Happy New Year

It is very nice to have my son home for a bit over the Christmas holidays.

Frostbite

Yesterday the weather finally warmed up here, but as it is i am staying indoors to rest.

The case is i have sore toes. I have asked around and googled things. Not finding and getting a lot of useful information.But i decided the most sensible thing to  do seems to stay warm and rest. and massages as many as i can get.

As metaphysical causes i found feet stand for future, but the big toe for dominance. -repressed desire to dominate- i found somewhere.

 Okay i will think about that. The future  might make sense, i do feel  more ever recently that i have to make a decision about my future. And for dominance :) ERASE what i say next:: i wonder if i should really look for a new partner, one that i can lovingly dominate .

back to the basic facts.

On Christmas eve i got my toes really cold, but not colder then usually after a long trip in severe weather.

I do have to say, this year i wear normal ski boots, compared to my big boots. I was tired of skiing on heavy duty skies, that have bindings fit for bunny boots.

Anyway warming up my toes at home, wnt fairly normal. I remember one year i once had incruciating pain while warming them up. 

Now the pain seemed to come later, somehow delayed. pins and needles feeling.

On boxing day i went out for a prolonged time again, and after that trip the pins and needles had worsened, or maybe more now i was truly alerted.

On google i found so little , the 811 nurse. Only helped by saying , i might have some nerve ending damage. her book said to go to the doctor immediately. Which i haven't done yet.

Anyway somewhere i did read rest/massage and that it might take a few days to a week.

So i will go with that, and let you know.

I did find though that frostbite is a very serious condition

I suppose we live a little on the edge here in the Yukon

The nurse ( from down south) asked me if i often have sensitive skin to the cold. Yes  i do! 

Which to her book requires a visit to a physician. But i figure living here, being outdoors a lot, that is daily life. My cheeks have put up with a lot over the years.

And one more note, one year i did get frostbite on my cheek, a hard patch of white skin, it recovered well, but for a few years that would be a sensitive spot to the old, i had to cover my cheek with a scarve being outside in  sub minus 20 temperatures. That spot has now totally recovered, even on those days last week my cheeks stood up to the weather uncovered.

I just wanted to tell this, maybe you have similar experiences, or questions

or some answers for me.

Thank you

ps and i drink my herbal teas: nettle, labrador, rose , potentilla, artemisia etc

Morgan le Fay

fata morgana, mirage

same mountains on different days

all i want to say actually is that i am upset with botany, first i found out this year that fireweed is not epilobium anymore, now you might think, what is your point, but now i find out that even asters that are asters are not asters.

we all know asters right?

you go check my wild flower blog if you want to know more.

and i know that it is me that is slightly obsessed with the name of a flower.

what is my reasoning? 

when i actually know something

a flower

a little detail of love

IT EXIST

sun dog

yesterday's poem is much longer, some times emotions are not to catch in four sentences, neither are they in a page long poem, so i suffice with telling you about facts of today's day. Yet even facts can have an ellusive quality to them.
This morning we were gazing at the sky, from here, from up the hill and from the neighbours deck. What was being clear was not so clear now. Our neighbours saw something in the sky , that didn't seem to be explained rationally like a sun dog. We'll have to look again tomorrow night.
Then at home after days of silent weather a whirlwind blew through our yard, putting us in a white out, now all is calm again and pink.
And.... i am still not smoking, and i KNOW i won't ever again, it's just what it is.

sun pillar

a sun pillar

it was you wasn't it?

i walk around my feet not touching the ground

it is very tiresome that way

my heart screams and i don't know if i laugh or cry

divine intervention

every year the lake freezes up differently

Last week i had an interesting experience, that makes me wonder about how free will works, if it does, and what is divine intervention.

Ha! i decided (again) to stop smoking last week. And i am now officially a non-smoker. Someone like you who has no desire to smoke, no will power needed, we just do not have the urge.

So yes, i read the book of Allen Carr,

but not till after i decided to sop again.

This is the story:  the morning i stopped was the morning i was planning to go to an after-care meeting from my recent 'changeways' group. I thought  i can speak about it there and they can encourage and support me and help me to set goals and solidify them. The meeting wasn't as good as i expected, i found it kind of lame, everybody was complaining and i was goofy. But anyway i did say what i set out to do and asked the group how i could set it in to manageable goals for the coming week, other than, stop smoking. Afew people said some reasonable things, which i waved down. Then this new girl ( that i didn't like yet, gosh i don't know her) she said get Allen Carr's book. Now we all know how there is a trillion self-help books out there, and what kind of goal is that anyway?  But for some reason i said, oh that sounds good, every time i feel i want to smoke i will read in a book about not smoking. After the meeting i did ask her for the exact title, while actually  having no trust (note last post!) that a particular book could truly help me.

And by golly it did!

The essence of his method is that he makes you understand that smoking does nothing for you. We all will start for a variety of reasons, well none of us really start smoking thinking , oh i like to be a smoker for the rest of my life. Then he says, because the cigarette taste awful we actually believe, that we can never get hooked.

But he goes on, nicotine is very addictive! and what it does, the withdrawal symptoms make you slightly uneasy, give you kind of an empty feeling, 

and that is the only reason you smoke again! to end a feeling created by the nicotine.

The easy way it is called, and easy it is!

Trust

of course i could write a whole chapter on sheep and trust...

I was saying that trust for me is an easy thing, i used to be outright gullible. Then i swung to just trusting that everything a certain person in my life said was a lie.
where am i now? i easily trust, or it just doesn't matter.

I trust that everything here on the Internet is out of my hands, When someone wants to use my photos in whatever way, bless them, i am glad i could inspire you.

I trust people totally,  it doesn't really matter if they lie,  how can i explain that?
When someone tells me they will love me forever, well by their actions of that moment i will know if they love me that very moment or not, and that is all that matters.

we call it, living in the moment, mindfullness :) you know the terms

all we have is the moment.

so when you mean trust, do you mean you are scared if they lie?
I do somtimes find living with my husband precarious ( balancing on a rock like a sheep, but i am sure a sheep doesn't think that way, he trusts himself, the group and the rock)  with my husband i do have to often take a moment, know my self, because he is not to be trusted, i can trust on that.

do not to elaborate?
 or can i trust that you understand why i feel trust is not an issue for me

You know what i was wondering lately, why is TIME so important to me, why do i always want to know what time it is, why do i always feel i run out of time, why am i always on time?

The circle came round, i have a total lack of trust in time..... can you explain that to me.

Jozien xox

sheep we are

(picture taken this summer)
are we sheep?
i don't know, what i want to write about, and ran out of time again, i am a sheep as i am always on the run and no place to go.

sooo what i want to write about.
is i observed in myself (and my husband) when one is in total joy, one does not feel discomfort.
Joy might not be the right word,  it's being in the moment also.
It's moments where one is at peace...
breathing...
I observed it first when i was in my meditation group, which i love, and as i had a bad cold, but went anyway, the whole friggin hour, i had NO cold, my nose didn't sniffle once.

Any i have to run now

rushing will do it for me too :)

while at it that is, like now

let's talk more about after...

love jozien

road kill

kind of a.... disturbing picture
what word suits it most; sinister, lugubrious?

hardly worth watching

hardly worth watching

Last night was world première
Finding Awesomeland!  Wanna find out what your kids are doing? From the makers of Silly Sundays and the biking videos you’ve grown to know and love brings you their first ever movie – Finding Awesomeland. The title pretty much says it all. Filmed in the motherland of Yukon, they bring you a buffet of  mountain biking, dirt biking, sledding, snowboarding, and skiing. Recommended for people who eat, sleep, and breath. Hold on to your britches, cause Hardly Worth Watching Productions brings you a film…worth watching.

(text copied from mnt.Sima website)

Eagle

the time of year, this is probably an immature bald eagle and not a golden eagle. I still don't know hoe to tell them apart

Nevertheless a powerful encounter

my shoulder blades pulling an urge to spread my 20 feet wingspan white wings

dreams

When i woke up this morning i remembered two dreams. I want to write them down, because i felt they were of a certain significance. And  yesterday i was talking  about dreams over the Internet with a special friend of mine, a shaman in French, Phoebe.

the one before waking up:
The dream was extremely vivid. I lived in this cabin with a group of loving friends, in front of the house there was a pond with swans. The swans were very large. The cabin was put togeher like some cabins here in the Yukon, put together with whatever comes along in different stages.
In some dreams i am in places that i have dreamed about before, this place was new. But in the the dream i had lived there for a long time, we talked and laughed about the long time ago fact , that this lovely place had actually come together from 23 dollars we had borrowed.
The dream was different in a way, because as the dreamer i was new to this place, but the person i was dreaming to be, which was also me, i knew the place. So there were all sorts of surprises, like finding old treasures one had forgotten about and things like, that i couldn't find things, that when i did find them, i knew that they had always been there, like where the spare key hangs.

the one before that:
I was climbing a mountain. I was with my brothers and sisters. The path was well worn, and only at the top it became very  steep and dangerous. One of us even slipped, but  he was able to stop his fall.
We had looked at this mountain from down below very often and knew it's look very well.
Now being on top i never looked at the view below.
We climbed down from the steep top and right underneath we came into a beautiful  cave like place, there was different coloured rocks to sit on and the walls and roof where consisting of small dense willow like trees (i would love to draw this place).

When i realized having had this dream i had a thought that maybe erroneously i had always valued the view from the top down more then the view from below looking up at the mountain.

So what i ask you, is what do you value more, looking at  a mountain or looking down from a mountain?

fling

i want to sit there and being flung in head spins watching crystals grow

my bare feet frozen in the ice that formed on the surface of the stream

what good is meditation when wild emotion dissipate

how much better is sex, or dance

my body convulsing, because my mind can't handle it

never again will i sit still again, all warm and cozy

never serene

to live i have to scream 

elevated as vapour

only when deeply cold i will turn crystal

so brittle

yes, i am in love

apparently

the bears are still out.
going for a walk we saw this fresh large foot print at the mendenhall meadows today.

ice roses

when the roses are frozen and life is just what it is
some people say it is not about happiness
not about being on top 

imagine the pink and soft petals, the fragrance

no matter what, but i know THAT is the true me 

I don't see geese very often around here.
In the summer months i can often find swans when i try.
Only with some luck i get to see them fairly close. and they are very good in front of the camera.
Now  ravens i probably see every day, but for me it is hard to get a good photo of them.

Ahhh let me know life is not black or white. Life is a geese, but i love my swans and ravens so much more.

powerlines

I get these dreams once in a while.
 dreams where i find myself flying.
It used to be, because i found my self flying, the dream became lucid, where i knew i was dreaming.
Last night i didn't really became lucid, i just became aware i was flying,
like; oh i am flying.
I was in the dream actually following someone, i was in the army, i was following my father who was in the same regiment as i was, there was no enemy.
I felt i couldn't keep up to him. so i decided to fly, to be faster
that's were i became aware.
But as i tried to fly ahead, i was pulled back.
In my previous flying dreams i am often confronted with powerlines, and am scared to fly into them.
Last night as i was thinking: my fellow army can see me flying, they probably wonder how i can suddenly fly.
it's then i got too close to the electrical wires.
And never before in my dreams
this time i did fly into them
they felt soft
nothing else,
but now i got scared to land, i was afraid that i would feel the electrical shock when i would land.
I never did feel a shock upon landing, but that's when i lost awareness of my dream

Now a strange thing happened to me yesterday in real life. A friend i had some issues with, which i thought we had worked through, informed me that he doesn't want to spend time with me anymore....

And as i go on with my program ( lots of homework ) and chip away at a bison hide ( we got a bison and i am working the hide), the birds are helping me while i type here,
i do wonder.....

where it all ties in

the dream was neither negative nor positive
so was the incident with my friend

butterfly days

a Comma and a Mourning Cloak 

and i think i saw a Sulphur too

but it could have been

a yellow leave 

slowly swirling down

la vie est d'or

I had something in mind how to post those pictures, but i do not know how to do it. That is okay. that will be another day.

For my changeways program i had to set goals, and that was not one of them.

At the program i learned this week, that this program is only about managing one's depression. Uhmmm i actually think i have actually all my life done quite well that way. So what's new? I am supposed to set small goals and pat my self on the back after doing them. Well i did set two goals for this week  and i did one

but having done that that, it turned out i need to something else , when i wait with that till next week a deadline has gone by and step one was useless.

And these photos mix me up, i like simple

As why do we need a bag around our bread and a bag to put that bag in and a car to drive it home etc etc

Yesterday i saw something beautiful, bicyclist are starting to use the driving lane on the riverdale bridge for biking. As the footpath is narrow and there is always lots of pedestrians. When more bikers use the driving lanes, car traffic will get used that. And hopefully someone doesn't get it in its mind to buy a bigger bridge, cars will just learn that driving lanes are for bikes too. Saying this, when we don't change no one will.
Yahoo! let Whitehorse be the bicycle and pedestrian capital!
It already is.
Alexander was saying in Medicine Hat you can't even walk to the grocery store, well start walking kiddo!
And no more plastic bags to me means a cleaner environment and no need to keep your bread clean form dirt which is created by the means to keep things 'clean'.

Well that was my two cents worth.  I bought a new camera, to contradict things i stand for, indeed it is plastic it came in plastic and in a box, and i printed the manual,on and on.

buying bread

 in Auvergne 

There: spotted in Auvergne, France, i think the village is called Echandelys. correct me if i am wrong.

This is how you can buy bread, i just wanted to show, bread doesn't have to be in a bag when you buy it.

Merci! Cees en Gerda.

in a phlox

June 26 2012

I feel very tired, more then ever wanting to curl up

Last night i dozed off  watching the Russian Ark, All is always so darn synchronized in my life.

This program  changeway, suggests, more social events

Well i say madly, my weekend had more socializing then normal.

Being with people does energize me

Yet i am so tired now

Or is it that i have been ignoring being lethargic and kept doing things.

Ha! i did a lot of little things

but not things like my writing or painting for an income

The program says; small goals, look at your succes......

I am in a phlox

what can be more beautiful

i just don't feel it

i'll do the dishes...

yes in soap berries

And i do want to tell you about my seed harvest, which i do find quite successful

I harvestest dock seeds, lamb's quarter seeds and plantain seeds,

and i do not winnow them

I eat them shell and all

and it's wonderful

i use them in baking, cook them with potatoes in soups, eat them with cereal, etc

birthday parties

stonycreek mountains, June 26 2012

First, thanks so much Christopher and Brian!!!

Maybe i have always said, that i am easily depressed, but know it feels i never really knew that i actually am.

In the 2nd group session, i was annoyed and at the same time pleasantly surprised that the other group members were actually quite happy and definitely interesting beautiful people, very much like myself.

Now i don't really think that i wish i had known earlier, like if i had knew, and worked on this before, how beautiful my life could have been, haha my life was/is beautiful. I do feel a little sad for the people that are/were around me. I could have been more loving. 

So that will be one of my goals , we have to set next week.

This week is about knowing what depression is.

And making a list of what i enjoyed in the past and not anymore. In the past few days, i came up with the fact that is not so much i don't enjoy the things i do, because i do, but the starting of them. Now after two days of practicing Astra's suggestion, i actually know there is a ton of things i didn't do anymore because i thought i didn't enjoy them anyway..... Haha it is a little overwhelming... And now that was one of the things bothering me, that i was so easily overwhelmed. go figure.

Actually what opens up now in my mind is , that i can actually enjoy anything, when i put my mind to it.

Do you know what i mean. That what i always know, that every moment in life is a new opening to infinite possible. 

It is much grander then i ever realized.

.

ptarmigan eggs, June 26 2012

Over the last few days i have been very succesful in just doing things that first enter my mind. It was very tiring to push my self all the time. But i did spend way less time dwelling in that state of mind i do not like, and 'curling up'. As my life always full of miracles, as a miracle my dear friend Alice showed up at a point were i was wanting to give up. And in the evening i went to a birthday party. "I hate birthday parties" ofcourse it turned out enjoyable way beyond my expectations. Thanks Jay and Kathi!

I still slept 9 hours after. (one of my goals is to need less sleep) but still i feel i am getting somewhere.

don't worry

this was last week.
And personally i like winter anyway. But for now i am happy that it is autumn, and i am so happy i discovered soapberries, i still do dishes everyday with soapberries. Enjoying it as long as it last, And amazingly the amount of soapberries in my yard is amazing, i just don't know how long they stay on the bush, firm enough to be able to be picked for dishes. Unlike other berries i feel no desire to pick large quantities for future use.

But
i like to journal here for a group i am in.
It's called Changeways
Long story short; i felt depressed last March and signed up for this program, It started two weeks ago. We meet one morning a week)

Today's journal.
Right now, i feel what bother's me most, it's an anxiety; i want to write here, but i want to do other things, but   like often i go into a state of thinking about what i like to do best, and can't come up with the answer. Yesterday, succesfully so, i would just do what came up into my head first.Astra, the group leader, explained it as, our instinct says, to curl up and do nothing. but she went on in saying that often we would know what to do. And i did.
Now i do wonder, by doing doing doing, don't i ignore the fact that i just want to be, but i really want to give this program my best effort, and will do as i am told, and hopefully in a few weeks i will see a positive result.

What i do wonder, when did this anxiety start, My mother told me that as a young kid, i would be either very happy or lay on the couch... not so much miserable but maybe unable....

It's a long story

But don't worry, i don't fit the category, majorly depressed.

I actually think being depressed is a good way to be....

red-osier dogwood

a jewel i found in the forest, i left it there. as it rains i want to be moss, the green thick moss. can i be moss and be me at the same time. can i soak up the rain and smell like earth. the white pearls in amethysts beyond my reach. if i am real i am everything. this dream i live in, this dream that thinks i am  only me. i scream and make the dark rough trees, that stand above me, shudder. only at the little creek the red-osier dogwood grows.

Soapberry soap

There is always something to pick, this time of year. I probably have said it before; i could spend all day gathering ( but i am not).
And really picking soapberries is not high on my list, so when dishes have piled up i run out of the house and gather a handful.
Because they do get my dishes clean!
and shiny really.
I was quite surprised.
This is what i do:
i use a small handful of berries, crush them in some hot water, add some more hot water , whip them up with a whisk, add more hot water, sieve the water, add more hot water.
And you have this reddish dishwater, it doesn't look very clean, but it cleans the dishes!
and i have to say when you use an old plastic brush or dishwashing tub it will stain old plastic red like tomatoes do.

It works for me and probably as long as soapberries remain on the bushes, i don't think i get into storing them for future use.

Anything to reduce trash. This morning on the radio  i heard something that irritates me. A study has been done and what they found out is that organic food is not more nutritious. Dahhh! That is not what it is about for me. It is that we can actually grow food without poisoning the planet. And i like to take it a step further, not to grow things, but harvest what already grows in abundance.
and reduce waste for that matter, i am on a mission again, that whatever i do buy is not wrapped up or packaged etc, not at all. It's possible, google it, people do it.
More on this as my cousin in France is trying to make a picture of  a baguette walking around naked in town.

swans migrating

what are the swans doing? Before we good even see them we could hear the swans trumpeting and making a lot of racket in the water.By the sound it seemed there were a lot of them,.As i approached them, there appeared to be only four of them.

I think one was already laying with it's wings flat on the water.

 then one (unaware of me in the trees) came flying towards me flying towards the takhini river ( they are on the mendenhall river.)

 two took of in the other direction, and came back soon after.
 the first one, circled around and came back too

 suddenly two seemed to be fighting

 I think two took off again, and two remained

One still laying with it's wings flat on the water.
And i think swan no. 4 remained calm throughout the whole time.

What was going on!?

mnt.Sima

http://mountsima.com/

I had so much fun today,
I rode the bike park, and i loved it!
One day  a week i am at mnt Sima to make a hiking trail, i volunteered my self to do some wildflower markers, which will happen! For now i am just working on the trail, and i am very excited about it.

The crew working at mnt. Sima is fantastic! I love the energy there and the way they work.

And after walking up and down the mountain quite a bit over the last few weeks, today i decided to take my bike and they let me ride the bike park, after i worked.  I took the easiest trail. There are 2 trails for the bikes. But Austin, the bike trail designer/builder, said a third trail will soon be open, this weekend maybe.
I took the easy trail , which i read is intermediate ( it's 'ridey tidy' i think) Anyway i did it twice, and the second time already more smoothly. I do have some past experience. I took a lesson in Kamloops years ago and what i was told, keep your pedals horizontal and  hold on to the brakes.,60% on the front brake and 40% on the back brake.something like that. ( meaning, press the brakes at all times, only releasing them a bit  when you want to go faster.)

And what i learned today; when you see the yellow sign CAUTION. go slow very slow....
There is only one such sign on the trail i went one, and it seems to be there for a good reason.... that's all i say :)

Austin  and Alexander worked two weeks ago on these trails http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Crankworx-Whistler-2012-Red-Bull-Joyride-Slopestyle-Video.html
This is not scare you, at mnt. Sima Austin designs trails, that are possible and fun to ride even for me.

red admirals in the nettle patch

Thanks to Christopher i found out that my two babies are Red Admiral caterpillars.
I phoned Bruce Bennett the Yukon Botanist, to see if that was the case. He knew of the sightings of Crispin Guppy.
As Bruce himself is more of a botanist (well he is) then a lepidopterist. we started talking plants, stinging nettles in this case. Utrica dioica.
As the nettle is not very common in the Yukon, i always wondered if my nettles had travelled here with me from Holland 20 years ago.  I look after my  patch diligently, otherwise it would be overrun by Fireweed.
Bruce told me the European nettle is actually different then the North American one.
the European: Utrica dioica ssp dioica
ours in the Yukon: Utrica dioica ssp gracillis
Which one  is the one that grows in my garden?
I found the following article: Similar Species: The uncommon European variety of stinging nettle (Urtica dioica var. dioicaor Urtica dioica spp. dioica, often referred to simply as Urtica dioica; European stinging nettle, common nettle, hokey pokey, devil's leaf, naughty man's plaything) is more branched and sprawling, with more densely hairy leaves and stinging hairs abundant on stems and both leaf surfaces. Leaves of the European variety are much broader and heart-shaped. Unlike the native stinging nettle, the European type is dioeceous, meaning its male and female flowers are found on separate plants. Small stinging nettle seedlings might be confused with mints, which also have opposite, serrated leaves and square stems, but no stinging hairs.

at http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/weedguide/singlerecord.asp?id=210

sooo it appears to me,i am glad to say, that mine is the native one. And! attracted some butterflies not so native to the Yukon.

Thanks Christopher and Bruce

Colourful butterflies make mass migration to the Yukon | Yukon News

Colourful butterflies make mass migration to the Yukon  |  Yukon News

Seed harvest

As i was harvesting lamb's quarter seeds, i remembered i had read somewhere that stinging nettle seeds are good to eat too. Now i do know, that there are butterflies that do have a connection with nettles.
"okay" i did harvest the lamb's quarters but left the nettle patch alone when seeing that these creatures  claimed them for their food source already.
Now the question is, will they hang their pupa in the nettles too and which butterfly will emerge and when?

after yesterday's rain

all is wet, the sun is out again today and in the slight breeze all sparkles like the tanzanite stones i saw in skagway
no this post is not going to be nice
but first i have you find the pika and the ptarmigan

in the spirit of all is not what it seems to be

Recently i heard a bad story, and yesterday some facts where confirmed by a friend of mine, who had been a victim in the story. I have no idea how to write about this, because if you know, my outlook on life is; all is good. Do i have a responsibility to speak up, when i am aware of someone harming innocent people?
I can't find any facts on the net. Yet this story is so.... like....awful.

This can't be happening in the Yukon.

I remember the villain as beautiful blue eyed and very charming, i liked him a lot when i met him.
And i do wonder what makes someone act in such way, was he deeply hurt once?
And i have known 'bad' people and seen their beauty, even spoken out for them in their favor. but these are other stories maybe for an other time.

So let me start this way, asking you, if what i heard is true. Is it really true?
That two beautiful men, Jonathan and Matteus have started up beautiful restaurants in the Yukon and left a trail of tears. Not paying their bills, their employers, stealing and taking people to court . I  am really not in a position to write about this, i don't know all the details.
The feeling i get here, is that most people believe in the goodness of people. These two men approached them and they trusted these guys, believed that they would pay later, went out on a limb for them because it all sounded so beautiful to be part of....

I heard  Carcross now, i heard things are falling apart already around them.

I hope they find their peace, i don't wish them harm. And i can only hope for them and all involved there is sunshine after rain.