The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~ Henry David Thoreau. I encountered this dry bear grass waving in the wind that always seems to blow near Flagstaff, Arizona, on a hot summer day. The grass became a metaphor for the winds blowing through my own life. Sometimes we bend…
If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. ~ Oprah Winfrey These young skunk cabbage were flourishing on a trail near the Museum of Northern Arizona one morning and I was struck by their vitality. There…
Life at its best is a flowing, changing process in which nothing is fixed. ~ Carl Rogers The San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona were formed from the jagged edges of a volcano that exploded many thousands of years ago. The Peaks rise to an elevation of over twelve thousand feet and are large enough…
Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments. ~Rose Kennedy These ox-eye daisies found a home in the Coconino forest near Flagstaff, Arizona. No one had planted them, and the ground was poor and thin. Yet they thrived, moment to moment. If I went back there a year from now, a sister plant would…
Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker Because my weekdays are filled with to-do lists and have-to’s, I cultivate a sense of slowing down on the weekends. The walks I take are longer. The pauses to talk to my cats are more frequent. I smell the air like…
Mindfulness helps you fall in love with the ordinary. ~Thich Nhat Hanh Cracked volcanic rock, almost elephantine in its folds and crevices, lined a short walk on my way back to the Museum of Northern Arizona near Flagstaff. What delighted me about this canyon was the overabundance of lichen, profligate in its blooming on this…
We deal with change all the time. Day changes into night. Our body changes from hungry to full. Seasons change. But if the cycle is predictable in many ways it may be comforting. Change can be, in the wider scheme of things like fractals. The farther away is your perspective, the more the overall pattern…
I have been working hard all week, packing boxes for the local Humane Society thrift shop. My sister suggested weekends were for fun, too, so yesterday I drove north to visit the sunflowers of Northern Arizona. These sunflowers provide stability for me. For fifty years, they have always bloomed out on Fort Valley Road north of…