Remember Your Spirit, Keep it Healthy

How does one nurture ones spirit?

• Appreciate time alone
• Live life as basic/simple as possible
• Pursue old/start new hobbies
• Give back time and experience
• Enjoy nature
• Confidence in all you do and attempt

 Life on a farm, in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania, was simple.  There was no running water in the farmhouse.  A hand dug well beside the chicken coop supplied water for the animals and the family.  Heat to bedrooms upstairs was limited to that which resonated from the stove pipe coming through the wood floor from the kitchen cook stove. 

The nine-room farm house only had electric ceiling fixtures in three rooms.  Each fixture had one exposed light bulb.  In order to go from one end of the house to the other, a kerosene lamp had to be lit and carried.

The outhouse...yes, there was a two-seater located on the hill behind the farm house.  This was pre-tp friends.  We had exclusive use of the oldest Sears catalog for as long as there were pages to tear out.

That may be a lengthy lead-in to this piece, but those experiences helped prepare me at an early age for life in the electronic age of my grandsons.  I find myself using one of those old stories about the farm house from time to time.

There is a special feeling I get every time I have an opportunity to visit nature.    Those who I hike with, have heard me say, I love coming to the back country and explore all that I can.  So it is, that I am usually the last hiker to leave the TH.

As an only child, there were 96 acres to enjoy   Creeks filled with minnows, thick forests to scout wild game, and cow pastures to walk barefoot in, careful to miss a thistle, a ground hog hole, or a fresh warm cow pie.  All of it alone, but totally enjoyable.

A college degree would not hang in my den.  A list of OJT (on the job) skills were mastered during a 35-year career.  As the list grew, so did my level of confidence in what I attempted and what I accomplished.

Hobbies as a boy included building model cars, and collecting baseball cards.  As an adult, backpacking and hiking have been enjoyable.  Those activities prompted me to start new hobbies.  After a hike, a journal entry would document the experience.  The handwritten accounts of those journeys needed visuals to help tell the story.  Thus the birth of a back country photography business in 2009.

Maybe it's time to reveal my theory of life.  Each one of us is dealt a set of "Life" cards.  We play those cards throughout our journey.  At the end of the day, we must change what we can and accept what we cannot.