Tag: Nature’s Teachings

What’s Down is Up….or What My Mind Thinks of When SUP Boarding

What’s Down is Up….or What My Mind Thinks of When SUP Boarding

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I gaze down into clouds, puffy and white, against a grayish blue sky. As I glide along, a rope stretches from the surface into the depths and I wonder if I climb down where I would find myself when I got to the end.

Suddenly a splash interrupts my reverie and the water’s surface ripples, disrupting the illusion, causing me to come back from Wonderful-Land and concentrate once again on my strokes. Yet inevitably, as the water returns to its mirror-like surface, my mind begins to dream of ways to access the world being reflected from above.

I think of this physical reality, this world of apparent solids and masses, as a mere reflection of what’s on the other side of this this realm. There’s so much more to life than what we see with our physical eyes….

I give my mind freedom to imagine, contemplate, go wherever it wants to go while I’m paddling. If it dreams of watery worlds that lay beyond the surface or enjoys the sensation of flying on watery clouds it’s fine with me. Alice had nothing on my mind’s ability to journey to wild places.

Imagine fish swimming in clouds and turtles sunning themselves upside-down. We create whatever world we wish….think about that. What would you create if given a blank canvas? What’s stopping you?

If you haven’t read my books or viewed my photos I invite you to visit my website and explore…enjoy. Turtle Island Adventures is where you’ll find all sorts of fun.

Dance of Beauty

Dance of Beauty

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I stood transfixed listening to wild turkeys vocalizing across the creek. The distinct and loud gobble of a male followed by the yelp of a female. For days as I walked the Mountain, I have heard the calls, have seen a dozen hens roosting in the huge, white pines overhanging the small creek. Today I wanted to find out where the chorus of wild bird sounds originated.

Walking down the mountain, we decided to follow the pavement around to a road that followed the creek, far below where we stood listening. As we got closer, the verdant pasture that arose from the water was covered in wild turkeys. At least 9 fully-displaying males and over 30 females provided a glimpse into the spring equinox celebration of these amazing creatures. It seemed that two or three small groups had joined together in one large group of courtship and scouting-for-potential-mates.

I could write pages recording emotions I felt as I observed, but it still would not express the sheer joy and sense of awe I felt as the tom’s spread their massive tails into fans and puffed their chests and dropped their wings while dancing with one another. Watching from the high bank of the rushing water, standing among delicate trout lilies, breathing fresh air while seeing the morning sun sparkle off iridescent feathers….how could life get much better than this? Such beauty of color, sound, movement.

Two-by-two the males walked up the pasture to the top of the ridge. I saw only beauty, breathed only beauty and lifted my heart with gratitude for this amazing experience, this profound rite of spring.

Passion to Proceed

Passion to Proceed

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I am sitting at the counter at my mom’s kitchen gazing out at Mobile Bay. Just a pause before writing.

I’m presenting a program at Gulf Shores Library tomorrow morning and was reviewing my A/V presentations to see which one I’ll use. In reviewing my library of programs one I put together showing the worst part of the oil spill at the Gulf Shores, Alabama area caught my attention. Tears poured down my face as I watched and recalled vividly the heartbreak experienced by so many of us that love this area. And then I felt a surge of passion and love for the Gulf Coast that caused a transcendent moment to spontaneously occur within me. It provided an amazing moment of clarity that sealed the deal, so to speak, for my move back to the Gulf Coast.

Over a decade ago I felt called to return to the Gulf Coast to work but as I stood on the shore with warm, salty waters lapping over my toes, I heard in my mind…’Not yet…but you will know when to return.’

When the oil spill first happened and very often for 18 months, I made the trip from Asheville, NC to coastal Alabama to document…to WITNESS what what happening here. I felt the call to return but I didn’t expect to move back. Little-by-little, however, I felt that this was the big leap needed to fulfill a promise I made to the Gulf those many years ago.

A few months ago I put my mountain home ‘on the market’ and waited. Within these past two weeks everything has begun to come together. Two incredible people have connected with “The Cathedral of Trees” and immediately understood the power of the home and land I have been blessed to call home for over five years. They decided to become the new owners of this special place. And just yesterday, I finalized a contract on a nice cottage home near the Magnolia River that will nurture me and my work as I leap back to the headwaters of my life. The place of my birth.

With every major change in life there comes anxiety and fear and those emotions were doing their best to rattle me. But when I reconnected with the immense love and passion I have for the earth, specifically this area of amazing beauty…my coastal Alabama home…all doubt was erased and the anxiety and fear begin to diminish.

I have dedicated my life to help our beautiful water planet. How thrilled I am to feel doors opening so that I can continue my work here, in this sacred place. There’s a song that has been my theme for this next stage of my life as it unfolds…Homeward Bound….”Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.” My heart is very, very full and I am so grateful.

The Abundant Universe

The Abundant Universe

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When I stop and look around me I see outrageous evidence of abundance. Sunsets, sunrises, rolling waves, white sandy beaches, tree-covered mountains all point to unlimited, unbounded, endless good stuff happening all the time.

No matter what issues circulate in the sphere of my life, the lives of friends, communities, ecosystems….balanced with those challenges, as bad as they may be, is amazing beauty and blessings. If we miss these places and events of sheer wonder, we miss the very things that make living so awesome.

If I look with the eyes of eagle, with higher vision, I see that everything works in some wild harmony and the story goes beyond the hardships, no matter how difficult they are. When the details get too intense it is time to step back and look at the big picture. A new perspective can shift me from the ‘poor me’ or ‘oh, snap!’ place to the ‘oh, WOW!’ place of expansion and wonder.

Currently my challenge is finding myself in limbo, awaiting the chain of events that will start my move back to coastal Alabama. I’m calling in higher vision and backing away from the details for a while. I want to be present with the abundant beauty filling my life NOW!

When do you find respite by stepping back and viewing the big picture? When do the eyes of Eagle help you in envisioning your life?

Parting the Veil–Thoughts from New Year’s Eve

Parting the Veil–Thoughts from New Year’s Eve

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As I paddled through thick, gray-white mist across the mouth of Weeks Bay, the silence was broken by a loon that surfaced nearby. The haunting cry bounced off the wall of fog and wrapped around me like a voice from another realm.

I felt peaceful and quiet, encapsulated by a small radius of open water as I glided through the new year’s eve morning. No sun, no warmth, the only comfort was the shroud of containment hugging me, coating my eyelashes with tiny water droplets.

Up the west side of the bay I traveled–the mostly undeveloped side where natural marsh grasses grow in sandy soil right to the water’s edge. No bulkheads disturbing the natural flow of the tides, wildlife or sand migration. Every paddle stroke yielded sounds magnified by the dense fog….droplets of water sliding off the blade, returning with a plop into the bay from which they came; the wake of water curling off the bow of my board; my own breath, warm against the air as I pulled myself and the twelve and a half foot board through the brackish life-blood of the estuary.

Further along, the mist parted so I could see the other shore, less than two miles away. I decided to paddle across, thus making a loop on my last paddle of 2011. I glanced back over my shoulder as I reached the middle of the bay. The fog was closing in behind me rapidly. The scene reminded me of the Mists of Avalon, a favorite book of mine from many years ago.

Parting the veil is a quest worthy of any seeker.

The rolling wall of fog pushed me forward. Access to what was behind me faded as if it never existed. It wouldn’t be wise to go back, to enter a white-out and get lost. The past is done…over….gone.

I hugged the shoreline as the fog intensified and made my way back to Mobile Bay. I didn’t want to spend new year’s eve paddling in circles in the bay so I kept the shore within sight. Years ago I was paddling my kayak in a large, fogged-in lake and lost my way by failing to follow the shoreline (and not having a compass on board). I nearly paddled over a dam (or close enough to make my legs shaky). Reflecting back, I saw where I have managed to learn a lesson or two that has gotten me safely through almost of all of 2011 and the years in-between.

Past skeleton piers and roosting shorebirds I glided. Slowly I maneuvered over pieces of broken piers, buried in the shallow water. I was in no hurry to reach my destination given the lack of visibility and snags floating just below the surface. Plus, I was enjoying the beautiful white cloud I was moving through and was not eager to step out of the other-worldly realm created by the bay, water and fog.

The solitude was a gift bestowed by the fog as it kissed my cheeks and swirled around me as I remembered the secret to parting the veil.

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Polar Bear Paddle 2012–Magnolia River was a great time! Even with our small crew we had a blast exploring far up into the river in the warmish temps…and one of our crew decided to take a plunge as well but she lives in Michigan now so a little winter river water did her no harm. Happy 2012!

© Simone Lipscomb 2024