Thanksgiving Day

“As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness:
just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it,
just warmth and shelter and home folks,
just plain food that gives us strength,
the bright sunshine on a cold day,
and a cool breeze when the day is warm.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Frog Falls, British Columbia

Laura Ingalls Wilder was just 15, when she become a teacher in order to support her struggling family. She had a blind sister, a paralyzed husband, and lost her home in a fire.  Her second child died at very young age.

In light of that, her attitude and writings are remarkable.

Today, tomorrow, and thereafter I am grateful for a priviliged life.

Happy Thanksgiving.

October follies

“The highest form of bliss
is living with a certain degree of folly.”

Desiderius Erasmus

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October has just been amazing. Clear skies, bountiful of sunshine, freezing night temperatures, fall foliage… Almost not enough time to catch your breath.

I know winter is coming. We are loosing 7 minutes of daylight every day. 13 F was the lowest temperature reading so far. Nevertheless, when the sun is out it just feels much warmer.

If I could, I would stop time right now. But I can’t. So I go with the flow and appreciate what I have.

 

August 2016

Young grizzly

Misty fjord

Cranberry craze

Mushrroom

Look, dont’ eat!

Raindrops

Fishing at Chilkoot Lake

Fall colors

August was another month full of changes. We went from sunny afternoons to misty mornings, from lush green to fall colors. It was a time to harvest: berries, mushrooms, and salmon.

Winter Solstice

“Is it snowing where you are?

All the world that I see from my tower is draped in white and the flakes are coming down as big as pop-corns.

It’s late afternoon – the sun is just setting behind some colder violet hills, and I am up in my window seat using the last light to write to you.”

Jean Webster

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The sun did rise this morning at 8:56 behind a snowy sky. Not that we have seen a lot of her, lately. It is the beginning and the the end of winter. Starting tomorrow there will be more daylight. We are heading for spring and summer. The colors will be muted for some months to come. But they will return.

In the meantime, we’ll make the best out of it. Reading, writing, working from home. Enjoying breaks in the weather. It is a good time to appreciate what we have.

Thank you!

Many moons ago LuckyGirl nominated me for a Liebster Award. I feel honored. Thank you very much!

I have been sitting on this nomination for a while, pondering… I have an allergy to chain letters, and this award certainly has an element of chain letter in it. Then again, it is nice to be recognized by your peers. After 3 years in the making,  just a handful of daily readers find their way to my blog and I have been content with that, as connecting images and words is an important exercise for me to keep myself straight.

However, a recent comment by Lori made me think, why not share this blog with a larger audience? I am not on Facebook, Instagram, or any other of the social media, so this award may be a way for more viewers see my images.

Here we are. I am gratefully accepting LuckyGirls’s nomination. As part of the process I am nominating the following 11 deserving blogs. Every blog had in its own way an effect on me through images or words. Thank you for that! Feel free to visit any of these fantastic hidden gems. You are in for a treat!

1. The Alaska Range Project – Carl is an accomplished photographer with an amazing collection of images from the Alaska Range.
2. Canadian Perspectives – Watch my all-time favorite music video. Makes me smile every time.
3. Salmapaja – Oh my. Fantastic images of Northern Lights, ice, and snow.
4. Stu ART photo – Minimalist art, enough said.
5. Le comptoir de Pierre – Paris in Black & White, mostly.
6. Em’s Life in the Wild – A life of adventure, discovery, and a dash of danger. That’s her story.
7. Orla O’Muiri – adventure journalism par excellence, read on…
8. Biking the world – Kyrgyzstan, my dream destination. Can’t wait for their next adventure.
9. Musherpeg’s Blog – what it is like to be a musher.
10. Unexplored Passages – Intense writing.
11. Teemu Oksanen Fine Art Photography – Last, but not least

For those of you who would like to accept this Liebster award nomination, I would encourage you to follow these guide lines:

1. Link and thank the person who nominated you
2. Answer the 11 questions your nominator gives you
3. Nominate 11 bloggers who have 200 or less followers for a Liebster award
4. Ask the 11 bloggers 11 questions, and let them know you nominated them!

If you choose to accept, awesome bloggers, feel free to post, email or comment your answers to my carefully selected, fundamental questions:

1. Why do you blog?
2. If you could have dinner with any 3 people dead or alive, who would you invite?
3. What is number 1 on your bucket list?
4. Do you have a favorite book?
5. How about a favorite charity?
6. If you had 30 seconds on TV, what would you say?
7. Do you have a role model? Yes? Who is it?
8. Do you watch TV? If yes, what?
9. What are you listening to right now?
10. Do you have a good camping recipe?
11. What’s the best thing that could happen to you today?

Thank you all, keep blogging, make this world a better place!

A serious case…

 of instant gratification.

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Am I part of a covert marshmallow experiment?

Today I walked into our grocery store. I don’t know where you live, but where I came from shopping has become an overwhelming task: Which store do I choose today, who has the best deals and my favorite products? Off course I always expected to find well stocked shelves with endless choices.

Not so here. We have one grocery store in town. Goods come in once a week, which have already been on the ship for a whole week, when the boat arrives, so nothing is “really” fresh. As quickly as the shelves are restocked, the goods disappear.

Then I tried to open a checking account in our one and only local branch. “Let me setup an appointment for you. Oh yes, we have an opening in 2 days from now. Would that work for you?”. Really? Well, it has to work for me, because I don’t have a choice.

Finally, my bicycle broke down and I needed a new part. That would be a 2 week break from bicycling. Fedex does not deliver to our town, so forget about overnight. Until I can pickup the replacement part from our local post office that would be a while.

Don’t get me wrong, I am here by choice and I am happy with it, being able to have something to eat every day and a roof over my head. Not to mention the amazing, ever changing natural beauty around me.

It just made me think, how spoiled I was by living in a society that fosters instant gratification. Anything I want, anytime. How did we get there? Were our ancestors constantly hungry? Always on the hunt for the next bite? No time to think about consequences in the future? Now that we have plenty to eat, we extend our expectations. Movies on demand have replaced video stores. Online news killed the newspapers. Cubicles and computers… And all that for what? So we can buy and have things that we want. Things that are supposed to make us happy…

I happily accept my new life style. I will be patient. I am not going to live in a cave, but I can wait for the next ship that may or may not bring bread and milk. I can wait for that bank appointment…

Paul Roberts has written a brilliant book about this topic: The Impulse Society: America in the Age of Instant Gratification. And on the subject of choices I very much like the following TED talk: The paradox of choice.

Guaranteed

“Leave it to me, as I find a way to be.
Consider me a satellite forever orbiting.
I know all the rules but the rules did not know me.”

Eddie Vedder

 

This is one of the nuggets you can find on the wonderful soundtrack to “Into the Wild”. Another great song is “Society“. Eddie found telling language and soothing music to accompany the life and death of Chris McCandless. I have read the book, watched the movie, hiked to bus #142 on the Stampede trail, and keep reading what people have to say about the adventures and the lifestyle of Chris.

 

I am sure he did not seek fame nor fortune. He followed his dream and made it to Alaska on his own terms. He did not seek safety nor guarantees.

 

Leave it to me, as I find a way …

Consider me a satellite…

I know the rules…

$7,050,000,000,000

That’s seven trillion dollars, the combined wealth of the 1826 richest people in the world according to Forbes.
They are all billionaires.

Would you like to be one?
Would l like to be one?

I am not sure.
I would feel guilty about it. I could give away some or all of the money and feel less guilty? Could I change the world? Probably not. So what’s the point?

Where does all this money come from? Who pays for it? How can a single human being earn a billion dollars?

What do you do with so much money? Seriously.

Disturbed.

Money, it’s a crime
Share it fairly,
but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today
But if you ask for a raise it’s no surprise
That they’re giving none away

Pink Floyd

Thank you!

Silverthrone, Alaska Range, AK

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.”

Meister Eckhart

As simple as beautiful.

Meister Eckhart was a Dominican monk, subject of the Inquisition, forgotten for many centuries. The central theme of his  sermons is the presence of God in the individual soul, and the dignity of the soul of the just man:

“When I preach, I usually speak of … the purity of the divine nature.”

Good bye, home sweet home

This is where I lived the last couple of days, La Chasse. A beautiful log cabin at Lake Puntilla. A wood stove kept me warm at night. Today we had heavy snow fall for an hour.

Now it’s clearing showing the mountains with a fresh white skirt.