Life with a view
This year my estranged brother John, who lives his own version of a Thoreau-like existence outside of Sedona, Arizona, decided to come up to visit us a few times after no word from him in years. In fact, we weren’t even sure he was still alive a few years back. He lives on the land, and a kind forest ranger finally convinced him to contact us. We have all now renewed our relationships with John.
My New Book – Kindle Edition!
Hey! It’s Small Business Saturday and you cannot find a smaller one than mine! Please consider my new memoir as a great gift for boomers thinking about retirement alternatives. We did something completely different and we’re glad we did, but there were times we weren’t so sure. Some of you have asked when I might have an e-book edition of my new book available for purchase. I just loaded it!
Our sunrise today!
Sometimes I feel like I live in sunrise heaven up here!
It started out with a shy edge of lovely light…
rising into incredible pinks and purples…
and then announced itself fully.
HERE COMES THE SUN!
Another new day in one beautiful place…
How sacred are our mountains…
After watching an episode of Sacred Journeys on PBS, one which included a bit about the sacredness of mountains in Asian thought, I got to thinking about how important it feels to have a full-time view of the forever changing Spanish Peaks right outside our front windows.
The Spanish Peaks, pictured above, have a centuries-old history of sacredness. Dating back far before the Europeans arrived, this area was a crossroads of the American West. Taos Pueblo, located in northern New Mexico today, has been a major Native American trading center for over 1,000 years. One trail headed north out of Taos into the San Luis Valley, crossing east over Sangre de Cristo Pass, through the gap between Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain.
Various Native American tribes like the Ute, the Navajo, the Jicarilla Apache and the Comanche passed through this valley regularly. To them the Spanish Peaks stood out because they seemed to emerge out of nowhere up to 13,000 feet running east and west, not north to south like the rest of the Rocky Mountains.
The natives peoples considered this a sacred place of ceremony. As far as they were concerned, this is where mankind first emerged from the womb of the earth. In other words, this was their own Garden of Eden.
The Ute Indians named these two peaks Huajatolla (pronounced Wa-ha-toy-a), meaning the “two breasts” which translates as “Breasts of the Earth”. I loved learning this ancient history, which I first heard about from Robert Mirabal when he came here to perform recently.
We moved here to create a dynamic relationship with these mountains, this landscape and the lovely silence. Mike and I have both traveled to many parts of the world. We now find the inward journey more essential than outward ones.
For us this is a sacred place, one where we can celebrate and appreciate the beauty of nature every single day, while continuing a long tradition of sustainable living.
Want to learn more about what it feels like to say goodbye to city life in order to live more intentionally? Here’s a link to my new memoir.
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The Simple Things That Bring Joy!
If you had asked me a few years ago how excited I’d be about putting in a new patio, I would have probably answered, “Not much.” But after the mammoth job of “manifesting” our custom passive solar home here in rural southern Colorado, and starting in May to find someone local to put in a simple concrete patio…
…this is a thing of beauty to me!
I started out in May calling five contractors. Nobody responded. I called them again and most said they lost my phone number. We finally chose one in mid-July and he came over to look at the job. He gave us an estimate and then never called us back.
In the end I had to find a guy in our neighborhood to work with my brother John on the project. The bad news? It took five months to complete. The good news? The cost was about half of the previous estimate.
This morning, when I went out to check it all out, I found what looks like a bobcat paw print in the fresh concrete. How cool is that? Whoops! That’s the contractors fingerprints in it! In case you’re new here, I just came out with a memoir of the extreme ups and downs of moving to the Colorado outback to build… Please go check it out!
Boomers’ Views on Election Scams, Medicare Scams and Letting It All Go
Our Boomer Bloggers are feeling frisky this week! Must be the full moon or perhaps the goblins of Halloween are already emerging early just for us… Tom starts us off.
In his post The 0.3 Solution Tom Sightings brings us the latest news from Social Security, and also relates his latest encounter with Medicare. Instead of raising the premiums, is Medicare stealthily cutting services?
As the finale of the never-ending election season draws near, Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting is thinking about life post-election. Not her life – hers will not change – but post-election life for the candidate not moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She has some ideas for one candidate in Ten Post-Election Pursuits for Donald Trump.
On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about new election scams and a drop in IRS scam reports since a huge raid in India.
On the other hand, if you are perhaps looking for an escape from corruption and scams, go try these links:
Too little kindness floating around, so that’s what Carol Cassara is bringing forward at Heart-Soul-Mind. Kindness. Let’s spread it, she suggests, and has two posts with practical ideas for doing just that. Kill the world with kindness, and an inexpensive way to brighten another’s day.
We all get caught up in busy days and a hectic life style, even in retirement. Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting took a couple of days off and decided to, if not exactly smell the roses, listen to the sound of the sea, smell the salt water, and enjoy unseasonably warm, beautiful weather. Read about her mini-staycation in An Autumn Respite.
And, to add a little bit of icing on the cake, don’t miss my new post: The Challenge of Being Fully Present in Your Life. This has nothing to do with the world outside your own mind and heart! In case you’re new here, I just same out with a new memoir. Please go check it out!
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 