My online journal where I share my interests in photography, nature, journaling, fountain pens, bicycling, coffee life, spirituality and the mystery of it all.
Well, I have now riden the past five consecutive days and love being back on the bicycle. A couple of those days I had to deal with north/northwest wind gusts up to 20 mph so I got in some good exercise. I took this image of the red steed at Spring Canyon Park which is where I turn around and head back. It’s an easy 10 mile round trip. The sun has set so time to push publish. I hope everyone has a great weekend.
“There are a hundred paths through the world that are easier than loving.
Mary Oliver
But, who wants easier?”
I finally got in my much needed bicycle ride yesterday afternoon. I rode out to Spring Canyon Park and back, a 5.9 mile ride. The last time I rode was December 27th. It felt good physically and mentally to ride again. I followed that up with a round trip ride to Mugs and back this morning, about 5.4 miles. My Fitbit is telling me to take it easy and go slower and I am. It has been cloudy and overcast today with the wind gusting up to 16 mph but the temperature is 68 degrees. Winter is not showing up in Colorado. The above image was taken last week on a drive along Horsetooth Reservoir. Love the blue and the effort!
For many years I had no clue what love was. I guess you can say I took a lot of those paths Mary Oliver mentions in search of it , while not really knowing what I was looking for. It also took a while to realize how I had love, lust and desires all tangled up in my head. I am happy to say that the past 25-30 years have given me an appreciation of all the varieties of love we can experience in life and the wisdom that there is no need to define love, but only experience the gift of loving and being loved. It requires knowing ourselves, letting go of preconditioned notions of love, taking risks, being open to the other, and an openness to the unlimited possibilities. That’s true whether loving or being loved. As Mary suggests it is not easy but in my experience, well worth the effort! I would even suggest it’s much easier than being full of hate. I hope you are having a good day.
Hope begins in the dark,
Anne Lamott
the stubborn hope that if you just show up
and try to do the right thing,
the dawn will come.
This is an image taken along the Spring Creek Trail. I have wanted to stop on several occasions and take this image for quite some time but I seem to always tell myself tomorrow. The morning’s ride became that tomorrow. I plan to stop more often in an effort to catch the light at different times. I have seen the water glisten with sunlight around mid-morning and I would like to capture that. Anyway this is the scene with overcast skies.
My sister and I fly out tomorrow for Phoenix to spend Thanksgiving a week early with my dad, sister and brother-in-law. It will be a short trip, coming back on Saturday. That should give me enough time to enjoy my family and overeat. I will not be posting much so I will catch up when I get back.
To live in the moment… is the onlyfootprint one must follow..
Oglala Lakota- Hinhan Wakangl
After coffee and conversation with my friends Terri and Jeff I rode home via Spring Creek Trail. The moon set its footprint in a clear blue sky over the mountains in the west. It seemed to be happy! Because it was happy I couldn’t let the opportunity pass for a photo. Now, I was happy! I hope you have a great day and I see snow is falling up north now.
With the time change my morning ride to the coffee shops will be safer since there is more light. It was a much warmer morning than yesterday, even though there was frost, so I rode the Spring Creek trail to coffee and back. That is also a safer ride, primarily free of all traffic. My traffic this morning was this buck. I stopped and tried to start a conversation but he would have none of it. However, he didn’t seem to mind sharing the trail. I hope you have a great Sunday!
Jeff and I switched things up and met for coffee at the Lory Student Center this morning. The 30 degrees made it a cool ride for both of us but the sunrise colors were stunning. I shot this image by resting my camera on my bicycle seat and holding it as still as I could in the cold. It was shot at ISO 3200 and .4 sec exposure at f8.0. I used Lightroom’s Denoise to clean it up and think it did a fair enough job. Happy Halloween! And, I’ve decided to wear the same costume today that I wore yesterday.
The poet Mary Oliver suggests in one of her poems (A Lesson From James Wright) that when you sit very quietly in some lovely wild place and listen to silence, that is a poem. I really like that idea. So carrying that further and thinking of our life as a poem, a prayer, a blessing for ourselves and others, maybe adds some aromatic fragrance to who we are and can touch another life. For me this includes creatives such as poets, artists, mystics, photographers, authors, family, friends and others who have done that in my life. I like that idea, also.
I took this image at the CSU Oval on my ride home this morning. In these later years of my life I am seeing and experiencing this beautiful world in a new way. Something inside me does not want to miss the chance of being a part of it, whether that is being an observer, a poem, a prayer, a blessing, a better loving human, or a silly photographer on a bicycle who stops for photos at the oddest times and makes people stop and look.
We are having wonderful fall weather here in Colorado. However, next week we will see colder weather. Late yesterday morning I stood on my porch enjoying a glazed donut and glass of milk, soaking up the sun’s warming rays and watching the constant falling of leaves, twisting and spinning on their short journey. It’s a mesmerizing experience to be aware of my breath while being a witness to nature changing, creating. I felt filled with gratitude. And this morning is just as lovely of a fall morning. As soon as I stepped out the door into the darkness I was met with a captivating quiet and stillness. I then accepted the gift of the sunrise colors over the CSU campus as I rode to Mugs for a wonderful Old Town mocha made by my barista Ethan, then conversation and laughter with Jeff.
On the way home I rode through the CSU Oval listening to the sound of my tires rolling through the fallen leaves. Again, I felt filled with gratitude. Yet, I am aware that not all of the world has this state of silence, peace, and serenity. Nor are are all my days this way. Chaos, death, fear and suffering fills their days instead. My heart cries for them and I grapple with my feelings of helplessness. So even though I do not understand prayer or the prayer as I was taught in my youth, I do as Joyce Wilson-Sanford says, “I pray anyway.” Somehow, someway the prayer is given. May you enjoy this Sunday!
One of the routes I ride to coffee takes me across campus. But before I move on I want to give you some idea about the campus. The CSU campus (urban forest as they call it) has approximately 9,000 trees distributed over three campuses, comprising 1,886 acres of land. The majority of CSU’s managed urban forest (7,207 trees) is located on the Main Campus within 191 acres of irrigated landscape. This 191 acres, where I ride to the coffee shop, provides a beautiful canvas for those 7,207 trees on campus to put on their fall season show of colors. I consider it a gift to watch these leaves of colors flutter and drift to the ground, swirling and dancing with the wind and forming small communities (piles) of leaves. A community here and one over there. Though these leaves are no longer connected to their branches they are still connected by these small communities (piles) of leaves, happily dancing and singing with the wind. I sometimes wonder where they will be tomorrow or even later today? But this fall show is shortened and the end of the next stage of life for these leaves is altered as the groundskeepers quickly move in to remove the leaves, and I understand the reasoning. We also do it with our parks and lawns. But being the sentimental person I am, I personally like to see the leaves being blown all over the campus into small communities of leaves, living out the rest of their lives in decomposition, rather than seeing the ugly bare asphalt, concrete or the manicured green grass. It’s almost like the leaves have become refugees and are being sent to the landfill. I’ve ranted about this before and probably will again. We had a wonderful fall day here in Colorado and hope you did as well.