I am both extremely grateful for and jealous of the summer of outdoor adventures our boys have planned this year. Just over a week ago we were returning back from a weeklong backpacking trip to Isle Royale. A few weeks before that they were on a long weekend of backpacking in the Porcupine Mountains. Tomorrow they head off on a week of canoeing with Grandpa and some of their cousins in the Boundary Waters. Shortly after is a few days of hiking up a couple mountains in Colorado over a long weekend. Throw in additional camping and whatnot and they are booked up with outdoor excitement.
I’m not even sure which specific part I’m most thankful for today. They will make some incredible memories. Their already deep appreciation of the outdoors has grown stronger already this summer. They are active and out enjoying life rather than living behind a screen. The skills they spare learning about hiking, camping, and wilderness survival are outstanding and will be useful all their days. All those positives are amazing!
At the end of the day I’m so stoked about how excited they are for each adventure, the smiles they have seemingly constantly on their faces, and knowing they’re creating a lifetime of memories in a single summer. I’m getting more excited for semi-retired life at some point to see if I can match their level of excitement alone summer in the future.
They’re hitting this next adventure without me, but I’m still so grateful for this and all of the other crazy outdoor adventures they have this summer.
Not gonna lie, I love the days that are a nonstop blur from start through stop. I’ve been up and moving since 4am and haven’t had a moment to relax until now. Blogging from bed has become a more and more common thing and I’m very much okay with that. Tomorrow will have many hours of drive time, I’ll relax then. In the meantime I’m grateful for the constant forward motion of today.
For sure, much of the day involved a great deal of fun with my Winona work family and it really didn’t feel like work. Every year we pause at the halfway point to see how we’ve done and where we’re going for the rest of the year. We get out of the office, talk business outside of the suction of the daily whirlwind, and find ways to be more successful. Once we’ve got the tracks laid we head out for some fun. This year’s event included an escape room, axe throwing, and a delicious supper. My voice feels a little strained from all the laughing, it was so much fun!
Afterwards I met up with the boys after soccer practice for a little bonus fun for them and their team. Spending time watching my boys hang out with the friends was kind of surreal. Seeing them have fun like that reminded me of so many summer nights hanging out with my friends back in the day.
Once we were home we moved right into packing mode to make sure they are both prepped for their upcoming canoe trip. For a while we were all pretty scattered and headed in different directions but we then got into a rhythm and got everything all ready. Throw in some jokes and laughs and it was a fun time.
Now I’m going to crash. My eyelids are heavy and I’ll be out before the light turns out. I’m exhausted, but in an awesomely rewarding way…
If you’ve done some running in the past you most likely know what I’m talking about today. Thank goodness it is an extreme rarity!
This morning when my alarm went off I was instantly wide awake. All systems were go and I was ready to start my day. When I got my shoes on and was about to head out for a run something just seemed off. My legs were tired. Both of my Achilles were stiff and sore. My body felt flat. Everything was off a bit.
I thought everything would loosen up when I started running so off I went. Instead of loosening up everything just got more tight, more tired, and more sore. My first mile was resoundingly miserable.
Sometimes it takes a while to knock the rust off. After a mile or so I find my groove and then I’m good to go for the rest of the run. Maybe if I just kept going I’d hit that point and feel refreshed.
Nope. I continued to feel like crap. Nothing felt natural, I couldn’t get into my right rhythm, and everything was off. For sure, it sucked. There was no improving it this morning.
My run was miserable today… but I gritted it out. Even though it was a rough one I stuck with it and wrapped it up.
For clarity, I really appreciate all of the times when my runs go smoothly. That said, a miserable run like this once in a while is an appreciated gift. It provides me an opportunity to prove to myself that I can grit through the discomfort and misery. Anyone can run when it feels good, am I a person who will run even when it feels like crap? It reminds me that discomfort and pain are only temporary. It reminds me to appreciate all of the other runs that go so fluidly. When I finish a run like this I know I’ve grown.
My run this morning was miserable, but I completed it… and I appreciate it.
What a full day it has been! While nothing went too far off from what was initially expected and planned there were still several twists and turns I wasn’t quite expecting. As I wrote about a few days ago there’s something to be said about how long the state of vacation calm can withstand the onslaught of reality upon return. So far so good! All of the curveballs have been taken in stride and I continue to move forward.
Something that really struck me today was a quote that came from a podcast I’ve been listening to recently. One of the comments he made was that we need to escape to the wilderness sometimes in order to hear God more clearly. This especially hit home for me as I continue to stand in awe of just how much more clearly I was able to see the world when all the trappings of modern life were stripped away. My thoughts were so much more clear, everything seemed to make much more sense.
At various times throughout the day I caught myself pausing to enjoy the sound of silence. I paused and listened to my thoughts. In those moments I was able to see solutions to challenges and was able to react as I would like to react. The quiet gave the space I needed to truly process.
Some of the notes I wrote to myself today were:
I am called into the woods to strip away all the unnecessary in order to hear my true voice more clearly.
Stripping away complexity allows space to live simply, to be more clearly who we are called to be.
Is there a better mirror for the soul than time alone in a desert?
As I keep pulling this thought stream through my brain and soul I’m realizing more and more that there is something to stripping away the unnecessary. While I thoroughly enjoy the wilderness there isn’t really a need to escape to the wild to do have the same sensation. All I need is the willpower to walk away from everything in the world for a short moment to pause and reflect with empty hands, an empty head, and an open soul. I can create a desert for myself anywhere at anytime so long as I choose to and am willing to do so.
Today I’m thankful for the continuation of a thought process from my recent backpacking trip. Almost daily it seems as if another layer of the onion is peeled away and the next level is revealed. What an incredible gift!
One of the biggest takeaways I’ve extracted from my recent writing experiences and my backpacking trips is the importance of letting go in order to find what we need.
When I write there are times when I really force it out of me. Those are the blogs that seem almost mechanical and off and I can sense them from a mile away when I go back to review old posts. They are pretty much the worst examples of my writing and in so many ways are even worse than when I just cruise through a blog quickly to check the box and say it is done. How weird is that? In many ways it is when I try my hardest to write that the worst writing comes out.
When I relax, let my mind go, get into a state of peace and quiet, rest my fingers on the keyboard, and start typing the thoughts flow right through me. Of course I’ll have to go back and edit and whatnot, but even then the edits are minimal compared to other times. As my writing coach keeps reminding me, let it flow through me rather than from me. In those times I can lose myself in a total state of flow and not have any idea of how long I’ve been typing. When the flow of ideas is done I’m done, and not a moment earlier. In those moments writing is about as opposite of work as it could possibly be, it becomes a mini vacation for my brain and often leaves me grinning while I’m typing away. All this form letting go and letting it flow through me.
I’m a huge fan of interesting dichotomies. Where my brain has been working overtime recently is one that’s an odd struggle.
One of my core values is grit – passion and perseverance for a long term goal or dream. I often think of running a marathon as an example of what grit feels like. Grit is working through the difficult times, busting my butt, smiling while I do it, and knowing that each drop of sweat is one step closer to one of my dreams.
Over the years I’ve learned to appreciate the grind itself rather than just the sensation of completion at the end. The memory of the marathon I ran with Becky will last with last with me for eternity. I was so focused on the end goal (completing the marathon) and not on the journey (the training runs) that when the race was over I had a sense of emptiness and loss for a month. It was such a crazy sense of mourning as that goal was now gone even though it had been successfully accomplished. I was too fixated only on the end result and not enough on enjoying and appreciating the insanely hard work it took to get to that end in the first place.
Grit is all about pushing through the discomfort, busting my butt even when I don’t feel like it, especially when I don’t feel like it. It is willing myself to take the appropriate action to accomplish the goal or to at least move me one microscopic bit forward. It doesn’t feel easy, it is work.
So how do I balance these two thought processes?
As I get close to the completion of writing my book I am in a very odd spot. I know I need to grit it out to get it done, but when I bear down and push the only thing that comes out is poor writing. When I let the words flow through me as I relax and take my time to ease into it my writing is so much better, but it takes much more time and space to make that happen. Grit would see me block out an hour each day to write only to see less than satisfactory work, but work that would be done within a month or two. Flow would have me go off into solitude for a few days, to leave the world behind, work my brain through the process, and then spend several hours in a perfect state of flow before heading home.
What I could really use is a balance of both. How I find that balance is a struggle.
This photo seems so proper for this post, in many ways I’m thinking I may be looking at this a little wrong and they two are truly a part of a unified whole that I just need to look at differently.
What’s truly crazy about this is that I am loving every moment of the twisting and turning of this dichotomy in my brain. The discomfort is palpable, but so welcomed. When I am feeling this stretched and uncomfortable it is a sign that I am growing. As I work my way through this I will continue to learn and refine my practice to improve future writing. Yes, it seems daunting now, but through the difficulty and challenge is when I grow most. I’m excited to learn and move forward.
While this morning’s run was a little lonely (no Becky) and my legs felt pretty rusty the sun raise made it all worthwhile. I am grateful for the times of the year when the morning run coincides with the sunrise, especially over Airport Beach. What a spectacular start to the day!
The backpacking trip may be over, but I’m still grinning away as its memory continues to reverberate through my brain. In particular today we’re several of the lessons I learned on the trail. They came up in various times during the day and added some great examples to a couple of situations. Yet again I’m reminded that times like that are much more than a simple get away, they are places when I learn, grow, and work to close the gap.
Back when I was a kid there was a very specific habit I remember well. Mom would typically work Monday nights so Dad would make supper for us. There were essentially three recipes we could count on on Monday nights… Fried burgers with onion, venison, or Hamburger Helper. The one that seemed to occur most often was the delicious pasta and beef supper in a box. With Becky out of town tonight I figured I’d better keep the tradition alive. While both making it and eating the boys and I joked and laughed. It was perfect. To think how many smiles we had from one heavily sodium filled box of pasta!
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
This excerpt from Walden has been ringing in my head today. There are several things now accomplished from my 2021 goals and there are almost as many left to finish in the second half of the year. Additionally, the past week has helped me dream bigger and start adding to my dream list which will be the backbone for my 2022 goals. Many castles have been built in the air, now is the time to build the foundations under them.
The focus on his face was obvious 😁👍
After some invigorating and relaxing boat time with the boys today I faced a choice. Sit down and relax or prep my breakfasts and lunches for the upcoming week. One of my goals is a focus on eating correctly and intentionally rather than going solely by desire and convenience. If I prepare in advance I eat healthy. If I relax and don’t prepare I eat much less healthy and watch the scale move in the wrong direction. In making a simple choice this afternoon I was actually making a choice which will have a huge impact on this week and the weeks after. I chose to spend the next hours in the kitchen preparing.
What I find interesting is that this one step really makes all the difference for me much of the time. I like to go with my gut and instincts, but so often my life is much improved by focused and intentional preparation. The more I take my time to walk through the details of a strategy of almost any sort the more likely I am to be successful. Even though I know that about myself I still hear that little voice in my head telling me “you’ve got this, just chill, relax now, figure it out later.” If I give in to the voice my chances of success decrease tremendously. If I remember to focus and prepare the odds are more in my favor.
As I led with tonight, the past week has been amazing for the creations of castes in the air. This evening I was reminded of the importance of building the foundations under them. They don’t just magically happen on their own. Focused and intentional preparation is the first step towards living into those dreams.
Getting back to normal after COVID has helped me be more grateful for so many seemingly little things I’d taken for granted. Today I had another experience which helped me take note of more of the normalcies I had not taken time to appreciate prior to March of 2020.
Becky and I were greeters at church tonight for one of my first times in a very long while. What made it all the more special were several of the changes our church recently made. We had paper worship aids again. If you’ve been vaccinated masks are no longer required (I’m also grateful we’re not an anti-vaxxer church 😉). You can seat yourself rather than have an usher put you in a certain spot. Put those things together and everything felt amazingly normal again!
Seeing the smiles on everyone’s faces was amazing! Over the past year I’d gotten so used to recognizing people from their eyes and up, seeing the full smile made me smile bigger. Seeing the look of joy when they were able to grab a paper worship aid was priceless. More small talk than normal was very common as we all seemed to be relishing the opportunity to communicate “normally” again.
Never in a million years would I have guessed a simple sheet of paper at church would bring me this much joy. Yes, COVID sucked (& still sucks), but as with any challenging time I can find more reasons to be grateful afterwards. Funny how adversity can quickly remind me to appreciate all around me a little more than I had before it.
The boat has been moving for a couple of hours now as we work our way back from our fortress of solitude to return to reality. As was the case last time I can’t help but feel a sense of impending loss. On the boat we’re now surrounded by more people than I’ve seen in one place before we left. The sensation of solitude is already fleeting, though I can still grasp at it when I stare out the window along the distant horizon of a seemingly endless Lake Superior.
For almost a week I’ve been out of touch with my normal reality. I’m sure there are a pile of emails, voicemails, and texts to get through when I get back. There has been no mention of news or current sports and no podcast updates. I’ve been very disconnected… and I’ve loved every ecstatic moment of it.
Something funny hit me a couple of nights ago. After typing my blog I was about to put my camera & blogging device (aka phone) down and without thinking about it my thumb mindlessly went to my email icon. Subconsciously I’ve built a habit of checking my mail when I have a down moment. That was my default action, how sad! When I had a moment of space my initial reaction was to fill it with email. As soon as I realized what I’d done I opted to take action. In a heartbeat I was moving my email icon from the bottom and static row to a random spot on a random screen. If I want to check it I’ll have to consciously find it to check it.
One of the key takeaways from this trip will be the reminder to completely unplug occasionally to create space for myself. Like Dominic and I talked about yesterday there is a deep state of peace to be found there. That said, it’s not always sunshine and rainbows, there are times when I come face to face with my own ugliness. While there is a joy in the simplicity of being unplugged it is just as much a time to pause and reflect on the gap between who I am and who I am called to be. Seeing that chasm can be humbling, daunting, and wildly uncomfortable. That said, in a world of constant connectedness and busyness it is so easy to not let my eyes actually look directly at it. In a state of simple disconnectedness there is nowhere else to look and it must be dealt with.
I remember a sermon from Father Mark way back in the day talking about escaping to the desert to repent, to get outside ourselves. That same sermon was the first time I heard the quote from Pascal about all the troubles of the world being caused by man’s inability to sit alone in a room with his own thoughts. I’ll look that one up when I get home, I feel as if I will now “get it” at a very different depth than I have in the past.
One of the hallmarks of this trip has been the constant state of disconnectedness. Deeply soothing and joyful at times, raw, humbling, and difficult at other times. Throughout all of those moments one constant remained…. profound growth.
There were a handful of deep thoughts that were prototypes for today’s blog, but they all got shoved aside by the end of the day. For sure, there are many moments, experiences, and newly created memories I’m grateful gif, but the highlight of my day started when the day began and ended shortly before bed.
Everyone else from our group left camp before Dominic and I. The two of us were packing up the last of our things and knew we’d catch up to everyone without any issue. For the span of a half mile or so the two of us got some fantastic father son time in the trail. We talked about where his thoughts had been leading him while walking the many quiet miles. It was awesome, pure and simple.
After supper many of the boys wanted to go explore a cave a little ways up the trail. Dominic hung back with the adults and I. After a while I asked if the wanted to walk towards the cave to check up on the others and we were off on the trail solo again.
On this later hike he shared why he loves this place so much and how he appreciates the opportunity to have time to think without the distraction of life. Not that he’s planning on running away from society and getting off the grid or anything, rather that same wonderful feeling of serenity which can only seem to be found in quiet places in the wild (though this is something I will dig into deeper in future days).
Why am I so grateful for these experiences with Dominic today? It’s twofold.
First, as a dad I can’t help but hope that I’m instilling the most important values of my essence in him, both the ones I live and those I wished I lived into better. He comments today helped me see that he is on such a wonderful track so much earlier than I was and I’m beyond excited to hear Dominic voice those thoughts.
Second, in many ways those same thoughts and ideal are the same Dad passed on to me. The respect and adoration of the outdoors coupled with an understanding and appreciation of the beauty of solitude. In spending quiet time alone in the woods we give our minds and souls the space they do desperately need to breathe, heal, and grow. Dad was smiling from above on our hikes today, no question.
To all the other amazing experiences, people, lessons, and deep thoughts – I’m so thankful for each of you as well for creating such a perfect day. Those conversations with Dominic, father and son moments in which our bond is drawn even tighter, are amongst the mist joyful moments of my life.
Thankful for Forty 