I find myself where I am now; looking out at the Atlantic ocean as it bumps up against the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When I see myself down the road, this is where I envision my reality to be. I’ve been places; many places, but none of them call to me, in my soul like this little strip of land on the Ocean.
I find my heart soaring, my inner self singing and know that I have, in every sense of my being, come home.
Maybe in a past life, or with inherited memory, or some other cosmic force, I have been here before, living and breathing and soaring through the air. I know it as I know my own home. I feel a belonging that beckons me to stop and stay; for a while or forever.
I can see myself, years down the road, waking to the sunrise, driving to the lighthouses, watching the wild horses, singing a song that only one who lives by the sea can sing.
Tears threaten, but they are tears of peace and contentment. Sorrow is as far from me as the depths of the ocean I gaze upon.
God has given me this space of time, the peace of mind, the joy in my heart. He knows of that which I had need.
ebbs behind the mountains and the now, multicolored clouds, I find myself on the back porch.
Grilling.
Making my lunch for tomorrow.
With the job I have been training for, I find that I could have Subway every day.
One of my cherished fantasies.
But I find that, sometime over the past few years, I have become cheap.
Too cheap to buy lunch every day.
And I like grilling. I love the smell of the smoldering charcoal. It is even more prevalent this night as I forgot to bring it in last time and it got rained on.
Love those waterproof bags, but if enough wet gets on them, well, I don’t have to elaborate on that.
The chicken and onions are sizzling and the smell makes my mouth water.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow mostly because of my lunch break.
I feel quiet in my mind and peaceful in my spirit.
I went to my favorite place … Little Stoney Falls. Once I got there, however, the parking space was full of cars. I was in no mood to share MYfalls with all these people, so I simply turned around and moved on.
I took the long way around to get there to begin with, for what better way to spend this magnificent day than driving around with the convertible top down and the music playing? From there, I took the long way around again and wound up in Coeburn, taking the turn for Flag Rock and the High Knob tower.
I lost myself in thoughts and dreams as I drove up the curvy, winding mountain road. It was one of those perfect days where the sky is blue, the clouds are white, the weather is warm and the light is magnificent.
While I did stop at Flag Rock and was bewitched by the beauty of the mountains, the blooming rhododendron and the sheer beauty of creation, I bypassed the High Knob tower.
There is no longer a tower there and the trees had grown up the last time I visited making the view nearly nonexistent.
I just kept driving.
Over the mountain.
The dirt road in front of me, the dirt road in back of me, the forest on either side and the incredible sky above.
At some point, I did get behind another car and found myself, once it was said and done, covered with a layer of dust.
Small price to pay for driving along with the top down and all of nature surrounding me, filling my head with dreams and images; I was in another place for that space of time.
I ended the day with a stop by the cemetery to talk to Jim about this, that and the other thing. It seems that my visits there over the past few weeks have done wonders to balance my spirit.
I have things to say and no one, in particular, to say them to. I talk to the sky, the wind, the grass, the birds … and I talk to him. Nobody knew me the way he did. I doubt anyone ever will again.
and re-evaluating my thoughts, emotions, feelings, friendships; things in general. I find myself in an odd position. This time of year is very difficult for me. I have, since the death of my husband, taken at least one day near his birthday, which incidentally, is tomorrow, off from work.
I never know how I will wake up … it could be the “well, just another day” mode, or the “hysterical, uncontrolled, inconsolable sobbing” mode. So, I avoid contact with the human race during that time because I am most unpredictable.
I know that I am not the only person who faces such days with this outlook. I would love to say that I am free from the memories, thoughts and flashbacks.
Actually, I could say that.
But I would be lying, and I am a terrible liar.
If I have learned anything, it is that it is good to know yourself. I think I have that one nailed. Unfortunately for my family and friends, I remain an enigma.
Sigh.
It makes me feel a bit disconcerted that, after all this time, the birthday of someone who has been dead for years still has the ability to effect me in this way.
Don’t roll your eyes. Of course I loved him and miss him. But over three years later? Give me a damn break already …
I had planned to spend the day at my favorite waterfall and then at a lake that holds special significance to me, however, due to an appliance malfunction, I will be at home.
Might as well cook, since I’m going to be here anyway and possibly reap the side benefit of being able to torment the appliance deliveryman with the smell of red sauce simmering on the stove.
I can only hope that he doesn’t find me sobbing like a child.
How awkward would that be?
Either way, I will get through the day and be thankful for many things. It doesn’t mean that I won’t lament over the things that hurt me, but those are less frequent than the blessings.
There is no point whatsoever in ignoring the white elephant in the room.
I miss my Jim; my Jamie. I miss seeing his sweet smile on his birthday. I have not, as odd as it may seem, dreamed of him even once, since his death. I suppose, on some level, I am grateful, for I would hate to wake each morning tormented by the past.
I am not big on torment … or pain … or sorrow.
Life goes on and we either live it leave it.
I choose to live it. Even when it makes me sad for without sadness sprinkled throughout, how could I truly embrace the joy.
I am a Sagittarian optimist. I am, even as the tears threaten to fall, looking for the silver lining. The tears will still fall. My heart will still mourn. My thoughts will still stray. But at the end of the day, I will believe that everything will be ok. And it will be.
is one of those emotions that catches me unawares. When I least expect it, am most vulnerable to it, haven’t the strength to fight it; it strikes. I don’t feel sadness everyday. As a matter of fact, I rarely feel sad and yet …
there are moments.
Moments when it feels as though the whole of the world is upon my shoulders and my soul is stripped bare.
Then, out of the blue, a thunderstorm approaches. I find myself on the back porch, tripod in place, waiting patiently for the the lightning; the strains of piano from my favorite music playlist, resounding through the darkness as the photographer in me readies for the beauty that seems to be displaying itself just for me ….
And then ….
much to my surprise and unexpected, heart-lifting joy …
the first lightning bugs of the season appear in their magnificent beauty.
I wonder, as I watch them flicker playfully among the trees and grass and rocks if they they know how much I have longed to see them. How much I have missed them.
They are magical, as they blink and fade before my eyes. I feel, at this moment, that they are here for the sole purpose to encourage me. To give me hope and to lead me to a place that is full of light and beauty.
Do they know that I have been looking for them … waiting for them … wishing for them?
The lightning that encompasses the oncoming storm dims in importance as I find myself mesmerized by the display of mother nature’s incredible display of magnificence.
I am encouraged.
They encourage me. I wonder if they know that … if they understand how much comfort they bring to me.
I wonder if they understand that I have been waiting for them, if they know how much they calm my overstimulated system, my aching heart, my yearning soul.
I can do this.
I can face that which paralyzes me … that which takes me back to a desolate time when my heart shattered in my chest …. when time stood still.
We all have those things that bring us joy in the midst of sadness … friends who listen to our laments and judge us not. We have them.
We often take for granted, at least I know I do … take for granted that they will be there in our time of need, but we have them; and they are there, without fail, when we are vulnerable and struggling simply to breathe, to live, to move from one moment to the next …not to judge but only to hear our thoughts and fears.
No judgment.
No harshness.
No rebuke.
No unsolicited advice.
No condemnation.
Only understanding , often in silence, as we fight our demons.
I am thankful for the lightning bugs.
And I am thankful for the friends who tolerate me, even when I am intolerable.
I am blessed well beyond what I deserve.
Thank you, Lord, for the lightning bugs, for friends who understand me and for loving me even though I am, many times, unlovable.
I count my blessings and they are many. While I am sorry that there are others who have stood in the rain, blinded by the sheer magnitude of the sorrow, they, as I have, have made it through the rain.
We are one, we are many and we are survivors in the midst of adversity, sorrow, death and pain.
to make me feel more like myself; more human and more natural. I have worn my hair short since fifth grade and really short for the past twenty years. There is something about the “peach fuzz” feel at the back of my head that makes me feel real.
If I have to entertain the thought of purchasing a blow dryer, then it is evident that my hair is entirely too long. I wear it shorter than many men I know and am perfectly happy with it that way.
I have heard it said that it takes a great deal of confidence, which, oddly, I don’t possess, to wear one’s hair this short. It leaves my face, a rather unremarkable feature, out there for the world to see.
Maybe it is sheer laziness on my part to keep my hair this short. It is easier to deal with on a day to day basis, especially when I find myself on a particularly arduous trail shoot, crawling through brambles and making my way through muddy trenches. It suits me and that seems to be all that matters.
Oddly enough, though I am not looking for any kind of relationship, it is the women who most often slip me their numbers. It doesn’t matter to them that I am not gay, they do it anyway, laughingly saying that maybe one day, I will change my mind.
It matters not to me what people think, at least for the most part. It wasn’t always that way, but it seems, as I get older, others’ perceptions of me means less and less.
I am who I was meant to be and am still working on who I am yet to become. Having boyishly short hair has little bearing on that.
When a new day dawns, if the length of my hair, the style of my clothes or the fact that what I wear matches has more bearing on who I am on the inside, then it will be most evident that I, as a human being, have failed.
What I look like, the clothes I wear, the hairstyle I sport and the car I drive do not make up who I am. That person lives inside me and manifests itself with the way I interact with others. If I am judgmental, then I will be judged. It is that simple.
I try not to be judgmental because judgement sends me two steps back when I have worked so hard to move two steps forward.
I want people to know who I am based on what I can bring into their lives, not by what they can see. Sight is only a small part of what makes up our world.
If what you see is all you see, then you have missed the point and I have failed to make myself heard. It is a fail, either way.
We are all on a journey to somewhere and if all we have to offer is our appearance, then I suppose my journey ends here. What we have to offer each other comes from within, not without. It is born of compassion, empathy and love for one another. Without that connection, that bond, what we look like on the outside is irrelevant.
Our outward appearance, when all the fences are down, has nothing, really, to do with anything if we are unable to connect to the people around us. We are essentially, without empathy and compassion, no better than robots.
I love technology and gadgetry, but I have no desire to be a robot, short hair or not.
isn’t my first choice when it comes to driving conditions, but considering what I have found myself driving in from time to time, it also isn’t my last.
I like to drive.
The mindless task of following the road is among my favorite things to do. It doesn’t matter, really, whether it is barely a ditch carved out of dirt, a steep ribbon of pavement curving and winding into a mountain or long stretches of interstate that seem, at times, to fade into infinity.
My thoughts flow freely, my mind wanders aimlessly and I feel as uninhibited as the birds in the air when I am behind the wheel. If the weather is so that I can put the convertible top down, the pleasure is multiplied tenfold.
The destination isn’t all that important; going somewhere specific, heading nowhere in particular or coming home.
It doesn’t matter.
Heading home today from a weekend out of town, it didn’t occur to me to concern myself with the rain falling in torrential sheets, pooling on the already wet road. It didn’t make me nervous or anxious or fearful … even when coming up behind the tractor-trailers spewing a nearly blinding mist up in the road, it didn’t occur to me.
I figure, at those times, the two choices are to either take my place behind them and suffer the constant barrage of what they throw up from the asphalt or speed up and pass them.
There was something ethereal about the verdant greens along the sides of the interstate, beneath the falling rain. I had a hard time finding fault as long as I could see the yellow line and, at the same time, take in the sulking, brooding gray of the heavy sky above the greenery and blooming things of late April.
My intentions were to spend today hiking in the Smoky Mountains, however, the weather did not cooperate. While I don’t mind taking a risk or two to get to the places I wish to see, I’m not going to invite disaster.
Hiking on the wet, steep, rocky trails alone would have been careless and while I have my moments of carelessness, I try not to make a habit of being so on purpose.
I started home in the rain and muck with a song on the radio and the highway stretching out before me. When I came to the last few miles, a narrow country road (in my mind, “my road”), an offshoot of a country highway, I was stunned.
In the two days I have been gone, it seems that Spring exploded on Big Moccasin; the fields edging up to the base of Clinch Mountain are greener, fuller. The high grass, dancing in the wind and the wildflowers, now abundant, unfurling their vibrant, colorful blooms without shyness or fear of frost took my breath away.
The sheer magnitude of the beauty of it, of home, of Spring, brought tears to my eyes.
I was reminded, once again, that no matter what I may have seen today had I stayed where I was, it wouldn’t have been any more beautiful than the height of spring in my own back yard.
On a larger scale than the peaks and valleys of Clinch Mountain, perhaps. But not more beautiful.
It just goes to show that springtime in the mountains, irregardless of which mountains, is a stimulating treat for the senses. As for the rain … well, nothing smells quite so wonderful as the Spring mountains after a rain, now does it?
when I come home filthy, covered in mud, bleeding from my brush with thorns and other sharp things of nature and smelling of the earth that I was crawling around on. There are few things in this life that renew … Continue reading →
while Barry Manilow played in the background, I spent some time catching up on photo editing. I culled through landscapes, portraits and random shots of various things that caught my eye.
The photographs are often exactly what I expect them to be, but not always. Sometimes, there is more to them than I saw with my eyes; images within images that make me realize, again, just how much there is to see.
The intimacy of holding wonder and beauty in the lens of my camera with nothing but light and shadow in between is profound; the effect it has on me is sometimes startling. Just as a piece of music that soars and resonates takes my breath, so do the images.
Contrast, light, shadow, color, reflection … they capture my imagination and intrigue me, teaching me something new every time. The same shot taken a hundred times will always yield a different result as nothing, not air nor wind nor water nor light, stays the same from one moment to the next.
I find, on occasion, that I have missed shots because I have become so mesmerized by what I was seeing that I forgot to click the shutter. At these times, the magnificence of nature or the human spirit permeate my very being and make me more than I was before; more aware, more real, more emotional, more grounded. Simply more.
There will always be, no matter where I go or what I do, more to see and experience. There will be new ways to feel old emotions and catalysts that will throw me where I never thought I could go. That is the beauty of photography. Every shot is an original. Every shutter click is a memory kept. Every image is a monument to a single, solitary moment in time. The wonder of that knowledge never fades and it never, ever gets old.
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace ~ Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8
and snow BIG, then I am officially done with winter. I am filled to overflowing with frosty windshields in the early, still dark mornings. I am finished with the cold wind whistling through trees that have been bare for too long. Winter weather advisories that never come to fruition and the forecasters who get my hopes up are now on my short list.
Since I love lists so much, it is time to make a new one; a warm weather one. This new and improved list will not include heavy winter coats, gloves or scarves. It won’t include three layers of clothes or multiple pairs of socks worn under fur-lined boots. It also won’t include walking home because the ice is too thick to drive in.
I was recently reminded by a friend that boating season is just around the corner. It took less than two seconds for the image of skimming across the lake with the sun hot on my skin and the wind in my face to fill my warmth starved brain. I foresee cold drinks and much laughter as we frolic in the lake. Actually, I suppose I should clarify; I foresee much laughter as THEY frolic in the lake as I’m not really box-ankled about jumping into water that I can’t see through. I’m more of a “float-on-the-top” kind of gal.
I look at my pale, winter skin and think of sunning myself like a lizard and admiring my tan lines (after the redness fades). I love the sun and, unlike many people I know, don’t mind the 90 plus temperatures of a steamy Appalachian summer. I long for the thunderstorms that come out of nowhere, bringing with them the stunning display of lightning and sky that only God can provide.
I look forward to long hikes along shaded trails and wading in the clear, cold pool at the foot of my favorite waterfall; speeding with the top down over curvy mountain roads to get there. My sister’s pool with the shimmering water and full-sized slide call to me like a siren’s song. Trips to the ocean and embracing the sunrise in the wee hours then sipping boat drinks at sunset will find their place at the top of my list.
Yes, I am officially done with winter and realize as I write this post and compose my list that I am going to need more paper. Now, if I can only get Mother Nature to cooperate, all will be well with the world and I can stop shivering.
