I love to meditate. Establishing an ongoing meditation practice is probably the most important and most satisfying thing I've done to change my life. I meditate every morning for at least 30 minutes and it sets the tone for my whole day. It also helps me to clear away the cobwebs and go deep to find the real "me" that is buried under all of the personas that are perceived by others: Mom, Grandma, Sister, Friend, student, etc. When I am in touch with who I really am, the quality of my life improves.
I also try to incorporate a lesson every morning, most often by listening to a guided meditation with my favorite meditation teacher, Davidji. The other day he talked about how sometimes we set an intention to achieve our vision only to be upset or confused when that vision doesn't show up the way we thought it would, or the way we wanted it to. He said that when that happens, it is helpful to meditate on the desire for clarity. Often all we really need is to look at our vision from a different angle to see the perfection of the form it came in. So I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and meditated on the word "clarity" for 30 minutes. What came up were the words gratitude, acceptance and awake.
Gratitude: I am grateful beyond words that I am living the life I always wanted, in a place I love, doing what makes me happy, and surrounded by so much beauty it sometimes makes my heart hurt. Am I exactly where my vision said I would be? No. My vision was to return to the little town I had lived in before, where there are sidewalks, and stores you can walk to, and a village green with a gazebo just like in the movies. Where I ended up was 2 1/2 miles outside of town in the country with no sidewalks, no stores, and cows for neighbors, but I wouldn't trade those killer sunsets for anything, nor would I trade the smell of green fields and plowed dirt in the early morning mist, or the birdsong that serenades me while I write.
Acceptance: I accept that the lifestyle I chose will not make me rich, nor will it even make me comfortable by society's standards, but I am happy, I have everything I need, and all that I really need anyway are the things of the soul, like contentedness, peace, integrity, authenticity and love. I also accept that with the absence of a vehicle for a while, I must learn to ask for help, something I have not been very good at for most of my life, but a lesson I've needed to learn, and to be okay with it as well. Accepting what is can be a most humbling experience.
Awake: When I stopped long enough to see what I did have instead of what I didn't have anymore, I began to see more amazing things then I could have imagined. No, the garden of my dreams did not materialize, but how awesome to watch wildflowers pop up in unexpected places, as beautiful as any in the garden shop, or to see a spider spinning the most beautiful art that shone with crystals when the morning sun shone on the dew drenched web. Being awake to what was right in front of me let me see that Mother Nature had everything in hand, thank you very much, and it was okay for me to just sit back and enjoy it without thinking I could improve on it.
The thing about clarity is that by looking at my vision from a different angle, I could see that all the things that I truly wanted were gifts for my soul and they came in the forms that my soul could recognize instead of my monkey mind. Those gifts have translated into a new direction for my writing, and a new "clarity" for my work as well as my home. It's like having an early Christmas. As my greatest teacher once taught: "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." That goes for our lives as well as for our gardens.
And so it is.
P.S. This blog post is dedicated to the memory of my beloved teacher, Dr.Wayne Dyer, who left us all too soon.
Monday, August 31, 2015
Monday, August 24, 2015
What if ...?
I was talking with a friend recently about all of the changes that have occurred in my inner life as a result of my having moved back out to the country. Nothing has worked out exactly as I had planned, but, then, what does? Somewhere it is written that when man plans, God laughs. Sometimes we don't get exactly what we want, we get what we need (I think the Rolling Stones sang about that). What I needed was to be physically and spiritually in the place that my heart could call home. All the other things, like discovering I actually like the "new" country music, that I can spend a Sunday afternoon sitting outside just listening to the silence and being okay with that, were unexpected gifts. What I also discovered along the way was that those things I am passionate about or committed to have nothing to do with where I live geographically, but where I live spiritually. So I began to wonder: "What if I had grown up in the country from the beginning? What if I had been raised as a good old country girl? Would I still be me?
I think the words, "What If," are the two most powerful words in the English language. "What if" has been the prerequisite for some of the world's most important discoveries and inventions. They have given birth to art, music, science, and humanity's greatest potential realized. Every new idea or invention started out with "what if?" They have also been the lead in to every fear and excuse not to pursue our dreams and make those discoveries: "What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if people laugh at me? What if I'm wrong?"
I started thinking about all the things that are important to me. If I had been raised in the country, would I still be a vegan? Would I have gone through all of the heartache and longing that colored the majority of my adult life to be somewhere else, someone else? Would I have become a writer anyway and would it have happened sooner? Or did I require all of the experiences and color of the life I lived in order for me to recognize happiness and joy when I found it? What if I had not fallen last summer and fractured my leg, requiring me to find a home without stairs, and what if my friend did not just "happen" to have the perfect place available in the exact place where I wanted to live? What if I stopped asking what if and gave thanks instead for what is?
I think perhaps that it's not so much the words "What If" as it is the words that follow. They are the modifiers that turn "What If" into an adventure that gives us a peek at our own greatness and all that we can be. If we can say "What If" and feel that twinge of excitement at the pit of our stomachs that tell us we're on the right track, then it doesn't matter what came before, only what is in front of us.
What if I get this blog posted and go outside to watch the starlings soar and play instead of doing the laundry?
And so it is.
I think the words, "What If," are the two most powerful words in the English language. "What if" has been the prerequisite for some of the world's most important discoveries and inventions. They have given birth to art, music, science, and humanity's greatest potential realized. Every new idea or invention started out with "what if?" They have also been the lead in to every fear and excuse not to pursue our dreams and make those discoveries: "What if I fail? What if I'm not good enough? What if people laugh at me? What if I'm wrong?"
I started thinking about all the things that are important to me. If I had been raised in the country, would I still be a vegan? Would I have gone through all of the heartache and longing that colored the majority of my adult life to be somewhere else, someone else? Would I have become a writer anyway and would it have happened sooner? Or did I require all of the experiences and color of the life I lived in order for me to recognize happiness and joy when I found it? What if I had not fallen last summer and fractured my leg, requiring me to find a home without stairs, and what if my friend did not just "happen" to have the perfect place available in the exact place where I wanted to live? What if I stopped asking what if and gave thanks instead for what is?
I think perhaps that it's not so much the words "What If" as it is the words that follow. They are the modifiers that turn "What If" into an adventure that gives us a peek at our own greatness and all that we can be. If we can say "What If" and feel that twinge of excitement at the pit of our stomachs that tell us we're on the right track, then it doesn't matter what came before, only what is in front of us.
What if I get this blog posted and go outside to watch the starlings soar and play instead of doing the laundry?
And so it is.
Monday, August 17, 2015
Sounds and Memories
The other day I was taking advantage of a cool, rainy day to get some freshly picked produce ready for the freezer. The first pickings from my garden and my friends' garden were ready to be cleaned, blanched and packed in freezer bags and containers.
One of the things I love about living here is the absence of outside noise except for the occasional hay or milk truck, the sounds of birds and a dog barking in the distance. This allows you to use all of your senses to be more present to what you are doing, which is exactly what happened while I was cleaning and snapping some freshly picked green beans. Sitting at the kitchen table, newspaper spread on the table, I snapped away. I heard each and every snap, heard the pieces hit the inside of the metal colander where I tossed them, and was suddenly transported back over 50 years to a summer day much like this one except the sun was shinning and I was sitting outside with my mother helping her clean and snap some beans for supper. I was able to see her as clearly as if she were sitting right across from me. She had on a sleeveless, cotton summer dress with a belt and two pockets, over which she wore a full flowered print apron. Her wavy brown hair was held back with bobby pins (remember them?). We each had a brown paper bag on our laps that was torn open with a pile of green beans nestled on it, and a metal colander just like the one I had on the ground between us. Every once in a while one of us would say something, but for the most part we sat in companionable silence except for that snapping sound and the tinging of the beans hitting the metal where we tossed them. I knew that these green beans would end up being part of one of her favorite summertime dishes which was boiled green beans and potatoes that were then steamed with garlic and oil, left to cool, and splashed with a little wine vinegar, a delicious summer veggie salad. I could almost taste the garlicky beans in my mouth and it actually started to water.
It is amazing how often a sound or a smell will trigger a memory of someone we love. My mother always wore Jean Nate' bath splash and to this day the smell reminds me of her. But it is the sounds and smells of the kitchen that transport me back to those days of my childhood that stand out the most. Maybe it's because they represent all that is safe and secure, the way I felt as a child when my mom was in the kitchen whipping up her magic and knowing at that moment that all was right with the world. How I wish I had turned out to be half the cook that she was so that I could have created those same feelings for my kids and grandkids, but I realized as I sat there snapping those beans the other day that each of us is charged with creating our own special memories, not borrowing someone else's and making them our own. My grandkids are more apt to remember me when they visit a garden center, or a book store, or smell coffee brewing, or touch a skein of yarn. Whatever it is, I hope it makes them feel as warm and fuzzy (and weepy, actually) as I was listening to beans snapping under my fingers.
And so it is.
One of the things I love about living here is the absence of outside noise except for the occasional hay or milk truck, the sounds of birds and a dog barking in the distance. This allows you to use all of your senses to be more present to what you are doing, which is exactly what happened while I was cleaning and snapping some freshly picked green beans. Sitting at the kitchen table, newspaper spread on the table, I snapped away. I heard each and every snap, heard the pieces hit the inside of the metal colander where I tossed them, and was suddenly transported back over 50 years to a summer day much like this one except the sun was shinning and I was sitting outside with my mother helping her clean and snap some beans for supper. I was able to see her as clearly as if she were sitting right across from me. She had on a sleeveless, cotton summer dress with a belt and two pockets, over which she wore a full flowered print apron. Her wavy brown hair was held back with bobby pins (remember them?). We each had a brown paper bag on our laps that was torn open with a pile of green beans nestled on it, and a metal colander just like the one I had on the ground between us. Every once in a while one of us would say something, but for the most part we sat in companionable silence except for that snapping sound and the tinging of the beans hitting the metal where we tossed them. I knew that these green beans would end up being part of one of her favorite summertime dishes which was boiled green beans and potatoes that were then steamed with garlic and oil, left to cool, and splashed with a little wine vinegar, a delicious summer veggie salad. I could almost taste the garlicky beans in my mouth and it actually started to water.
It is amazing how often a sound or a smell will trigger a memory of someone we love. My mother always wore Jean Nate' bath splash and to this day the smell reminds me of her. But it is the sounds and smells of the kitchen that transport me back to those days of my childhood that stand out the most. Maybe it's because they represent all that is safe and secure, the way I felt as a child when my mom was in the kitchen whipping up her magic and knowing at that moment that all was right with the world. How I wish I had turned out to be half the cook that she was so that I could have created those same feelings for my kids and grandkids, but I realized as I sat there snapping those beans the other day that each of us is charged with creating our own special memories, not borrowing someone else's and making them our own. My grandkids are more apt to remember me when they visit a garden center, or a book store, or smell coffee brewing, or touch a skein of yarn. Whatever it is, I hope it makes them feel as warm and fuzzy (and weepy, actually) as I was listening to beans snapping under my fingers.
And so it is.
Monday, August 10, 2015
... and the wisdom to know the difference
I have always loved the Serenity Prayer. It is simple, to the point, and from the deepest places of the heart:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I pull from this prayer whenever I am up against a situation that challenges me to change the way I perceive it and find a better way to deal with it. A case in point is my long awaited chance to garden again. Twenty-three years ago, I found gardening, or, I should say, gardening found me, and it became my greatest teacher. When I had to leave it in order to be closer to where the jobs were, I grieved as if I had lost a best friend. For fifteen years I found ways to stay connected to the earth and the lessons that gardening taught me by learning to container garden. Even if all I had was a window sill, as long as I could put my hands in dirt and watch life unfolding before me, I continued to grow. Yet I never stopped yearning for my old garden. I remembered being out there in the early morning when the grass was still wet and the weeding went easier. I remembered listen to the good-morning music of the birds and the signal to the bees that it was time to get to work. In my mind, everything about it stayed the same. Alas, it may have been that way in my dreams, but in reality there was one thing that had changed greatly ... me, or, I should say, my body.
I have always been proud of the fact that I kept in relatively good shape for my age. I abused my body terribly in my youth but made great progress towards changing that as I hit my 50's. I dropped 62 pounds. I took up yoga. I leaned to meditate. I went to a gym. I make walking my basic mode of transportation. I started to eat healthier. I lived in a third-floor walk-up apartment and got more exercise carrying groceries and laundry up and down those stairs than I got on a treadmill at the gym. All that came in handy last summer when I sustained a fall on a cracked piece of street and fractured my upper leg/hip area, requiring three pins, and my shoulder as well. All that I had done to keep myself healthy helped me to recover my mobility much more quickly than I would have without it. Even the doctor and the physical therapists marveled that I was mobile so quickly. Mobile, yes. Able to do everything I did before, not really. In fact, some things are still too painful even after a year, One of those things is large-scale gardening.
So imagine finally getting your dream of the last 15 years fulfilled when a place opens up that has a garden you can play in, and finding out that one hour of weeding and planting knocks you off your game for days afterwards. This garden in sloped which puts more strain on the joints, and you realize that it's not just the area affected by the fall, but that while you've been praying for 15 years for a garden, and even though you hiked up and down those stairs all that time, you still got older, and arthritis found you anyway. So now you have to pull out that Serenity Prayer, and look those words in the face, and find the courage to change what you can while accepting what is. There is wisdom in accepting what you cannot change, because once you accept it, other possibilities have the room to grow... like all that wisdom you gained container gardening all of those years. Yes, you can grow lettuce and tomatoes in pots ... and I am. Yes, the herbs will like the outside shelving that holds all of the pots of basil, and lavender, and parsley, and mint ... and love. Yes, you can still go out early in the morning to pull the weeds you can reach without straining, and listen to the birds sing the day awake, and watch the bees go to work. It was never really about the garden. It was about me.
Another saying, probably my all-time favorite, and one I have used here on more than one occasion, is this one: Bloom where you're planted. So I have. That's something I have the courage, and the wisdom, to change
And so it is.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I pull from this prayer whenever I am up against a situation that challenges me to change the way I perceive it and find a better way to deal with it. A case in point is my long awaited chance to garden again. Twenty-three years ago, I found gardening, or, I should say, gardening found me, and it became my greatest teacher. When I had to leave it in order to be closer to where the jobs were, I grieved as if I had lost a best friend. For fifteen years I found ways to stay connected to the earth and the lessons that gardening taught me by learning to container garden. Even if all I had was a window sill, as long as I could put my hands in dirt and watch life unfolding before me, I continued to grow. Yet I never stopped yearning for my old garden. I remembered being out there in the early morning when the grass was still wet and the weeding went easier. I remembered listen to the good-morning music of the birds and the signal to the bees that it was time to get to work. In my mind, everything about it stayed the same. Alas, it may have been that way in my dreams, but in reality there was one thing that had changed greatly ... me, or, I should say, my body.
I have always been proud of the fact that I kept in relatively good shape for my age. I abused my body terribly in my youth but made great progress towards changing that as I hit my 50's. I dropped 62 pounds. I took up yoga. I leaned to meditate. I went to a gym. I make walking my basic mode of transportation. I started to eat healthier. I lived in a third-floor walk-up apartment and got more exercise carrying groceries and laundry up and down those stairs than I got on a treadmill at the gym. All that came in handy last summer when I sustained a fall on a cracked piece of street and fractured my upper leg/hip area, requiring three pins, and my shoulder as well. All that I had done to keep myself healthy helped me to recover my mobility much more quickly than I would have without it. Even the doctor and the physical therapists marveled that I was mobile so quickly. Mobile, yes. Able to do everything I did before, not really. In fact, some things are still too painful even after a year, One of those things is large-scale gardening.
So imagine finally getting your dream of the last 15 years fulfilled when a place opens up that has a garden you can play in, and finding out that one hour of weeding and planting knocks you off your game for days afterwards. This garden in sloped which puts more strain on the joints, and you realize that it's not just the area affected by the fall, but that while you've been praying for 15 years for a garden, and even though you hiked up and down those stairs all that time, you still got older, and arthritis found you anyway. So now you have to pull out that Serenity Prayer, and look those words in the face, and find the courage to change what you can while accepting what is. There is wisdom in accepting what you cannot change, because once you accept it, other possibilities have the room to grow... like all that wisdom you gained container gardening all of those years. Yes, you can grow lettuce and tomatoes in pots ... and I am. Yes, the herbs will like the outside shelving that holds all of the pots of basil, and lavender, and parsley, and mint ... and love. Yes, you can still go out early in the morning to pull the weeds you can reach without straining, and listen to the birds sing the day awake, and watch the bees go to work. It was never really about the garden. It was about me.
Another saying, probably my all-time favorite, and one I have used here on more than one occasion, is this one: Bloom where you're planted. So I have. That's something I have the courage, and the wisdom, to change
And so it is.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Go Deep
This morning I finally won the battle against procrastination and went outside in the early morning dew to weed. I don't know why I've been putting it off. I usually don't mind weeding, especially in the early morning when the day is new, the birds and the insects are just waking up and the breeze holds the promise of the day. However, we've had a really rainy summer and the weeds have taken on a whole new life as if someone has injected the rain with super vitamins. I only wish my poor tomatoes, still green in this first week of August, had so much energy. I also knew that my having put the job off had resulted in some very deep rooted weeds. My last go around with just such a weed taught me a very valuable lesson: sometimes you have to go a lot deeper than you want to go if you want to clear out what's growing there.
The weed in question was growing in the garden bed that is the home of some beautiful day lilies, iris, wild strawberries, and a host of other things. At first I thought it was some kind of late growing bush because it was almost three feet tall and looked like it was going to be a tree when it grew up. In fact, it was already the size of a small bush. At the time it was early spring and I was just beginning to discover what was growing in each bed of my new garden that had already been established years and years ago. My landlords assured me that no one had planted that particular specimen and, in fact, it was choking out everything around it. Not to worry, here comes Flower Bear, aka Barb, to the rescue. My philosophy in gardening, much like my philosophy in life, is that if you can't co-exist nicely together side by side, somebody has to go. So I got out my tools and got to work. First I cut it down to where it was just a bunch of stems sticking out of the ground, and then I started to dig around the roots ... and dig ... and dig ... and, oh my goodness! This thing had to have been growing those roots all winter long under the three feet of snow on top of it. I couldn't be sure, but for a moment there I could swear I heard Chinese music when I finally pulled it out and looked down into the mammoth hole! You will be happy to know that in that spot a pretty, stripped hosta has found a new home.
Shortly after the Great Weed Extraction, I was listening to a guided meditation by Denise Linn on Hay House Radio (my favorite place to hang out online) where we were supposed to "go deep" to find those well-hidden limiting beliefs that kept us from living our lives to the fullest. As her soothing voice lead us along, I went deep, really deep, deeper than I think I've ever gone in any meditation I've ever done, and suddenly I began to cry as the words, "No one protected me" surfaced from way below. I don't think I've ever said those words, either out loud or even just to myself. I knew in an instant what it meant: that no one protected me from my first husband who had been an abusive man, both verbally as well as mentally, and on a few occasions, with threats of physical abuse to keep me in line. I blamed everyone, especially my parents and his parents, who grew up in a world where a woman in those days kept their mouths shut and were lucky to have a man who would take care of them. I wept for a long time. I don't believe I even heard the rest of the radio show. All I knew is that I had just freed myself from the idea that I needed protecting when the truth was I was an intelligent, caring, creative woman, and that I was safe. I didn't constantly need to be saving the world one cause or one person at a time. All that I needed to do was love, forgive, and move on.
I didn't meant for this post to go on for so long, but my experience was so profound that I knew I had to share it, especially with women my age who may be carrying around a limiting belief that is so deep that they need an emotional backhoe to get to it and root it out. Like the Great Weed Extraction, sometimes you just have to keep digging until you hear the music, but it is so worth it.
And so it is.
The weed in question was growing in the garden bed that is the home of some beautiful day lilies, iris, wild strawberries, and a host of other things. At first I thought it was some kind of late growing bush because it was almost three feet tall and looked like it was going to be a tree when it grew up. In fact, it was already the size of a small bush. At the time it was early spring and I was just beginning to discover what was growing in each bed of my new garden that had already been established years and years ago. My landlords assured me that no one had planted that particular specimen and, in fact, it was choking out everything around it. Not to worry, here comes Flower Bear, aka Barb, to the rescue. My philosophy in gardening, much like my philosophy in life, is that if you can't co-exist nicely together side by side, somebody has to go. So I got out my tools and got to work. First I cut it down to where it was just a bunch of stems sticking out of the ground, and then I started to dig around the roots ... and dig ... and dig ... and, oh my goodness! This thing had to have been growing those roots all winter long under the three feet of snow on top of it. I couldn't be sure, but for a moment there I could swear I heard Chinese music when I finally pulled it out and looked down into the mammoth hole! You will be happy to know that in that spot a pretty, stripped hosta has found a new home.
Shortly after the Great Weed Extraction, I was listening to a guided meditation by Denise Linn on Hay House Radio (my favorite place to hang out online) where we were supposed to "go deep" to find those well-hidden limiting beliefs that kept us from living our lives to the fullest. As her soothing voice lead us along, I went deep, really deep, deeper than I think I've ever gone in any meditation I've ever done, and suddenly I began to cry as the words, "No one protected me" surfaced from way below. I don't think I've ever said those words, either out loud or even just to myself. I knew in an instant what it meant: that no one protected me from my first husband who had been an abusive man, both verbally as well as mentally, and on a few occasions, with threats of physical abuse to keep me in line. I blamed everyone, especially my parents and his parents, who grew up in a world where a woman in those days kept their mouths shut and were lucky to have a man who would take care of them. I wept for a long time. I don't believe I even heard the rest of the radio show. All I knew is that I had just freed myself from the idea that I needed protecting when the truth was I was an intelligent, caring, creative woman, and that I was safe. I didn't constantly need to be saving the world one cause or one person at a time. All that I needed to do was love, forgive, and move on.
I didn't meant for this post to go on for so long, but my experience was so profound that I knew I had to share it, especially with women my age who may be carrying around a limiting belief that is so deep that they need an emotional backhoe to get to it and root it out. Like the Great Weed Extraction, sometimes you just have to keep digging until you hear the music, but it is so worth it.
And so it is.
Monday, July 27, 2015
The Gift of Presence
Look who showed up at my birthday party this weekend:
Yes! It is Flower Bear herself, or, rather, Flower Bear immortalized as a chocolate birthday cake! My oldest granddaughter, Courtney, is so talented and creative. I was almost sad to have to cut into her but since I knew there was chocolate hidden under her hat and dress, I relented. Anyway, the real one graces my home and teaches me about love (and gardening) each and every day:
I asked Courtney how she managed to create this wonderful gift and she produced pictures she took along the way during the baking, construction and decorating. It took so much patience, focus and creativity to do this. I remember watching her when she was little and she would rummage through the "junk drawer" (we all have one), looking for a piece of this, a bit of that, some string, yarn, paper, glue, crayons, what have you, and sit with the presence and focus of Michelangelo. When she was finished, there would be a horse made out of a step-stool, or flowers made out of straws and string, or a hundred other wonderful presents that she made me over the years. She made my "presents" by using her gift of "presence."
We are so busy these days that multi-tasking has become a religion all its own. Technology was supposed to make our lives easier, but instead it has just given us another way to try and accomplish a dozens things at once, and not one of them would give us the same sense of wholeness that giving all of ourselves to one task, and completing it to the best of our abilities, would give. This is even truer if we apply it to our relationships. How present are we with our children? Our partners? Our friends? After a long day at work, how present are we while we're trying to get dinner on the table, catch up on messages, checking our calendars for which commitments we made for the weekend, while our kids are in their rooms with their heads glued to iPhones or laptops? The greatest gift we can give to ourselves and each other is the gift of our being completely present in each and every thing we do. You would be amazed to discover how much you've missed by rushing just to get something done and not taking the time to truly see what was in front of you and all around you. You can just weed a garden, or you can experience a garden. It's a whole different ball game.
As for Flower Bear, we all took pictures to share with family and friends who could not be there, and then we took off her lace collar and sliced into her chocolate goodness. As always, she had another lesson in love and relationships to teach us that day, as she does every day, and I, for one, am forever grateful for her presence in my life.
And so it is.
Monday, July 20, 2015
Sometimes You Just Have to Build a New Nest
If you've followed my blog posts over the years, you know that I am a long-time fan of the Decorah Eagles on UStream and Facebook. I have watched this dedicated pair of bald eagles bring 23 babies into the world, parent them as only they can, and launch them into the world as youngsters beginning new lives of their own. There have been successes and tragedies. Some of the young ones were killed by high tension wires and poles not properly insulated or protected. One youngster fitted with a transmitter has taken us on a 700 mile round trip over the last few years. Being able to watch them hatch and grow, taking one step and one flap at a time just like any other child, has been a privilege, as has the lessons in parenting their Mom and Dad have taught all of us.
The other day we were informed that a strong storm cell had passed through Decorah, Iowa, and literally snapped the tree with the eagles' nest in half, sending the nest, as well as all of the camera and recording equipment, crashing to the ground. Thankfully, none of the eagles were harmed. Mom, Dad and the three youngsters, who have all "fledged" and taken wing on their own, were elsewhere riding out the storm. However, our birds-eye view (pardon the pun) will be put on hold for quite some time until we know which tree the parents will chose to build a new nest in.
This is the second time in the history of this pair that a storm has taken down their nest. They waited until nesting season was upon them and simply built a new nest in a different tree. There was no wailing and moaning, no "woe is me" sentiments. They adjusted to the situation and did what needed to be done. Sometimes you just have to build another nest.
How many times in our lives have we felt like we were starting all over from square one? Just when we thought we were finally done with all the problems and responsibilities, and ready to really live our lives ... boom! Another storm, another tree down, another nest (dream/goal) smashed to bits. What can we do? We can cry and wail, and blame God, our partners, our kids, the economy, our parents, and anyone else who fits the bill. Or, we can just build a new nest. When we do, when we simply asses the situation, and really look at what needs fixing, the new version is often a better version than the one we had. If we don't become so attached to what we have, thinking that "stuff" is what makes us happy, then having to start over again isn't so much a tragedy as it is an adventure. More often than not, the new nest is better than we could have imagined, the new life better than the one we had planned.
I will miss being able to turn on my laptop and visit with the eagles high up in the tree, viewing the countryside as they see it and watching them live and grow. It will probably be some time before the folks that set up the cameras will know where the new nest will be so they can get us ready for a new season of eagle-watching. In that time, we will all have to be patient and do what we can, with what we have, to build something newer and, hopefully, stronger. Until then, I'll just have to consider the next few months to be an adventure into the unknown and take it on with all the excitement and anticipation of a young eaglet about to take her maiden flight. Sometimes the nest leaves you, but more often than not, it's you who have to leave the nest and take that first step.
And so it is.
The other day we were informed that a strong storm cell had passed through Decorah, Iowa, and literally snapped the tree with the eagles' nest in half, sending the nest, as well as all of the camera and recording equipment, crashing to the ground. Thankfully, none of the eagles were harmed. Mom, Dad and the three youngsters, who have all "fledged" and taken wing on their own, were elsewhere riding out the storm. However, our birds-eye view (pardon the pun) will be put on hold for quite some time until we know which tree the parents will chose to build a new nest in.
This is the second time in the history of this pair that a storm has taken down their nest. They waited until nesting season was upon them and simply built a new nest in a different tree. There was no wailing and moaning, no "woe is me" sentiments. They adjusted to the situation and did what needed to be done. Sometimes you just have to build another nest.
How many times in our lives have we felt like we were starting all over from square one? Just when we thought we were finally done with all the problems and responsibilities, and ready to really live our lives ... boom! Another storm, another tree down, another nest (dream/goal) smashed to bits. What can we do? We can cry and wail, and blame God, our partners, our kids, the economy, our parents, and anyone else who fits the bill. Or, we can just build a new nest. When we do, when we simply asses the situation, and really look at what needs fixing, the new version is often a better version than the one we had. If we don't become so attached to what we have, thinking that "stuff" is what makes us happy, then having to start over again isn't so much a tragedy as it is an adventure. More often than not, the new nest is better than we could have imagined, the new life better than the one we had planned.
I will miss being able to turn on my laptop and visit with the eagles high up in the tree, viewing the countryside as they see it and watching them live and grow. It will probably be some time before the folks that set up the cameras will know where the new nest will be so they can get us ready for a new season of eagle-watching. In that time, we will all have to be patient and do what we can, with what we have, to build something newer and, hopefully, stronger. Until then, I'll just have to consider the next few months to be an adventure into the unknown and take it on with all the excitement and anticipation of a young eaglet about to take her maiden flight. Sometimes the nest leaves you, but more often than not, it's you who have to leave the nest and take that first step.
And so it is.
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