Climbing Mount (Butte) Talbert!

I recently bought an I-phone this past month and I have patiently been learning how to use it.

So yesterday when us three senior ladies decided to climb Mt. Talbert I made a special point to be sure I had it along. I sincerely believe if not for my I-phone we might still be on top of Mt. Talbert. Wait...I'm getting ahead of myself. I enjoy stories...telling stories...writing stories...and just hearing stories. To me everything that happens in my life is just a story waiting to be told. But as I sit here at my computer I am finding it especially hard to put into words everything that happened on our second time to scale this mountain...OK its really a Butte.  But it is the largest undeveloped Butte in Northern Clackamas County. The park offers miles of hiking trails and four different trail heads. Four different trail heads? Good to know!!

We met at the church at 9:30 AM anticipating our hike and our time together. We were all looking forward to the exercise...enjoying God's creation...and chatting and catching up on each other's life.
Mistake #1...Chatting and catching up on each other's life.  We chatted all the way there...we chatted while driving...we listened..we chatted...we drove....we chatted. We arrived at the trail head thirty minutes later, strapped on our fanny packs, grabbed our water, and I grabbed my recently charged I-phone and we were off.

I love my I-phone!! It has this amazing built in GPS that navigates and helps you get anywhere you need to go. You can down load a map and it will pin point exactly where you are at any point on your hike. It's an amazing indispensable device to be in your pack before starting a mountain climb...OK a Butte climb.

We had zero time to warm up. The start of the hike was pretty steep right off the bat and we had to shift into two heel drive immediately. But soon we got in the right gear and were trudging up the mountain...OK the Butte..at a firm fast clip of about 1.1 miles per hour, taking time out every so often to take pictures of the beautiful rain forest filled with ferns and wild flowers. The trail was always very well marked with arrows marking the route. Two hours later...with full bladders...we started looking to see just how far yet to our parked car at the trail head.

There are four different trail heads? Good to know!! Did anyone note the name of ours?? We continued on with much discussion of the correct route to take and after another hour of wandering through the wilderness I realized I was miss-placed. YES...miss-placed. We exited at yet another trail head to find a hugh beautiful retirement village...you know the place where they put old people that get lost all the time. We used their restrooms and after another discussion time decided we needed to stay out of the jungle and hit the roads and maybe something will look familiar.

At the intersection of two busy highways here sits three directionally challenged..totally wiped out...ready for the retirement village...senior ladies. Our short hike was now a lesson in survival. Then I remembered my I-phone in my pack. My amazing I-phone that can direct us out. Another half hour passes while I am trying to locate where we are on this munchkin size map and me without my reading glasses. But it did tell us the name of the two streets intersecting...smart phone...we figured that out by sitting on the bench reading the road signs. I was again patting myself on the back because I had the foresight to remember to bring my oh so very smart I-phone. I picked it up and dialed my son to come and get us. I told him the sad story of how someone had stole my car while we were hiking.
Thank you God for my son.....and for my I-phone!!

A funny thing happened on my way to the rest of my life!!

I wake up each morning reminded that all I need to face the day is a fresh breath of my Lord and Saviour and then to find my way to the coffee pot. I could live without my coffee (if I had to) but I could not survive without my morning jolt of Jesus. Then I turn on my computer and my  passion...writing. Maybe it's not a passion but an addiction. I can totally relate to my writing being an addiction because once I get going I really do have a hard time stopping. Even when I was a little girl I can remember writing silly little poems to my Mom and I would tell her, "I'm going to be a writter of words when I grow up". How is it that a litttle five year old can engage in such a complex thinking process years before I was even capable of surviving on my own? I couldn't wait to grow up and get on with my life. I wanted to experience everything. Still do!! Why is it I wonder we always want something we don't have or to be something or someone we're not?  When growing up I wanted to be a famous sports star....a movie star...I wanted to be thinner (still do)...I wanted to be older. I wanted to be eleven when I was six....then sixteen when I was thirteen..then twenty-one when I was eighteen. I finally came to my sences and now I want to be younger. What was I thinking!! I remember when all I had to do was crawl...come on think back...you too can remember those days. I had it made. I was carried everywhere. Grown-ups would jump to meet my every need. I perfected my whine at an early age. All I needed to do was whine a bit and the whole world revolved around me. Oh...those were the days my friend!! But I couldn't leave well enough alone, no I had to try walking, and at what cost. Falling over and over again until I could stand on my own two feet and then I could walk on my own. Then not happy again I decided I needed to learn to run. You get the picture!!

There is something inside us that drives us. Call it ambition, passion, rebellion, competition, independence...whatever...it's there from the beginnning. A God given drive to move forward, our souls crave progress.

Then a funny thing happened...well not laughing funny...but wierd funny. I'm all grown up now and like my young neice asked me yesterday, "why can't grandma's run". Oh man...the one thing I was really good at too!!  Actually I'm more than all grown up....I'm really almost grown UP!! I've been confronting my future lately. What is my future? Is there hope for a real future without my husband of many years? He defined me and gave me purpose. But hope pulls me forward into the future, whatever that holds. Where there is no hope there is no future. I believe hope is the oxygen for the soul!!

We are saved by trusting, and trusting means looking forward to getting something we don't yet have. Romans 8:24

My soul doesn't crave something from God, my soul craves God!!  ...and by the way... so does yours.

A PROMISE KEPT

A friend of mine has a sailboat named Promise and he has been promising me a sail on Promise. He kept his promise and took me sailing on Sunday. Oh how I do love sailing!! But I must admit that the whole sailing thing is more than a tad confusing. My question is why must they change the name of everything on the boat? A rope is only a rope when it doesn't have a function. After it is assigned a function it's name is changed. That had to be the grand idea of a man!! The rope that is attached to the sails to control their shape are called sheets....and when you adjust the sails shape it's called trimming the sheets...ropes that raise the sheets are not ropes..they are called halyards. Now I'm not a man or a sailor for sure but I'm thinking wouldn't it be easier to just call them what they are?

On the open sea the captain needs to know at all times that his crew or mate obeys his every command without question. It's a matter of life and death!! So with all that in mind you can see if the skipper's mate is given the command to "trim the sheets" she would automatically find the scissors and go to the aft cabin and trim his sheets. Aft...that the rear cabin in case you are wondering.

It's so easy to get confused with all the sailboat speak.

When the captain tells me that unless we get some wind we will need to be "tacking"...and from what I understood from him it is hard work and something he really doesn't want to do. So explain Captain sir...what is tacking? Unless I have a weakling for a skipper I'm reasonably sure it has nothing to do with tacks on a bulletin board. Tacking is the act of changing the direction of the sailboat by heading the bow into the wind and it requires a zigzag motion in the water. Then when the Captain asked me to take the helm (that's boat speak for drive this thing) while he went below to the head ...I was totally and utterly confused. He had just informed me previously that the head of the boat was called the bow and now he going below to the head. But since he did seem in a bit of a hurry I decided that now was not the time to correct his boat speak. Will I ever be sea worthy?

Now back to the statement I made in the previous paragraph. "The Captain asked me to drive this boat while he went below to the head". I came to the conclusion while I was driving the boat and he went to the head that my Captain is a weakling!! Tacking is not hard work at all...I was zigzagging the whole time he was below and it wasn't hard at all. That zigzag maneuver was no problem for me!! Keep in mind the sails were down.

The little boat we drag behind us is called a dinghy and the rope that hauls the little boat is called a painter. Since they insist on renaming everything I don't think it's entirely my fault that we lost the cute little boat. We never used it anyway so I'm not sure what all the fuss was about. When he said check the painter and be sure it isn't tangled I got so totally confused with all the boat speak. Trim the sheets...check the painter...check the head sail...the head of the boat is the bow. Anybody would get confused with all those commands. Is it any wonder I cut the painter and peed in the bow of the boat!!

I accidentally bought another jacket!!

What is it when you shop that you can't resist?  OK come on women ...admit it. I know there are some things you just can't resist. I have a very frugal/thrifty/green friend who admits to washing and reusing plastic bags and she also saves plastic grocery bags, cuts in strips and proceeds to crochet a purse. What a woman!! But my very frugal friend also did admit just recently to being a shopaholic at times. She counted her socks at moving time and admittted to 54 pairs of socks. For someone who most of the tiime goes barefoot I would say she has a sock fettish.

Another good friend of mine accused me of being a jacket  junkie. So yesterday I set out to disprove her theory and decide to count my jackets. So now my question is... do sweat shirts count as a jacket? I Googled...what is a sweat shirt? Google's description of a sweat shirt is a garmet intended to cover the torso and arms. A jacket is clothing for the upper body. Since they both are intended to cover the upper body I probably should count them all together. My favorite color used to be black...so I have 4 black jackets. (my sister-in-law says black is not a color) I also love white (she also says white is not a color)
I have 3 white jackets. The new color this season is that lime green that I have went crazy for...3 lime green jackets. Navy is another color that goes with anything...2 navy's. Last year my favorite color yellow....I really, really, really like yellow. ..5 yellow. Everyone woman needs at least one red jacket to wear during the Christmas season...I only have 2 red ones. Pink...only 1.  Then I have 6 jacket/sweatshirts of different colors not mentioned here. So now I am re-thinking everything as I realize I probably am a jacket junkie...since I counted twenty-six...oh now I'm wondering if I should have included my coats. Probably not!!

I had a good laugh at my friend who collect's socks but likes to go bare-footed...and here I am with numerous jackets...and I am constantly hot these days. Go figure!!

A smile...

Hello my friend....your smile creeps from the words on the telephone screen and dangles

just for a moment on my fingers...catches breath and then snakes

up my hand tickling as it darts inside my sleeve...up my

shoulder...pauses to tickle my ear lobe and then

treks up to my eyebrow...then dives into

the brown pool of my eye...creating

lovely ripples that lights up all

that is inside and outside

one more smile please...

just for the other

eye!!

THREE GOOD THINGS...

NOTE TO SELF...remember that as we make plans..God is smiling.

He must be smiling an awful lot lately...because it seems lately nothing goes as I plan. I go on a diet and plan on loosing some weight, this morning I stepped on the scales and decided to give my scales away to some needy family. I plan an amazing dinner and guests cancel....next time I'm planning SOUP. I spray my weeds and it rains and washes the weed killer away. I really dislike change..and I'm perfectly willing to compromise but it seems God wants to have everything His own way. I was really hoping that by this time in my life I could just breathe a deep sigh and say, "Oh, so this is how life works! Now I understand! Now I can settle back and just enjoy it."  But surprise...Seems I catch on to one thing and get really good at it and then it's over, and all the expertise I gained is no longer needed.

I didn't plan to celebrate Mother's day without a mother...or to celebrate my husbands birthday with out him.  Note to self....do research to determine if it's wierd to even want to celebrate his birthday without him.

So feeling kinda down this morning....OK I guess what I'm really feeling is poor...poor..pitiful me!!
So I decided to come up witih three GOOD things to focus on instead of myself.

1. On Saturday night my son was out of town so I invited my daughter in law and grandkids (4) over for a slumber party. What a grand time we had eating spaghetti and garlic bread...lots and lots of garlic bread. (Oh maybe that's why I'm mad at my scales this morning)

2. Went for a wonderful hike in the country. Saw beautiful wild flowers and stopped to play with some new born puppies. Then home to a good book and a nap on my porch swing while listening to the water cascade over the rocks in my beautiful water grden.

3. Rembering pastor Ron's sermon on Sunday and the fact that God never changes!! What a great thing to remember in this life of constant changes.

BREATHE IN...BREATHE OUT...MOVE ON!!

These are words to one of my favorite songs and this has also been my mantra these past years. When my husband of 47 years was diagnosed with cancer...I would tell myself just breathe...we can do this. During his numerous bouts with chemo...just breathe...during his stem cell transplants.....
breathe in...breathe out..move on!!!  Move on and do what has to be done. When we received the terminal diagnosis...I would breathe in but would forget to breath out. So numerous times a day you would hear this big whoosh of air being expelled as my body remembered to breathe out.

But that is in the past. Or is it? The past is never the past because it is really never gone. The past caught me off guard this morning as I was digging in my dresser drawer and came up with his safe accident free belt buckle. The past is there when I look into the eyes of our youngest son...the past is always there and after all where would it go and why would I want it to be gone anyway. The past I'm talking about and the past that I want to be gone is the hurting past of the past few months of his life. I'm trying to "move on" and move away from the bad years and focus on the good times. Trying so hard to not let the painful past haunt me and trying so hard to not let the past become my future. I want to look at the belt buckle and remember how much he loved driving his big 18 wheeler...I want to look at pictures of him on his ATV at the dunes and remember his dare-devil rides and jumps. What a hoot!!  I want to view pictures of us on vacation and remember the fun we had together...no tears of sadness. I don't want to remember cancer...chemo...treatments...and final days. I want to move on and move away from the pain...move on and away from cancer.

Breathe in...breathe out....move on!!