Past hikes with Jane

 I will try to find the year i climbed  up Jo-Jo Peak. It was a few years before 2009, i read on this blog.

I started this blog in 2008.

 Jane and I did many hikes together. We could have started hiking together in 2005

 July 16th 2006 Sifton Range

Sept 26 2006 Ibex Valley/ Arkel Creek

June 6 2007 The Sleeping Giant, mt Alexander

Oct 2 2006 Stony Creek

These are a few  dates i found and will post them here  so i can find them again.

Jane and i are still out and about at times. The photo shows the trail we worked on this winter,  we have named things before ( like mt Alexander), but this is the first time we made a  sign (Jane did) Isn't that cool? 

goodmorning

Sunday today. The only thing really planned is facetime on messenger with my son and his girlfriend. haha and i will keep it that, but just wanting to say  that more then ever, if possible, i am very proud of my son. And I do miss my mom in that way, because  really only with her i could share talking about my son, her grandson for hours.

I find that keen interest i have in him quite interesting.  Has my life become smaller, and my interest in my children become bigger?

Anyway my husband is pulling at me, right now here. That has become a big thing too.  One that is far away (son) and the other one as close by as can be 24/7 ( husband).

Anyway related to this, this week i had numerous interesting conversations. Happy ones not so happy ones. Am i happy, i was asked?  Having gone through depression many years ago, i can say i am not depressed for sure, and that is a beautiful feeling seen in that light.  But happy,  I would say content.  And i do feel that is enough for now. More then enough really when i put it that way.

One lady i ran into this week, someone i had not seen for many years. She looked very happy. It was one of those fun encounters. I said, my you look so good, how old are you now? 81! she said laughing. We met at the gas station filling up.  and did hold up the traffic there a bit, sorry about that, but everyone one was good about it, after we were made aware and moved on, lots of smiles and waves.

And i do want to say,   covid did come up ( it has been a while, not so much  a topic anymore). She is not vaccinated either!  I do find it always amazing how many of my acquaintances are not vaccinated against covid.  What is that all about, maybe the people i know are not as random as i might think?  Because i do think i am quite random that way, not affiliated with religion or politics or work. My interest connect me with a broad range of people.. i hope.

In another conversation  this week  again covid came up. This friend had not wanting to converse with me, for a while during those years.  And i was surprised at my self how it is still a difficult subject when opinions ( she calls them facts) are opposite. I was not able to just let her say her thing, i kept saying, please stop, please do not. 

But glory glory we parted laughing heartily how we had overcome the initial  covid bumb in the road, and had talked for an hour after as best of friends, which we are.

Feeling blessed with so many loved ones in my life.

and that one here,  he waited patiently for me, what a gem!

 

yes a wonderful weekend

 I do think I often suffer from too high a self-esteem. But on the other hand i also recognize my self quite often at odds.  All that anxiety for some fabulous outings.  And am happy that i can recognize  defaults in others and hopefully be quite passionate towards them.

 I am pondering a respond to a friend, who seem to suffer the little things a lot. What is more compassionate, to try to tell her  she could just drop it, something that i would not even have picked up in the first place (I pick up other things i guess.) Or let her suffer in silence.

And what about to keep working on our health, when  really at a certain age, we all seem to go. Would you go for ten days longer, ten weeks, ten years? if you could.

I hope i can say i am always looking for that balance.

hmmm  i this weekend  I was all calm and quite happy about  letting my friends hike to the next peak, while i sheltered behind some spruce trees and puttered around for an hour or so. I have always been happy when others exceed me,  especially people who i perceive as my students

 But the fact, that unless i really go out of my way, i probably never reach Jo-Jo Peak anymore. This hike might be on this blog, it has been many many years. When you look  at google earth for Jo-Jo Peak, it's the right area, but points at the wrong peak.

Ad a question i have is , can we at one point indeed just drop it all, and go peacefully? I read  and know examples of people waiting for their last breath, but do you know stories of people, just saying, it has been good!  I will let go soon, and the did.

Actually writing it like that i do know a person like that, and she sometimes comes to mind  while i am meditating. 

She looks wonderfully wild and is always laughing...with me.

Anxiety

 Yes i was born with a certain anxiety :) yet i don't think i really became aware of it when i was till later in life. But now here feeling anxious,  lightly, not extreme or debilitating, but just wanting to crawl back in bed, which i sometimes do when i feel like this.  Yesterday i just laid on the couch for a few minutes, to work through it. Now i just sit behind the computer. Both will work.

 But what i find baffling, is that i still get it. I get it when i have an agenda, like people visiting or having to do things.

So much for awareness.

 And i get it that some people are not interested to meditation. As i am meditating these days with impermanence. I find it quite overwhelming that everything i touch something ended for that. my coffee,   a wilderness was burned down to make room for my morning coffee. it is a heavy load.

Yet i would say meditation made me more content then ever, made it quite easy  for me to work through things like my anxiety.

Two things related to that in  this time in my life . I also believe that everything   i experience in my body starts as an emotion, and emotions start in thinking. something like that, you out there might be able to explain better. 

The first thing; my eyes water a lot when i am outside. And looking at in the Louise L. Hay way. Does that mean  i have to cry more, i have to cry when sad?

A second thing. My night time dreams. I dream a lot and like to get into a lucid dream.  This lucidity i cannot really make it happen. But  the dreams i have recently, it is not that i am lucid, but scary things end up good, like i am hanging of a cliff and miraculously i pull myself up on top. 

Now i have read that people in the Holocaust would dream of luscious meals. So am i getting more lucid in my dreams able to confront my demons ( the Jung way i think). Or  is this impermanence, the fears related to that, getting to me and like people who are starving, i dream of the opposite.

See how i make myself very busy when not!

 Today i will bring a turkey i was gifted, to a neighbour, they will cook it , and sunday evening we will go there to enjoy it with them.

And today i will meet friends on the Kusawa road to go for a hike.

Yetsterday i walked with a neighbour to the cave north of here.

Hiking, walking, eating, sleeping, computer, and a  lot of thinking that is what makes me busy.

And oh yes when i am with people other then my dear husband, always a lot of laughter.

do i need to make an acount

 in order to leave comments on other types of blogs?

Is it just wordpress that is 'the other'?

hoar frost

 Photos would be nice today, but i will try to describe. We have been living in a fairy tale world of hoar frost for many days, and  neighbours here that i have spoken to, we all agree it is so beautiful every thing covered in white. A 3 cm  thick wrap around of white down on even the spider webs,  But we all miss the sun. We  all  have been, so it seems, on sun quests, and we have all found  that sun light!. The day before yesterday i climbed up out of it, and saw it is just a small cloud hanging over our neighbourhood. 

This morning i did see stars out of my bedroom window, faint, but stars nevertheless. And stepping outside, clearness does come with colder temperatures, it was -15 C.  And the hoarfrost has transformed into something... In a few hours from now... it is funny how it has been so dark this year as i was explaining here on blog early this winter that we have lots of light, oops not when it is cast over all the time. Anyway i am so looking forward to the light that will come, i  expect  the hoarfrost to be sparkling.  My path to the outhouse earlier , branches were hanging over low, i had to duck . Usually  i will knock of this hoarfrost when in my way, but it had transformed from down into ice crystals. I have never seen it like that.

All is well in the world.

masonhalea richardsonii

 Not knowing kind of what to write about, to many ideas floating around in my head . One of them nagging  for a long time, that i want to write about is  the war in  Ukraine.  But i will not. I will not go into it. 

and on cue

"hey Don  what ever you want!" i  scream at  my husband, as i am bothered by something he snarls at me. It does seem i am often at war in my own house.

 Earlier, 10 minutes ago,  he was coughing a lot, and i gave him some Masonhalea  richardsonii, Arctic tumble weed, to chew on. And took some myself too.

 He wanted to know what are the medicinal benefits. Everyone i hang out with otherwise knows of this gorgeous little lichen that we find on top of our mountains,  in the alpine.  We, my hiker connections, know that it is good for a sore throat, it is native american knowledge around here. And as i am chewing it right now i have come to like its flavor, when not taking it too often.

We frigging all know! And i am not upset at my husband  now for not knowing, he does not hike, he is my walking buddy . But i am upset at  the fact that when i google it, it crosses out masonhalea richardsonii and gives me links to  anti biotics.  Like what is wrong with the media and the Internet ( i have no tv, i am spared that one.)

And that is why i try not to listen to the war on Ukraine, to me it is outrages that this war is still going on. 

humbly but so is my war with my husband. flaring up too often for my liking. 

For our walk i will not instigate or react. That should be possible, Out in nature, he and i, we are at our best. I do not want to say for today, that is too big of chunk for me to bite off.

I will let you know, and please when you catch us in the act, do not encourage us

How would you help us, when you see us bicker?

What works for you to stir a difficult relationship towards more harmony?

and for the masonhalea, i will take another bit, because i often cough when coming into the cold air, also wondering if it is the dust in my house though that is hard on my throat, or the  woodsmoke, or my husband a smoker (outside luckily but still) . The masonhale will be good.

 epilogue

I coughed twice on the hour walk,  lightly. so for sure not more then usual.  

And! we were all lovingly good, and when we talked to the birds (probably redpolls), they sweeped passed us, if to say hi.

I will extend  my resolution, because already back inside, two things have been said... to which i shut up myself, and did not react to his. I will extend for lunchtime.

massage

 My husband just gave me an awesome shoulder massage, I lay on the floor on my belly, he sits on a chair, his feet on my shoulders, upper back.  At the end i turn around and he presses on my shoulder with his feet when i lay on my back. The opening of my heart,  maybe :). This morning started of less open hearted.

 This morning meditating again with impermanence in mind. I try to get it.  This fear of impermanence that Budhism talks about as the elephant footprint of ...i forget, but i get the idea.. I contemplated that  when it is not my fear of impermanence,  what is my fear? What came to me is, that I am triggered by: 

 Before meditation, i got up to go to the bathroom, as it turned out my husband was using it, i kind of knew, but my brain not fully working. He grunts as i try to enter, i tell you he takes his time in there. But his grunt, felt by me, as aimed at me.  of course if you know us a little thing like this often escalates a bit. Nothing major, not at war or anything. But as i learned 25 years ago with the course of miracles, it is either negative or positive, you either feel good about something or not. no matter how little. And this was a negative one.

 Fast forward to  my meditation; contemplating, I don't mind impermanence, or do I? I enjoy the coming and  going of things, looking forward to something, enjoying the something enjoying the after. 

 aha But i do want my life to be always be smooth sailing! no interruptions early in the morning at bathroom time please.

I wonder if that what is meant. by the suffering of change?

 Buddhism  talks about the -suffering of suffering-. Pema Chodron in her latest book mentions it fleetingly. It is i think about the deep suffering, like people in war or,  or people very sick, etc. And Pema somehow writes, that that often is ongoing, one horror after the other.

I have questions about that too. 

Wood

 It feels i am on roll with blogging, i decided to go with the flow of it. I wake around 7 am, meditate for half an hour,  go on the computer ( ah see i skipped my exercises, still not a habit), I made and ate breakfast.. takes 10 min tops. (i will time it tomorrow). And now 9 am. The newspaper says sunrise in Whitehorse is at 9 am. I do not know at what kind of horizon this sun is rising above. We do live in the mountains here, but if it rose i am sure i should see some light, i will go out and look now! ok maybe there is a very faint glow on the eastern horizon, which accidentally has no trees or mountains, but it is really too dark to see. It is dark out no doubt about it.

And as the city is also in that direction, on a clear night the city 80 km away will give off a glow .

Anyway i was going to write about my wood cutting.

  My house should be smaller. I think it is insulated ok, could be better. Our windows are  triple planes or more. Our ceilings are lowish 8 feet.  I think our house is 1600 square feet. We have a large woodstove an old RSF, in the middle of the house.  Old , meaning we do not know, we have had it 20 years, but it was bought second hand. The insulated chimney is the part that gets replaced  a little more often. 

We live in an old growth forest, mixed spruce and aspen.  Due to climate, our biggest trees only get two feet in diameter. We live at the edge of a far out subdivision. say 200 people.   To the east is our city, to the west is Champagne and Haines jct. And south 200 km no roads or settlements there is Alaska. To the North more kilometers of space.

To be so far out is  not very good for the environment,  but gives me an opportunity to live from nature. Lots of wood at our disposal.  You know i even eat it.  We do need permits if cutting it outside of our property. Our house is partially build with spruce logs, from a mill in Carcross. 

Our wood for heating is right here!  Still, like i said my husband is not able to cut anymore.  But for 30 years he did. or we did, and we always enjoyed it,  As a family we made it lots of fun. We never worked our son very hard (maybe ask him)  we found it more important that living this way was happiness, not hard work. But it is hard work. Very labor intensive. I like to joke that wood heat makes you warm many times over. Include the dusting and sweeping i have to do  in the house due to it. Wood is very dirty.

So yesterday, the woods were magnificently beautiful, the hoarfrost  2 centimeters long, the birds abundant.

ehh 9.30 am still pitch black out there, but i am going to wrap this up.

Yesterday two people, 4 hours work incl, getting there on foot) maybe we cut  2 weeks worth of wood, for average winter temperatures ( -15C/ -20C) I actually have no idea.  But i know to cut all my wood for all year,   as a family we were out there,  days, many days.  And then the splitting, stacking, bringing in, stoking. on and on. It is a way of life.

And now we get older, we have started to buy most of our wood, 500 dollars a cord as is.

9.45 am  i stepped outside, still very faint light at the eastern horizon no change from at 9 am.

First light i know  is around 11 am, i have to look into that, why the newspaper says 9 am.

electricity

 I think I have mentioned before that our electricity bill is   approx. 40 dollars per month. I do feel it gives us a lot of luxury.

Is going electric the answer?

To me NOT when as a society we do not curb our use. I can only imagine all the problems when we all go electric.

Last night we watched a movie, the Little Pink House, i can recommend it. It is about people being evicted from their own houses, for Pfizer, who is now long gone from the site, it didn't work out for them there. 

But it made me think of something  i had seen this summer, My husband and i drove through Hudson's Hope,   I loved Hudson's Hope and that whole area there, i had never been there.

To see humongous structures being build, you can't think; oh this is a very green/clean solution. I don't know how anyone can.

Last night after the movie, i googled for the website of the Site-C dam there,  It is  saying -clean energy-, with a photo of a big bulldozer. Like are you kidding me, clean energy?

It breaks my heart even for the land altered, animals displaced and the people forced to move out, just so society can run wild,  other people (like in the movie, not those that had their houses destroyed) can sit in their houses, and demand everything at their fingertips.

And now the talk about fusion, very scary to me.  Nothing that i google, depicts a harmonious life, One with nature.

And we do need nature, we are nature. If we destroy it for advancement, of whom, you might ask, we ultimately destroy ourselves.

What is the answer for you?

 For me,  for today i will  go cut wood with my neighbour. Wood still the best answer for heating our houses. I can walk (40 min) to the site we picked, yes, we do use a chainsaw,  we take dead trees in the mature forest, but not all of them, we are leaving the mother trees, as we call them, for the woodpeckers and all.

 My answer may seem impossible for you, far fetched, but i am sure there is something little you can do.

I do believe every little bit helps.

 

critical thinking

 Yes  i agree ( to comments below my last post.) That there is a place and time for critical thinking, and as i emailed the leader of my meditation group. she wrote back that some of the group  expressed that they missed my presence, because i was always able to start a discussion.. So i did take that as a compliment. 

To express, maybe again, I do  feel i can get better at knowing where it is good to be critical and where i can nip it , my thoughts going rampant,  in the bud.

And i like my critical thoughts to be just that; knowing that one way or another is not good or bad, or false or true but just what it is. Which does bring me to the question what is the  truth anyway. I am sure since Socrates (or whoever mentioned it first) there has been a lot written about that.

I like to believe we all have our own truth. But that gets complicated, yet we see it all around us.

Dawn is upon us, i soon want to get ready for our morning walk.  Looking out of my window I think nobody will deny that  it is getting light outside, and we call that dawn.

The problem comes in when i feel that walks are good for me and my husband. For all i know maybe they keep us stuck in a pattern that is not very outgoing. And to a bit more outgoing would  maybe be very beneficial to our health. Now at break of day, we both start to get ready for a walk, mind you a habit i love and am very grateful for.  

Hey you know where it gets difficult for me, when people say without question , this IS good or bad. Why not say; for me it works at the moment.

So this writing here  (currently as in which i started up recently), of course was born out of frustration of me feeling bombarded with opinions that to me were neither true nor false, but were claimed to be so.  From now on when someone states a fact, i can choose to just listen to it, and appreciate that that is their fact. And here on this blog i will spew mine.

This afternoon i have an appointment with my astrologer. 

How is that for; whatever, if that works for you, that is great?

 

How annoying must i have been

 Last night it occurred to me, how i never did get. Now there is an opening, i still do not get it fully, but..

I am reading Pema Chodron's latest book.  My old meditation group is reading it, they started this morning. I do not join them anymore because  i do not drive into town anymore on a regular base, and certainly  not at 6 am in the morning. But as they started this new book i thought i join them in spirit.

 Now  over the years my opinion of my dear dear Pema took a bit of a gnaw, because her teacher was involved in a sexual abuse case, and i found her response to it all rather callous...

Nevertheless, maybe as she learned lots of helpful stuff from her perverted teacher, i learned a lot from her.

But  reading her new book, i am half way through, i had lots to criticize . Now i have been aware for a long time of my overly critical mind. I asked a teacher about it, and her advice was somewhat helpful, " just be aware"  notice it when it happens.

Anyway  long story short, last night reading the  first chapter 3 times over, for this mornings meditation with the group in mind, i had started to underline things that i do not agree with. A light bulb went on: suddenly i asked myself , Jozien who is interested?  Pema wrote this book as to what she believes, no one in the group or in the world is interested in what you believe unless they ask. And it is not even so much about  others, but can i from now on just hear what others have to say.

It seems obvious, how could i be so blind? 

And already, i feel i am more acceptive of what others say, just listening, instead of instantly figuring out what i think, never mind speaking it.

wowow i am probably the 1 % who does not get this fully.