Shadows

Most people concentrate on the sky. But the shadows are just as beautiful. How satisfying it is to watch the light wrapping its shawl around trees and fence posts, barns and docks.

That's what I love about old Florida. The shadows tell a story, and it's not one of sadness. There are horse farms and still, muddy marshes supporting rotten boat bottoms with grasses growing through them. Soft hills carpeted with pasture display classic oaks like dancers on a pedestal.

North central Florida sprinkled woodlands across my weekend. They were laced with dogwoods--just past their prime and half-dressed with white flowers--a sight for the eyes a little too used to tropical scenes.

My mind has been too full of things. It's felt like French onion soup oozing over the edges of a mug that's too small. I've needed some serious nature, and nature that's more than 30 minutes from home. This part of the state feels like a more temperate zone--less beachy, with trees that actually lose their leaves in the winter, and therefore, shine zealous crops of lime green growth when the spring hits the air.

I feel renewed. Cedar Key sightseeing. Gainesville hiking. Ocala horseback riding. Strung together with two lane county roads, they have each seen their share of college students, visitors from out of state, families backed by generations born in a state where surprisingly few originate, and other characters of travel and home.

I regret my camera didn't make the treck, yet I see through a clearer heart lens of really being in the moment when I'm not concentrating on a perfect image to savor for later.

Shadows--whether building with the illumination of a new day or the fading of a day that's been filled with experience--lay themselves out on the land and reach to me. I feel their stories and the sun shining on them, an observer yet somehow part of it all.

10 Things That Make Me Feel the Sun Shining

So last week I shared a few things that make me want to hide in a dark corner. Since I'm not, afterall, a girl who likes to dwell on the bad stuff, here's a list of a few things that renew my sense of contentment. I'm hoping we have some things in common, and even more so, you'll share your list with me. 

1. Plop me in the natural environment anywhere, anytime, and I'm happy. Pine flatwoods, oak hammocks, salt marshes, freshwater marshes, lakes, rivers, streams, mountains, beaches, oceans--I'm there. There's an order to all of them and I take refuge in their purity.
2. Surprising friends and family with cards and small gifts. I've always enjoyed popping a card in the mail or buying a small, unexpected gift for someone in my life. I need to do it more frequently.
3. Planning travel--day trips to places I've never visited in Florida, weekend trips with girlfriends, or fantasy travel with the fam I may not ever take. The power to plan and explore gives me renewed energy when the minutia of circumstances are draining my spirit.
4. Mexican food. I wish it wasn't so, but give me a margarita, some fabulous chips and salsa, and a veggie burrito, and I'm in sheer bliss. Add a bit of queso dip, and it's like a mini vacation. If only the calories were equivalent to a bed of lettuce...
5. Painting the walls. Yes, I've now painted our office three times in the last 6 months. I know it seems a bit obsessive, but I can't seem to get it just right...and something about having that roller with a fresh coat of color is sooo exciting. It's a physical activity too. Good exercise.
6. Watching Flanders curled in her ball of brown sweetness, asleep and content.
7. And along those lines, the sound of Husband breathing when he's sleeping soundly.
8. The sweet songs of two birds in particular just make me feel alive, like everything is okay in the world: the cardinal outside my window in the morning; and the Chuck Will's Widow I used to hear in the evening when I lived with my parents.
9. I can't lie. Hoarding candles and health/beauty supplies does something for me. Don't ask.
10. Creating. Whether it's a painting, a photograph, writing, designing, a newsletter for work--I love to create.

Mr. Charleston Called It: The Arboretum is Magic

Driving an hour or so outside of Phoenix, up near the little community of Superior, you will come upon a place full of color, texture and magic.

The Boyce Thompson Arboretum is a peaceful 300+ acre garden with native Sonoran Desert species, cactus varieties from Australia and South America, and unexpected forested pathways leading around orange boulders and toward dead-ends you're happy to discover.  

There are lots of well planned gardens and places of beauty, but some of them call to you in a way other places do not. It's the kind of connection you can't really explain. Here's a bit of what I enjoyed at the Arboretum:

Final Coyote Resting Place

Here in Arizona, and in many places in the US, coyotes are everywhere. We have a growing population in Florida as well. I think they're interesting, charming and versatile as a species.

Even the nature lovers among our human inhabitants here on Earth tend to forget the majesty of a creature as it becomes more common. And poor coyote has fallen victim to irreverence since he's not so rare. But I find him pretty amazing.

On Saturday as we were driving up to Pinnacle Peak (outside of Carefree, Arizona) for a hike, the light was so beautiful streaming through the saguaros all over the landscape. They looked like they were glowing as the sun highlighted the spines. And the salt bushes were almost angelic as the morning illuminated their fluffy seed vessels and the ground around them as if touched by newly fallen snow.

I asked the Coaching Goddess to pull over so I could take a photo or two, and we happened to choose the spot right where a coyote had passed out of its life. It was probably hit by a car. Because the ground was covered in the white dandelion-like fluff, I didn't even notice him at first. Then I saw his paws, still in tact.

You can see his outline in the second photo on this post too, if you look closely.

I thought about Coyote for the rest of the day and what his life must have been like from the start as a playful pup, through adolescence and going out on his own, and to all of the trials of his adult life surviving on what the desert provides.

His final resting place is so beautiful, and his body is going back into the desert. Where his spirit is, I could only guess.

Colors

This sphere of blue and green we all share is endless in colors, textures, shapes, inspiration. You may have seen a couple of these photos in previous blog posts, but here is an assemblage of colors I've photographed here in Florida:



Random Acts of Culture...A Little Lighter Today

To escape from the depression of the public school system failures and those scary new people who will be taking public office shortly, I enjoyed a video of a Random Act of Culture--a cool initiative funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to expose people to the arts.

The Opera Company of Philadelphia surprised shoppers at Macy's. Don't you love it?

The Chalk on Burns Square

Sunday we ventured down to the Chalk Festival in Sarasota.

The streets in Burns Square were blocked off and plots were mapped in duct tape for artists from all over the country to pour their creative sweat into temporary images that will wash away on tires and wind in a short time.

At most of the outdoor art events, I wander about thinking how some pieces are better than others and how it's a nice kind of thing to do, but there's nothing about it that really blows me out of the water.

Not so with the Chalk Festival. I was amazed at the artists' ability to transfer a small piece of art (usually a 8 1/2 X 11" piece of their own, tucked safely in a plastic sleeve) to a huge chalk masterpiece. So impressive. They were all so different--the art and the artists--yet none were inferior.

It was Halloween after all, so some pieces were "friendly" holiday themed:

Others were more classic:

Others were a little creepy, but beautiful still:

Every creator was an artist in every sense of the word--truly masterful in his own right.

It was hardly an easy task, working in the sun on hot asphalt with their pastels spread about the pavement.  Some wore naked hands and knees--decorated with multi-colored bruises from the chalk. Others wore knee pads and gloves as part of their craft and comfort. The mess was a testament to the concentration and hours of plotting and shading.

Seeing so many different kinds of people walking on the sidewalks, looking down at these bold images and their creators in awe, I am reminded of what art does best--it brings people together for a common experience, even if it washes away by tomorrow.

Brave People

The evening was as beautiful as the day was.  The hints of fall and the large half moon surrounded kids running on the lawn, grown-ups carrying their red, gold or silver balloons and music coming from various corners of the park.

This was my first year participating in the Light the Night Walk, an annual event of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It was humbling to be in the company of so many brave people: survivors of blood cancers, those who have lost loved ones to blood cancers, those who are battling blood cancers today, and their families, their friends, their co-workers.

Beyond all the losses of life, time spent in hospital rooms, missed days of work and adjustments to uncertain outcome was a pervasive sense of happiness, of togetherness. No, the walk wasn't sad, but it was celebratory.  For those touched by cancer in whatever way--there is a rawness that opens the lens of reality. It brings a heightened awareness of small pleasures, of the importance of seeing each moment through with as much joy as you can muster.

The crowd this evening was all about life.  Our team walked for Ingrid, and it's true that she was an example of living to the fullest. She lived bravely, faced her untimely illness bravely and died bravely.  The last time I saw her in her hospital room, Ingrid looked at me and said, "This is it, Susie."  It disarmed me completely. She was facing "it" squarely and with the kind of resolute truth and courage that only the bravest person possesses.

Going forward, I've tried to remember that you have to be brave to live life to its fullest. In one way or another, we'll all meet our own day, and when we do, wouldn't it be fine to say we did all we could, all we wanted? 

Yes, you have to be brave to live. I give thanks to all those who face such adversity and set a lesson for the rest of us. Is it not better to stop hiding in the nooks and crannies of life and open up to the lovey opportunities before us? There's no one else to do it.

Thank you to those who donated to Team Ingrid. Special love to Ruth and her amazing parents, who must surely be together again.

Cynthia Davis Rocks

I've met the coolest people through the Gropius blog. Some of them came here first and I started following them; others I found online in the twisted mazes of navigation and exploration.

I can't remember how I landed on the Running with Letters blog, but Cynthia Davis is such an entertaining writer, equipping each post with just enough details to make every "story from the ordinary" intriguing. I lover her use of metaphor. 

When I discovered her beautiful tiled seahorses, I knew one of them would make the perfect housewarming gift for Brother and Sister-In-Law and for my Goddess friend who left me here and moved out to Arizona.  I was able to select the colors, which she carefully glazed, designed and assembled into these lovely reminders of tropical seas:

Thank you, Cynthia, for putting so much love and care into their creation.  They're beautiful and the receivers couldn't be more delighted!

Bloggers everywhere: it's not only nice to support your fellow social media partners but you end up with unique booty you cannot get anywhere else. Visit Running with Letters and share the love.

Window Boxes, Rocking Chairs and Skies

I can usually count on these three unrelated images to reinstitute a feeling of peace.

Flowers and soil attached to the window bring a bit of wildness close to the house, blending manmade structure with a small dose of nature-made inhibition.

There were some good ones last week during our travels.

Windows in the historic district of Charleston

Maybe it's the old subconscious memory of being rocked as a baby that keeps me loving the image of a rocking chair--even when the chair itself might not have been so comfortable.

 

Rocking chairs on the dock in Charleston outside of the Marriott, a one night's stop on our way north to NC

D-Man and Husband chillin' out in rocking chairs on the porch of the beach cottage in NC

I love it that, like life, skies are constant only in their everchanging cloud formations and colors. Somehow, it just works from the vantage point of the human spirit. I find a sort of comfort in that.  Summer in the Southeast is responsible for some pretty dramatic skies--there's a lot of power in those clouds, and they always complete the landscape.

If only the land or ocean could say to the sky,"You complete me." They totally had the patent on that before that creepy Cruise ever said it in that rediculous Jerry Maguire scene. (Sorry, fans of Jerry Maguire and Tom Cruise...can you ever forgive me?)
 

Cotton candy cumulous clouds over the Atlantic Ocean

Subtle sunset over Atlantic Beach

  Not so subtle sunset over Charleston

Summer sky over Fort Sumter, off the Charleston coast, where the Civil War began

My Grandmother's Beach

Experiences during the formative years follow you around for a lifetime, and if you're lucky enough to have had positive ones, they provide ongoing sources of mental vacations for those times when you can't get away.

The first time I learned we would be spending a week away from Charlotte during the summer to go to the beach with the entire family--including two aunts, uncles, cousins, and my grandmother--I was pissed. Being a young teenager, all I could think was that it would diminish the freedom of summer by seven days.

But my parents were good enough to let me take a friend with me, and it turned out to be a great time.

Every year for a number of years after that, my grandmother continued to rent this large house on Atlantic Beach, North Carolina for the purpose of bringing her family together as the matriarch and preserver of traditions. The large porch was equipped with rocking chairs, and the long wooden boardwalk stretching down to the beach gave an open invitation to the rough surf everyday. Always this beach seemed to exist as it must have for millions of years, without crowds of people, hotels or commercial establishments.

Of course most of our time was spent on the beach itself; or on the deck looking at the sea, feeling our hair coated with salt and imagining what was swimming out there near the horizon; or propped up on the boardwalk rail marveling at the clear, star-filled sky untarnished by light pollution. It always seemed windy at night.

A few mini-excursions came to be anticipated, some with joy and some with a strange nostalgia not entirely inspired by favorable expectation...

An older cousin-accompanied trip to Jungle Land, a mini-golf and bumper boat adventure that we always did at night. I can remember how magical the artificially colored water looked--this sensory experience mixed with the distinctive smell of gasoline dissolved in sunscreen that was still lingering from a day on the beach.

A sweltering exploration of Fort Macon, which was always reserved for the hottest day of the week. My uncle would tease us relentlessly about making the short drive there until one early afternoon the inevitable summons arrived.

A visit to the towns of Beaufort and Morehead City, where restaurants that have been part of family summers forever, along with little shops and nooks along the Sound, were waiting to be re-discovered. In those "must buy a t-shirt everywhere" days, it was a paradise considering the possibilities.

One evening we went to the mysteriously named Radio Island, surrounded by the Sound, to hunt for "specimen." I always admired my family's knowledge and love for nature, and my uncle, who was a judge, was famously entertaining on his vacation days. He strapped a headlamp on so he could more carefully identify little shrimp and marine life in the tidal pools. I remember the feel of the sand stinging my ankles as the wind whipped up around us.

When my grandmother became too elderly and physically challenged to organize the trip, we were also getting to an age where things were fast becoming too complicated to coordinate over several families.

We would all miss out and think back on those times with such fondness.

I'll never forget my gratitude to my grandmother for many things, and these summer weeks live in a place of my consciousness only reserved for love and innocent, untethered happiness. I go there often in my mind.

This year, my father rented the same house on Atlantic Beach. We haven't been there together for over 15 years.

Sunday we'll meet my parents and my brother's family there. What will the week bring?  Surely we'll be equipped on arrival with tales from past years and the intentions to visit Clawson's, the Fort and other fond remembrances. But we'll also carve out new stories, built from experiences driven by a different time and a different place in our lives.

I only hope they will leave a similar lifetime impression for D-Man, who is just around the age I was when I experienced the first summer at my Grandmother's Beach.

Alive

Yesterday morning I went to Emerson Point Preserve, one of my favorite places in Manatee County. Laced with enchanted mangrove trails along the Terra Ceia Bay, a view of the grand Skyway Bridge in the distance and an upland trail through a transitioning habitat, it's diverse and full of subjects for any inspired photographer. I didn't bring my camera yesterday. I'm glad I didn't. I was able to focus on all the senses, and found some extraordinary things.

The night before we were fortunate to get drenched with a heavy storm. When the rain hits and soaks in, the world rejoices. Emerson was alive with sounds, smells and colors. Everything looked so bright. 

Seven Roseate Spoonbills stood on the side of a shrinking pond that still didn't get nearly enough water to restore the normal levels. Tracks from a wandering armadillo were clear enough to observe from dig to dig, where it had scraped a string of three inch holes searching for a tasty dinner, each laced with a thin line from its receding tail.

Recently the upland trail had been burned. Prescribed fire is a popular habitat management tool here in Florida, where invasive plants are destroyed and pine flatwoods are stopped from the process of succession to hardwood hammocks. Because of the rain, the smell of the burned earth was ripe again, and filled my nose with the scent of a raging campfire the morning after. Beautiful.

The wild limes, a native plant which doesn't actually bear limes, were blooming with clusters of tiny flowers. As I approached each wild lime, a sound like a muffled airstrip grew louder. Hundreds and hundreds of bees were pollinating them, and no matter how close I got, it wasn't close enough to disturb them from their deliberate work of working the small blossoms. Incredible.

I love how the world becomes even more alive after the rain. Although I'm not sure if the plants and creatures are sure of what they're missing, when it comes, they buzz with gratitude and celebration.

You're the Inspiration

I remember loving the (then) new Chicago song "You're the Inspiration." Awww, it was just so sweet, wasn't it?

A couple of weeks ago a local group asked me to be one of 10 speakers to do a 5 minute slide show featuring 10 things that inspire me, speaking for exactly 30 seconds about each. Of all the public speaking I've been doing, this one was the hardest to put together, precisely because it's about me, not about a subject. It's been hard for me to get into. I'd love to say that I picked the top inspirations. Most of them are. But then I started picking through them, replacing a few of the slides because I didn't think I could explain them in a way that would be interesting enough.

So what else would I do? Blog about them of course.

Our planet from space is one of the most profound and inspirational images I have ever--and will ever--see. First photographed about 40 years ago, it was the first time we could see in a clear, visual sense the magnitude of our beautiful earth. Carl Sagan's thoughts about it mirror mine exactly:  everyone who you've ever met, who you will ever meet, who has ever lived...lived on this sphere. 

I think of that, of how simple it is that all of humanity, along with all of the wildlife, diverse plant life, water and clouds are contained in this rock. How can we fight?  The "reasons" for war, destruction, selfishness and greed seem so meaningless, so hard to understand, when you look at our world from this inspiring perspective.

The Sounds & Sights of Hope

This has always been one of my favorite songs; I get a smile from ear to ear when it pops on the radio. It instills a reminder that even if things are tough, I can choose to find hope, happiness and simplicity just around the corner.



These sunflowers from Husband's garden make me feel the same way.

What sounds and sights bring you hope?

The Northern Territory's Big Sky

A recent post on Marvin the Martian reminded me of some experiences I've had with big skies. One of my favorite was the night sky in Australia.

I had the opportunity to travel down under the year I graduated from high school. I was there for six weeks, splitting my time half with a host family in a little town called Woomby in Queensland--about an hour's plane ride from Brisbane--and half traveling around the country. My favorite place by far was deep in the middle of the Northern Territory--the very red desert.

You could travel all day on this two lane road through the Red Centre without encountering another car.  On two nights, we simply pulled over at night and camped on the side of the road. We dragged out our tents, pitched them, made camp. 

The sky in the Southern hemisphere is more brilliant that anything, but out there--with no urbanization for many hundreds of miles--it's especially incredible. It literally looked as if the sky was 2 inches above my head and appeared as if it was descending on me. The magnitude of aliveness I felt was incredible: being far out in the desert, with a quiet breeze, seeing tracks in the shadows of the flashlight, there was nothing to separate me from the Universe. Above me there was a clear and giant expanse of the heavens which seemed to surround me like a blanket and include me with an ancient feeling of connectness.

The Big Backyard We Share

If you consider the world as your backyard, you have a big, big backyard.  I do.

I love roaming about in the woods, over boardwalks through marshes, by reed-lined rivers--anywhere I can find branches, a sky unblemished by buildings, and ants. Yes, ants.

I'm so content anywhere outside.  And being there creates a feeling of emotional and physical space for me where I can go outside of thought. It's meditative I suppose. 

I can forget my age, my job, my obligations and melt into a universal place of being where I am simply an observer.

Big Color in the Springtime

One advantage of living here in Sarasota's paradise is that we have year-round color. But nothing decorates my world like the big color of springtime.

Enjoy these photos from the blooming beauty of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, one of the treasures of this community.