Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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almost wordless wednesday: my heart goes where she goes

This is the view from a peak called Twin Sisters in magical Colorado. Jocelyn, Justin, and Bridget climbed this yesterday and sent me a slew of gorgeous photos just like this.

I can’t help but think of how often when she and her own sister were small, people thought for a moment they might be twins.

view from twin sisters june 2016

Although I miss her terribly, seeing the world as she sees it transports me, and feeling her joy through the miles is a gift for which I am unendingly grateful.

Oh man I miss those mountains and crave a good, long hike.

Happy Wednesday, friends!

“He does not need opium.
He has the gift of reverie.”
~Anais Nin
XOXOXO

 

 

 

marathon monday: gratitude trumps regret

Friends, to those of you who ran any of the amazing events yesterday at our City’s beloved Memorial Marathon, congratulations!! I hope you had the most wonderful time! I hope you were safe and felt happy, energized, and appreciated. Weather conditions Sunday morning were challenging, with high humidity and strong winds, but that just makes your accomplishment so much sweeter, right? Close to twenty people I know or sort of know were among the almost twenty-five thousand runners. Wow! Watching your updates made me super happy. This is, after all, much more than any road race; this is an act of remembrance and a declaraion that love overcomes hate. That communities can heal.

This chainlink fence stands all year long and is constantly adorned with flowers, wreaths, letters, and stuffed animals to remember those lost in the 1995 Murrah Building bombing. Runners in the different Memorial Marathon races also pin their paper race bibs here.

I am disappointed to not have participated this year. No doubt. My enthusiasm was so high going into training, and I had been learning so much about myself (mind and body) this past year, that I really believed this April would be a big deal. I harbored pretty fantastic ideas about how things might go down, around Lake Hefner and along Classen especially. But that ankle injury changed everything. Thankfully it is pretty well healed now, just not in time to build up the stamina needed for long distance. And that’s all I want to do, really.

 denial run

I was tthhiiiisss close to registering anyway, last minute, without even warning my husband. It was Friday night and I was clicking on links left and right looking for options. Maybe the half?

But then I scrolled through the hundreds of photos on my phone. Having spent the previous week with Jocelyn in Colorado, I was overcome with gratitude and in many ways still felt like I was there with her. We had such an amazing eight days together! I visited her fit and healthy enough to really enjoy exploring her version of paradise. Hiking up snowy mountains with this beautiful young woman is a pleasure I could never have predicted. It is beyond a dream come true. So… deep gratitude for health and love and life in general quickly overwhelmed that nagging race regret.

My ankle and stamina were not lacking; they were exactly where they needed to be.

joc me hike

I halted all plans and mind games about desperate registration and actively gave thanks for the time spent with her, for being healed and strong enough to really enjoy Colorado with her a second time and makes some irreplaceable memories.

false peak

Isn’t life amazing? How wonderful that gratitude is so consistently powerful, too.

Once again, friends, my warmest hugs and congratulations if you ran any of those events on Sunday!! It’s quite a feat. Also congratulations if you trained for something and had to bow out for any reason. I now understand how frustrating that is. Take care of yourself and look to the future with me, okay?

More importantly, let’s look at the present moment and count our abundant blessings hard. Let’s invite gratitude to fully overwhelm all our stabbing little regrets. It feels so nice.

 

 

It’s As It Should Be.
XOXOXOXO

 

 

 

sketches of day two

Frigid water boiling along the pebble-bottom river bed, the symphony of its journey a constant temptation for me. Drawing me closer, daring me to jump in and swim away. Be carried away. She warns me every chance she gets about the dangers of the water, tossing in branches and flowers to demonstrate the swift kidnapping. Such a sweet maternal role shift. I call her the Mermaid of the Rockies and she holds my hand tight with both of hers while I wade and stretch until my shins are aching from the cold. 

A magpie joined us on the hike, his black and white tuxedo feathers so stark and crisp against the greens, browns, and blues of the lush landscape. He delicately tried to lead us up the side of the mountain, on to adventures we can scarcely imagine, toward the opposite end of wherever the freezing river would have taken us. He is one of a thousand magpies who found us at different points throughout the day, and not just on the hike. And not just on that day. Magpies follow her, and they watch her and have some kind of purpose we are hungry to divine. We call it her spirit animal and wait for more.

The vaulted rock walls impart a feeling of safety. Enclosure. And they pulse outward, a strong heartbeat that almost knocks you down where the forest parts and the view is suddenly unobscured. How the water flows so constantly, the cascading falls sprouting from those sky-high caves, is a thrilling mystery. 

Everything here demands and deserves our attention, both the minuscule details near our feet- the ferny undergrowth, colorful wildflowers, and smaller rocks and mossy boulders- of course the enormous rocky, forested cathedral all around us. The foothills that grow up into sheer cliffs that take our breath away, then the down-tumbling avalanche memorials.  

There’s just so much, and it’s all alive. It all has a very real pulse. So we slow ourselves. Press it all into our skin, our eyes, our hearts and souls. We listen to the birdsong and let it be our soundtrack. We touch the smooth, rough, cold, sun-baked rocks and inhale the unreal natural perfumes. We let ourselves become dry sponges soaking up the extravagance. 

There are not enough words for beautiful.

We ended that very full and happy day at midnight on Trail Ridge Road, in a spectacular grayscale, exploring the highest reaches of the mountain beneath a dazzling, sloping quilt of constellations. Shadows passed beneath us like the behemoths of the watery deep. The air was cold. Cold! And the winds howled overhead and all through our ribs, combing our thoughts and feelings, pulling salty tears right to the surface. The smeary gilded half moon stood guard over this unbelievable scene while we stomped in our sandals and canvas shoes through old snow. Crunching and running in the stuff up to our knees, laughing and freezing ourselves into the purest exhilaration. Stars poured through an unseen funnel toward one mountain peak in particular, and I swear they were moving. Churning magic. 

Do the mountains talk to each other, these ancient companions?

xoxoxo