Archives for category: Oregon Trails
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It’s Not Jam

September 12, 2025 //
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Hate is contagious and corrosive. It can become lethal. Hate can influence the thinking of entire groups of people. Hate can make one individual do terrible things. Hate can drive people to murder.

… What does it mean when someone perceived as hateful, or who espouses hateful ideas, is themselves the victim of hate?…

I’m as human as anyone. There are ideas and people I find pretty horrible and hateful, myself. It’s most often not a personal sort of emotional experience, it’s more abstract than that. I’m not sure I’ve ever truly “hated” anyone in a direct and personal way. I have actively disliked people enough to avoid them. I have even loathed an individual to the point that I had nothing good to say about them, if asked. Hate, though? That seems a bigger deal, a deeper emotional investment that implies a commitment to infusing the awareness of the individual with persistent steady negative emotion – enough, perhaps, to be a weapon itself. I’d really have to care about someone, in some sense, in order to hate them, I think. What do I know, though? I avoid engaging in hate as an experience. There is reliably always too much I don’t know that could change my opinion.

Don’t shoot people because you’re angry. Don’t shoot people over ideology either. That kind of hateful shit is terrible for the perpetrator, in it’s own fashion, and it’s likely to have regrettable consequences. It’s terrible for the world. Violence is toxic and terrible and the “solutions” it provides aren’t the sort with real value. (Have you seen the images of Gaza and Ukraine since the most recent conflicts began in those places?) I don’t suppose, if you’re reading this blog, that you need that sort of cautionary reminder; you’re likely on a different path.

So… Charlie Kirk is dead, I hear. I can’t say his death moves me personally at all. He represented no good qualities or ideas to me. I did not know him personally, and was only aware of him in the most indirect way, as some favored conservative talking head notable enough to be mocked on South Park. (South Park is hilarious, and definitely knows how to tap the zeitgeist, and my opinion hasn’t changed.) I don’t have any personal feeling of loss over Charlie Kirk’s death. The hateful ideas of our conservative administration get people killed and wrecks lives every day…why would this one guy, famed for saying hateful things, getting shot be at all noteworthy?

I think killing people is wrong. It’s vile and wasteful and morally repugnant. Humanity could do better. That doesn’t change because someone I find unlikeable gets killed. It’s still wrong. I just don’t plan to spend more time thinking or talking about this particular death. Aren’t the innocent lives lost to school shootings, domestic violence, and police brutality more worthy of conversation? Isn’t genocide more important to address than the death of one voice espousing hate? And femicide? Infant mortality due to disease? I guess I’m just saying that this one particular shooting death carries no significance for me. It’s unfortunate people are still so primitive and barbaric that they seek to solve problems through violence. That’s the problem worth solving. We could definitely do better.

Don’t spread your hate around (or anyone else’s) – it’s not fucking jam.

I pull myself back to this gray moment, here, now.

I sigh to myself looking at the gray sky. Daybreak came on the trail and I am sitting with my thoughts before the work day begins. I’m tired and I slept badly. The alarm woke me, and I thought it was a mistake, at first. My eyes still feel gritty and dry. My head aches. I’m feeling cross with myself and with the world. I definitely need more rest than I got. I’m grateful the weekend is ahead and that the week has gone well… but… g’damn I’m just so fucking tired. I’ve got shit to do, and all I really want is to go back to sleep.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I yawn and rub my eyes. I don’t feel groggy – that’s something good. Too much to do to have to deal with grogginess or brain fog, too, and I’m grateful. Slowly I pull my focus back to the things that matter most (to me, right now) and let the rest go. I’m grateful that I remember telling my beloved Traveling Partner I’d run to the store before work, and glance at the clock. Already time to begin again…

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, grief, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War

Thinking About Words

September 10, 2025 //
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I walked the first “half” of the trail thinking thoughts about words. I started with the word “open”, and thoughts about open doors, open minds, and open questions. I finished as I reached my “halfway point”, which isn’t typically actually halfway – it’s more to do with a convenient stopping point, or a particular view. I still call it halfway, which is sloppy and inaccurate. These thoughts are inconsequential noodling as I walk, neither amounting to worthwhile thinking, nor meditation. Just chaos and noise in my head, really, and it’s been quite difficult lately to quiet the noise.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and hope that meditation may provide some calm to the inner chaos. I turn off my headlamp. It was necessary when I started down the trail, it is less necessary now. Daybreak is here, and the sky has begun to lighten, revealing a cloudy sky.

My mind wanders. I pull it back to this quiet moment and my breath. My tinnitus is loud in my ears. The air conditioning of some nearby building is almost loud enough to drown out my tinnitus, even at this distance. I pull my attention back to my breathing, which I hear as somewhat louder than either my tinnitus or the building AC. It’s relative and a bit peculiar that these three things seem so nearly the same loudness…they definitely are not, at all. I’m momentarily distracted by that thought, and gently let it go and refocus my attention on the moment, and my breath.

This morning meditation is hard. It’s been like that for days now, and getting worse. I struggle to calm my mind. Even my sleep is more than typically disturbed by strangely “busy” dreams. I wake not feeling rested. I work feeling constantly on the edge of being completely overwhelmed. I get home feeling sound sensitive and unable to “hear myself think”, but thinking isn’t even the goal, at that point – I just want to find rest.

I’m scrambling to consume as much information as I can as quickly as possible in my new job, and I’m doing so in the context of a ticking clock in the background (a 30-day trial period is a standard practice at this company). It’s working on my mind a bit, I guess. I sigh and look out into the dawn sky. Cloudy. Looks like rain. My head aches ferociously. My arthritis is giving me grief, too. I feel a bit “tense and weird” and wonder whether I just need a vacation – seems premature, considering how new the job is. I’m so tired, though…

I let all that go with my breath as I exhale, and I pull my attention back to this moment, here, as I inhale. Meditation helps. Maybe it helps a lot? I’m not losing my shit over dumb stuff or making everyone around me miserable. That’s something. I could do better with the self-care, clearly, and that’s a manageable detail. Even the work is entirely manageable. I definitely do need to figure out the cognitive fatigue before it breaks me, but as problems to solve go, it is also pretty manageable.

My mind wanders to dinner, to household chores that need doing, to the note on my calendar reminding me to make more tuna salad for my Traveling Partner, to make a quick grocery run… there is more to do than I can keep up on. I sigh to myself as the thought spikes my anxiety. I pull myself back to my breath and do my best to let all of that go, again. It can wait. The work day is ahead, and for now I can let that go too, and simply be.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. My mind wanders, I pull it back. I begin again. I repeat the sequence. Again. Yet again after that. I keep practicing. We become what we practice… eventually. I take another deep breath and exhale as a sigh. I watch the dawn becoming day.

… It’s time to walk on, already. A new day, and there’s work to be done. Rest will have to wait for later…

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Frustration, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, Words

A Full Moon Lighting The Way

September 8, 2025 //
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It’s early. A little later than usual, but it makes sense; I’m trying to shift my usual waking time to something a bit later. Even a small change can add to my anxiety, and this morning it does. I’m hopeful that I managed to slip out quietly, without waking anyone. No one needs my anxiety to be the thing they wake up to!

A full moon peeks out from behind the trees.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and lace up my boots to walk the local trail I favor, but I arrived to a lot of noise and bright light at the trailhead. There was an event here over the weekend, and a crew has come to clean up. Well, shit… That’s less than ideally peaceful, eh? I move the car to the other side of the parking and walk to my starting point from there, well out of the way of the work crew.

… Every day we make so many small seeming choices intended to get us to a goal, or to achieve some particular result…

The morning is chilly, not yet “cold”, but hinting at colder mornings still ahead. Daybreak arrives in the usual way. Blue sky shows through dark clouds as the sky lightens, and I head down the trail.

The camera makes things at this hour bluer than they seem to my eyes.

My head is stuffy when I reach my halfway point and stop for a moment. Something in the air doesn’t agree with me, perhaps? I’m glad I stuffed some tissues in my pocket as I left the house this morning.

My anxiety has come along for this morning’s walk. It’s “only” background anxiety to do with the new job, I think. Experience tells me it will pass, and to care for myself. Self-care defuses a lot of anxiety. (I silently acknowledge that sometimes self-care causes me more anxiety, setting up a brief back-and-forth with myself over whether that is the case now, and if not why mention it at all?) Anxiety is a liar, and aside from that, anxiety is also a bit of a self sabotaging drama queen. I laugh uncomfortably to myself, and fill my lungs deeply, then exhale slowly, not quite a sigh, definitely an expression of… something. I’m a little annoyed with myself, I guess. It was a good weekend. The job feels like a promising opportunity and a good fit to my skills. What’s to be anxious over?

Change is. One of the results, sometimes, is anxiety. Feeling routines and my “sense of things” being disrupted is uncomfortable, sometimes even upsetting. I feel unsure and uneasy and reluctant to trust. I feel vigilant and as if I’m waiting for that metaphorical other shoe to drop. It’s a little ridiculous, but the awareness brings no relief. I find some relief in meditation. I find some relief in routines. I finding some relief in the distraction of a sunrise on a gray morning as summer begins to turn to fall. Little things matter. I’m grateful when my anxiety begins to ease.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sit quietly, grateful to see another sunrise. Grateful for another job opportunity. Grateful for good friends, loving family, and skilled friendly colleagues. The gratitude pushes aside the anxiety, and sets me up to enjoy the day ahead. The anxiety, this morning, is dysfunctional, a broken indicator light on life’s dashboard. I chuckle to myself thinking about the Parable of the Mechanic for a moment. This morning my mortal physical body feels more “hoopty” than sports car, for sure. I’m fighting arthritis pain along with the anxiety, and it’s possible that my arthritis is actually causing quite a bit of the anxiety in the first place. Definitely adding to it.

I sigh to myself and take something for my pain.

It’s a new day. Anxious or not, I’ve got shit to do that won’t wait around for my best mood or greatest comfort. Sometimes the path we walk is paved, level, and well lit, sometimes it is rocky, uneven, and dangerously pocked with potholes or littered with obstacles. Sometimes a distracting “side quest” is truly what matters most. The way forward isn’t always clear. We’ve just got to go ahead and get on with things, walk our path, and fulfill our “destiny”, if such a thing exists at all. If it doesn’t? Well, the journey is the destination, after all, and not walking our own path isn’t really an option. Our every choice, every moment, is another step along the way.

I think about a cookbook, a map, a menu. I think about a miscalibrated scale. Metaphors worth considering. Topics for another day. For now, I hear the clock ticking, and it feels like time to begin again. The path ahead won’t walk itself – and it’s the only way forward from here, now, to… wherever it leads. I smile to myself and watch the sun rise on this new day.

Where does this path lead? Choose and find out. Walk on.
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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

When the Rain Comes

September 6, 2025 //
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I woke to a bright flash and the sound of thunder a few minutes ahead of my alarm. There was a message from my Traveling Partner sent during the wee hours of the night, asking if the thunder was keeping me awake, too. It wasn’t, but it eventually did wake me. As I dressed, I looked at the forecast. If it’s still raining, it won’t be for long, maybe.

I head to a more distant favorite trailhead, meadow and marsh, fewer trees. When I get there it’s still dark, not yet daybreak. I park facing west and watch the lightning illuminate the western sky at unpredictable intervals. I make a futile attempt to get a photograph of lightning; this is not the camera for that purpose. I give up and sit quietly, just watching, and waiting for the gate to the nature park to open.

Lightning before, lightning after, but the click of the shutter doesn’t catch the sight. There’s a lesson here.

… So much lightning seen, and not photographed…

I sit watching, as daybreak arrives and becomes the dawn of a new day. Most of the lightning I see arrives without thunder. It must be far away, I guess. Most of it flashes horizontally across the western sky, seeming never to touch the ground. Instead of a blinding pure white light, some of it appears almost orange, and I wonder at it, and contemplate what the cause could be and whether I’ve ever seen that before. We rarely get thunderstorms here, but lacking the sound of thunder, does this count as that?

I watch the lightning for more than half an hour, as the dawn sky brightens. Is it even safe to be out on the marsh trail in the open during a lightning storm, I eventually wonder? I’m content to wait and wonder, there is no reason to rush; it’s a Saturday.

…It isn’t even raining, at all…

Once there is enough daylight to make out the trail easily, I lace up my boots and go.

I enjoy the hues and shadows of the blue hour, as they change.

I get to my halfway point on the other side of the marsh and the meadow safely. I perch on a fence rail near a small pond and watch the western sky. The lightning seems less frequent, and when I see a flash, it is more to the north. The storm is moving. No surprise; storms move. An unexpected really bright flash of lightning tears across the sky, this time with the crackle and boom of thunder, catching me with my eyes wide open looking directly into the brilliant white light. I’m momentarily blinded, and wait, grateful I wasn’t walking at the time.

I breathe the rain-fresh summer air. It smells clean and fresh and healthy. I breathe deeply, filling my lungs with cool joy. I enjoy the moment of solitude and quiet. I watch a large-ish herd of deer crossing the meadow. Three does with eight fawns, almost grown, their spots almost gone. I scan the meadow and treeline looking for the buck, but don’t see him. This is a delightful moment simply to exist in the world. I sit with that thought and a feeling of contentment and joy, awhile longer.

After some little while, I notice my legs becoming stiff. Seems a good time to move along down the trail to the next moment. I wonder briefly whether my beloved Traveling Partner managed to get the rest he needs, and whether I should find something to do after my walk and let him sleep in, or head straight home after a short trip to the grocery store on the way? I chuckle to myself. I can rely on him to let me know, and don’t need to guess.

I get to my feet, stretching and looking down the trail. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Sleepless Nights, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being

Weather or Not

September 5, 2025 //
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I am waiting for the sun, at a local trailhead. I’m not in any hurry, and it is a calm, quiet morning. The forecast says maybe it’ll rain, later. For now, I amuse myself wondering if that’s lightning I just saw. What I definitely saw was a brief very bright diffuse flash of light somewhere beyond the clouds obscuring the predawn sky, and then, later, another. I didn’t hear thunder, so I guess that if it was lightning (what else would it be?) it must be quite far away.

In the darkness, before dawn, it’s easy to wonder.

Another work day. Nothing much to say about that.

My tinnitus is crazy loud in my ears. My spine is a column of pure pain; I tell myself it’s “only” arthritis. It’s an unhelpful bit of exaggeration, but I count on it to persuade me that the pain can safely be ignored. I take my morning medications, which include prescription pain relief. It helps some, but only serves to “take the edge off”. It’s been a long time since it was any more effective than that.

I sigh to myself and grab my cane. I’ve got enough daylight now to walk this trail safely. I get started…

… I walk, lost in my own thoughts, and find that I’ve gone down and around and back to my starting point, already. It’s still early, barely daybreak. I decide to walk the loop again (it’s only about a mile and a half)…

I stop at a favorite resting point, when I reach it. My mind wants to dart ahead, to focus on work, but it is not yet time for that, and I pull myself back to this moment, here. The sky is gray, and cloudy, with the look of a sky that might rain, maybe. The air smells of rain, too. Another flash of distant lightning, another hint at rain.

Weather…or not.

The hills far to the west are hazy, looking more like a watercolor impression of hills on the horizon, and a bit unreal. This moment even feels a little unreal. Too quiet. Too still. The darkness of the trees between me and the river beyond seem vaguely spooky, although they have no secrets. It’s just a row of trees along the river bank. I walk here often.

I watch the sky continue to lighten, as daybreak becomes dawn, and an unseen sun rises somewhere beyond the clouds. The sky shifts from night black, to the deep blue of dawn, to the gray and cloudy sky I see now, and hints of pale blue behind the clouds peeking through where the clouds shred slowly as they move… north? North. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Somewhere nearby, the noise of a trash truck interrupts the stillness.

I sigh to myself as I get to my feet to finish my walk and head to work. Whether or not it actually rains, there’s still weather of some sort. Whether or not my path takes me where I expect to go, it still leads me somewhere. Having the experience is what matters most – the being and doing are the point. The journey is the destination. Isn’t that enough? I think about that as I stretch. The clock is ticking, and it’s time to begin.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being
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