My last “proper day of vacation” began with some sleeping in – what a delightful luxury! I dressed and slipped out of the house without waking my Traveling Partner (as far as I know). I decided, yesterday, that today I’d make the drive to the coast and head down to Fogarty Creek, which has easy access to a small private feeling beach enclosed by steep rocky hillsides. The Oregon Coast Trail passes through there.
… Stormy clouds followed me, and I figured it might rain at some point, but I drove on, unconcerned, enjoying the absence of traffic (not another car on the road going my way, at all)…
Kite flying on a stormy morning seemed like a good idea to someone.
I parked with my coffee at a favorite spot with a great view of the ocean. The tide is coming in, and in a few more minutes it’ll be high tide, according to the tide table, but not the highest high tide today. That’ll be later, shortly before sundown, and long after I’ve returned home.
The first rain drops tap the windshield gently, and then it’s just straight up raining. Last time I made Fogarty Creek my destination, it also rained (a drenching deluge blown sideways by fierce storm winds). Today I can see breaks in the storm gray clouds overhead, so perhaps the rain will pass quickly. No matter. I actually don’t care much about the weather today, I’m enjoying my time (and my coffee) anyway. I sit watching a man on the beach persisting in trying to fly his kite in spite of the rain.
The drive over to the coast was beautiful. The roadside slopes and ditches were in bloom with plentiful pink foxgloves and purple vetch, and blackberry brambles covered in clouds of pretty white flowers. The air smelled fresh and sweet. No traffic at all was a nice treat. No traffic = no stress. It was fun.
…So this is 62? So far so good…
I sip my coffee, sitting contentedly with my thoughts on a rainy morning, listening to the raindrops on the roof of the car. I’m enjoying the pleasant relaxed vibe of having nothing specific to do and nowhere I need to be. I savor the moment, because this too will pass; moments are fleeting, and a mortal lifetime is brief. It’s enough to enjoy the moment as it is. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I think of my Traveling Partner and hope he has a lovely day relaxing or working, whatever suits him most.
I sigh to myself as the rain slows to a few random drops. Soon enough, I’ll finish the drive. There’s no rush, and the journey is the destination. It hardly matters whether I drive further down the coast or sit contentedly right here. What matters most is simply to enjoy the moment…
My ears are ringing like crazy this morning. I focus my attention on the sound around me, and the songs of early morning birds (mostly robins). I listen to my steps as I walk the paved section of trail near home. I am walking westward. The sky is gray, densely cloudy, and the air smells of recent rain.
I squint at the newly planted section of vineyard alongside the trail, as I approach it. Something red is blooming at ground level, and I can’t quite make out the grape vines in the gloomy early light. Red clover? Vetch? Last year this was meadow (or fallow fields), and I reflect on the feeling I had the first day I came to this trail after the meadow had been plowed under and replaced by vineyard.
One perspective of many possible perspectives.
Here and there wild blackberries encroach on the edges of the vineyard. They aren’t the native sort, they’re an invasive non-native. The blackberries themselves are tasty nonetheless, but it will be many weeks before blackberries dangle ripe from the thorny canes. I walk past some wildflower blooming – or is it a weed? So close to the planted vineyard, I guess it’s very much a matter of perspective. I walk past reflecting on that.
Wildflower or weed?
Breathe, exhale, relax, and keep walking. I am having my own experience, walking my own path, and quietly enjoying this gray rainy morning.
… The clock is ticking…
I pause at my halfway point and sit for a few minutes, listening to the sound of geese overhead and distant traffic. Breathe, exhale, relax. My tinnitus is still pretty bad, but it’s no longer dominating my attention. There is forest around me and I can hear the nearby creek bubbling past. A small brown bird stops near me, hopping here and there in the grass at the edge of a the trail.
This is a lovely quiet morning, suitable for walking. I get to my feet and begin again.
The drive to the office was relaxed and routine. My coffee isn’t bad (neither is it actually good, it’s just coffee). The view from the office window at dawn hints at a warm afternoon, later. A good day to be in the garden.
I’m in the office.
The waning “pink moon” setting as the day begins.
I sigh to myself. Breathe, exhale, relax. I take a few minutes for meditation before work begins. I plan the day ahead. I do a thoughtful body scan, and consider how best to manage my pain and the stiffness that results from the combination of sore muscles and arthritis. I seek the one, and try to avoid the other, but ultimately pain is pain; managing it as well as I can is a good practice. Not letting it run my life is an important choice. They both require a committed effort; there are verbs involved, and a steady willingness to care for this fragile vessel with a full measure of consideration, and my whole heart. I stretch and sigh again, before wondering “at what point is a sigh just a deep breath?” I let all that go and watch the moon set.
Yesterday was lovely. My appointment with the surgeon I was referred to went well, I guess, for some values of going well; I got referred to a different more specialized surgeon. lol Progress? I guess so. The Anxious Adventurer set up two more of the small raised beds for me in my new “west side garden”. It’s small space, and sure, it’s narrow, and limited, and the big A/C unit is right there, but… it’s also just outside my office window, and rather private (not visible from the street the way the front garden is). The first bed is already planted in strawberries, and since I started those from mature plants in 4″ pots, there are already flowers. I smile at the thought and yearn to feel the soil under my fingers as I fill the other two beds with soil and plant them with… something. I don’t know yet. It’s a spot that only gets afternoon sun, and I haven’t yet decided what else to plant there. Maybe just more strawberries? Something with flowers? Perhaps a clematis in that extra large black plastic nursery pot left over from when all my roses were potted (so many years, so many roses)? I smile, feeling my shoulders relax. I get so much joy from my garden I easily forget how I loathed the time I spent gardening as a kid. It felt like an obligation. A demand. Manual labor, nothing more or less, and I was sure that I had better things to do with my time. It felt like indentured servitude, then, and I longed to be 18, and master of my own affairs and decision-making.
What have you planted? How well do you tend your garden? (It’s a metaphor.)
…I’m grateful now for the time I spent in my parents’ garden; I use those experiences a lot, in my own garden, now. I’m still doing most of the labor. lol I don’t resent it any more. I appreciate help when I have it, but I love the work and my only resentment is that aging has robbed me of considerable strength and endurance for it… I have to choose my tasks wisely, and plan the work thoughtfully.
I hope the work day passes quickly. I’m eager to be back in the garden. I think about love and gardening awhile longer. I’d plant honeysuckle or jasmine instead of clematis, but either of those has serious potential to aggravate my Traveling Partner’s allergies rather a lot. I’ll miss them, maybe, but clematis offers lovely dramatic flowers, and will be less likely to be unpleasant for my beloved. I would not willfully choose to harm him. I think about how much I adore him. How my love is returned in equal measure; everywhere I turn in my home I see his love in the little things he has done or made for me. Even yesterday. New work skills, hobbies, creative endeavors, tools and materials, are often tried out or put to use the first time in some new something or other for me. I feel so loved.
A token of his affection, 3D printed, using Hue Forge.
The journey from being mired in trauma, sorrow, despair, or ancient pain is not an easy one. There’s no map. There is no sherpa to carry the baggage accumulated over a lifetime. There’s no handy tutorial. It’s a hard mile and we have to walk it ourselves, but every step, every moment, every sun rise is a chance to walk on, and to begin again. We become what we practice. We have choices. Sure, it’s a lot of work, and it’s often slow going. We stumble. We fall. We fail. It’s human – all of it, so very human. When I began this journey years ago, I only wanted to “be mostly okay” – to feel something good, at least as often as not. I wanted to manage the chaos in my head and to silence my nightmares.
I find myself, now, in a very different place – mostly thriving. Contented. Joyful. Even happy, rather a lot of the time. I wasn’t trying to get “here” – but once I got there, I just kept on walking. Kept working at healing. Kept practicing practices. Kept making better choices and slowly becoming someone more like the woman I most want to be. The journey is the destination – this isn’t new-age-y bullshit, although it is as metaphorical as it is practical – it’s quite real and you can make the journey yourself, from wherever you are now, to that place you most want to be, or at least someplace much better than where you feel you are. Keep walking. One day at a time. One practice at a time. One moment of studious self-care at a time. Making the decisions that the journey requires isn’t always effortless or obvious or even “painless”. Sometimes adulting is hard. I’m not telling you how to do the thing – I’m just saying it can be done, and hoping to provide some measure of hope and encouragement on what is admittedly a difficult journey. Life. Healing. Becoming. It’s not a journey of miles or moments, or hours or days – it is a journey frankly measured in years and decades. A lifetime. But the time does pass, and the miles do add up – and we do get somewhere as we go. Incremental change over time adds up. We become what we practice.
What are you practicing?
If I stopped writing today, I don’t know that it would be missed. There is so much life to live… I enjoy taking a moment to reflect on it, though, and doing so brings me great joy and peace. What about you? What are you doing to cultivate contentment? To find joy in your experience? To build emotional resilience? To become the person you most want to be? It’s not too late to make that journey – you only need to begin again.
I stop along the trail for a message from my Traveling Partner about a housekeeping detail. I’d rather it would have been a greeting or a love note, but it was not. It was a complaint (phrased as a request for action). It’s not an unreasonable request, not at all, and I add it to my list of shit to do without further discussion.
It’s a new day. What will you make of it?
Once upon a time, I was often the most negative person in most groups or conversations. I was cynical, irritable, easily angered, frustrated, and disappointed with people and circumstances, and I found very little joy in life. I complained a lot, about a lot of things, often. I told myself I was funny but that couldn’t have been much fun to be around. I sip my coffee and reflect on how much less often I complain about things these days and how much joy and contentment I find in life, generally. I’m in a very different place. (It took work and practice to get here.)
It isn’t that there is actually less in the world to complain about (I mean, seriously? We’re basically watching the world burn). I don’t find value in complaining as a form of communication, in my relationships. It has its place, I suppose. The negativity of it grates on my nerves. There are better ways. Kind frankness and gentle words are more comfortable to receive and more pleasant to act upon, day-to-day. My Traveling Partner, long ago, asked me to be less negative, and since then I’ve walked a very different path – and I’m glad I did (although it turned out he meant something different by it). I enjoy my life so much more. That’s the thing about negativity; it’s emotionally corrosive, and undermines joy, limits satisfaction, and creates discontent. Who needs that?
I get it, though, it’s so easy to be negative about unpleasant experiences and circumstances. So satisfying to complain – like picking at a scab (and it has about as much real value). A constant stream of negativity and complaining isn’t pleasant to be around, though, and it may result in the loss of relationships or connections with people who just don’t have the energy or will to endure it. Something to think about, eh? Certainly my own relationships have improved greatly since I gave up chronic complaining as a “feature” of my character. I still make an occasional complaint or negative observation; I’m very human. I don’t live my life in that place, emotionally, though. Complaining rarely improves anything; it is action that creates change. I get more done by embracing change, taking action to make my life what I most want to live, and by seeking out joy. It takes far fewer harsh words and frankly just feels better as an experience. I didn’t change the world; I changed the way I experience it. Worth it.
Walk on. It’s not personal.
I smile to myself. I’m having my own experience. It’s a lovely morning. I get to my feet and back on the trail. It’s a good day to begin again.
It was already daybreak when I reached the trailhead this morning, partly because the season is changing, partly because I slept in a bit (for some values of “sleeping in” lol). I got my boots on straight away and hit the trail. Quiet morning. Cloudy sky. It rained during the night and the trail is wet, muddy in spots. I walked with care, grateful to have my cane, annoyed by my pain with each step: ankle, knee, back. I persisted. I walked on.
A first look at a new day.
I’ll do this bit of writing. Meditate. Then run a couple errands before I head home to help my Traveling Partner with some paperwork. I suspect he could do it himself, if he chose to (although I’ve no doubt it would be unpleasant, difficult, and awkward), but it is easier to ask my help. I’d rather be helpful than deal with his discomfort and lack of enthusiasm for the task, but I honestly also hate doing this sort of crap (and somehow end up doing it in every relationship nonetheless).
I breathe exhale and relax. Sometimes things need doing, and it is important to get them done and see the process through. Like pulling weeds in the garden, it’s real work, often repetitive, and sometimes the payoff is not immediate, nor the value obvious. Still has to be done as a step on a path.
… I think about that a lot when I am walking. Steps on a path eventually make the journey…
The meadow this morning is dotted with tufts of greenery as the lupines begin to stand out from the grass here and there along the path, and in patches on hillsides. They are one of my favorites, and I’m eager to see them bloom again. I’ll paint them with soft pastels, as I have with watercolor, oil, and acrylic. I smile when I recall yesterday’s discovery of three new lupine seedlings coming up in the flower bed beneath the kitchen window.
As I sit at my halfway point, I watch the clouds drifting rather sluggishly across the sky. Less wind today. My headache worsens from looking up, and I frown at myself. I know better, I just like looking at the sky, and watching the clouds. Is it worth the pain? Maybe. Maybe it is; how long will I have the opportunity to see the sky overhead? We never know when the clock runs out, and it is always ticking. I’m not being gloomy, nor feeling the weight of my years, just aware that this mortal lifetime is finite, and that pain is inevitably part of the experience (but not the whole of it). I can choose differently.
I sigh to myself. Some moments I almost hear the ticking of the clock. It vexes me to be aware of the passage of time. I breathe exhale, and relax. I let that go and turn my attention to the flowers blooming on the marsh, the sweetly scented Spring air, and this delightful moment. It’s enough. I’ll begin again later. For now the moment is mine to enjoy, as I sit here beside the meadow trail.
A gray Spring morning, suitable for self-reflection.
Evening Light 