James Brown Story

This story has been moved to the new blog: http://katieraver.com/2011/james-brown/ Hope to see ya there! ~Katie

Spider Joe's Spirituality of Wonder

He threw his arms around the tree trunk, gently bit off a small piece of bark and ate it, passionately kissed the tree, and ran off laughing.

My nephew is two years old.

Why did he do this? His world is a mystery to me. There seems to be no future and no past. Things from the past -- learnings, beliefs he's already formed, fears, expectations -- do influence his life. But he doesn't live there.

That's what the Spirituality of Wonder (my new favorite term, coined by my friend Spider Joe) is all about, at least in my current interpretation: flinging yourself into the present moment so thoroughly that you shake off the past and the future, and you look up to see a hawk flying overhead. For that moment, only the hawk exists. And that present moment is full of causes-and-effects that may or may not make sense, but they arise from somewhere most of us long to visit. And some of us long to live.

We use the word "spirituality" because it's hard to find a word that expresses what we're talking about. Think about the last time you were pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone actually planned a surprise for you. Or maybe you were given a gift you didn't expect. Perhaps something random happened, which turned out to be good for you.

Let yourself be absorbed in the feelings of being pleasantly surprised. It's a nice time to linger, isn't it? What were you seeing and hearing? Where were you? Seeing the events through your own eyes, notice the people around you. What were you feeling?

That's the spirituality of wonder, too. It's being completely absorbed, however briefly, in something that brings you wonder, awe, and curiosity.

When do you experience the spirituality of wonder?

Diving Deeper on Facebook

Have you ever been swimming with dolphins?

Unless you're lucky enough to already know some dolphins who like you, you begin by going out into the ocean on a boat. Someone climbs into the "tuna tower" on top of the boat. From the vantage point of the tower, you can see patterns in the waves on the surface of the ocean.

If an area water looks like it's boiling, it's probably a school of tuna feeding at the surface. It could make for some good fishing.

Sea turtles often swim well below the surface, where they aren't visible from a tower. But when they do come up for air, their round heads pop up for a few seconds, and then go back down under the water. You can see the small wake their heads create by slicing through the surface for a few seconds, and then the line of the wake goes away. Line, no line. Line, no line. If you see that pattern, you know there are sea turtles there.

Dolphins cut quickly through the water, or play. You can find them by looking for lines in the surface water (bigger than sea turtles' lines) or random splashing. If they jump out of the water, they're really easy to see because they break the line of the horizon. Then, you can spot where to go to find out if they're interested in swimming with some Homo sapiens.

Facebook is the tower. It's the place I can go to quickly see what's happening on the surface of my friends' lives. If I want to only interact with what's on the surface, I can choose to do that.

But I can also choose to go beneath the surface. Based on the surface patterns that I see on Facebook, I can choose where to dive deeper below the surface, and who I want to swim with that day.

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen has sparked my interest.

Hildegard was an anchoress in 12th century Germany. To put her on a global mystics timeline, she died 38 years before Persian mystic Sufi poet Rumi was born.

Hildegard began reporting visions as a very young child. Oliver Sacks has since confirmed her descriptions as a common visual hallucination that often happens just before a migraine headache.

Luckily for us, no one told Hildegard that she was experiencing pre-migraine symptoms.

Instead, she became a student of the Catholic church.

When she was eight years old, Hildegard became a student of Jutta, a Catholic abess. When she was fourteen, she was enclosed as an anchoress, probably with Jutta. Jutta taught Hildegard to read and write, she taught Hildegard the psalms and the liturgy. Jutta was an extreme ascetic. When Jutta died, Hildegard took her place as abbess. Hildegard was more moderate.

And Hildegard was a mystic.

A mystic is someone who relates directly to the divine, and knows it. Many times, they relate to the divine like a lover, writing passionate poetry or music or through ecstatic, untiring dance. Mystics can be unusual folks. I think this is because they must experience the divine through their own map of the world (um, like we all do), and every person's map is different. Some mystics record that interaction with the divine through stories or poetry or music. That's the most personal expression in the world! Because we're all unique, our individual interactions with the divine are quite unique, and they can seem unusual to others.

But that's a story for another day. Back to anchoresses.

Anchoresses lived their lives in a small cell adjacent to a church, called an anchorage. Anchorages typically had 3 windows: one window into the church, in direct view of the high altar; one window through which they could communicate with assistants and scribes and receive food; and one window to communicate with the public.

Anchoresses tended to be very public hermits. Although they lived lives full of prayer and some solitude, they also wrote books and music, and people came to them for advice and prayers.

Hildegard even went on 4 preaching tours, the only woman of the Middle Ages to have done so.

Hildegard dictated the story of her life to her scribe. And she wrote music. Stunning, haunting, transcendent music. Hildegard is the first music composer for whom history has left a complete biography.

And we all go through life like an anchoress, set aside for life here in physical bodies, with "windows" into the world. Our windows are our experiences. It's how we manage what passes through those windows and the meaning we make of those experiences that dictates whether we become more open and connected, or less so.

Why am I so intrigued by Hildegard?

Choose to Feel

If you enjoy hauntingly beautiful music that takes you to unexpected places, I highly recommend that you join Steve Daniel's email list, where he sends his didgeridoo upcoming events.

My husband Keith and I drove out to Bastrop State Park last weekend. There's a place outside the Austin city limits where the landscape transforms. Scrub mesquite and grasses give way to elm trees and pecan trees and tall pines. Bastrop State Park is in the middle of these tall trees.

Eighty feet high or more, this stretch of pine trees is probably the tallest group of trees you'll find in Central Texas. They're named the Lost Pines because they are "hidden away" in between the Hill Country brush land of Austin and the swamps of Beaumont and Louisiana.

I noticed a bumper sticker on a car during our ride: "Choose to Feel," it suggested.

I liked the sentiment. In a society plagued with distractions, feeling is something we must decide to do.... and that takes some courage. It turns out, there's a very good reason we slip into distractions: it can be uncomfortable to feel.

I wondered what the driver would look like. Keith sped up, and I looked at the neighboring driver.

He had a friendly, relaxed face... and then, I noticed he was didgeridoo player Steve Daniel!

"Choose to Feel," indeed.

The bumper sticker made sense. If you ever wanted to choose to feel and needed a little encouragement, or someone to help you to do that, listening to Steve Daniel play the didg is a good thing to do. He approaches everything from saying hello to blowing the voice of the didgeridoo, with presence, gentleness, and heart.

Steve's didg playing is all about opening and connection. The deep, percussive sound of the didg moves through listeners, taking them deeper and deeper into something very familiar. At least that's how I experience it. Listening to Steve is like a journey inward, yet even more familiar, even more primal, than the journey within. It's the journey back to something we all know, perhaps.

He makes his own didges, often out of hollowed-out agave stalks. At even given moment, he has several didges with him, each with a unique voice.

Steve's didges are surprisingly light. He brought one to a recent Best Resources Night Walking class. Whenever it was time to walk, he just propped a didg against his shoulder and took off.

But that's a story for another day.

What NLP Has Done for Me

It was very early one morning. Somehow, my husband and I started discussing one of those obstacle-laden subjects. In the dark. While we were still waking up.

I would not recommend this, by the way.

We argued. It reached such a vehement peak that I just left for work. I was angry. Sometimes you just have to take a break and let the old reptilian brain and automatic responses settle down.

I got into my car and started into work.

Now, I live in North Austin and I work in South Austin. Interstate 35 was my route between the two. If you have lived in Austin any time since 1962, the year I35 opened, you know it's been under construction. The whole time. Sometimes, they shut down the whole thing. Sometimes, they shut down a lane or two.

And they often like to do this shutting down very early in the morning.

So, I had a lot of time to think that morning, passing by the grinding machines and day-strength work lights, while traveling at 5 miles an hour.

I replayed the argument in my mind. What had escalated it?

Then, I realized it. I wasn't angry about the topic that Keith and I had discussed.

I was angry about the onions.

The night before, I had been chopping onions for dinner. I was pondering the old self-help cliche about peeling an onion... you know, as you go through life, you're peeling the layers of an onion. Layer upon layer upon layer, we peel the onion.

I was curious: what's at the middle of an onion? Why are we doing all this peeling anyways?

I carefully cut away the outside of the onion, leaving the smallest onion "kernel" in tact. I sliced through the middle of it.

Inside, there was.....nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Onions produce seed stalks, so there are no seeds inside an onion. It's just a little, empty space.

That's when I really got angry. What the heck? All this onion peeling is for.... nothing? Just some crummy old onion-scented air? I've been doing all this ridiculous self improvement yada yada so that.... so that nothing!! For no purpose at all!

So, the argument that morning had come out of my own existential onion crisis.

My day proceeded, and I mostly forgot about the whole thing. I came home that night, and there was a horrible smell in the house. Looking for something rotting in the pantry, I discovered an entire bag of rotting onions. They were full of green stalks, starting to grow right there in my pantry.

It seems that, given that I had had this whole existential onion crisis thing, I would have noticed that there were, indeed, onions in my life for the second night in a row.

But I didn't notice. It never crossed my mind. I took the onions outside and threw them away in the garbage can. I did not yet know that I was, apparently, on the path of the onion.

The next morning, I was sitting in the back yard in my garden and it hit me: the onions were onions. The onions I threw away were onions! I ran to the garbage can, tipped the can over, and dug through the garbage to retrieve the bag of onions.

I knew just what to do. I dug a hole and, one by one, planted the already-growing onions. I carefully watered and nurtured them for months to come.

Apparently, everyone knows what the space in the middle of an onion is really for, except for me. I told this story to my friend Virginia Brodie. "Katie, do you know how an onion grows?"

I didn't know.

Virginia continued: "The space in the middle of the onion is for the new shoot to grow. It forms a green bulb and grows out from there. Without the space in the middle of the onion, it would never grow."

Oh, I said.

NLP is the space at the middle of the onion, the place from which growth can occur. Taking an NLP Practitioner class is like bypassing all the layer-peeling and going straight to the center.

NLP has helped me to notice my reactions and change them, and it's given me the ability to dig through the garbage, reclaim the onions, and plant and nurture them. My life is so much longer and fuller because I can peel the layers, knowing there's "nothing" waiting for me in the center.

Condor

Hope you enjoy this one. Preview: on Monday, a story about onions and how NLP has changed my perspective on life... in very good ways.

I was in my front yard. I saw a huge grey bird in the distance. It's the biggest bird I've ever seen. I ran through the house and into the back yard, to get a closer look.

Very clearly, I saw it was s a condor flying away from me. A baby condor flew to me and hovered overhead. I was looking straight up at the baby condor. The baby condor breathed into me, in one full, complete, giant breath! And I felt full of energy and light!

It wasn't a jarring thing.... it was the same thing I've experienced before, only more. It seemed perfectly real.

It was so real that when I woke up, I was confused. Hadn't I just been in the back yard? It took me a moment to realize it was a dream.

Then, I was worried because I thought a whole day had passed.

But in "real" time, I had been asleep only 20 minutes.

After I reoriented myself, I realized I felt really good. I felt that every cell in my body was full of energy. There was even the sensation of energy coming out of my pores, just because there was so much of it.

The Path of Love and the Path of Power

Recently, I saw the movie The Kite Runner.

It was beautiful and horrible. One horrible part is that a veiled woman is stoned to death in front of a stadium full of spectators. The story takes place in Kabul, Afghanistan, from the end of the Afghanistan monarchy to the Soviet invasion to the rise of the Taliban.

The beautiful part was the relationship between two boys who fly kites together.

One boy is on the path of power, exploring all the things he needs to do to make his life happy and to live in the complicated world around him. Power is about setting boundaries and making "good" decisions, often in the face of great fear.

The other boy is on the path of love, exploring all the things he needs to not do to make his life happy and to live in the complicated world around him. Love is a state within oneself, and exists regardless of the events happening externally. It's about adding more energy or love to one's own life, often in the face of great fear.

Sometimes, it's difficult for people on such different paths to even talk! But when they collaborate together, beautiful things can happen.

The boy on the path of power recounts a story he's written: there's a man with a magic cup, which will turn tears into gold. The story ends with the man having killed his wife, weeping, sitting on a pile of gold.

The boy on the path of love asks to respectfully ask a question about the story: why wouldn't the man just cut an onion?

Nick Goodness, Storyteller and Haleakala Park Ranger

As we made our way down Haleakala that day that the Hawaiian chanted up the sunset, we stopped at the main visitor's center.

One thing I love about the visitor's center is that they work hard to keep a bed of volcanic rock blooming with silverswords. This is an important part of preserving the more remote places that these endemic, fragile plants grow. It gives visitors a place to view the blooming plants, without tromping and destroying wilder silversword habitat.

Silversword in bloom, in front of the Haleakala National Park Visitor's Center.
Silverswords only grow in the Haleakala crater and have been endangered
due to pigs, goats, and humans.

Inside, we met a park ranger who made our day!

One of our group members started asking him questions about Pele. He spent quite a bit of time telling us, in vivid detail, the story of Pele, the story of Maui, and all sorts of wonderful things about polynesian navigation. But those are stories for a different day...

A trickle of tourists came in and out of the shop, but he kept talking to us.

I was moved by the generosity he showed -- with his time, and energy, and sharing his knowledge of Hawaiian culture. I gave him one of the globes -- one where the land was represented in red, like the glowing molten lava of Pele.

We asked his name on way way out. "Nick Goodness!" We like that name!

The next morning, he happened to be the park ranger at the summit gift shop, when we returned for sunrise. When he saw us, he pulled the little globe out of his pocket and held it up to the sun, and smiled.

Mahalo nui loa, Nick Goodness, for sharing so much with us!

Chanting Up the Sun on Haleakala

For our trip to Maui, we knew we'd be meeting a group of friends there. So, we took a gift for each person.

We found 15 little marbles with the map of the world on them. All different colors and textures, each one was unique.

I took them to 3 sacred places in Austin:

Mount Bonnell at sunset.

The cottonwood tree by my house at sunrise.

And Home Slice Pizza.

(If you've ever met Shauna and had the number 6 at Home Slice, you know what I'm talking about.)

When we arrived on Maui, I realized I could take them to 3 sacred places on Maui before we met all our friends. On Maui, I took them to:

Haleakala at sunrise. The summit is 2 miles high and the sun rises up through the clouds.

The Black Sand Beach and Birthing Canal Cave at sunrise.

And the porch at Joe's Place, watching the full moon rise with the owner of Joe's, Ed.

I took them to a lot of other wonderful places on Maui, too, like Koki Beach at Sunset, and Alelele waterfall.

When I opened up my little bundle of globes at the Haleakala sunset, something wonderful happened.

Katie at Haleakala sunrise. Notice my left pocket -
it's full of little globes. Photo by Virginia Brodie.

Haleakala is very cold and windy. People gather at sunrise (and sometimes sunset) because of the beauty of the sun coming up through the clouds. Tourists are often unprepared for the cold weather, having only packed for tropical breezes. Sometimes, people are wrapped up in beach towels or bedspreads from their hotel rooms.

This particular morning, a Hawaiian guy in shorts and flip flops walked over to my bundle of globes and proceeded to chant the sun up. His chant was so loud that Keith and Mary Ann could hear him from on top of the nearby hill they had climbed. Keith said the man did a version of the Ha Prayer, a Hawaiian prayer for refining a goal or dream, committing your energy to the goal, and then letting go of the goal.

Each time the man sang the refrain of "Ekahi" (pronounced ee-kah-hee) the sun became visibly brighter.

Then, the Hawaiian man left. As I packed up my globes, I looked around to thank him. He was nowhere to be found.

The Little Flower

Once upon a time, there was a little flower.

Every day, it woke up early to watch the sun rise. The color of the sky changed from deep navy to a lighter blue. Filament by filament, the sky changed from light blue to a bouquet of pinks and oranges. After some time, the shining, red orb of the sun rose above the horizon.

Every day, the little flower watched this wonder of nature.

Then one day, a blue bird came by. The blue bird had stories of sunrises from far away places. In some places, the clouds were below onlookers. In other places, the sun rose over a beautiful pool of water. And sometimes, when the sun rose, it shined its light just perfectly on a waterfall and its spray, and a rainbow appeared.

The flower listened intently, and wanted to see these sunsets, too.

So, it backed its bags and started on its way.

Sure enough, the little flower saw some sunrises in breath taking places. On the coast of an island, where the stream meets the ocean. On the mountains of Bali, at the top of the Alps, in the Cave of All Knowing. All over the world, the little flower traveled, sunrise to sunrise.

Then one day, the little flower came upon a strange sight: a beautiful, white flower. This flower never bloomed or came out of its bud.

This confused the little flower, so it asked the Wise Old Wwl: “Why is this flower so different?”

The Wise Old Owl had an answer: “Stay up until after the day ends, and you’ll find out.”

The little flower stayed up all day that day, and waited for the day to end. The sky put on a show of pinks and oranges and reds as the sun neared the horizon. Just as the sun dropped out of sight, the little flower saw a burst of green where the red sun had been. It had never seen anything like that before! And the sky settled into lighter and lighter colors, loosing color completely to the deep blue of the night sky.

The little flower watched the white flower. Nothing happened, so it decided to stay up a little longer.

As the night sky darkened, the little flower saw the stars come out, one by one. There was no way the little flower could sleep at such a magnificent moment as this!

Still, no change from the white flower.

The little flower noticed a change in the sky. It was beginning to get brighter. Was the sunrise coming again?

Sure enough, the sky brightened, but there were no pinks and oranges. This time, everything glowed with a white light. The stars got dimmer.

Just as the moon reached the horizon, the white flower, ever so slowly, began to open.

Petal by petal, the luminescent white flower opened. It saw the little flower, watching it in wonder, and smiled.

Together, they sat silently, watching the orb of the full moon rise above the horizon. They basked in the moonlight.

The little flower was filled with joy! Seeing a sunset, and the stars, and the moon, and a night-blooming flower – these were a lot of new experiences for a little flower to have in one day! What a wonderful, lucky life it had!

The little flower thought it might burst with gratitude.

Sure enough, the sky began to change, much like it had every day of the little flower’s life. Deep navy turned to lighter blue, then to oranges and pinks. The luminescent white flower wordlessly closed its bud and went back to sleep.

It didn’t quite know why, but the little flower knew it was time to go.

Before departing, the little flower left a small stone next to the white flower: a red, red stone – the color of the sun at dawn.

And the little flower packed its bags and started on its way.

Hosmer's Grove on Maui

For the first part of our Maui trip, Keith, our friend Mary Ann, and I stayed at Hosmer's Grove.

It's a campground located at 6500 feet, on the slopes of the big crater mountain on Maui, Haleakala. More about Haleakala later.

Hosmer's Grove is in a cloud forest. There are tall trees all around the campsite. Every morning and afternoon, you can watch the clouds come down the slopes of Haleakala. As the clouds reach the campground, it starts to rain. And the grove is much cooler than what most folks think of Maui; it's in the 70's during the day and down to 35 or colder at night.

Around 1900, Ralph Hosmer decided to conduct an experiment in growing lumber trees on Maui. He planted many species, including the pine, cedar, and eucalyptus trees that have survived all this time. The trees are quite beautiful, and the air smells fine. There's a soft carpet of pine needles underfoot. But the trees don't grow quite right -- the soil isn't perfect for them, and they would need a deeper soil line to really thrive. But they survive.

With a very Hawaiian attitude, this area has been turned into part of a National Park. Although folks go to great lengths to eradicate invasive, harmful species (there's a fence at the park to keep goats and pigs out -- they eat eggs of defenseless endemic birds and disrupt plant life), they leave newer species that are not harmful. Indeed, they use such a place as a way to educate.

There's a short trail through the area around Hosmer's Grove. It takes you on a tour of the different types of trees that Hosmer planted.


Photo: From the native shrubland, you can see a cloud moving over Hosmer's Grove.



Then, the trail winds through native shrubland, where 'ohia, native sandwood, and koa grow. These plants are important to limiting erosion and support endemic honeycreeper birds, found nowhere else in the world. There's an outcropping of rock, reminding you that the Hawaiian islands were formed by volcanoes. Everything in this area looks healthy and robust, in balance

I like to stand on the seam between the tall trees and the native shrubland.

Back Yards and Front Yards

After being on the island of Maui for the past 3 weeks, I’m back on the mainland! Over the next few weeks, between NLP updates, look for stories here about my trip. Aloha!

When I was very young, I would go with my Granddad on early morning walks.

He would soundlessly wake up at 4 a.m. every day. He’d get his dog’s leash and his dog ready to go, and we’d be off, walking through his sleeping Albuquerque subdivision.

They had sidewalks. Some people had lawns made entirely of rock. There were evergreens of every sort. There were mimosa trees. Some people had a tiny patch of grass in their front yards.

Granddad knew everyone in the neighborhood. He would point out each house and tell me stories about the owners. He would tell me about the flagpole they installed and how they hit solid rock when they were digging the hole for it. He would tell me about the cats in the neighborhood.

He pointed out one house with a perfectly coiffed lawn and landscaping. There were steps up to the front porch, and the house was set back further than the other houses. They had a friendly St. Bernard and grandkids. They had suffered through diseases and disease treatments. I imagined that people like this must be very tall and stout.

We rounded the corner and were back at his house, ready for breakfast.

Granddad had a great backyard. He had a clothesline – something I’d never seen anywhere else. He had a small flat area, and then a terraced step all the way around the outside of the yard. And there was a shed with all kinds of tools in it.

The fence wasn’t a fence at all. It was a cinderblock wall about 4 feet high. You could easily see into the neighboring yards, with their extensive vegetable gardens and little dogs.

In one back corner, there was a staircase. Granddad was a woodworker, so he probably built it. It fit perfectly between the place where the two walls met.

If you climbed it, you could meet the folks who lived there. They had a beautiful back yard, with lots of plants to hide in and around if I wanted to be by myself. If I wanted company, there was a giant dog, or the kids who lived there would play with me. As long as I knocked on the back door, the tiny grandmother who lived there said I could come in anytime. We would talk while she rolled the dough for a pie and the oven warmed up. Sometimes her husband would come into the kitchen and talk, too.

One morning, I asked Granddad to show me where the tiny grandmother lived. He showed me the familiar house – the one with the perfectly appointed yard and the people with sorrows and a St. Bernard.

This is one of the many experiences I was hoping for in Maui: connecting with old and new friends in ways that helped me “forget” their front yards and the assumptions I had about them. I wanted to see their back yards by interacting directly with them – beyond assumptions – and get on with just being friends and enjoying each other.

While I was there, I met with a group of 15 advanced NLPers at Tom and Bobbi Best’s workshop. My mom was there. My good friends Mary Ann Reynolds and Virginia Brodie were there. There was a group of 4 Austrians there, too, including Daniella. And I met some people with the strongest Aloha I’ve ever seen. I look forward to sharing stories about these people and the beautiful place of Maui soon.

Last Walk

The last time I saw Granddad Raver, he came to visit my family where we lived in Keller, Texas.

He was healthy, and he still camped and traveled long distances. It had been two years since my grandmother had died. He brought his dog Jenny and slept out in his RV, hooked up through the garage.

I was 19. He was 84.

We went for a walk one morning on the nearby trails. The trails in Keller are remarkable, especially for a small bedroom community of Fort Worth. They wind through parkland and woods and little meadows, all smack dab in the middle of suburbia. If you know just where to step off the trail, there's a dry stream bed where you can lay on your back at sunset, watching the fireflies appear, one by one, against the darkening sky.

I don't know if I knew he was going to die, or just sensed he had important things to say to me. But I paid attention. He re-told some of my favorites stories, one by one: about how he and Granny Kate met, about his adventures as a road grader, about getting bucked by a bull while crow hunting.

He talked about how much he loved farming, even though he had left it behind as a young man for road construction. He'd take a big breath in, as if he were smelling the dirt right then, and say, "Katie Ann, turning the earth and smelling it, planting the seeds and watching them grow, there's nothing like it."

He even talked about the death and destruction he witnessed in World War II -- something he'd never told me about before.

At some point on our walk, we sat down under a blooming pear tree, pink blossoms floating all around us, slowly falling to the ground. He signed, and with a slow, gentle smile, looked right at me. "Katie Ann, when you're with someone for 50 years, you miss 'em when they're gone."

The Inez House Pocket Door

When you were a baby, someone held you a looked into your eyes with love. Maybe it was your mom, or you dad. Maybe it was the nurse at the hospital. Or perhaps for you, it was someone else entirely different. They held you, knowing you were full of potential and choices. They cooed at you, telling you the mundane, or explaining the extraordinary.

This story is about one of the people in my life who looked at me with great love: my Granddad Raver.

He was born in 1912 in Nebraska. He came of age in the Great Depression and World War II. Remarking back on his childhood, he used to say, "I must've been cold and hungry at some point, I just don't remember it. Maybe that's what 11 brothers and sisters are for."

Granddad Raver was 37 when my dad was born, and 65 when I was born. One foot in the Victorian period, he did not develop a conscious interest in better communication, unconditional love, or learning to develop children's curiosity and confidence. Those were things for younger generations.

He had exactly one game he played with us as kids. I assume he made it up himself. He had a giant, black vinyl chair in the living room, positioned to see both the TV and the front door. During the commercial for Judge Wapner, he would get up from his chair.

With a twinkle in his eye, he would announce to the room, "I sure hope nobody sit in my chair while I'm gone." He would leave the room and I would dash over to his chair, climb in, and wait patiently. When he returned, he would pretend not to see me and sit on me, complaining about his lumpy chair.

I thought it was the greatest game ever!

And of course, he showed me his dentures one time. That was pretty wonderful.

We lived in Texas growing up, and he lived in Albuquerque, so we saw each other once or twice a year, at most. He lived in a house on Inez Street, walking distance to the library and the Furr's, where we would share banana splits. But that's a story for another day.

Between the street and the front door, you had to walk through a corridor of evergreens, probably juniper. I remember the strong scent.

One of the first things we did upon arrival was go to the pocket door between the kitchen and the dining room. Granddad Raver would flip open the little metal latch on the end of the door, pulling the pocket door open and revealing a paper height chart. Each grandchild would stand, back against the pocket door, and he would mark with a pencil their height, labeling the line with a name and usually a date or an age.

Even after we had been there a few days, and the newness of the pocket door had worn off, I remember flipping up the latch myself, and pulling out the pocket door. With my finger, I would trace the previous measurements of myself, the other grandkids, and even my dad, uncle, and aunt.

Happy Anniversary to Us

Keith and I are celebrating our 6th wedding anniversary today, and in October with an extended trip to Maui. Happy Anniversary, my darling!

For our first anniversary, Keith and I went to Maui.

The first day we were there, we knew something special was happening on this island. We sat on a little patch of green grass at our hotel, basking in the moonlight and watching the ocean. We breathed the deepest we'd ever breathed.

The second day, we drove the Hana Highway, a 50-mile stretch of narrow road that makes some 250 hairpin turns. We smiled a lot that day with our co-journeyers John and Julie. There were waterfalls. And taro fields. And rainbows. At one stop, Keith thought to himself, "huh, I'm a little hungry." A giant avocado immediately fell off a tree and rolled across the street, stopping at his feet. He stooped down, picked it up... and ate it.

Then, we arrived in Hana.

We had been trying to pry information out of our teachers Tom and Bobbi Best about how to prepare for the trip. How much does it rain? Are there mosquitoes? What kind of shoes should we bring? Each time we asked a question, no matter what the question, they would reply with something like, "Well, when you pull into the park, you get out of the car and stroll down to the black sand beach. [Takes a deep breath] The sun warms the rocks, which warm you. You listen to the pulse of the ocean going in.. and out.. in.. and out... The breeze blows across your face. You smile."

Whether we asked about typhoid shots or backpacking gear or anything, they gave us the same answer.

And now we know why.

Hana is so enchanting that when you arrive, you are a different person.

The place, the land itself, insists with infinite gentleness that you relax. All the details of mainland life fade away. The place itself assures you that you are completely loved and that the universe is indeed a good place to be. The land is so alive, it provides anything you'd ever really need. And when you have all the love you could ever want, somehow, the precise material that your raingear is made out of becomes a distant concern.

Winding Road to Pecos Wilderness

What happens when I write a story after reading Nelson Zink all night.

Every summer, I went camping with my granddad in the Pecos Mountains.

He was a tall man, perfectly bald, and he favored coveralls. He had work coveralls and dress coveralls. Some of his coveralls even had his name scrawled in cursive embroidery on the front pocket: Donald E.Raver.

He was a quiet man.

We would load up his suburban, a giant behemoth vehicle before SUVs were common, and haul his RV up from Albuquerque, past Santa Fe, through the tiny town of Pecos.

We would begin our ascent to the Pecos Wilderness from there, the suburban crawling up the circular mountain gravel road. The trees changed from cedars to aspens. The air got cooler. The sun was a little brighter up there.

When we arrived, we’d creak open the doors. It was quiet up there. Just birds singing. And the start of the Pecos River babbling over smooth river rocks. It’s a tiny creek at that altitude. It held so much beauty and happiness for him, that’s where he chose to pass from this world to some other place. But that’s a story for another day.

In the mornings, it was cold. Sometimes we had a fire. Sometimes, he made us warm, grilled spam sandwiches with mayonnaise. They taste good in the mountains.

If you wanted to get time alone with granddad, you had to get up early. He usually woke up around 4am and took a walk. That was the best time to be around him, because with just him around, things were very still.

Once, I ended up going camping with him by myself. Who knows why. I was a shy girl around most people, but I guess I had a lot to say on the inside. That trip, I talked and talked and talked and talked. For days. He didn’t say much. He just kept getting up at 4am, talking walks, going fishing, making spam sandwiches, and I went right along with him, spilling my every thought. He listened.

And then, after the third day, I had said everything. I had expressed every passing thought, every curiosity, every little thought I had had for years, every insightful 10-year-old observation – I had said it all.

That’s when I started to see things very clearly.

When he was done cooking breakfast in the morning, he would start to lean in towards the river, and look that way, and I knew it was time to go for a walk. Sometimes, he would turn towards his fishing pole. That meant we were going to walk over to the lake and go fishing. When he put his hand on the rock beside him, that meant we were going to sit there a while and I could sit by him if I wanted to.

I would sit by the stream, watching the water flow over the rocks, the sunlight reflecting white light off the water. Tiny fish would swim through the rocks, in the current. If we waited long enough, a bird might fly down right in front of us and grab up a fish. The aspen leaves glinted in the sunlight on the trees, like shiny coins hanging from the trees.

After we sat a while, granddad would reach into his pocket and take out a red apple and his knife. He’d wind that pocket knife around and around the apple, separating the peel from the apple in a single piece. Then, he’d hand the apple to me and let the red spiral stretch out vertically, like a spiral staircase to somewhere out there, somewhere important, some place worth going to.