train song

sometimes

it takes a while to get it:

Well it's all right, riding around in the breeze
Well it's all right, if you live the life you please
Well it's all right, even if the sun don't shine
Well it's all right, were going to the end of the line...

Update:  slightly troubled by the "has your artificial hip failed?" pop-up...
Update#2:  George is my favorite Beatle.

wish

nothing more.  nothing less.  only this.  

rise

If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
Chuang Tzu

start

The Beginner’s Manifesto:

1. The hardest step is the first one.
2. It’s also the smallest, and often the simplest.
3. Momentum is more powerful that we realize. But the snowball won’t roll unless you give the first push.
4. It’s hard to start, but it’s even harder to stop once we’ve started.
5. Start something small every day. Watch them pile up.
6. Choosing not to start is choosing to fail.
7. Find a reason that makes it worth it.
8. What will happen if you don’t begin? What might you miss?
9. Make the first step so small it’d be impossible not to take.
10. The only thing standing between dreaming and beginning, is you.
11. Start first. Think later.
12. If you don’t start, nothing else matters.
13. Most of the fear comes from anticipating the start.
14. Most of the fear disappears once you begin.
15. Don’t leave the sight of an idea without doing one thing to get it closer to reality.
16. Say no to something that doesn’t matter, so you can start one thing that does.
17. Possibility cannot live until you begin.
18. If you don’t start, you can’t finish.
19. Starting is what builds a bridge, creates a business, loses 100 pounds, writes a best-seller. Starting does it all.
20. Starting is what changes the world. It’s the only thing that ever has.
21. Everything starts by starting. When is now a good time?

Thanks, Live Your Legend

hike your own hike*

Fighting rising panic, I throw myself into tall grass, pleading with gravity and making deals with blue sky.  Cicada songs rise like breath that I can feel in my chest and throat.  These days, precious few days, my hair hangs loose in a tangle of leaves and bits of twigs and dreams.  Long days filled with flights of inexorable wanderlust punctuated by tides and trees, storms of lightning and wind, streaking, streaming stars, rocky cliffs, mountains, bears, snakes, and wide golden eyes considering me quietly from perches in the night. 

I joke that I have to be dragged back kicking and screaming but it's just barely a joke.  Cool days and nights, early leaves with color, oaks dropping acorns, all indisputable evidence that these days that owe their substance and mystery to spontaneity and wildness are coming to a swift end.  There is never a thing I can do to prepare myself for the loss of freedom.  It will be replaced by the security of routine, the comforts of home ... and dreams and anticipation of next summer.  

*Thanks to "Ava", and to "True Lax God," for leaving these sound bits of wisdom in the trail register at Byrd's Nest No.Three.  They kept me company in my thoughts for many AT miles and the many more since.  

dissolve

 Back in civilization I begin the questioning, "What to do with life? What kind of life?"  In the wilderness this ceases; the questions aren't answered, they dissolve.
--Randy Morgenson