| 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. |
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| 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... |
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| 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! |
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| 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...
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Fall, a season of loveliness
lingering leaves
falling to compost
nature storing supplies
preparing for the winter
of ever circling seasons to come...
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| 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. |
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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!
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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.
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| Cascade Head, a Nature Conservancy site, is right next to Sitka. A hike up through a rain forest opens up to reveal this outlook. |
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| 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!
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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.
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| 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! |
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| Tom and I in a photo I "played with" in an application on the computer. |
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.
A n owl, calling
an unexpected sorrow about a change in my life recently.
Grief flies free
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
