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Why I Love My Hiking Boots (Why My Office Hours are Chickadee to Full Moon!)

I love my hiking boots.

My hiking boots remind me that my office hours are “first morning chickadee chirp” to “wow look at that midnight Moon”.

Hmm… I guess that means I work all day, but hey, such is the life of the work-at-home-writer/ work-in-the-wild photographer.

These boots are the physical representation of my life on the trails. As I see them sitting next to my desk, they’re looking somewhat like a dog staring longingly at a leash, begging to be walked. My boots are waiting patiently to be taken out on a hike. I swear my dog gets jealous of my boots on the days it’s too cold or wet for him to come along!

These well-worn pieces of footwear describe me.

My hiking boots mean that my “research” for my writing gets to be trotting along looking at grand vistas.

My hiking boots say that I’m adventurous, even when the terrain is filled with boulders and prickly beings ready to poke me if I dare to bump in to them!

My hiking boots give me traction. I don’t always have the best traction out on the trails. I’m often caught in spots where the footing isn’t so great. Well, isn’t the same sometimes true in life?

I often feel like I can’t find my traction, like I’m slipping, sliding, or stuck. I feel it on the trails and in moving through this world. Even in writing this blog and my books I feel it! Some days the traction is there, and I’m on a metaphorical run down the dusty, winding path. Other days, I’m lost for words, lost in the trees, lost in a fog, or just plain, well, lost…

As the boots give traction on the trail, my hikes in nature give traction in my life. My boots anchor me steadily to the ground beneath my feet. Hiking anchors me in this world. It gives me perspective, a grounding point from which all other things are measured. It is my sanity, my balance, my joy. I can handle what life throws at me when I know the mountains will be there for me, whether I need the trees to whisper softly to me or the birds to sing my blues away.

My boots give me support. They wrap my feet up and keep my arches from pancaking. Trotting on trails and hiking to new heights can be stressful on the tootsies. It is said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Well, those rugged roads we travel chasing our dreams are craggy and uneven, challenging us at every twist and turn. We fight to keep our fragile footing and not lose our balance or our way. Sounds like quite the trek. Better have supportive footwear.

My boots protect me. They are my armor against the twigs, boulders, bee stings and prickly pear cacti out to maul my toes. Hiking in nature protects me. It is like getting the clearcoat protectant at the carwash. Time in the outdoors braces me against the harshness of modern life. Wandering in the wilderness gives me both a gentle eye for beauty and a toughness that only the rugged outdoors brings out in us. Nature forces me to handle it all- the wind, the cold, the snow, the rain, the relentless sun, the bugs, the aches, and the pains. Nature makes me sturdy.

My hiking boots get me up the hill to where these flowers wait for spring to arrive, to bloom again and let the sun kiss their leaves and petals. My time in nature gets me up the hills in life. Wandering the forests on lush mountain trails inspires me to create my own internal spring. It brings out my own desires to bloom, to grow, to be more than I am and keep reaching for who I could be.

My hiking boots whisper to me… “Let’s go to the trails!”

They take me along the path, and help me find new friends.

They tell me, “Remember, your office hours are from ‘first chickadee chirp at sunrise’ to ‘full moon lighting your late-night trail’….”

I do love my hiking boots.

And don’t even get me started on how much I love my camera…

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The Healing Surprise of Sweet Deer on the Trail

I blogged last week about the sweet anticipation of flower buds hanging on the edge of blooming.

Anticipation is one of my favorite sensations in life, but another feeling caught me today and set my soul beaming with joy- “happy surprise”.

This morning was far too cold to stay out hiking for very long. I stopped at my usual morning “meet the animals” spots to say hello, see who was up to what, and see if any critters wanted to pose for my camera today. But apparently all the critters at Garden of the Gods thought it was too cold to play, too.

For two weeks, now, I’ve been watching a pair of magpies build a nest, but they weren’t in a building mood today. No, today they were just shivering on a branch. The mountain cottontails that hop about playing “chase” games this time of year were off hiding under the bushes.

The spunky family of fox squirrels I love to hang out with were nowhere to be found, and the landscape in this very early part of spring still has a bland look to it. That meant even the mountains and great stones of Garden of the Gods weren’t all that exciting this morning.

So I decided to spare my fingertips the agony of frozen nature photography. No, I decided. Go home and catch up on some house cleaning today.

And with that, I set off for home.

But on the way out of the park after leaving the magpie homestead there’s one more turn in the road I had to pass. This stretch of road runs alongside the stunning, towering rock formation known as “Cathedral Rock” (left in the top picture, blocking Pikes Peak), and as I approached it in the morning sun, I saw I was not alone.

My dear friends, the deer, a small herd of does and fawns that roam the park, were doing their happy morning munching on the hill in front of the south face of the great stone. Some had crossed the road; others to the west seemed to be thinking about it.

I parked and jogged up the hill, just in time for a mother and her babies to cross right in front of me on the trail, between me and the great stone Cathedral Rock.

I couldn’t have timed it any better had I actually tried.

Once they had all crossed the road and settled in on the hill in front of me, I couldn’t help but stand there in awe and reflect on the graceful timing of our encounter. Five minutes earlier, my cute deer buddies would have still been deeper in the park, out of sight. Ten minutes later, they would have been all the way over the ridge they were climbing.

So what are the chances that I would happen upon them, at just this magnificent moment, to cross the very path I was walking? How did I get so blessed as to spend the morning with these placid sweeties, when my mind had been in such a funk and on such a mundane mission: to go clean the house?

I have long told friends who were facing indecision, an unclear or boring path, or who are in crisis to stop trying to figure things out. So often in life, the answer, the solution, the inspiration that leads to the change we need comes not from thinking our way through something. It often does not come from reasoning, plotting, planning, strategizing or analyzing (shocking advice from me, a trained philosopher!). It comes, all on its own, when we just relax, and let life unfold, naturally.

Today I tried to plan my morning, in a nice, responsible, practical way. Looking back my thoughts amuse me. Yes, Suze, spare your hands the cold today. Yes, yes, go home and do the dishes and vacuum, that’s a much more reasonable use of this time.

Ha! Inspiration knows nothing of reason, and I have made a choice in life to follow the inspired path, to trek the tantalizing trail, to flow like water and see where the muse of nature takes me.

That’s when the inspiring things happen. That’s when the clouds part and the angels sing and the herd of deer crosses in front of the great stone at just the moment I happened to go by. Ah, that’s the path I’m taking.

What will heal a problem is so often something you cannot foresee. What will thrill you is often something you cannot foresee, either.

I’ve had some emotional pain to deal with this week, and the disorientation of a hectic, out-of-sorts, busy schedule. I had no idea how much I needed some down time to just let my soul do some healing. I had no idea how much I needed a little thrill.

When we’re stressed there’s nothing quite like having an experience where time suspends, emotions soften, thinking quiets, and all becomes still and wonderful. In those moments, when we’re truly in the present- not in the past, not in the future, not in worry or tension or pressure- we can heal. Answers come, smiles appear, paths seem clearer, and life takes on a new lightness.

So after I’d taken enough pictures to exhaust my poor camera (I do work the poor thing hard!), I sat down in the dirt. The one momma doe looked a little quizzically at me at first, but then decided to ignore me and give her baby a bath.

These deer have seen me and my annoying clicking machine before. Perhaps she remembered that, and knew I was okay to hang out with this morning. So I stayed with the little herd. They munched and played, groomed and bathed. And I sat a few feet away, enjoying their gentle sweet presence, their relaxed, quiet ways, their big brown eyes and the crunching of twigs.

I had a morning full of bliss. Not the morning I’d “planned”. No, this was way better than that….

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Lean In and Listen to Life’s Sweet Whispers

What is life telling you?

Are you even listening?

Have you ever noticed how often we find ourselves scrambling madly about, “looking” for answers to life’s biggest questions. We’re shouting at the wind, often loudly, all 7 billion of us. A confused and befuddled lot we are, creating a cacophonous roar of humanity, all screaming, “What am I supposed to do?!”

I hike in nature nearly every day. I see animals making decisions, encountering obstacles, dealing with predators, building nests and seeking out the nourishment they need to face another day. And while the occasional noisy uproar takes place, for the most part they‘re not a screaming bunch. If anything, they’re a pleasant, musical bunch, happily going about their business with tweets and chirps. They’re not generally freaking out or creating any sort of inharmonious hullabaloo.

How do they do it?

Why are these wild animals, out in the dangerous “wild” so generally at peace? What do these cute little critters know that we don’t?

They listen to the whispers of life. They’re quiet enough to hear them. These seemingly meek and simple creatures exist in a very natural state, uncluttered by the demands, the noise, the chaos of our modern human lives. They know when to shut up, be still, and tune in.

They do far more listening than chattering.

Even the much-maligned squirrel, the notorious “spaz” of the forest, actually spends a great deal of time just being still. Just, well, being. They spend hours lounging lazily on comfy bark-covered branches. And when they need information to help them make a decision, they don’t run around chirping and squeaking and chattering madly. They stop, hang from a tree, and just listen.

Human critters don’t spend enough time listening. The squirrel only chatters when it has to. When it’s figuring something out (including what the heck that clicking sound is coming from my camera), it is quiet. It tunes in. It listens and absorbs information instead of shouting at the wind that it doesn’t know what to do. I think we humans need to learn a little critter wisdom!

Today I got fabulous practice in the art of listening and lending an ear.

Ironically, in the middle of writing this, I spent two hours conversing with a dear friend in the throes of a mammoth life upheaval. Oh, boy, out came my human instinct to talk! But instead I listened. I stared at the draft of this post as we talked and made sure I really listened. And then she listened. I listened because she needed someone to hear her news, and she listened because there was information I had that she needed. In the stillness of the space we created, information could get through and understanding could be born. In that space we could hear answers, whispered softly across the ocean from one friend to the other. That’s how good communication works.

The answers are there for us, just as the animals know. Sometimes all we need is to quiet our minds and discover that the answers, really, are within us. We know what to do, if we just listen to ourselves, and listen for the cues the world offers to us. Stop shouting “What’s the answer?!” long enough to hear the reply.

Animals know that whatever information they seek is probably right in front of them. We humans may think we have the smartest brains, but wisdom lives in all kinds of beings. Pride won’t get in the way of me seeing that I could learn something from a stellar’s jay. Arrogance won’t blind me to the sage-like ways of the raven who stands confidently on the cliff’s edge, waiting, listening.  Humility moves in and tells me I’m the student of life, here.

I’ll gladly walk in the paws of the wise squirrel who hangs in the stillness, the attentive bunny who cocks her little head to hear more clearly, and in the feet of the astute chickadee who holds on tight and listens to life’s sweet whispers.

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The Things We Dream of Can Seem So Far Away and Unreachable

The things we dream of can seem so massive, so distant,

 So hopelessly far away and unreachable…

But on the grand scale of the whole universe?

Think about it…

They’re really right in front of us…

I’m a dreamer. I’m an overflowing current of creative energy that buzzes through life, coursing along the field lines of ideas and inspirations that carry me from one “dream” to the next.

I’ve dreamed of, and pursued, a dozen different things. I’ve dreamed of business ideas, academic degrees, hobbies, talents, and passions. And every single one of them seemed, at times, to be one of those nifty “impossible dreams”.  One of those “go chase a rainbow” dreams. One of those dreams you just swallow hard and keep to yourself.

We seem to fear telling people about our sweetest dreams as we would fear telling them that we’d like to raise pet unicorns or chase rainbows for a living.

We fear the chorus of voices taunting us with a reprimand of, “You silly! Don’t you know how far away and impossible dreams are?”

In a world seething with a high-stakes, high-achieving mentality and stories of outrageous entrepreneurs and daring extroverted superstars, it can be an easy trap to think, “Everyone’s right. I’ll give up. Dreams happen for other people. Those kinds of people.”

You know, the people who make it look so easy. Or the ones who seem so lucky. The ones who are so different from you, so unlike the humdrum of ordinary people. Yeah, dreams are for those people.

Or are they for all people?

I mean, this little flower dreamed of one day growing out from under the oppressive shade of this big overshadowing rock. Its dream became real.

Okay, I don’t know if flowers dream, but I do know this flower had a mighty spark of life in it to achieve such a thing.

Don’t we all have a spark in us? Aren’t we all capable of so much more than we tend to believe? What if creativity was let loose here on Earth, given a free rein to make this world into everything, all the best things it could be. What If we unleashed ourselves to going after the big, beautiful dreams that matter? Are we so afraid they won’t come true? Are we afraid they can’t come true?

I know some of our dreams seem massive. But it really makes me wonder. Why do we call them dreams, anyway? As though they were something so otherworldly, intangible, unobtainable and elusive as never to make an appearance here in the real world.

Well, I guess because for those of us who have dreams, words like ambitions, goals, objectives, and purpose just don’t cut it. They’re too concrete. Too linear. Too, well, dull. Aspirations is a little better. It at least tries to capture that ethereal, effervescent quality of creative longing.

But I wonder if part of the reason we call them dreams is that we are so utterly convinced that the things we dream of are so hopelessly far away and unreachable. Think of it this way. We would never dare to believe that our dreams we have at night are “real”! How silly would we be? But ouch. Wait. What does it mean, then, if the desires and aspirations we cherish most during our waking hours we habitually refer to as- gulp- dreams? Dreams? Those things that we know for sure aren’t “real”? Wow. What does that say about us?

I think it says that we’ve lost sight of the notion that although the things we dream of can seem so massive, so distant, so hopelessly far away and unreachable, on the grand scale of the whole universe they really are right in front of us.

After all, rainbows do appear here in the real world. Mountains do get climbed. We’ve sent spacecraft to the moon.

So maybe we just need some cosmic perspective, some epic viewpoint by which to judge these “crazy” dreams.

How about traveling to the Andromeda Galaxy? That’s a nifty dream! But yes, on the grand scale of the whole universe- for now, anyway- that one does seem hopelessly far away.

What about changing careers to something that truly excites your soul, ignites your passion, and makes the world a better place? By comparison, that’s not so hopelessly far away.

How about uprooting yourself and moving to a land that’s warmer, or prettier, or has fewer mosquitoes? By comparison, that’s not so massive! (After all, I did it, so it can’t be that unreachable!)

See, it’s all just a matter of that pesky perception.

And since I’ve seen my share of jaw-dropping, lusciously brilliant rainbows appear in the skies above me, I’m a believer. Yep, I’m in, I’ll dream.

You, too! Go dream! Go aspire! Good grief, just go DO.

And what the heck, go chase a rainbow just for the fun of it.

But I wouldn’t expect to find too many unicorns. I think that one’s still out of reach. 😉

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Every Bud Enjoys the Anticipation of What it Could Become

Ah, flower buds.

Sweetly wrapped up bundles of loveliness.

As they sit waiting for the day their petals unfurl to reveal the glory within, do you think they enjoy the anticipation of what they are about to become?

Okay, I don’t really know what flower buds think. But when I follow a plant photographically from sprouting to budding to full bloom, the moment that seems to hang in the air with breathless anticipation is the bud on the verge of bloom.

It’s intoxicating. I know that feeling. I love that feeling.

Because anticipation is one of the sweetest sensations in life.

And it’s at least half the fun.  For those of us on the creative path in life, when we have dreams we’re chasing, the anticipation is what keeps us going. It’s the months of swooning daydreams you have leading up to glorious events, adventures, and joys in life. It’s what we feel when we have something to look forward to. And what is life if there’s nothing to look forward to?

It is the anticipation of the future that propels us forward, like a wind at our backs, or a rope pulling us in. We lean towards it. We feel that future just beyond our finger tips’ reach and…. keep reaching.

So when I’m lying in the dirt, macro lens at the ready, clicking away at the soft, new, baby-fine petals-to-be, I drift off into that goose-bumpy emotion. A bud has shared with me the gift of enjoying its anticipation.

(Click on any of my photographs to see an enlarged image)

Are we so unlike the flower? Just ponder, how many such blooming transitions do we have in our own lives? We have our own seasons of growth and rest, bursting forth and settling down. We experience cycles upon cycles of transformation.

Stirring within me in those moments, beyond empathizing with the transition of the bud, beyond soaking up the yummy feeling of anticipation, I also feel inspired. If this fragile, kind-of-helpless little plant can find the power, the gracefulness and the know-how to burst through cool spring soil to become this magnificent expression of beauty… then what am I capable of?

What are you capable of? More than you realize? More than you ever dreamed? Be the bud today. Enter a new transition. Dare to ask yourself, am I a magnificent expression of beauty in this world? Be with that question for a while. If the flower can do it, I’ll bet you can, too.

So maybe today begins a transition. Why not? Set some new sight, new expectation, new goal or dream to blossom in to. Commit to it with the strength of the sprout that emerges from the land. Go make it beautiful as the bud does. And enjoy the anticipation of what you are about to become.

Then smile today. After all, you just had inspiration from a flower bud… how fun is that?

We’re all here for you, in the field of wildflowers! Does anyone have a dream they’re willing to share? What are your buds going to become?

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Calmly Soaring on the Hunt for What We Want in Life

Inspiration doesn’t come by flapping madly about.

Meaning and purpose in our lives are revealed not by pressure, not by effort, not by a bossy, inner voice proclaiming shoulds and nagging us about what we ought to do.

It is only by soaring above the cacophonous voices of the world (and our own past) that we enter the calm air of tranquility where our own, authentic inner voice becomes clear. And our own vision becomes clear. See not from the ground, where the clutter of life interferes with our line of sight, but from above, where the panorama of the Big Picture can put it all in perspective.

Go on a hunt for meaning. Be the hawk. Find some stillness. Find some silence. Go ahead, it’s okay. Ride the wind till you catch an updraft that suspends you and holds you gently while you listen with keen ears and see with new eyes.  Stay aloft until you find what you seek. It’s there, from this view, standing out from the scenery below.

(Click on any of my photographs to see an enlarged image)

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