Mushrooms Inspire Me in the Darkest of Moments

It has been a while since I visited the Patch. One would have thought that I would have camped out here during the weeks before the election considering all the negative ad campaigns, the anger of the citizens, the sadness, and the chaos.

The mushrooms symbolize the magic of life when it emerges from a source considered less than lovely by most people. The mushroom, a fungus, begins its existence as a spore underground. It draws nourishment of the decay of organic matter from trees, grass, dead insects, and yes, even feces, animal and insect.

The emergence of colonies of mushroom inspires me for they do so with astounishing speed, and once the caps are exposed to the air, they develop very quickly. Once the caps have unfolded, they actually turn upwards, then equally rapidly, the mushroom releases its spores, sheds its cap and the whole organism rots and is reabsorbed into the earth from whence it came.

Though the life of a mushroom colony is brief, the beauty they exhibit cannot be denied. They are powerful, and can move aside very large objects as they pop up and unfold. They have many shapes, sizes and characteristics.

Mushrooms come from humble origins, feed on what the world considers the garbage of life, have short but amazing lives, and, when they die, they leave only more nourishment of other organisms.

Mushrooms inspire me in the worst of times. Thank God elections are held in the fall.

Annie Lennox Big Sky 2007

Annie Lennox weaves music darkly and yet somehow her music gives me peace. Dark truth is still truth, and it sets me free indeed.

Sometimes people, institutions, policies and politics bring me down and my big sky looms threatening above me. If I brave the gloom and see it for what it is - just the gathering of energy before release, I can look past my fear and feel the anticipation of the coming sun... and it always emerges.

Beautiful life.

Recircuiting

I finished circuiting the new electrical in the master bedroom. I installed some new fixtures, re-circuited some of the old stuff, and an added an entirely new circuit for the outdoor lighting.

What a very long project that turned out to be for me. I knew when we redesigned the master that the new lighting would be a challenge, but I never imagined how complicated the actual design and installation would become. Avenues of routing I thought were open to me, proved impossible to follow, and time and time again, I had to change plans, reroute and reposition. The house was built, shall we say, off the cuff. The builders and subsequent re-modelers utilized a lot of that good old fashioned Alaska "git er done" spirit. I have probably officially joined that faction out of sheer desperation. I didn't compromise code or standard, but I had to compromise my vision.

The problems I have faced in my electrical work mirror the general struggles I have faced in my life in the past two years since my father died. I have had to face truth, lots of it, and if I thought re-circuiting "the house that Jack built" was a challenge, it was a cake walk compared to re-circuiting the "brain that Jeanette circuited." I have learned on a very deep level what is the meaning of compromise, humility, and acceptance. The lesson was not easy to absorb. I thought myself to be the self made gal, but these years have taught me how to accept help, to reach out to others, to trust and to allow myself to admit mistakes.

Though tired and nearly spent from physical and mental labors, I could not be happier with the results - both with house and head. For the first time in a very long time, I am enjoying the process of living. Yes, I still fear the shadows in the far corners of my home and my mind, but I can handle it... that is as long as I let someone hold the light for me while I work. Life is good.

Finding Peace in Blown Insulation

I spent ten plus years crawling around the cramped innards of an HH-60 Pavehawk helicopter without complaint (a few expletives maybe). I have slithered into the darkest, smallest spaces in a C-130, and emerged relatively intact. I have been surrounded by thousands of despicable looking crickets clinging to the dank walls of a crawlspace, and kept my cool. But yesterday, while wriggling on my belly in the attic through two feet of blown insulation, I encountered the edge of my sanity, and fell off.

If the pitch of one's roof is exceptionally low, reason would dictate that one choose not to attempt the virtually impossible task of sifting through a mountain of puffy, itchy insulation to find a wire of the same color as the insulation in which it is buried. Certainly, a normal human should not attempt to cram themselves into the sort of angular space that one would find at the edge of one's roof near the overhang. I really thought doing this would be a good idea.

Where I found the energy to do any of this I will never know. I am bruised the full length of my body, yet, despite dreading another trip to the furthest recesses of the attic, I feel the urge to repeat this insanity. I have to because my family is counting on me. Who can deny a family there due? If they desire to be able to illuminate the out of doors with the flick of a switch, who am I to deny them such a seemingly trivial wish?

I don the proper apparel, tools and a prayer, and head up to the nether regions of home. I give myself a safety briefing to the effect of:

"Should we be doing this?"

"Probably not."

"Don't fall off the ladder."

"Okay, what else."

"Uh, make sure the power is turned off."

"Got it. Anything else."

"Not really. Don't think about the huge, very pregnant spider that you watched dangle from the eave of the roof yesterday."

"Great! Thanks for bringing that up."

"No problem. Let's get 'er done."

"I hate that slogan."

"Tough. Get to work."

"You stink as a safety officer."

Sound of toe scuffing rocks as I sulk and walk away to do my job.

My only solace is the knowledge that my dandelion patch will be waiting if I need to visit.

S'mores and My Higher Power

If, as Forrest Gump so eloquently pointed out,"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you are going to get.", then it must also be like a stack of s'mores because you never know how balanced it will be until it starts to melt.

Yes, this analogy is a bit flimsy on paper, but try it. Stack your chocolate, the marsh mellow and the graham cracker, heat it and watch what happens. Frantic, haphazard stacking will produce an unbalanced s'more that collapses on its way to your mouth. The chocolate slithers off of your graham cracker onto you shirt, and the marsh mellow collides with the skin of you chin instead of your lips. It's tragic, and avoidable. If one takes a moment to contemplate their stack, they will recognize imbalances in cracker, chocolate and marsh mellow, make adjustments as necessary, and commence to microwave their creation. This stack will maintain its balance from plate to mouth. Oh, yes, indeed the goodness of chocolaty marsh mellow will most assuredly ooze from between its graham cracker sandwich, but you will expect it and be ready to intercept and ingest the sweet goodness on your terms.

I warned everyone to expect absurdity, and I have delivered. Life is a box of chocolate and a stack of s'mores and so very much more. Even if we choose the chocolate with awful maple filling, or end up with chocolaty ooze on our new blouse, we have the God given faculties to accept our plight and press forward. It was the lure of chocolate that drew our attention to that box, and just because a teensy bit of maple goo appeared, we still managed to savor a bit of chocolate. And for all the mess from our hastily stacked s'more, we felt the sweetness of it on our tongue. All we need to do next is pick up the mess and be grateful for the experience. So simple and yet so difficult.

My beloved has caught me in the act, and I am being not so subtly herded back out of doors to finish hanging trim. I am grateful for the love, grateful for the sense of urgency, and grateful for the opportunity to be of service to my family. Whatever the consequences of my selections may be, I am grateful for those as well.

Being Grateful for the Process When The Goals Seem Insurmountable

My home
My Joy
Is Barred and Bolted
And I...
Won't Letcha In.

Kate Bush - The Dreaming

My partner and I bought this house in September, 2004. I cannot believe that nearly six years have passed since we moved in and began the process of renovation. We knew this would be no overnight project, but we certainly did not anticipate that it would take all of six years.

I chose the above verse from a Kate Bush song because for six years this house has all but been barred and bolted. Our visions of gatherings 'round sizzling barbecues or nights spent around a game board have been placed on hold until the renovations made the house hospitable. Yet, what defines hospitable?

As happened with the death of my father, I am awakening to the onslaught of time and yet another ungentle dose of reality, which, put simply is that I may be waiting a very long time until my visions become reality, and in the interim life streaks by me.

How can I alter this reality that has come to dominate my life? How do I encapsulate the larger than life, what cannot be accomplished in a day's work into an achievement that can be appreciated at the end of a day?

These and many other answered questions await me each morning when I pop out of bed. They would overwhelm me if I didn't take a moment to meet with my Maker for some much needed guidance. If I spend a few minutes just sitting quietly thinking about God and am grateful for all that God has created in this world, I can gain the perspective I need to confront the daily projects.

As I see it, the Maker didn't necessary create the world in which I live just for me, yet I have never failed to find something in it that touched me deeply. Perhaps I should do as the Maker does and be joyous in the creation, and let those around me share my joy as they are able at their own pace. Some of what I make may not be meaningful to one, but will be to another. What one cannot appreciate, another will even as I have waxed hot or cold to the elements in the world around me.

I will strive only to be happy with the work of my own hands, and the blessings of the Maker delighting in what each day brings to me. Whatever I do has been done before, but not in my unique way. I believe that it pleases the teacher to see the student find solutions each in his or her own way.

Converting a Patch of Quicksand into a Patch of Dandelions

My moods can swing as swiftly as the stars careening through the sky on a cold Alaska evening. Sometimes the pace at which they alter troubles me, but lately not as much as they have in times past. I have this buffer now between my thoughts and corresponding emotions. I can pause for just a brief second before my emotions run roughshod over me leaving me full of remorse or regret.

My emotions have been difficult to cope with since my dad's death. Some days every good emotion was immediately followed with the thought that something bad would happen, and my spirits fells. Other days, no happy feelings existed at all. My chest felt like quicksand sucking thoughts and emotions into it to swirl around in a morass of self pity and even despair.

How does one pull the plug on a tub of quicksand? I don't think you can, but I could do was back fill it feeding more emotion into to create a more stable platform on which to stand.

If my thoughts were negative, I let them pour forth, but not without blessing them with a rational thought or two. For instance, the emotion of sadness was fortified with the thought that I deserved to grieve because grieving made me stronger, honored my father, and if allowed to run its course would allow me to move. I resisted the urge to quell my feelings. The quicksand thickened. The positive nature of my thought words restored the pH balance of my emotions. The quicksand turned to nutrient rich soil wherein happier emotions could take root and produce tender shoots. I tended my new found garden with more positive affirmations turning sadness to contentment. I greeted all emotion with joy letting the feelings wash through me. They collected in the quagmire and were treated with a compost of my own making: a collection of past happy memories of events related to the negative emotions, and a mental picture of how the present sadness would morph into a pleasant future. The quagmire turned to soil and from the soil sprang my favorite ground cover - the dandelion.

You can eat the leaves of the dandelion while they are young and tender. You can harvest the roots and consume them as well in a tea infusion. Dandelions excel at surviving. When the soil beneath them begins to run fallow, they will kick into overdrive and produce flowers in great abundance. Those flowers transform into the most beautiful fuzzy tendrils with seeds at the ends of their lengths. When the winds pick up, the dandelions produce some sort of chemical that relaxes the follicles holding the seed stems, and they are released into the wind. The wisps on the seed stems are perfect air foils and the seeds are carried to far reaches in the hopes that at least some of them will find ripe soil in which to grow.

Dandelions do not horde their life energy. They instinctively know to release the bounty of their offspring to chance. All life is chance, and no amount of clinging to it will change that fundamental concept. My life is extraordinary, and what I have experienced, good and bad, should be released. The seeds of my emotions and thoughts will not be corralled into tiny pockets of memories to be stored forever as personal treasures. Each thought must be free to compliment each emotion. Memories must be pliable enough to transformation lest negative ones grow unabated into pools of quicksand that cannot support new life, or positive ones become monuments to joys that can never be matched causing regret to the heart that holds them.

I release the bounty of my life to the wind, and I laugh as they climb unfettered into the atmosphere that has sustained my breath. Who knows where they will land and into what substrate they will take root, or even if I will witness that burst of life or gentle withering. Even the withered ones will replenish the soil upon which they landed, and even in passing they will provide nourishment. I am content for now just to witness them dance and whirl about me as they do what all life must do - change. I can stand upon my once unstable patch of quicksand and know that I have stepped back to allow the Master Gardner to do His work, and that I need not fear being sucked down into its depths. I am free, happy and blessed.

4th of July at Fort Ticonderoga

Yesterday was yet another magical day spent with family in New York. My second cousins, Aurora and Edan, kept me occupied most of the day with swimming and archery. I really liked the archery. I enjoy letting myself get lost in the rhythm of notching an arrow, drawing the bow, sighting the target and releasing the string. The arrow striking the target with a solid thump is very satisfying.

My cousins and I swam as much as possible. There are two beaches at the Y. The one on the point offers the most room. Aurora dove for mussels and snails letting me inspect each one as it was retrieved. Edan caught me up on the history of the resort, as details of her family's move from Albany to L.A.

I bought a kite to fly on the commons by the tennis courts, but by the time I finished meditating with my Uncle and some of his friends, the wind had stopped blowing and the bugs had launched into the warm, hot air from their blades of grass. Although they don't bite me, they can be quite annoying. I fled the commons giving over the field to God's most persistent creatures.

The family gathered at the dining hall for a very nice dinner. Everyone visited each table and chatted in a natural ebb and flow of conversation. The children bubbled as children do, and there was joy.

Sometime around eight, my cousin Aaron, began the process of gathering family and friends together in an effort to get us all to the fireworks display to be held in the town of Ticonderoga. Gathering a McEwen is no easy task. They have very long legs and can be pleasantly unpredictable. Watching the gathering event was in and of itself enjoyable. I claim no superiority of time management, for if I were with my clan, I doubt I would have been much better able to get from point A to point B.

Eventually all were gathered into various cars and vans, and we all drove to the town. Amazingly enough, we found everyone very easily. The group split into two groups with one group opting to remain at the fire station, and the other heading further into town in search of the mythical carnival grounds. I was apart of the second group.

Our group found a nice hill on which to sit. The toy boys in our bunch made good use of the slope rolling down it and running back up it repeatedly until dusk fell. The grandmothers asked them to remain close to us so they could be seen and tracked. One grandmother bought them a ring of glowing stuff with which they played until the fireworks started.

The fireworks were spectacular as only fire works can be, and we all oohed and awed. After the final burst, we quickly made our way back to the outskirts of town and found the first group who apparently had had sprinklers turned on them just after we split up. Tired and happy we drove back to the cabin. My Uncle dropped me off, and went straight to bed.

What an incredible day!

Welcome to Silver Bay YMCA of the Adirondacks

A Wedding in the Beautiful Adirondacks

Today I am joyously occupied with activities and sightseeing. My cousin got married last night in the chapel at the Silver Bay YMCA. The wedding was as all weddings are simply magical. The chapel were they took their vows was built in the late eighteen hundreds. It is of the sort you find all over the east coast with walls erected of local stone, and a high vaulted ceiling made of locally milled lumber.

The theme for the reception was Scotland where the two newly weds will spend their honeymoon. The guest tables represented the isles of Scotland, and each guest knew their seating arrangements by looking for their names on the rocks at the sign in table. On the backs of the rocks was writ the name of the isle or table where they were to sit. Beautiful.

Everyone made merry. The children, many and varied in age, height, gender and temperament, danced until the staff shut the ball room. Those who chose to imbibe of spirits did so with gleeful abandon having no worries of driving home.

I have reconnected with my family on my father's side, and I am thrilled to have this opportunity.

I arose this morning filled with energy. I began with a thirty minute run, then donned my swimsuit and did a few laps in the lake. Wow. You can actually swim in the water. It was cold, but the body adjusted quickly and the joy of swimming in a lake overwhelmed me. I cried. What else could I do?

After meditation, I went down to the boat house and checked out a kayak. The livery master suggested I head into the wind south on the lake, Lake George. I took his advice and went about a mile down to a point. The lake stretches out quite a ways, several miles perhaps, but I do not really care for the details of its geography. I yelled as the bow of the kayak cut into the foot chops spraying me with copious amounts of warm water. Such a rush! I am not afforded these opportunities in Alaska where the water can kill the unwary. I gave myself over to the rhythm of the strokes. Getting back was bit trickery as I had to adjust for following seas but the peace and quiet on the water made it worth the effort.

The day has not even begun to unfold. The wedding couple reserved the archery range for one p.m. Adults and small children will be notching arrows. Oh, pray that we all emerge from the experience unscathed.

I am the sole representative from my father's lineage. I am a bit sad, but feel privileged as well. I want to carry on my Grandma Fuller's tradition of keeping in touch with family and friends. I felt her spirit at the wedding. I had to stifle the urge to break out into a soulful rendition of "Sunrise, Sunset" from the musical Fiddler on the Roof. It was one of Grandma's favorites. Sigh. I resisted the urge, and let the moment pass. Still, it could still happen....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjOF6byeKEI

If The Spirit Had Been More Willing, The Body Might Have Been More Able.

I love to hike, and spent quite a bit of time exploring trails all around Anchorage and down on the Seward Peninsula. I once dreamed of hiking over the pass that separates Portage from Whittier. I had boo coos of dreams back then.

I moved into a fixer upper home, and for the past five years painting, scraping, tiling and renovating have eclipsed my desire to explore the great outdoors. Make no mistake, my home gives me much comfort, but the work has been difficult, and at times I have struggled to maintain my facade of competence. The results of each days labor astounds me, and renews my vigor. Still, in the distance, the peaks of the Chugach beckon.

A week ago, I took a hike three quarters of the way up Flat Top in Anchorage. I could not make it the last fourth of the way. My heart was thrumming in my chest, and once I stopped to catch my breath, my legs just refused to carry me any further. My first response to this system's failure was anger. How dare my 43 year old body react in this manner? I was furious with myself. All my anger and indignation could not jump start my aching muscles.

I wonder what would have been the response had I simply rested, enjoyed the view of the city, then made another attempt? I did sit down for a few minutes, but my head buzzed with negative thoughts and observations. I resented the new houses that have cropped up closer to the mountain. I resented the bits of trash I had seen scattered here and there along the trail up from the main parking area. I did not much care for the modern parking area. My memories of the old days swirled inside my head. "I used to run this trail." "The old trail was better." "Why can't anything remain as it was in the past?" I couldn't let go of the negativity. No positive energy could bubble up through that morass of dour indictments.

I have experienced the shifts in my physical strength and stamina that follow changes in thought patterns from positive to negative. I have been down in the dumps and flat on my butt with no energy only to be polarized into action the next moment after receiving good news. My strength and energy are directly influenced by my thoughts. Negative thoughts and emotions sap my strength. Positive thoughts and emotions boost my energy.

My state of mind the day I took that hike determined my fate on Flat Top. Had I been kinder to myself in thought and action, I would have found the strength I needed to finish my climb. Perhaps I should not have made such a climb in the first place? An honest appraisal of my performance suggests that if my spirit had been more willing, my body might have more cooperative.

Affirmations: Challenging Myself to Expand a Little Bit More Every Day

I love this picture. My nephew, Conner, took it of me posing on the Butte in Palmer, Alaska back in 2001.

Many of the qualities I value most about myself can be seen in the picture on the right: my smile, my enthusiasm for seeking beautiful places. I like my hair as well.

2001 was a good year for me. I treasure many of the memories from that summer in particular. My nephew and I were able to do many activities together. My partner and I renovated a 32' class A recreational vehicle. I separated from the military, and embarked on a new adventure.

Finding myself after separation was awkward. I realize now that I missed the structure and security of that institution. Those qualities however, came with a price, and I do not miss paying that price every day.

This picture captures all the hope and enthusiasm I possessed at the time. I pulled it out and posted it as a visual link to the two affirmations I have for today:

• I love my smile, and the way I open up totally when I am happy. I seek to be happy each day regardless of circumstances. I open to happiness.
• I love the spirit of adventure that bubbles under my surface waiting only for me to open and harness its energy. I can feel it in the twitching of my legs or the way my eyes seek a mountain peak or a distant horizon. I will let my higher power guide me as I open myself to that adventurous spirit.

These affirmations encourage me to expand my spirit a little more each day. Somewhere between that picture of me on the Butte and today I collapsed upon myself, but my face has found a sunbeam again. I need to follow it wherever it takes me until I find the source of its magic. I used to thrill at the chance to chase sunshine up mountainsides. The mountain may be more metaphorical these days, but the thrill will be none the less spectacular.