tides – Page 3 – In the Woods

“The Artist’s Mother in the Little Room” by Hans Thoma — “The Artist’s Mother in the Little Room”
by Hans Thoma

One year ago today I started writing this blog. Changes…

…I use those little dots a lot…

I think it’s because, as the amazing Polish poet, Wisława Szymborska observes:

Every beginning is always a sequel, after all,
and the book of events is always open halfway through.

Changes keep coming along, welcome or unwelcome, keeping us on our toes, and the Japanese scholar Kakuzō Okakura reminds his readers:

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

I feel like I’ve fumbled around this past year, but have finally accepted that this blog has been and is going to be a hodgepodge of anything and everything I think about, dream about, or experience, although the line between “reality” and dreams in my consciousness is often pretty fuzzy. For this blog, over the year I have tried out five WordPress themes, Coraline, Structure, Tarski, Treba, and this one, Elegant Grunge, as far as I can remember. It’s fun playing with the widgets! My favorite posts are the ones with pictures taken on my nature walks with Bernie, Beverly, Janet and Tim. Making friends with my readers, reading their comments here and reading and commenting on their blogs is the best part of being in the blogosphere!

On March 14, 2010 I started another blog, called “…select and collect all the words…,” which was at first to house my collection of quotes. Then I discovered all the art available in the public domain at Wikimedia Commons! So I spent hours pairing quotes with paintings, and wound up neglecting this blog. Finally on January 6, 2011, I posted my last quote there, and made the decision to merge the contents of that blog into this blog. It will take some time, but for now I think I’ll post quotes and paintings on the weekends. Of course, that may change, too.

On March 23, 2010 I started a family history blog for our relatives, close family and distant cousins, Rodgers Family History. (Actually we had a family history website since 2004. I created it on our own domain using Front Page 2000. But using WordPress has been a nice change, making presentation and navigation so much easier.) That “blog” has been neglected, too, but new cousins have found what is already up there and generously added to my database. Connecting with them has been so satisfying. I hope to get more of my data up there in the near future.

“Sailboats in Le Petit-Gennevilliers” by Claude Monet

A slower and incomplete change has been The Change, a hormonal storm through which I am still trying to navigate. The seas around my little boat are pretty choppy, and I’m never sure if I’m making the waves or being tossed around by what others are leaving in their wakes as they sail, drift, or jet-ski through their own lives. And then there is an energy from the tides that doesn’t originate with people, but pulls from the universe through the moon. Steady and yar…

A year ago I was asking Stevie Nick’s questions:

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

I am still asking. And sometimes answering affirmatively. Some day I hope Carole King’s lyrics will be my most frequent answer…

My life has been a tapestry
Of rich and royal hue;
An everlasting vision
Of the ever-changing view;
A wondrous woven magic
In bits of blue and gold;
A tapestry to feel and see;
Impossible to hold.

Well, it just occurred to me that perhaps this blog isn’t a hodgepodge, but a tapestry! And with that thought, I’m off to embrace another year of writing about the “ever-changing view.”

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
~ Stevie Nicks
♫ (Landslide) ♫

I have put on thirty pounds since my husband survived a major heart attack and triple by-pass surgery two and a half years ago. A symptom… of what? Stress? Middle-age? Less than a month after the heart attack, my already frail and declining father fell and broke his pelvis, femur and a few ribs. He has since been confined to a wheelchair. Neither one of them wants to exercise… We won’t even go into the healthy eating question… A couple of weeks after that my son was hospitalized with an antibiotic-resistant infection, and in the course of treating that it was discovered that he has diabetes. No family history of diabetes. And eight months after the heart attack I had a highly suspicious (false positive) mammogram followed by the ordeal of a stereotactic biopsy and waiting days for the, in the end, negative result…

Last summer we went to a big family reunion at Shenandoah National Park where I made friends with my “stepsisters-in-law” as we spent four days hiking in the woods together. It felt so good to be active and immersed in the natural world! It began to dawn on me just how sedentary my life had become, the exact opposite of the changes in lifestyle I had started hoping for after the cardiac wake-up call.

spring 2009
Shenandoah National Park, Virginia
bear we met while hiking

Last week I was food shopping and a special interest magazine on heart-healthy living caught my eye. Thinking it might have some helpful recipes I bought it, but inside also found an article on strength building exercises. As I read the instructions and studied the pictures I thought to myself that the exercises were too simple and easy to offer any challenge and have any benefit. Well…

This morning: “Stand with feet just wider than shoulders, toes turned out slightly. Slowly bend torso to the right, bringing right arm toward ground and left arm toward sky. Hold for 1 count and return to start. Do the given reps (5-10), then switch sides.” As I lifted my left arm toward the sky for the first rep it ached, oh so miserably, from that simple stretch! (I shoveled snow yesterday and it didn’t bother my arms – hmm…) I stopped at 5 reps and switched sides, right arm ached, too, but not quite as much. There were six more exercises and they stretched all kinds of long neglected muscles. Some of the exercises call for weights, too. Looks like I now have myself a workout to add to my walks!

I love to walk, especially in the woods. My friend Kathy, whose blog inspired me to begin this blog, wrote a lovely blog post, Why I won’t (usually) go cross-country skiing with you, which touches beautifully on the subject of meandering mystical nature walks vs. cross-country skiing (or for me, brisk hikes) in the woods. (I’d love to try snowshoeing one day.) I think both are needed for body-mind health.