and all its inhabitants in an embrace of love and compassion?
Yesterday, while editing an article Cyndie wrote, I was reminded of how much impact our mental energies have on outcomes. She described her journey of transformation in defiance of a particular diagnosis of permanent disability, choosing to purposefully embrace the power of possibility, in lieu of passively accepting untested limitations.
My mind would be far less able and aware if it wasn’t for Cyndie’s influence. I’m embarrassed for the number of years I dragged my less-enlightened self, kicking and screaming in resistance, behind her bold explorations of potential for better possibilities.
“I dwell in possibility,” she would always tell me.
“Yeah, it’s possible this could all go wrong,” would be my natural reaction.
Proof lies in the pudding, and I’ve seen enough results now to recognize the beauty of her powerful thinking.
I’m going to send my love today to those who just lost a precious relation, while also renewing the lives of members of my own family by fondly remembering them in the same way my mind did when they were here.
An amazing power, thought.
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Four Years
I was reviewing the “Previous Somethings” archive for some posts that I published four years ago and came upon a picture that means so much to me. During our very first visit in 2012 to see this property with our realtor, I was so overwhelmed by the experience that I hardly took any pictures.
This is one of the few I had for remembering what we had seen, to help me describe the place to family and friends. We had walked a short loop of the trails and I dropped behind Cyndie and Patti while dizzily trying to comprehend what I was experiencing. The place was beyond my wildest imaginings for us.
I came to my senses for a moment and remembered my camera. I captured Cyndie and Patti walking in the distance on a mowed path through one of the fields.
They are walking in a spot that today is about where the entrance to the labyrinth garden is, on their left. The tall weeds on the right are now what we call the Back Pasture, surrounded by a fence.
These are some recent shots of how that spot looks now.
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I get a shiver thinking about that first impression and our visions of the possibilities, combined with the realization of all that has come to be in the four years since.
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Ponder This
Time changes everything. Time has a tendency of changing my memories. I’ve been told that each time I remember something, the memory morphs a little bit.
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When I mentally visualize plans for the future, the conjured perceptions in my mind have the same “look” to me as when I am revisiting my memories.
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What if, in the present moment, I imagine a future occasion where I re-experience something I remember from the past?
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March 11th
I had forgotten the significance of March 11, until one of my sisters emailed a note that our sister, Linda, would have turned 64 this year if she were still alive.
I have a precious picture of Linda standing with me at my high school graduation. The event was not a significant achievement in my family, and as such, treated as more of a formality. I was the 5th of 6 kids. By the time I reached the milestone which marks the completion of high school, it had already been done enough times in my family that it was old hat.Looking Back
Last week we reached the milestone of the 3rd anniversary of making Wintervale Ranch our home. Lately, Cyndie and I have found ourselves randomly recollecting some of the early days here and marveling over the variety of things that have since changed.
It feels a little —what is it? Presumptuous? Gratuitous?— somehow inappropriate for me to request, but I urge you to sneak a peek at one or two posts from the Relative Something archive (Previous Somethings) for the month of October 2012. There are too many gems depicting our arrival for me to do justice to them by trying to produce links, or re-posting to bring them forward to current posts this week.
Barely a month after we finally closed on the purchase of this place, we adopted the cats, Pequenita and Mozyr. After about a year, we came to the realization that Mozyr was not happy with his situation, and we returned him to the shelter, but Pequenita has proved to be compatible with the random chaos that arises here from time to time.
In July of 2013 we added 10-month-old Belgian Tervuren Shepherd, Delilah, to our family, purchased from a breeder nearby. From that day on we have tended to find ourselves in a battle between her training us and us training her. It’s fair to say there have been a smattering of victories on both sides.
Just short of 3-months after Delilah joined us, in the last week of September in 2013, our horses arrived. That was a monumental occasion for us, and came after an intense effort over the previous 11-months to be appropriately prepared.
We removed rusted barbed wire, installed new fencing, built up protective cover on barn walls (previous owners had miniature horses), buried a water line to an on-demand waterer in their paddock, and built a hay shed, along with a variety of lesser noteworthy projects.
I knew so very little about horses at that time. They have taught me a lot in the ensuing years, and come to mean the world to me. Just standing among them, passing time, has become one of my favorite things to do.
I have built a wood shed, twice. After it blew down in a storm, our friends Barb and Mike Wilkus came by and helped me to put it up a second time. Any time we weren’t working on something else, we were creating the spectacular 70-foot “Rowcliffe Forest Garden Labyrinth.”
Speaking of storms, we have endured a variety of dramatic winter weather events. Two of them particularly stand out for me.
The first one involved 18-inches of heavy wet snow in early May and snapped a lot of tree branches. Two pine trees that tipped over during that storm eventually died, even though I tried standing them back up and staking them.
The second snow storm blew for days and eventually filled the space between the 4-foot banks on either side of the driveway. It took me two days to dig us out, even with the assistance from both of our closest neighbors. What did I learn from that storm? The neighbor to our south told me he had plowed his driveway twice during the storm, so it never got to the extreme that ours did.
Lesson learned.
An awful lot has changed in the last three years. It is hard for me to imagine what might be different, three years from now, but I expect the changes won’t be near as dramatic as what transpired when we first arrived and worked to establish the infrastructure to support having 4 horses and fulfilling a dream of creating our Wintervale Ranch & Retreat Center.
What fun it is to look back once in a while.
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Remembering Nepal
I am thinking of Nepal and the friends that I met during my visit in 2009. The Sherpas and porters who took care of us during our trek were great people. I have not received any information regarding their situation, but given the severity of the damage caused by the earthquake, and the large area affected, I imagine all survivors are suffering hardship. My heart goes out to them.
I am sending big love to the people of Nepal.
Carol, a member of our group, took this shot during a pause in a tour of some fascinating places in the city of Kathmandu. We saw some incredible history in buildings that I fear would not likely have held up well during such a severe quake.
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Pam captured this great shot of two happy guys from our support crew up in the high country above the town of Lukla in the Khumbu region.
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I enjoyed the luxury of spending extra time with Lhakpa Sherpa after separating from our main group. He shared several personal stories that helped me gain perspective of what life was like for the people living in the areas most influenced by the commerce of guiding tourists on treks. I’m pretty sure it was Gary who took this picture for me with my camera.
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Hoping that gracious relief from suffering comes swiftly for the people in Nepal.
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Fond Remembering
Gary and me
Last night I had dinner with precious friends at Gary Larson’s house about 65 miles west of where I live. It is always so very worth the long drive to be present for these gatherings.
Gary and I were thinking along the same lines when we both marveled about having met each other on one of Jim Klobuchar’s annual June bike trips and soon after, traveled together on the trek in Nepal in 2009.
That trip was one of the reasons I had my long hair put into dreadlocks and it was the catalyst for my starting this blog. I’ve been posting every day ever since.
The dreadlocks, though I miss them in many ways, didn’t last as long.
David Piper took this shot of me overlooking Namche Bazaar
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Flowing
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slowly
flowing
blasting past
every last transformation
the old neighborhood
is gone
our memories
don’t last
buried deep
resurfacing
in a dream
a breath
of hope
lost
in an instant of ‘I’m not from here’
walking away
toward yesterday
the marbles roll
behind the couch
flirting
silently
with old realities
in the fog
of dust and detritus
pressed
precariously
against
unknown reasons
for every
vague
remembrance
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Relative Something 