Fresh air

[rebeccmeister]

On a couple of recent early morning bike rides out to Lake Bryan, I've noticed plumes of fire on the horizon. The plumes remind me of the burnoff from landfills, but I'm not sure that's the cause in this case. There's a lot of industry happening along the route to the lake, involving some sort of pipeline construction and oil well or fracking construction, which seems to me like the kind of activity that could also involve these fires. One of the companies that's been measuring seismic characteristics in the area left one of its detectors sitting out right in front of the boatyard. I got tired of finagling my bike around it, so I finally ripped it out of the ground on Monday and moved it to one side.

I have a small dilemma. I keep finding myself looking at photos of beautiful places - even my computer desktop photos fall in this category, as they are photos from a family hike on Mt. Rainier the year after Zack died. The dilemma is that these photos often make me very sad, and I am unsure about what to do about that. My life these days involves trips out to Lake Bryan, to be sure, but Lake Bryan is a humid and buggy place, where the water is muddy and the shore is covered in cast-aside beer cans and remnants of charcoal fires. I just don't relate to oak trees in the same way I relate to evergreens. But I crave beauty. How to find and experience beauty in a way that won't make me sad? I've been trying to think about it all from the perspective of gratitude for the times in my life when I've been able to spend more time in these beautiful places. It might all become a moot point for the immediate future, because I'll be in southern California and Arizona for 2 weeks very soon, and I think I will make an effort to spend time outside in those places.

Comments

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Armchair travel and concrete plans to go to those places, may help?

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

Hopefully so...I'm heading to California today, then Arizona next week, but I have this feeling that time spent in those two places is going to be busy and stressful. I'll also be spending two weeks in the Pacific Northwest in November, which will hopefully be less stressful. It feels like it has been too long since I've taken a break, and both trips are tricky because they're combination work-leisure, and often the work winds up eating into the leisure.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Yes it does. That's how my whole weekend vanished...