Category: Timing

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July Walks: I Think I’ll Just Stay Out

July 4, 2024

Hi, it’s July. 4th. I am contemplating the walk event of the day. So, I’m down by the great Miami River. wondering what happens if I just stay out, even if it’s raining? No umbrella. I’m carrying my backpack. Is it always necessary to shield myself from rain? It’s very warm out.

I’m less than 30 minutes from my vehicle. I have water . I  have food. I even have my backpacking equipment, including my shelter.

I think I’ll just stay out.

And….. I did stay out for about thirty minutes as light rain fell, then stopped. I completed the mile back to my vehicle and stepped into the stone shelterhouse to eat my lunch, being graciously welcomed by a couple enjoying their lunch. As I ate, the sky blackened and the wind picked up, tossing the leaves high in the forest canopy. Rain pelted down and I moved back from the open side of the shelter to the next table to stay dry. read more

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Deepening Practices

June 9,

In everything I do, I strive for deepening my sensory and spiritual experience. I’m pretty sure you do too!

I’ve picked up on some techniques from John Muir Laws (his real name!) through his Laws Guide to Nature Journaling. Two years ago, I launched a program at the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Visitor Center to provide a platform to practice what I’m learning.

Notice and Wonder is now a frequent listing in the Park’s Interpretive Schedule. In it, I offer five simple techniques to read more

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What If?

January 31, 2018

My Super Blue Blood Moon experience today filled my senses with awe and my soul with awakening! A few days ago I realized that the view I would get from my employee housing here at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park would limit my experience to just the beginning of the totality phase of the eclipse. “That’s not good enough!” I declared. As a creator of fulfillment (in difference to a settler for whatever comes), I asked, “Where can I go to get the fullest eclipse experience? I need to be able to see the horizon!” Where better to see the western horizon than the west coast! read more

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Job Advice Please

January 21, 2018

Summer is coming! Every year for the past seven years, the ATC offers me a ridgerunning job!  I love that job! It’s work I enjoy doing and feel good at, and the venue is the absolute best for me. It’s in the dream job category of getting paid to do something I love doing. Here’s the catch, though. As the years go on, I want to add another description to the “what I love doing” category.  I want to add, “supporting, inspiring, coaching others to create radiantly fulfilling walks” to my list of job duties. read more

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Form Arising

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My Nonsenses Charging paintings the past two days have emerged with form! Usually, the colors alone in patches and washes satisfy my feelings for a color immersion. As I’ve been shifting my perspective of sharing HeartSingingWalk from secretively personal to universally integrated, I’m allowing sensory shape to become visible.

As I write this, especially those words “universally integrated”, I realize that this journey of consciousness is actually way bigger than my own life! What seems to me now to be a big transformation for me in my own life CAN go even beyond what I have been imagining, until now anyway. I have been fairly daunted with the vision of a tribe of a hundred embracing and integrating HeartSingingWalk in their lives. Suppose the true spirit of HeartSingingWalk is to reach even further than my community! How about thousands walking to Wild Wind and Senses Walk! Holy Moly! That knots my stomach! read more

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Important Details

A dreaming Pacific Crest Trail hiker posed this question in a women’s hiking forum: “When & where will you start? how long have you been planning? Would you share some of your plans/knowlege… I’m so nervous I feel I will leave some important detail out.”
She’s touching on one of the Five Essentials in the Guiding Star for Radiant Hiking, and that’s TIMING. Timing is essential in many aspects of our fulfilling walks. When we consider our hike in our life, the timing in the seasons, the timing of each section, in our daily pace, and even in the timing of each step, we can fashion a walk that builds from the inside out, one that takes outer shape from our inner intention. Our hike becomes an expression of our purpose and our physical and spiritual rhythm. read more

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A Hiker’s “Why”

I read this hiker’s blog today. She seems to be discounting her purpose, saying she doesn’t know why she’s hiking, and that’s OK.

http://leftbase.com/?p=1568

To me, it’s a missed opportunity to avoid or discount anwering this important, formative question for a fulfilling walk.

Knowing – or inventing- a purpose for embarking on a journey can help a hiker make important choices about all five essential areas of planning as well as provide quick clarity when challenges arise during a hike. read more

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Heartsinging Pace

I’ve weighed in on a thread started by a mom concerned that her daughter is discouraged on her Appalachian Trail hike. I found out that she’s walked over 200 miles in her first two weeks on the trail, starting in early March on Springer Mountain, Georgia. Here’s my response:
If that’s her heartsinging pace, then bravo. As a ridgerunner, listening to hundreds of hikers, I discovered that the happy, fulfilled hikers were those who found a personal pace that came from within, matching their own body’s comfort with their walk’s purpose. The unhappy, worn out ones were pushing themselves to “make miles” according to some formula they had heard from outside. The hike became something they felt forced  to do, and many had something else they’d rather be doing. I believe there’s an inner purpose and pace that evokes a fulfilling, energizing, heartsinging walk! May hers be so! #singingheartwalk read more

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Buzz of Visioning

I’m in another world. It’s all in my imagination! I’m writing a letter for my partner, imagining him in a position that I think would be perfect for him!
It’s hard to concentrate on the details of the actual details of the reality I’m actually in right now. The energy buzz of imagining is strong – and distracting! Better than a movie because it’s composed  in true feelings.
I realize that once I imagined and felt THIS situation when I applied for the job I got. The details that I could not imagine are now my physical reality.
This reminds me to rely on and trust the Creative Cycle, using it consciously to work with Spirit to build a fulfilling life.
Even Facebook reminds me that this cycle plays in my life with its “Four years ago today” memory. read more

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The Real Work

The Real Work — Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry ~
(Collected Poems)

The impeded stream is the one that sings

My friend, Barbara Hotz, another master of words and rhythms in my life, sent me this poem on the day my hiking partner of 5 years announced that he was going solo for a time. It wasn’t so much that I was surprised with the news, just the timing. Are we ever ready for those changes we intuit or have even secretly wished for? Even though our relationship had been strained with lack of common, heartfelt purpose for the past month, we had kept willing ourselves to be together. He was the brave one to take the bold step of leaving. read more