Adventure prone!

(me on a roadside in Montana videoing a glacier view across the road)

Time has a way of making everything clear as glass! I find myself in the middle of making some decisions that could change my life forever!

 How true it is when one door closes another opens! I just recited that very quote to a traveler who is making his way across this country on foot! I know he has had a remarkable journey over 3,000 miles walking from East to West...and now its coming to an end and he was having some thoughts of "where to go from here." I know he will find his niche.

You know that other saying...you cant see the forest for the trees? Well I was so surrounded by trees, metaphorically speaking, that I couldn't see the forest...so when I cut a few of those metaphorical trees--behold a path-- with such exciting possibilities that I'm afraid to write about it yet!...I don't want to sway the Yin/Yang that has brought me to this point. I had a dream many years ago...to ride my horse across the country...after reading the book by Peter Jenkins, called Walk Across America. IT was so inspiring, but I had just married and made a promise to have and hold for better for worse, so the timing was way off.

Then my beloved horse Sundance passed away of old age...while I was busy raising my son and turned all my attentions to my family...and my dream sort of faded in the background. I've had some wonderful adventures in my life, in a way I always said I was Adventure Prone....at the age of 17 - 21 rode Race Horses for a living!..yep in those days I was young and strong and weighted in at about 127 lbs!..OK it was a very long time ago...and I took up SKIING and traveled to enjoy skiing in the East, North East and in the mountains of Colorado. I was a contestant of the Anything Goes Road show and made a fool out of myself on TV! 

Then my sisters and I all in our 40's in 1995 & 96 backpacked over 80 miles of the Appalachian Trail. That's not the only backpacking trek we made we hiked the Savage Gulf in Tennessee, and we found out why they named it Savage Gulf...we made other camping, hiking, backpacking, canoe trips, kayaking the keys in Florida, until ....

In 1997 when we were to do our third hike on the AT, driving to the airport to pick up one of the sisters.... I was nearly killed in a high speed car crash along with my MOM. We survived but it took a lot of praying and hard work. 

 To celebrate LIVING.... as soon as we could we took off on an 8,000 mile road trip on the highways of this country traveling from SC to California and then up to Montana and every state in between and visited almost every big park in the west. Mesa Verde, The Grand Canyon, The Mohave Desert, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National park, Yosemite, Virginia City, Sun Valley Idaho, the Salmon River, Glacier National park, Yellowstone, Cody Wyo, Mt. Rushmore SD, and the Black Hills, the Buffalo Valley of Arkansas, Tupelo Mississippi, just a few of the spots we spent time in....What fun we had.

 That same year I went white water rafting in Colorado River! I just couldn't get enough excitement so that next year my sister and I took off for an Alaskan Adventure!..We flew into Anchorage, rented a car and drove 1,600 miles of Alaskan highways including the great pipeline highway to the Artic Circle, we camped outside Yukon Alaska, and took the bus ride 80 miles into the wilderness and camped at Denali National Park...seeing 38 grizzly bears in all...and the excitement doesn't end there.

 A few years later that I got itchy feet and moved to New York City...I got into emergency medicine and went back to school and became a Paramedic! Being a paramedic in one of the largest cities in the world can give you a big rush. I was there for the 911 disaster, witnessed it and worked in it...and then burnt out and retreated, wrote a book about my childhood adventures and came back to home to think about all of that, and wonder whats next?? 

 Well I will never cease to have adventrues in my life... Now an opportunity has presented itself for me to be part of a team going from East to West on the American Discovery Trail...NOTHING has been decided but just thinking of it makes my heart race...

Like the Buffalo

I awoke this morning yelling "no"...I was frozen in place as the warm blankets of my bed were slowly lifted by a hand- a fake hand- attached to a long wooden stick...covered by a long sleeved white shirt. The hand of man...

I had dreams all night long, ones I don't recall except for the arm,...and when I finally gave up and tried to open my eyes, my brain felt like mush. Cobwebs crept in and covering each hemisphere with a dull numb feeling of unawareness. When finally I allowed my feet to dangle over the edge of my bed, the blood rushed down to fill my legs and toes, and I slowly rose and stood upon them. The floor under me felt solid, but cold as if I was surrounded by a fake world, one foreign to me, like a false set in old western movie where only the building facades are real... and behind the scenes 2 x 4's are nailed haphazardly in place to keep it sturdy and level. A set, a spot where I would be for only a moment in time, then suddenly it faded to black and then to surreal and then to real.

Such an odd awakening, brought from slumber to a strange world where I have never been...awakened in a new way. The numb brain has been hanging with me for a while now. I have been unable to put words into phrases let alone complete sentences that could be understood. Ive been accepting words rather than sending them out on a trailing wind in hopes that somewhere an open ear will accept them and from the ears they will find their way to the mind & heart. The diaphragm moves and lungs expand taking a fresh breath and the moment is filled with enlightenment and a bright warmth fills the air and illuminates someone else's spirit path...the light burns bright and the knowledge is accepted, taken in cherished and passed from one to the other, to the next and so forth and so one for all eternity.

Somewhere a dusty plain a new buffalo calf has hit the ground covered with the blood of life along his trip through a mother's womb...he will make his first meek call to her and she will reply as he trembles to his feet seeking the life's milk that she has waiting for him. With each pull on her teat he will gain knowledge, the knowledge of life will pass from one to the other. He will see the journey end to end in his little calf's world. Each sun that rises will make him stronger and he will grow and in his big bony head he will carry all the wisdom taught to him by his mother and her mother before her, and hers before that and on and on until the beginning of time...

I want those memories, like the buffalo on the snowy plains, rambling around in a seemingly dumb stupor, pawing the Earth for tidbits to nourish his body while his "self" contains the secrets of the universe, locked away in the recesses of a mind mankind is unable to communicate with- he holds...un-given knowledge, the knowledge of survival in the world that comes, as the one that went before us. He seeks only grass to eat, water to drink, and to live to the day when its time for him to mate he will pass with his seed the knowledge, the necessary thread to his survival and the survival of his kind.

"Go in peace my brother the Buffalo, spread your seed and grow your herd, for the times they are 'a coming, when you will need the knowledge to keep you on this Earth."

Walking my Spirit Path one day at a time.