Inspired

The Treasure Hunt of Life

It would be an understatement to say that the past two months have been busy, but dear friends...so much has happened!

There's been lots and lots of travel...a retreat in California, a family wedding in the Rocky Mountains and then a mad-cap turn around to leap half way around the world into the lands and cultures of Greece and Turkey for five weeks...and I'm still trying to sort this experience out in my head.  It was not at all what I had anticipated and yet...it was so, so much more.

 

the view from our bedroom on Santorini, Greece

 

While coming home has been mind-bending and the jet lag difficult, the miracle of modern jet travel is always mind-boggling to me.  We take the ease with which we slip through the sky for granted, completely forgetting that not so very long ago, this very trip would have taken months, if not years.  My gratitude for this ability to travel with comparative ease is immense.  My gratitude for both the time and the financial means to travel is even more immense...there was a time in my life when it seemed that it would remain unatainable.

 

Bob and I at the volcanic caldera, Santerini, Greece

 

I've been thinking recently of the idea of living life like I'm on a treasure hunt...finding things, moments and experiences each day to pick up and drop into my sack of treasures. Everything is an opportunity for me to discover what it is I that I want more of in my life.  It's a mind game yes, but one that helps me to be aware of what it is that I treasure and how often these moments happen.

 

Sailing the Bosphorus, Istanbul, Turkey

This trip to Turkey was an immense gift...a true treasure...to myself and one that I've wanted to take for many years.  Within the trip itself, there were several things I experienced that were very meaningful for me...flying over Cappadocia, Turkey in a hot air balloon, experiencing the spiritual dancing of the Whirling Dervishes and one other beautiful blessing... that I'll keep close to my heart. 

 

Ballooning over Cappadocia, Turkey

 

This morning I was listening to a recording by Abraham/Esther Hicks, and it echoed the gratitude I've been feeling...

We would awaken in the morning and speak our appreciation for the sun coming up, whether you can see it or not.  We would acknowlege the perfection of your planet spinning in it's orbit, whether you can see any other planets at that moment or not.  We would feel appreciation for the intelligence of our physical body and for what the cells are doing, for what they know how to do.  We would feel appreciation for the bed upon which we had slept and the pillow beneath our head.  And we would bask in the deliciousness of the coverings upon our body and we would acknowledge at the beginning of every day:

This is a good day, I have such a good basis from which to begin, All is well with me, Source energy is aware of me and has my back, and everything that matters to me is known and all things are lined up and I'm on an eternal treasure hunt of treasures because the Universe knows what I seek and knows where those treasures are and is pointing me on the Path of Least Resistance to the adventure and the fun and the thrill that I have defined as my desire.

...all along what you were seeking was your natural and well deserved... JOY.

(if you have a few minutes to listen to the recording, it's a lovely energy)

Wishing you all the discovery of your own treasures as you go through your days.

Blessings,

 

 

Hace Mucho Calor!

I'm not whining...no, I'm loving it but my body is taking time to adjust.  Going from 0 - 30 C. (32 - 88 F) in a day, takes a little acclimation.

 

 

 art on the Malecon at Barra de Navidad

 

We're in the little town of Barra de Navidad, Mexico, which is just north of Manzanillo on the west coast.  We've been relaxing and doing a lot of nothing since we got here.  Every now and then we look at each other and think we should be out doing something and then we wonder why we feel that way (guilt at not being busy?)...and then we go back to reading or listening to favourite podcasts or playing around with new art apps on the ipod...and that's the end of that!

I'm sure we'll pull ourselves out of this lethargy/inactivity at some point and decide to do some exploring but at the moment the big effort of the day involves a walk to a cafe or beach side restaurant for something cold and thirst quenching.

 

paper 53...just using my finger 

I found this app...paper 53...on the very talented Alicia Burke's website.  It's a digital drawing app and I'm having a lot of fun with it.  It really needs a stylus for finer detail but I did the page above with my fingers.  The basic app is free but adding more colours into the palette and a wider array of tools to work with, are add-ons.  Sketches can be saved in many different "moleskine" journals within the program.  It's not complicated and would be fun for kids too.

 

 using Percolator...I haven't completely figured this one out yet but I like what can be done with it!

The other programs that I've been playing with are several photography apps that were recommended to me by photographer/artist Shane Robinson.  I've spent some time playing around with Percolator, PhotoForge 2, Big Lens, Photo Toaster and Iris Photo Suite.

Percolator takes an image and works circles into into it (as in my image of Molly above)...some abstract fun.  I love what Shane did with this app and would like to work further with it to figure out the blending a bit more

PhotoForge 2 allows limited layering and blending (as with Photoshop),

Big Lens gives an iphone shot the blurred depth of field backgrounds that you normally only get with a DSLR,

Photo Toaster and Iris both have image editing capabilities for iphonography (a step up from Instagram).

Two years ago I stopped lugging my heavy DSLR around with me on trips.  Last year I took my Canon point and shoot and this year all I have is my iphone.  Times change and the new iphone (which I don't have, btw) has the same number of pixels as my old Nikon DSLR!

Anyway, just wanted to let you all know that I'm alive and loving the king size bed that I spend much of my day lollygagging around in and when I'm not there then I'm here...

 

 

sheltering from the sun in our roof top palapa

or even here...

 

bakery cafe in Barra de Navidad

enjoying this...

 

the gluten-free oatmeal/cranberry cookie is mine!

 

And maybe...just maybe...when I do come back here, I'll be out of bed by then!

Sending hugs and blowing kisses to all, dear friends,

 

Peace and Joy

I wish for all of you, a beautiful, beautiful peace…

 

…and a knowing of deep contentment and inner joy.

 

Sending love to everyone from a wintery beach in Oregon.

 

Yesterday found us roaming the country roads of nearby Salt Spring Island.  This is a long weekend in Canada with each province celebrating it’s own history and heritage so it’s probably the busiest weekend of the summer.  It was a warm, sunny day and the 30 minute ferry ride to Fulford Harbour was such a treat, although we just squeaked on…we were the second to last car aboard. 

Even though Salt Spring Island is very near to where we live on the Saanich Penninsula of Vancouver Island, and looks so close, it’s hard to believe that it’s a separate island…we hadn’t been there for 7 years.  A visit was definitely overdue and it was a perfect day for an adventure!  There's been no particular reason why it’s been so long since we visited but so much has happened in those intervening years, not the least of which has been building a new home, moving, and those never ending ongoing landscaping projects.  We’ve focused so much on “doing”, just putting one foot in front of the other and have…at times…forgotten how important it is, to simply “be”.

I needed to get out of town...I needed to not have an agenda...I needed to play!

The beautiful bottles pictured above were for sale at one of the stalls at the Ganges Market and I meant to go back and pick out one or two to take home with me (how could I resist these colours?) but by the time I made it through the market, I was on people overload and ready to leave the bustling little village

Salt Spring is a picturesque island of musicians, artist studio’s, organic gardens, sheep farms, wineries, B&B’s, cyclists, boaters, and kyakers.  It’s a visual feast for the eyes and oozes charm from every nook and cranny.

We lunched by the ocean as we watched the sea planes take off and land in Ganges harbour… 

We sat and sipped a beautiful glass of light summer wine at a local winery, while overlooking a peaceful, pastoral valley…

We sat on the edge of the Fulford Harbour dock in the sunshine, licking an ice cream while waiting for the ferry…

and we arrived home tired and weary…but in the very best possible way.  

I don’t plan to wait another 7 years until I return!

 

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged, to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Nelson Mandala

And I'm hoping that you too can take the time to play when you need to...or better yet, BEFORE you need to!

As always...thank you dear friends, for stopping by,

Passing By...

 

 

This sweet little church (St. Anne’s Catholic Church) sit’s in a narrow valley near a small town…just a village really…called Hedley, in the southern interior of BC.  It’s actually just east of Hedley in the Chuchuwayha Indian Village.

I’ve driven past this church at least a hundred times in the past forty years and for the past twenty, I’ve wanted to stop and take a photograph…but we always seem to be in a hurry; a deadline to meet, a ferry to catch.  There’s no easy place to pull over and I haven’t wanted to intrude on the people of the reserve. They likely wouldn’t mind if we pulled in and stopped to take a  picture, but I’ve been hesitant.

On my last trip to the interior to visit my dad this past March, I took this shot from the car window as we were wizzing past!  It’s not a great shot but I was so glad I did it.  I’m now totally pumped to stop when we return later this summer, and take the time to actually focus the camera!! 

I think forty years is long enough to want to do something and not do it.  In fact, forty years is far too long for me to pass something by and not stop to act on my yearnings!

Is there something that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time…perhaps just a small something…that you haven’t yet done?

 

 

(the sun is shining on this end of the island and it's actually starting to warm up a bit...hooray!)

Leaving Boca

We left Bocas del Tora, an archipelago of islands in the Caribbean, this morning and I have some lasting impressions to share.  Bocas is built out over the water…most of the stores and restaurants in town are built on piles and much of the business and daily life of this area is done by boat.  The little panga’s (water taxi’s) zip around between the islands, dodging the slower and more traditional, hand-paddled (and often dugout) canoes which are still numerous and popular as a means of transportation.

The flavour of the area is much more “Caribbean” than anywhere else in Panama…which isn’t surprising, as it’s in the Caribbean!

The beaches are beautiful and numerous…

…and you may not have to be a millionaire to have waterfront property!  Between the fish at his front door and the bananas at his back door, you can see why fried fish and fried plantains are so popular (and they’re delicious too!)

Although these hand embroidered Molas are made by the Kuna women of the southern Darien region, they’re for sale all over Panama.  Molas are hand made using a reverse appliqué technique. Several layers (usually two to seven) of different-coloured cloth (usually cotton) are sewn together; the design is then formed by cutting parts of each layer away. The edges of the layers are then sewn down.

We ended our time here with a day wandering through the mangroves,

watching dolphins play in the bay, finding gentle sloths in trees and discovering the teeniest, tiniest of bright red frogs…barely an inch long!

But for most of the time that we were Boca del Toro during the “dry” season, this is what happened…

to get the actual effect of the torrential downpour that went on for days, the volume needs to be turned up loud...it was so loud we could hardly hear each other speak! 

We got lots of rest, read lots of books and listened to the howler monkey in the jungle around us who were complaining about the rain too.

That Was a Nail Biter!

…especially when you’re thousands of miles away and the wireless won’t stream the game!

and you really, really, want to know what’s going on back home with the Olympic Gold medal hockey game in Vancouver…Canada vs US.  (That’s Bob above, trying to connect our computer to something…anything…video or radio…that we could download and listen to the game, but nothing worked).

So we followed the updates on the computer…but it wasn’t updating fast enough.  What’s a Canadian in Boca del Tora (a Panamanian island in the Carribean) to do? 

I emailed my daughter Meghan with the hope that she’d get it on her blackberry.  I knew she’d be watching the game somewhere.  She picked up the email and we then got a goal-by-goal update via email until Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal in overtime! Woo Hoo!

What a nail biter that was!  Even sitting thousands of miles away, we felt connected to Canada and did our own little happy dance on the patio of our temporary “home” on Boca.  I’m not a huge hockey fan (I watch the playoffs) but I’m a huge fan of Canada and winning this was really important on our home turf.  We Canadians are not big on tooting our own horns but from what I hear, the horns were blaring loudly yesterday. We missed all the Olympic celebrations while we were away…choosing sunshine instead, but it sounds like it was a huge success and everyone had a lot of fun.

(Our son-in-law is an American living in Canada, so for him this game was win-win…no matter who had won, he would have been happy!)

Olympic sized blessings to all,

The Fourth File

Gail at Picturing the Year, has passed on a fun meme…to pull the fourth photograph from the fourth file in her “my pictures” file…and she’s passed the challenge on to anyone who’s curious as to just what’s in that fourth file!  I thought I would try it myself just to see what I came up with. 

...and what I did come up with, made me smile :)

Me, cooking with very, looooong green beans in Shanghai, China

This photo was taken in Shanghai in September, 2001.  We were visiting my daughter Meghan, her husband and my son Robin, who were all working in China at the time and we traveled with my dad who was then eighty six. (He's now 93 and traveled to Mexico with us last year!)  For much of dad’s life, China was an exotic and enigmatic country and when we asked him if he would like to come with us, he jumped at the chance to realize the dream of a lifetime.  Dad is well traveled in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the US, but China was a mystery that had been shut away behind closed doors for much of his life.

In this picture I was standing in Meghan’s kitchen on the 24th floor of a modern high rise. It didn’t get much more modern than this and yet surrounding her building were narrow roads that turned and twisted through old longtangs and communist era structures.  We had a wonderful trip…traveling to Beijing, Xian, Chongqing, Nanjing and down the Yangtze river.  We were three generations together, discovering China’s amazing and unique history and geography.  Meghan had been living abroad for almost six years…in Shanghai, Budapest and then back to Shanghai…so as we traveled, we caught up with each other’s lives.

It’s a trip we’ll never forget, but for more than just happy memories.  The day after we arrived in China…September 10, 2001…the Trade Center fell in New York City and the world has never been the same.  We numbly watched the events unfold on television as did everyone…feeling strangely detached in such a far away and foreign land and yet realizing just how small and connected the world really is.

I’ve included a few more photographs here of our time in China, all from “the fourth” file.  Thanks for putting the challenge out there Gail…this was fun! 

What’s the fourth picture in your fourth file?

top row:  The  Forbidden City Beijing, Meg & Bob on the Great Wall, Laundry hanging on Meghan’s street in Shanghai

Middle row:  Meg with pomegranates on the train from Nanjing, more of the street where Meg lived, all of us at the Terracotta Warriors in Xian

Bottom row:  Classical sleeve dancers, the Yangtze River, and the Tea Pavilion in Yu Yuan Gardens, Shanghai.

Thanks so much for visiting!

Play well and be kind to one another.

Things that caught my eye...

and my camera lens while walking around Mexico. 

I'm back home now...I actually arrived home several days ago but I've been layed flat with a cross border bug. Viruses have no concept of the idea of borders!  It's not my idea of a holiday souvenir, but hey...it didn't take up any room at all in the suitcase!

Until I get my bearings I thought I'd post a few images that speak volumes about the heart and beauty of Mexico.

 

Cactus blossom...

 

When the chicken crosses the road....?

The fountain in the cafe courtyard of the library in San Miguel...

Children from a nursery school watch dancing in the streets...

Ah...those amazingly beautiful Jacaranda trees...

 

Beautiful, colourful and oh so dignified...

A group of school kids in a parade held just before Lent...

piñatas hanging in the market...

a nursery school wall in La Penita...

a fountain in Mineral de Pozos...

the roof top patio of a bed and breakfast in San Miguel

The Winged Wonder sitting in our kitchen in San Miguel and pondering the complexities of a non functioning computer connection .

While walking up the street I wondered if these ribbons were simply for decoration or did they signify something?...

A wall mural in the Instituto Allende...a degree granting art Institue in San Miguel... 

the beautiful symmetry of nature...

voted (by me!) as my favourite courtyard in San Miguel to relax with a glass of Sangria...the Fine Arts Cultural Center of Bellas Artes.  The two-story cloister which was a former nunnery, surrounds an enormous courtyard with large trees and a gurgling fountain,  It houses art exhibits and classrooms for drawing, painting, sculpture, lithography, textiles, ceramics, dramatic arts, ballet, regional dance, piano, and guitar. The cafe which is tucked into a corner, is the perfect place to sit and enjoy the peace.