Woo hoo!!!  I turned the corner and am feeling great again!!!  Maybe not 100%, but much better than 24 hours ago and tremendously better than 48 hours ago.  Funny how a quick  heal can help me appreciate the feeling of being healthy.  Often I take for granted how great it is to be 100% well and good, it’s interesting how life throws us illness occasionally to remember to appreciate that sensation.  When someone commented on my ability to bounce back quickly I explained it was thanks to two things…  Tons of sleep and Becky’s willingness to help me get more sleep.

When I pulled into the office parking lot today I felt a deep sense of belonging and purpose.  When I joined my tribe in our office I felt at home.  Throughout the day as I jumped on my calls and into meetings everything just felt right.  Not everything went perfectly or anything, but it all just felt right.  As much as I love vacation I so appreciate being able to go to work, contribute towards a noble purpose, utilize my strengths to push forward, and work with people I love.  I am so grateful for my full on return to reality today.

As we were getting haircuts tonight I took some time to cull the herd of our recent vacation pictures.  In past vacations I’ve taken way too many (taking 3-4 at a time to make sure one turns out, just a way of life with two boys!) and it’s too time consuming and cluttered to go through all of the pictures.  I’ve learned that knocking the number down quickly after vacation can really make the viewing of pictures later a much better experience.

With being out on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning with illness it’s almost like today was my first “real” day back after vacation.  As I went through the pictures starting with our first day it was awesome to kick right back into those very fresh memories!  Each picture brought back memories of what we were doing, our meals, the jokes and stories, and the smiles in the experiences.  When I wrapped up because we were all done I smiled to myself…  I realized I’d only made it through the first day!  This is going to take a while, but I am okay with that!  😉

Thanks!!!

When I got up and moving this morning I found this on my nightstand:

How cool is that???  Could you pick any better way to start a day?

I am so thankful to see them living one of the values I hold most dear.  Sometimes I get nervous about whether or not they are appreciating all that they have as much as they should, times like this help me put that nervousness aside.  It’s also so cool to have it come at a random time and cover some of the really fun things (vacations) as well as some of the basics that are easily forgotten (“making me alive” and “giving me shelter”).  My heart is full of joy as I read and read this card.

Besides making me smile due to their appreciation it also reminds me the power of the hand written thank you note.  How often should I write these for all the people in my life I appreciate?  Also, how often do I take some of those things for granted?  This note reminds me to pause and be thankful for all that I have, especially the little things that tend to get missed.

Thanks for putting a huge smile on my face and helping me find ways to be more grateful boys!

Thanks!!!

 

Mountains truly are magical, aren’t they? There’s a call I hear from them that brings about so many thoughts and emotions. Amongst those are awe, humility, adventure, experience, simplicity, reverence for the outdoors, huge dreams, determination, time, and self awareness. While I’m not always able to spend time in them I can always read a great book about them (usually courtesy of Steve). On our trip I read a great one that helped me appreciate the mountains even more while instilling some some wonderful leadership concepts as well.

High Exposure is a great way to experience the world through the eyes of David Breashears, the direction of the Everest IMAX movie. He details his life from a child of a very broken home to living homeless to taking great chances to finding successes to making mistakes to some pretty serious self realizations. Through his writing I now only found a new / different respect for Everest, but also some great leadership lessons.

• Grit and Risk Taking – Time and time again I am drawn to stories of individuals who had great dreams and busted their butts to attain them. In some cases it might even mean making drastic changes and going out on a limb, but always better to attempt to live the dream, grit it out, and fail than to have never tried. What dreams do I have that I’m afraid to make the jump towards? Where should I dream bigger and work harder to reach it?
• Delegation and Communication – One of his greatest failures professionally came as a result of not delegating tasks he could do himself and by not communicating effectively with his team. When does my micromanaging impair the success of my teams? How can I communicate more effectively while delegating more?
• Humility – Breashears puts it into a very clear point when he said, “… really understood the indifference Everest holds toward human life. You can climb that mountain a thousand times, and it will never know your name. Realizing your anonymity, accepting it in all of its terrible consequences, is key to a mountaineer’s humility, key to a climber’s self awareness.” How true for everyone? When do I think a little too highly of myself and ego gets in the way?
• Gratitude – He shares the story of Beck Weathers, a pathologist who was left for dead on a couple of occasions during the awful Everest tragedy of 1996. As Beck is being led down knowing he’s going to lose limbs due to frostbite he made jokes and was cheerful the entire way down, even commenting about how he always knew this trip would cost him an arm and a leg! Beck was thankful to be alive and didn’t care the condition, he was grateful for life. Sure, I blog every day, but how can I be even more thankful? How do I remember to be thankful for everything that happens as I’m alive to experience it?

Today I’m thankful for a book that scratched my mountain itch while helping me see ways I can live and lead better. Thanks again for the book recommendation Steve!

Thanks!!!

I really wish I knew a better way to explain it, but something in my soul feels so totally at peace and at home when I’m on the Big Island. It’s a sensation that runs through my entire being that tells me that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s kind of strange because I know that home is where I am with my family, it’s not a physical location, but I just feel “home” when I’m on the Hamakua Coast. Logically, if I was going to move somewhere else I’d choose a split between New Zealand and Alaska for many reasons, but they just don’t quite the strike the same chord as Hawai’i. As I type this on our flight from Hilo I already feel homesick but I know I’ll be back soon enough. I don’t believe in past lives, but if it turns out they exist I can tell you exactly where a large or critical part of those multiple existences come from.

With today being the last day of being “home” I’m so thankful that it turned out to be so beautifully perfect in every possible way.

We woke up a little early and had plenty of time to clean up, pack up, eat up, and head out. No rush, no stress.

Our plan for today was a horseback ride through the scenic Waipi’o Valley. This included a trip down and back up the steepest paved road in the entire US – which was AWESOME!!!

As we drove to the horses our guides shared stories of living in the valley, it turns out they grew up there! It was so interesting to hear about their life, a balance of tours like this and farming taro. There was a wonderful simplicity to their lifestyle that I’m sure I’ll write about again in the future as I have a chance to think through that more deeply.

Once in the valley I can’t even put into words just how beautiful the valley was. Pretty sure when it’s my time to go there’s a greater than 25% chance that I’ll be walking through that valley again. For reals, it felt like the garden of Eden. It is a beautiful lush land full of colorful plants and flowers surrounded by 1,000+ foot tall walls covered in green and waterfalls.

The horseback ride itself was so peaceful, my ride took his time and somehow seemed to find himself a long ways behind the others and yet a long ways ahead of the end of the group so I had some time to myself on the trail. What a wonderful gift to have time with my family as well as time by myself.

After our time in the valley we headed to an arboretum and wandered while taking in the perfect weather. From there we headed to wander in a park in Hilo until it was time to head to the airport.

The entire day was with my family, peaceful and relaxing, a perfect way to spend my last day at home for a while.

Thanks!!!

One of my favorite parts of the Big Island is how you can drive about 90 minutes or less and get to whatever type of climate you’ve got a hankering for. Want a rainforest? Hit the area around Hilo. Want beautiful green valleys? Head to Waipi’o Valley. Need some time in the mountains hiking? Drive up Saddle Rd to Mauna Kea. Are valleys with plains and cattle more your thing? Zip on over to Waimea. All those options and many more all within a 90 minute drive.

Today we needed some sun, waves, and the ocean so we headed out to the best beach we’ve found here, Hāpuna Beach. The temperature jumped by over 20 degrees in our short 60 minute drive from the “green side” of the island to the “brown side.” There we found exactly what the boys were looking for today.

Sometimes I can’t help but laugh at how the boys always pushed back about taking swim lessons. They never wanted to go, but they never had the option not to. Becky and I both aren’t the best of swimmers and we wanted to make sure they felt comfortable in the water. We obviously pushed them right past comfort and into passion. Today it was tough getting them out of the water when it was time for lunch and when it was time to leave.

Today the boys decided to take on boogie boarding and took to it very quickly… maybe a little too quickly. At one point I looked up in time to see Dominic get hammered by a 7+’ (for reals, it could have been an 8 or 9 footer!). wave that crashed right on top of him. My heart stopped for a second until I saw him pop back out of the water. He was a little shaken, but determined to go back out. That’s when he noticed that he only had half a board. His board split right in half from the force of the crash. As he got closer to me I saw the blood running off his nose and face as well as a few good welts on his chest and shoulders. Tough as nails, he wiped the blood off with the back of his hand and went right back in the water using the board Gavin had set aside in favor of making a sand volcano.

All totaled Dominic was in the water for well over four hours and Gavin for probably three today. In addition to the boogie boards we had a ton of fun just getting pounded by wave after giant wave. The laughs, smiles, and joy will be remembered by all of us for quite some time. I’m so thankful we took the fish to the ocean today!

Thanks!!!

To kick off 2019 in the right fashion we headed out to the lava fields. Part of it was to show the boys the power of volcanoes and lava. The other reason was to re-live some of our favorite memories from our last trip to Hawaii. What we found was that everything changes through time, even rock.

We first headed to a lava field to show the boys where the lava went right over a road and cut it off. We wanted to show them the area we hiked to see lava pouring into the ocean. The lava stopped over four months ago, but the area around it was pretty amazing. What we found instead of the five foot high swath of hardened rock was a road… with houses on it. Where there had once been land, then houses, and then lava was now once again inhabited by man. It was amazing to see roads cutting through and on top of the lava to use what appeared to be unusable land. We were still able to drive further ahead to show the boys the lava fields but it was the first of many changes since we’d been here almost six years ago.

When we were here back in 2013 Becky and I fell in love with the Champagne Ponds, a natural wonder of bathtub temperature water surrounded by all types of sea life and protected from the ocean by walls of rocks. We were able to literally walk out of our house and into the water to snorkel and see turtles, eels, and fish. It was heaven on Earth, a true paradise.

At the beginning of this past June they were completely destroyed by lava flow. Pele took back what she’d created. What the volcano gave it took back in less than two days. The bay was completely filled in, the houses destroyed, the water boiled away, and every square inch was covered in lava.

Becky and I knew this before coming, but we still wanted to see it with our own eyes. There was something about seeing it on the news that made it not quite feel real and I knew that seeing it would help me really get it.

As we drove from the lava fields to where the ponds had once been the road ended long before it it was higher than the lava that had once cut off the other road we’d been to earlier in the day. This wasn’t the normal way to get to the ponds, but my heart already felt like it was starting to break.

We drove along the other route and as we reached a corner we remembered driving so many times in 2013 we saw this…

We couldn’t even get close to the actual area, but here it was, the entry to paradise, blocked by lava. All we could see beyond it was black shimmering rock.

Later in the day we had our big excursion for this trip, a helicopter ride over the volcanic areas. As we took of and flew clockwise along the coast I was enjoying all the green foliage separated from the blue ocean by cliffs of black rock. As we went around the corner my heart sank as I noticed something I was afraid I immediately recognized. Over the headset I asked the pilot, “is that the light beacon that’s right by Kapoho Bay?” His response matched my fears, “it was.”

Looking to the right of the light beacon where there should have been one of the most incredibly idyllic places I’ve ever experienced was a field of black rock. There was nothing but rock. No ponds, no plants, no green, no blue, no sea life, no houses… just black steaming rock. Everything we’d enjoyed and experienced at this location was erased from the face of the earth.

As the realization of the impermanence of the ponds hit me my eyes welled up and I just had to sit back and breathe. That punch in the gut is what I am most thankful for today. There were two huge realizations that I have been able to take away from this experience.

First, nothing is permanent. Everything will eventually change. I will die, my body and soul will change. There is nothing that I can do to stop it from happening. I have the choice to either be sad about the change or accept it, appreciate it, and learn from it. The only constant is change, and nothing is immune to it. In this case the change in the first place is what gave us the gift of the pools. The volcanic activity gave us the gift of the pools, the volcanic activity has destroyed the pools, the volcanic activity will create something else in the place of the pools. I can either be saddened by the change or I can be thankful for having experienced it in my lifetime… which brings me to point number two.

Much like when I lost my dad I realized that the reason loss hurts so much is because of the deep love I have for what was lost. How wonderful to have had the experience I had at the Champagne Ponds? How great is it that I was able to find such great joy in the wonders of nature? Of course I’d still like to have them around, but I’d rather have experienced them and lost them than to never have experienced them in the first place. The depth of the hurt reminds me of the depth of my love for them.

Today I’ve been reminded by the impermanence of everything, a reason to enjoy the present and milk every second of it for all that it’s worth. My heart aches for the loss of the pools by rejoices in the memories I’ve had flooding back of so many moments of pure joy in them. I’ll never forget swimming through a small break in wall, turning right, and almost running right into a turtle. I’ll always remember laying still and just watching moray eels open and close their mouths underwater, thinking about the old Hawaiian stories of how the eel is the wisest of all animals as they believed that knowledge was taken in with breath. I’ll always remember the smile on Becky’s face while snorkeling there. My heart will always fill with joy as I think back to sitting up on the deck overlooking the pools at night listening to the ocean. Today my heart hurts due to the loss of the Champagne Ponds, but it is full from the joy they’ve brought me so many times in my memories.

Live for today, enjoy the moment, live and love without fear of loss.

Thanks!!!