We All Have Angels

I know 'The Great Spirit' is real. I don't know what God is. You can't learn 'it' through books or websites, Everybody loves a good story. My story is not better or more accurate than your story. As I walk through the green woods accompanied by my Labrador, my third Labrador over the last thirty years, all of which walked these same trails with me...I realize; We all have Angels. Angels are protecting us. Angels are cheering for us and rooting us on. They did the same when they were walking on this green earth. Almost all of us have had fans who wish us well and wish the best for us in all of our endeavors. These souls do not just disappear. I believe they hover above us, sometimes wagging their fingers trying to warn us but, always pulling for us. My Labrador angels keep me safe and alert on every hike we take, "Watch that rock, duck that branch. Is that dead tree about to fall? Keep your eye on it. There's a big cat in the woods to your left, just keep walking." It's so reassuring to know that we all have angels.

Losing Friends

One of the shocking side effects that comes with living into a fourth quarter century of your life is losing friends... Did I pay close enough attention to our last few conversations? ...Was I really listening to words and body language?... Was there a plea for help? In your seventies you don't lose friends due to contrary political perspectives, even if you disagree. You don't lose friends because they stood you up on planned adventures. You realize people are going through a lot of different complications...one day good, one day not so good. We have learned to forgive often and repeatedly. I've had some of the same friends for fifty or more years. We don't see the world through the same or similar sets of eyes. We react to what life throws at us in a multitude of different ways. But, we still consider each other as friends. When one of us expires, we all grieve...and say, "Damn, was I really present during that entire friendship?"

Rooted

"Are you leaving the area after you sell your commercial property?", everyone asks. We moved to Chester intentionally in 1985 after a couple of years of talking about a move to higher country, specifically Chester, California. We were married in Greenville and had our reception in Chester in 1983. For me, I missed living in a region that held four distinct seasons each and every year. Low elevation California was boring me. Forty years later, here I am still at 4,600ft. where the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges merge. We built our 1,600ft. cabin in 1991, it's been perfect and we've kept up the maintenance like pros. We love our community, we trust our neighbors and when we adventure off to corners of the hemisphere everyone keeps an eye on our place. We invested fifteen years into Jet-Set vacationing..Europe, Tahiti, New Zealand, Hawaii and then Europe again, again and again. Burning jet fuel, one of the most environmentally impactful decadences you can foist on your fellow Earthlings. Now, we keep it on the ground and enjoy cleaner air. We are travellers and we're still burning petrol... however, we are more than happy to keep it on the ground...earthbound.

Routinely...

I rise between 5:45 and 6:15am on most days...I find Birkenstocks or Crocs for my stair descent...fourteen of them to the Great Room, where I probably left my pants. Into the kitchen and straight to the coffee pot. I grind my own and get water out of the tap, it's fantastic water...only tainted for one week (after the one million acre Dixie Fire) out of the forty years we've lived in this watershed. While the coffee is brewing I sit down with my Ipad and a cup of yogurt. I look for stories about geologic events, re-wilding, environmental challenges, people surviving cancer and last of all, worldwide political unrest. I struggle to stay out of the Donald Trump 'rabbit hole'. The man loves attention and I'd rather not give it to him. I check facebook to see if my people are OK and then pull on socks and shoes for a hike in the woods outback with my pup. This is how my day starts outdoors, a one or two mile hike with a Black Diamond hiking stick and my Labrador. A small window onto my daily routine.

Little Short on Oxygen

When you relocate from the lowlands to 4,500ft. you definitely notice the lungs laboring to deliver enough oxygen to make the hillclimbing (say, to 8,500ft.) pleasurable again. I love climbing on my bicycle. After a month of high country living and exercising the two percent loss of available oxygen is hardly noticable...unless, let's just say that nearly every tree within a ten mile radius of your town burns, leaving a forest of charcoal statues as far as you can see. The village of Chester harbors a small island of green that processes carbon and delivers oxygen. The Dixie Fire of '21 incinerated 96% of the trees that oxygenated our daily activities previously. The views of Lassen Volcanic National Park are stupendous and panaramic to the north. We really couldn't appreciate the wall of high country that stands proud above Chester when we were enveloped by tall fir, pine and cedars. Now we 'make do' with less oxygen and broader views.

Epiphany While Pedaling

Forty years ago this month, I am pedaling up Hwy 32 out of Chico, Ca. with my friend Ed. At Santos Way we swerve to miss a shattered brown glass bottle with a SNB Pale Ale label still intact. Ed Mc Laughlin was a unique character... His reactions were quick and he vocalized what was on his mind instantaneously. "That sucks, we did that!" I worked at Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for it's initial five years. Ed would fill in on the capper, washer, labeler when we got in a bind and needed more hands, which was often. "This motorist was not only drinking our ale while he was driving, he slammed his empty onto the shoulder of our favorite bicycle ride." We were sure that SNB drinkers were far classier and more intelligent than that. "This was an act of meaness. We made this possible." In five years of running the Fritz Maytag-gifted bottle washer i calculated that I had hefted one million bar bottles into this hungry machine...twelve at a time with grippers in each hand. Of course, Ed was right. We were responsible for this alcohol-primed behavoir and here it was coming back on us as we recreated. During the last six months of my employ at SNB, I couldn't put this realization behind me.