Tag: adventure

Soul Sunday

Hi friends. I’m leaving on another little adventure. I may write every day, or I may not. (I’ll keep you posted. 😉 ) At the very least, I’ll be back in full form by the end of the week. Sundays are devoted to poetry. Today, I felt a little “rhyme-y”. Write a poem today, just because you can . . . . Here is my poem for the day:

There is nothing that will make you feel more like a child,

Bringing you back to your natural whimsy and wild,

Than planning a trip, an adventure, an impromptu lark,

And feeling the giddy frenzy right before you embark.

Perhaps the most exciting trip anyone of us has every planned,

Was the one that we have right here, in this place, in our hand.

Life is a journey that sometimes feels long and banal,

But if we look at it closely, its length is quite small.

So open each day with the thrill of the new,

Unpack all of your baggage, and enjoy and pursue.

Make the most of your days, as if they were your vacation.

Before you know it, your adventure will reach its culmination.

Every exciting experience always ends, this we know,

So, in the meantime, make it amazing, every inch that you go.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

624. What word or phrase do you use too much?

Satisfaction Brought Her Back

I was all set to write about something else today and then I came upon this quote unexpectedly:

“Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” – Lovelle Drachman

I’m admittedly a very curious person.  I hate getting into ruts.  This day and age is a wonderful time for us curious folk!  There is so much information to be had, just at the wink of an eye and a push of a button.  Yesterday, I got sidetracked into looking up information about the Kermode bear.  It is also known as the spirit bear.  It is a white bear, but not as white as a polar bear.  It lives in British Columbia.  I found myself curious because it has the same coloring as our dog, who is a Dudley labrador.  These gorgeous animals, Kermodes and Dudleys, have green eyes and pinkish-brown noses.

I also got sidetracked yesterday reading all about Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel comics.  Now I’m not much of a comic book fan, but my youngest son is and he was genuinely sad about Stan Lee’s passing.  I was delighted in the video footage I found of Stan and his wife of 70 years, Joan.  They were really cool people and completely devoted to each other.  From the video footage, I decided that they were both the type of people who you couldn’t help but to instantly like.

Luckily, due to my curiosity, I have met all sorts of interesting people.  I’m the kind of person who strangers tend to tell their life stories to and sometimes that annoys me, but mostly, I find it fascinating.  I have learned so much about people and about myself from being open to others’ points of view.

My curiosity has made me a wanderer.  Years ago, I took my kids on a nine state, 15 city road tour.  We ended up wandering through the horse farms near the Kentucky Derby on part of this trip.  Then my curiosity got the very best of me, and I decided to get out and actually see one of these majestic horses up close, on the farm.  No one yelled at us for trespassing and I will never forget the stallion that I gazed at.  This horse was so tall, majestic, muscular and other-worldly – one of the most beautiful animals that I have ever seen and I love animals!

I’m truly grateful to be a curious person.  I’ve tried a lot of different foods, read a lot of different books, have had a lot of interesting jobs, wandered into all of the different neighborhoods in all of the different cities that I have lived in, have had almost every kind of pet imaginable, and I have been blessed to have traveled to a lot of cool places in the world.  I find all religious and spiritual practices fascinating.  I am truly mesmerized by nature.  I am very thankful for my curiosity, and my open mind but also for my beautiful guardian angel who has kept me safe throughout my adventures.  She has worked over-time but we have had a lot of fun along the way!

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any other experience that reveals the human spirit.” – e. e. cummings

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind.” –  Thomas Hobbes

 

Real Cowboy

Yesterday my husband, our dogs and I set out on an “adventure day”. We like to hike so we headed out to some of the more rural state parks in our area.  The first stop was a bust.  Our first hike was more of a “sludge through mud” experience as due to a lot of recent rainstorms,  the trail had turned into more of a swamp.  Even one of the bridges on the trail was mostly under water.  My husband, my collie and I were less than pleased with the start of our adventure.  Our Labrador retriever was in doggy heaven.  He’d much rather swim a trail than hike it, anyway.

We decided to head to a more inland state park and our GPS took us through some windy, remote dirt roads to get to it.  When we hit an unexpected pothole, I started to wonder how many miles we would have to walk through fields for assistance since our phones had limited service.  Luckily, our tire survived and we made it to our next destination.  This park had the trails that we were dreaming about since starting the adventure.  They were secluded and provided natural shade cover.  The shade was created by beautiful, old, bowing trees with branches that formed a perfect canopy with their thick foliage, providing just the right amount of protection from the hot sun.  As we set out on the first trail, dodging huge spider webs created by spiders as big as my hand, the rumbling of a big summer storm started in the distance.  We started walking faster, keeping pace with Ralphie, our retriever, whose nose always keeps him at least 100 steps ahead of everyone else.  When it became clear that the storm was a reality that we couldn’t force away with our own sheer will and determination, we reluctantly turned back.  Grumpy and salty and cranky, we decided to at least salvage the day, with a stop at one of our favorite taco joints that we discovered on one of our many soccer game day trips over the years.  This is a restaurant that we don’t get to frequently due to the distance from our home, but it is one that never disappoints.

Once again the GPS guided us through the road less traveled and as we were driving we passed a man who looked like he was horseback riding.  But he wasn’t.  He was riding a cow.  Now to be sure that we weren’t hallucinating, my husband and I decided to turn around and validate to ourselves that we indeed had seen a real cowboy – a man literally riding a cow.  There they were again, contentedly trotting along and when I asked to take a picture, the sweet man and his bovine companion happily obliged.

Sometimes our adventures don’t always turn out the way we plan.  We are often prisoners of our own expectations.  I find that when I surrender to where the adventure wants to take me, it is usually a far more interesting expedition, than what my limited imagination has already planned and tries fervently to control.  If we expect the unexpected, and go with the flow, life is grand!