A new year ahead...2017

A Happy New Year to you, dear family and friends.

I send you love, some photos and a few thoughts on 

the first day of 2017. 

Deep silent snow 

powder pure

pristine surface

utterly still, icy

shimmering shining

brilliance,

sun lit glistening hiding life

covering

protecting 

decayed, decomposed dormancy,

gestating quivering potential

waiting in the cold,

dark, deepness below

sun lit brilliance warming life

Tom with the roof rake... after he finished shoveling!
Nice to have him around!

Lauren came to Bend in the Spring and she and Alex came for Thanksgiving. 

Southeastern Oregon, the Oregon Outback...
a magical terrain of wide open spaces, geological outcroppings,
high desert landscapes, birds, wildlife and quiet.

In September I returned to my beloved island in Maine, where I spent time as a child and now
revisit as much as possible. My cousins still own the properties and are very
welcoming to my visiting.

Sunrise from the house on the island.

Art piece designed and carved by a friend for our backyard. 
It nicely hides a part of one of the houses recently built behind us.

Being the officiant at the marriage of two dear friends was
a beautiful and joyous experience. And such fun!
 It was held at Timberline Lodge,
 Mt. Hood, OR.

My grandfather's cello and I are closer than ever before!

Lauren in Machu Pichu, following in her mother's footsteps
...27 years later!

In the year ahead...

May I practice open-heartedness and equanimity,
listening to and actually hearing all viewpoints...

May I acknowledge anxiety, but not become attached to that anxiety

and feed it to the point it becomes fear.

May I focus on transforming negative energy 
into actions that will be of benefit.

May there be a miraculous awakening of wisdom, compassion and skillful action in the world.

With love to you,

Dottie

Year's End 2015

December 2015
End of the year greetings to you, friends and family.

Offering you a taste of the
 flavor of my life this past year with a few highlights ...
my way of continuing a connection to friends, near and far,
as well as a marking of the passage of a year for myself.

Our first snow of the winter in November. This is taken from the top of a cinder
cone that has several trails. I call it my "outdoor gym."
The Cascades' peaks are North and South Sister
and Broken Top.

This is one of the trails on Pilot Butte, the cinder cone.
Every trip up and down is constantly changing due to the skies, the weather,
the temperature, and the 360 degree view...
...like life day to day, 
moment to moment,
impermanence
endless possibilities
  await clear vision... 

Winter, a time of hibernation, 
dormancy, darkness,
gestation of potential,
quiet contemplation
gathering seed energy for
the bursting to come...

A winter wonderland, with rain, snow and ice from
Thanksgiving to the present...
It's been a quiet holiday, with the icy roads encouraging
stay at home hibernation!

Lauren, the Rock Star!

Last March in Mill Valley, CA was the first time I'd ever seen my daughter, Lauren, perform with a band in a public venue. It was a thrilling experience seeing how composed and polished she was in front of an audience singing an amazing, variety of rock, pop, and blues...

                                      Check it out on You Tube!   Go to "Lauren Wylie Sweetwater

One of my favorite places in Central Oregon is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. There are five different "units" to the Monument and one of them is the Painted Hills.  A geological wonderland of color, shapes, vistas, big open sky, fossils, flowers and endlessly changing clouds and light. Millions of years of history are revealed in the layers of color and textures. 

A visual and tactile experience of impermanence...

Fall, a season of loveliness

lingering leaves 

falling to compost

nature storing supplies

preparing for the winter 

of ever circling seasons to come...

Directly west of Bend are the Cascades, a mountain range characterized by a series of volcanic peaks, some extinct and some only dormant. A popular one to climb is South Sister. (above) It's an all day climb, with climbers starting the day before to climb to this area shown here, where they camp overnight  before starting the ascent.

This is the extremely steep trail that begins the climb. 

It's only a two miles or so, but feels like much more.

When you reach the leveling off of this first trail, you can see the route far ahead up the mountain to the highest point you can see in the pictures above this one.

 It is tough, with lots of loose scree on the way down, which has deterred me from this ascent....so far. We'll see if I get braver as I get older!

It was a perfect hike without doing the ascent, as we completed a 7 mile loop that took us by Moraine Lake (above) and then down the Green Lakes Trail to the road where we had left a car to take us back to our starting point and the other car.

A week out at Sitka Art and Ecology Center on the Oregon coast was a great time, and we were fortunate to experience clear skies, mild temperatures and a really good teacher. 

A friend and I were in the workshop, and Tom had a good time just exploring the coast and being with us in the evenings. 

Cascade Head, a Nature Conservancy site, is right next to Sitka.
A hike up through a rain forest opens up to reveal this outlook.

I guess it is obvious how important the natural world
is to me. I find it reflects back to me so many truths of human life,
is a constant healer, and a palatable grounding experience.

Selfies on another trip to CA to see Lauren!

Lauren and "Boo" on a bronze deer in front of City Hall

in San Anselmo, CA. When Lauren was just a toddler, I would

walk with her in a stroller to this place and then place her up on

the deer. She loved it and still remembers it, obviously!

My grandfather's cello, with me since my 15th year, is a big part

of my life. I play with a pianist, and also in a quartet with both occasionally

giving performances. It's all fun and brings much joy, albeit performing causes inevitable nervousness! Playing in a monthly Taize service is a meditative and lovely experience. 

One of a few paintings done this year. I'm experimenting now with
how to do more abstract work. I'm not a serious painter, finding
that I'm much happier just letting it show up, rather than thinking I
should paint something! 

Tom and I in a photo I "played with" in an application
on the computer.

For the last 3 years exploring, practicing and experiencing Buddhism has been a central focus of my life. I have found it to be challenging, engaging, practical, transforming, surprising, exciting and life enhancing, in spite of the fact that it really messes with your mind! Finding like-minded people in the Dharma Center I attend has brought new friends into my life and I am enriched by them all.
Between Buddhism, my Enneagram study and Feldenkrais, and my ongoing love of preparing organic, fresh, mostly vegetarian, both "raw" and cooked good food, I'm healthy in body, mind and spirit!
A new challenge: Through the Latino Community Association I've been matched with a young woman who wants to improve her English. We will spend time together every week, with the learning coming mostly through conversation. The grammar aspects are secondary.

Note: For those of you interested in Rays of Hope, the clinic in Kenya that I've written about several times, I am happy to report that Maureen's family have come forward and are putting together a plan to help the clinic remain healthy financially, now that Maureen's bequest has been expended.

Sending you love and my gratitude for your presence in my life, and for the memories.

May we all see beauty everywhere in this lovely season.

I say farewell with a poem, written when I was experiencing
an unexpected sorrow about a change in my life recently.

Grief flies free

An owl, calling

from where there are no owls

startles me awake.

Fears chorus, insistent concerns

echo, calling, pulling

disguising deeper threads

entrapped in ego’s children…

Searching for clues,

I find sorrow softly lying

beneath the surface…

I do not turn away.

I welcome her, recognizing

she holds what I don’t yet see…

her grief is palatable, painful

To resist change is to freeze the flow,

lose the preciousness of creation,

deny the impermanence of all things.

The sorrow in this change is a threshold.

Stepping past resistance into deep

spaciousness, grief dissolves, liberates

into awakened potential, flying free…

May your new year be full of abundance, awareness and open hearts...

With Love, Dottie

January 2015

Strange as it may be, I am about to post something I wrote 9 months ago and never published on this Blog. I have no idea why it didn't get published, but I've decided that before I write a new post, I will publish this now to catch up to the present! 
So, more coming soon...
It may be in a new Blog with a new name, and I'll send you a notification of that.



The day has finally arrived that I am actually here with keyboard at the ready to share with you some highlights of the past year or so...
It always overwhelms me a bit to not only look back in time, but to decide what has enough significance to even write about! I have some criteria at the ready, and also will be guided by photos that I've gleaned from many taken.
The basics: Tom and I are still living in Bend, and this year will bring us to the 10 year mark! That alone is significant to us. On the one hand, it's no time at all. On the other, it seems like we've always been here!

Early in 2014 we began plans for a major remodel of our house, and we the entire job was completed by mid-April. Unlike all the stories I'd heard, it turned out to be a wonderful experience with no big upsets or delays. The planning was just plain fun, and, with the help of an interior designer friend, we had everything planned and ready to be carried out by the time the weather turned from winter to spring. We did have to completely move everything out of the house, and it fortunately all fit nicely into our garage. Tom is a master space planner and with his guidance we did it ourselves, with the help of a mover for the heavy furniture. After moving in, we put in new landscaping in the front yard.

New Kitchen

Part of living room with new door and new patio beyond.

Our new side patio. The grass is actually common area and is taken care of by the Homeowners Association.

Privacy screening for the new patio.

New front walk and landscaping

We love the openness of the space now and the additional light from having removed two trees from the front. There are many trees around, and, as sad as it was to cut them down, they are not missed.

Lauren and Boo came for a visit in July.....

We did lots of hiking. Tumalo Falls is very near, and

this was Boo's first hike!

Bend has many summer festivals downtown, and here Tom and I danced to a Swing Band....11:30AM.

Lauren and Boo

Rock Concert at the Outdoor Amphitheater

Sparks Lake....30 minutes from our house!

Still snow along with spring flowers at the higher elevations.

 During Lauren's visit we got into some boxes in the garage. While showing her some memorabilia of my life, she came upon this photo. It was taken during my years with Pan Am (probably circa 1965), and this was a "Flapper" party as I remember. She thought it was an great photo as it was a random shot but the layout was perfect. I was flattered that she took it and had it blown up and framed!











More random shots....

Tom and our dear friend, Debra, from Minneapolis
Todd Lake and Mt. Bachelor in the background with
hardly any snow. It's completely white today, and this area is covered in snow

Our "laughing monk" figure gazing
at a 1998 Vision Quest photo of Dottie.

Dottie and June, Tom's niece's new baby, who was 3 months old
when I visited them in Arcata, CA

Tom holding a photo of he and I taken in 1993, when we first met.

Tom fooling around at a Festival.

Manzanita Strings at our Sept. Recital where we played
The Five Novelettes by Glazunov

"Laughing Monk" even as he is buried in snow!

The prayer flags in the backyard symbolize my involvement with the Natural Mind Dharma Center here in Bend. This is a Tibetan Buddhist center that has become a big part of my life. Two years ago, when I first began regularly attending, I felt as if I had finally come home. Many threads of my life's exploring seemed to come together and settle into what just seemed to fit me perfectly. The teachings are challenging, and not easy for the Western way of thinking, but I find them very moving. The practices that one does are powerful, and I am committed and consistent in a way I've not been with spiritual practices in many years. The community is warm and welcoming. It's a small group which is very alive and present with each other. The community is led by a Dharma teacher who has a very relaxed and relevant way to present the teachings. He was an ordained Methodist minister early on, and thus has a background that is helpful. He can relate the Buddhism to other faiths, and understands the backgrounds of many of us there. I find myself to be the most contented and at peace than I've ever been, and it feels just right for this stage of my life.


To close I am adding some photos of our September trip east into the Outback of Oregon, where the wide open spaces and incredible beauty of the high desert, wild horses, ranches and few people make for a most unusual experience....