Summer is not over yet

Woods Coffee at Bellingham Bay 

I took this picture with my iPhone yesterday morning after finishing a nice brisk walk with the Fairhaven walking group. I had already checked the weather and knew it wouldn't be a good day for skydiving, but today, Sunday, looks much better. We had a couple of days of rain, and now it's looking like we'll have more summertime weather for the upcoming week. That's good, since I'm going on another "extra" hike tomorrow, a trip down to the Mountain Loop Highway with some of my hiking friends.

Pretty busy life I'm leading, it seems. I woke this morning feeling some sadness about the change of the seasons, coming up as fast as it does. Only another month or so for this skydiving season, and then I'll put my gear away until springtime. Some of my equipment will be out of date by then, and I'll have to spend more money to get it back up to speed, and that means making some decisions. I never thought I'd still be skydiving at this age, but I can't quite seem to stop just yet. The winter layoff gives me time to figure things out.

And then I remembered my first jump back this spring. It had been more than six months since my last one, and I was nervous and really wondering if I should still be doing this. I wrote about it on my other blog here. When I had gone up and faced my fears, I was ecstatic with joy about being under canopy again, remembering why I love this activity so much. Now I'm at the end of the season, wondering if next spring I will be going through this same activity or not. At some point, the "or not" will be the appropriate choice.

However, before the end of the season I'll be making another trip down to Lake Elsinore with Frankie, another septuagenarian friend I met in April, and we'll be trying to make a record formation with all jumpers over the age of 70. I will travel by bus to Portland and stay overnight with her before we will fly to Lake Elsinore for three days of playing in the air. That will probably mark the end of the skydiving season for me, with my gear going out of date somewhere in the week after I return. Your reserve parachute must be repacked every six months and inspected, and mine was last packed April 26. Of course, this assumes that I will not need to use my reserve before then. If I do, then it must be repacked before I can use it again.

I've only used my reserve a couple of times in more than 4,200 skydives, but you never know when you might need to use it. Just thinking about it makes my heart rate increase. The last time I needed it was many years ago in Arizona. When I opened, my parachute went into a hard turn and I saw that one of the brake lines had come loose. I tried to fix the problem, but it only got worse, and fast. When you are spinning, you're losing altitude very quickly, so I made the decision to release my main parachute and deploy my reserve. I reached for my handles to do just that, and they were not where they were supposed to be, since I was spinning so quickly that my harness had shifted. Once I got ahold of them, a good six inches higher than where I expected them to be, I just did what I had practiced so many times. I had so much adrenaline going that I didn't even realize that one of the released risers had whacked me under the chin, and it wasn't until the next day I saw the big bruise and knew what had happened.

By the time I had landed under my reserve parachute, the efficient organization that is Skydive Arizona had followed my released parachute into the desert and brought it back to me. Many skydivers had seen my actions and came up to congratulate me on my successful cutaway and reserve ride. My knees were weak, but otherwise I was just fine. I was able to get my gear to the rigging loft so that it could be repacked and I could jump again the next day.

Reserve rides seem to come in spurts. When you are hanging around between jumps, watching the canopies open after a skydive, you will sometimes notice that someone has a problem and you see them drop away from a malfunctioning main and the blossoming open of their reserve. The statistics are something like one reserve ride every 800 skydives or so. Like I said, it's been a long time for me, but I could have another one today. My friend Christy had one a few weeks ago. I wasn't there, but she told me she hurried to pack for one more skydive before the end of the day, and she must have stepped through her lines and packed it without noticing. When she opened, she was unable to release her brake lines because of a severe twist in the risers. She will be back to using her own gear when we meet today and, hopefully, nobody will be needing to use a reserve parachute!

But you never know. It's like having a blowout in a tire when you're driving down the highway; all you can do is what you have practiced. Nothing that we do is without risk in the world we live in, and we must think about how we will perform if things happen to us unexpectedly. Minimizing our risks by checking the tires, getting your reserve repacked and inspected, or locking the doors on your home when you leave—it's all part of the same package, part and parcel of our daily lives.

I am hoping that I'll have a good day today and tomorrow, and that all will be without incident, and I can only hope that your own days will be the same. It's always comforting to log onto my computer and see what my cyber friends are up to, and I'm always happy to hear when everybody is safe and sound. Life is a gift that we have all been given and are sharing with one another. Let's seize the day, shall we?

September song

Rainy scene last Thursday

It's already September, and the long weekend that heralds the unofficial end of summer for most of us is here. The strange weather we had this year, with the driest June on record, made it possible for me to spend much of it skydiving instead of watching the usual low clouds. Then July, which is usually cloud-free, had many weekends filled with low stormy clouds. August was unusually muggy, with dewpoints and humidity much higher than we Pacific Northwesterners normally enjoy.

Last Thursday was a wet one. Although we have had many hikes that were wetter, it made it impossible for us to reach our destination; the cold wind and rain caused us to pull out all our warm gear, while we attempted to stay dry as we hunkered down for a quick lunch. Although it sounds pretty miserable, it actually wasn't. I enjoyed myself because I had all the right gear, dry feet inside my hiking boots, and the company of my fellow hikers. I came home and wrote this post about the adventure.

What is on my mind this morning? Two things surface: the first is the gratitude I feel for being able to enjoy my favorite pursuits, hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest wilderness and skydiving, both with favorite companions. After I wrote last week's post, I drove down to Snohomish and made three skydives before heading back home. On Monday I went on a long 12-mile hike with the Trailblazers, and then Thursday's shorter 7-mile-long wet one. And yesterday, another two skydives. All in one week, interspersed with trips to the gym for my usual exercise classes. I look back on this week and am grateful that I can still do it. As we were walking back to the hangar after the last jump, Christy told me how glad she is that I decided to continue skydiving this year. I was reminded that I had considered hanging it all up when I turned seventy.

Which brings me to the other thing on my mind this morning: the incredible speed of time passing by. Now that it's already September, I'll begin to focus on my trip to southern California next month, and ponder the future of my skydiving career. Not to mention the future of my hiking career. Both of these activities require a fit and resilient body, and my 71st birthday is right around the corner. Several times lately I've shown up at the Senior Center for a Thursday hike and discovered that someone is not joining us because of an infirmity, such as knee problems (which I have), inflamed tendons (ditto), or a bad back (so far so good).

As we age, we either work through our pain or we stop being so active, or both. It's part of life, and it's not possible to ignore the fact that these bodies wear out. I have long thought I would be smart enough to be willing to listen and make the appropriate decisions. But here I am, pushing myself and my body to the limit time and time again. As long as I can continue to do it, I will. I tell myself it makes me stronger, but there's some denial in there, too. It's not that I don't have pain: I pamper my sore knees by using trekking poles, although they continue to complain on steep downhills. The achilles tendon on my right heel refuses to work in the mornings until I warm it up. I hobble around for a few minutes before it works properly, but by the time I leave the house, I've forgotten about it.

Skydiving has a reputation for being a daredevil sport, but it's actually not like that at all. I'm one of the dinosaurs, because I come from a generation of skydivers that likes to make formations with others, all while maintaining a belly-to-earth configuration. That's become old fashioned, as most youngsters like to fly head down, and speed increases as you present less body surface to the air. Things change. I tried it once and hated it, but there are some DZs where nobody does belly flying any more. I'm glad I play in the air with friends who enjoy the same things I do.

Climbing outside the airplane requires some upper body strength, as I hold on in the wind, but that's probably the only part of the skydive that involves much muscle. Being in freefall is easy (other than the psychological aspect), and if my parachute has been packed properly, the opening is not jarring in any way. Flying around under my canopy as I set up my pattern to land is also not only fun, but it doesn't take much upper body strength, either. The landing is usually just a step down onto the ground, but if I misjudge the timing, the worst that usually happens is that I scrape in on my rear end. My pride is injured, but that's about it.

Hiking requires much more stamina than most people have developed, but since our hikes are rated easy, moderate or hard, one can make a decision about whether or not you are up to it. I've been pushed to my limit many times this summer, but I'm stronger today than I was at the beginning of the summer, even at my age. I know that during the winter when our hikes are shorter and closer to town, I'll lose some of that aerobic fitness, and one day it will not return when I start out on a longer hike. I know this, and I will have to learn the lesson of gracefully bowing out of a hike that is beyond my level. Paying attention to the subtle signals that my body sends me is paramount. I'm trying to be reasonable, really I am. I suspect that some of my readers think I am imprudent to carry on the way I do, but is it really true? Or is it the perception that as we age we must retire to our rocking chairs based on what the calendar tells us?

I don't really know. As I sit here in the early morning, I can feel the twinges in my left knee, and that pesky tendon in the right heel is tight. The clicking of the keys as I type doesn't disturb my softly sleeping partner next to me. Taking an inventory of my aches and pains reveals that I'm not doing too badly, and I'll go to the gym today, since it's closed tomorrow for Labor Day. I'm scheduled for a massage tomorrow that I'll enjoy tremendously. It also helps to keep me active, and just the thought of it gives me pleasure.

Those two things: gratitude for today's blessings and the grace to accept what the future holds reminds me of the Serenity Prayer, which I offer here: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Until next week, I wish you well, and maybe you'll give somebody close to you a hug. As soon as Smart Guy wakes up, I'm giving him one.

Pretty in pink

Dahlia from yesterday's market

I have to tell you right up front that I am a little bit self conscious about following up last week's post. So many of you told me how eloquent it was and when I went back and read it, I wondered how in the world I might approach today's post. It's never easy to decide what to write about, and when you've got such an appreciative audience, it can be just a bit daunting. Performance anxiety, I guess. So, be forewarned: great posts are few and far between. I'm just gonna lift the lid and see what comes out.

The baby was born in the apartment below us on Thursday. I was on a hike all day long and heard from Smart Guy about the strange sounds emanating from their apartment. I knew the baby would be born at home, because they had hired a midwife. Midwives don't get to work in hospitals, unfortunately. Our next-door neighbor filled me in that it was to be a "water birth" and was apparently quite successful. I saw pictures on Facebook after the birth and learned that a little baby girl was born at 7:15pm, so all was quiet by the time we went to bed on Thursday night. I'm so glad it was a girl; I'm not at all sure why. There was a picture of the baby showing four generations of women; all three mothers were wearing exactly the same smile.

I was present at a home birth once, many years ago in Boulder. My friends had invited me to attend, and I was a little nervous but glad to be invited. By the time I arrived, their doctor was present who was a friend of the family. They already had a three-year-old boy, Lev, with whom I had spent a great deal of time, babysitting and the like. He had been born in a hospital, and the parents decided that a home birth might be less traumatic this time around.

Although I had no actual duties to perform for the birthing, I was able to help with Lev until the time came for the actual event. It was an amazing sight, to see this infant emerge into the world. He was blue and didn't cry out at first, since the cord was wrapped around his head. The doctor cleared his nasal passages and he began to cry, much to the relief of everyone present, and he turned pink immediately. He looked huge to my eyes, and it turned out that he weighed almost ten pounds! The mother, Rochelle, was a tiny thing who didn't weigh much more than a hundred pounds herself. But once it was over and mother and baby were cleaned up and wrapped in warm dry clothes, the radiance on Rochelle's face was what I remember the most. It was a transformative moment, experiencing the presence of a new life in the world.

We humans have been giving birth in various fashions since, well, since the beginning. As I wrote about my own experience last week, the fifties and sixties in the United States were among some of the more unsettling occasions, where the mother was removed from the event as much as possible, turning it over to doctors and nurses. I suppose it was thought that this would be better for all concerned, but I sure don't think so. When I think of the difference between coming into the world in a warm nurturing environment and the bright lights and sterile environment of a hospital operating room, there is simply no comparison. Our first moments of life separate from our mother should be sacred and cherished. I never even got to see my son for several hours after he was born, much less hold him.

***

Yesterday's weather didn't allow for any skydiving, so I went on the Saturday walk and enjoyed a cup of coffee with the ladies afterwards. The weather today is a little better, and I've looked at the web cam a couple of times wondering what is in store for me today. My week is always better when I've been able to get in a skydive or two, since it's an activity that I enjoy so much and know that the days are numbered for us to get up in the air. By the end of October, the season has shut down in this part of the world, and September is right around the corner. I saw a maple tree yesterday that has flame-red leaves already. So soon? It seems so quick, the summer season winding down. In October I will travel to Lake Elsinore in California for one last flurry of skydiving for the season, and then I'll decide whether or not I will continue the activity in 2014. You know I probably will, but I'm reaching the time when I need to carefully consider whether it makes sense.

Now I realize that those of you who never had made a skydive might think it NEVER makes sense, but that's because it's not familiar to you. Being in freefall and flying my canopy are events that are as commonplace to me as driving a car is to most of you. Remember when you were first learning to drive? It was terrifying, at least it was to me. Until I learned how to navigate that powerful machine and became accustomed to highway speeds, I was in a state of hyper-awareness whenever I was driving a car. I still feel that when I need to get on the interstate and travel at speeds higher than my comfortable around-town pace. It's easy to become complacent when we are behind the wheel of a car, and that's dangerous. I spend three hours on the highway when I travel to and from Snohomish, probably the most hazardous part of my day. Really.

Okay, that's it. I lifted the lid and that's what came out. Now I can begin the rest of my Sunday, as my tea is finished and my partner continues to snore softly next to me. My laptop will bring me the news and the blogs that my friends have written since I last checked. Then I'll read the Sunday funnies online and continue with the rest of my day. My morning meditation is complete, and my thoughts are turning to other things. At this point, I always offer a quick prayer to the universe to give us all another wonderful day on this beautiful blue globe we call home.

Happily ever after

Yesterday's ripe tomatoes

I remember when I was little and learned that fairy tales always started with "Once upon a time" and ended with "...and they lived happily ever after." After suffering through wicked stepsisters and unjust servitude, Cinderella found her prince and... When did I learn that there is no such thing as a "happily ever after"? Life isn't like that at all. It doesn't stand still; anything living is dynamic, not static. Those beautiful tomatoes in the picture taken yesterday will be overripe in a few day's time.

My sister Fia was married (for the second time) a week ago, and I smiled at the pictures she posted on Facebook of their honeymoon. Her face is filled with happiness and her eyes are shining in a way I haven't seen in a long, long time. She's experiencing the bliss of beginning a new life. Of course she knows that they will have to return to the real world of work and strife sometime in the future, but not now.

The woman who lives downstairs from me is nine months pregnant. I saw her yesterday with her mother, and I was absolutely shocked at how big her stomach has become. It can't be more than a few days or a week now. When I was pregnant, I'm sure I was that big, too, but we wore smocks that made a tent over our tummies, and now women wear form-fitting clothing that doesn't hide anything.

The sight brought back memories from long ago of my own firstborn and the fear I had of going through the experience of childbirth. That was in the early sixties, and it was a different time then. There were no Lamaze classes, no internet that I could peruse to allay my fears. I was living in a small town in Puerto Rico, the dependent wife of an airman who was stationed at the nearby Air Force base. Nobody in the surrounding dwellings spoke any English, and my only companions, other than my husband, were other Air Force wives who lived nearby. We didn't have a car, so we made arrangements with a fellow airman who would drive us to the base hospital when the time came.

Inevitably, it began in the middle of the night, contractions that wouldn't be ignored. We rushed to the hospital and I was given over to a nurse who shaved me and gave me an enema. Do they still do those things? And then the doctor took over. I wasn't allowed to participate in the birth at all. They gave me a caudal anesthetic to deaden the entire pelvic area, strapped my legs into elevated stirrups, and tied my hands to the bed. I remember a mask with ether being forced onto my face and that was the last thing I knew until I came to. I had given birth to a son.

I wasn't allowed to see him until I had recovered from the anesthetic, which had filled me with lingering nausea. My memories are hazy, but I remember being in a ward with six other women when they brought him to me. I wanted to nurse him, but I wasn't helped in any way, as they expected I would bottle feed my baby. Breastfeeding was simply not encouraged back then. They even tried to give me pills to dry up the milk, but I didn't take them. I was the only one in the ward who breastfed her baby. Fortunately I was released from the hospital the next day, and the three of us went home to begin our new life. A memory I have of the two of us, Derald and me, leaning over the crib and looking at that beautiful new life, so tiny, so sweet. It lives on in my memory, in my heart.

But that was so very long ago. We didn't live happily ever after. Although we had a decent life, I thought I deserved a better one. I wrote about that time when I first began this blog, and I titled it "Trapped," because that was how I felt. Derald and Chris have now been gone a long time, but I am still here, still living on. There's no "happily ever after" in my story, but then again, I don't think it's even a real thing. I found this quote online by Joshua Loth Liebman:

“And they lived happily ever after” is one of the most tragic sentences in literature. It is tragic because it tells a falsehood about life and has led countless generations of people to expect something from human existence which is not possible on this fragile, imperfect earth. The “happy ending” obsession of Western culture is both a romantic illusion and a psychological handicap.

I was one of those people who thought that if I didn't have romance in my relationship with my husband, it must be because he wasn't the right one for me. I didn't know that love changes as time passes, that as it matures it changes. I pinned all my unhappiness on my poor husband; I now know that he was a good man, and that if I had been able to see that, we would probably have stayed married. Instead, we had two sons and were divorced before five years had passed.

Now I have the wisdom that comes from a lifetime of having been through all the ups and downs, the incredible highs and the devastating lows that anyone who has lived long enough goes through. Maybe I've had more than my share of loss, but nobody who lives for any length of time escapes the loss of loved ones. It's part of life. As I said at the beginning, life is dynamic, always moving and changing. That baby downstairs is getting ready to change the lives of its parents in ways they cannot even imagine. The drama continues. Life continues.

The seasons are only three months long, and the long days of summer are beginning to shorten. The first whiff of fall is in the air. My garden is getting ready to go dormant, and there are even a few leaves that are just beginning to change from the green of summer to the reds of fall. And then the trees will be bare again, and we'll enter into the dark days of winter. The cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life, will continue long after I'm gone from this planet. But for right now, I'm living the dash. (A reference to a life, written as 1942— .) There is no second number... yet. All I can say is that although I've already lived a very full life, I'm looking forward to what comes next.

My cyber friends (that means you) occupy a certain space in my heart, and as I think of all of YOU living your own dash, I wish you well. Let's go out and fill our day with love and light, what do you say?

Middle of August already

Seagull at the bus stop

Every weekday morning I walk about a half mile to the bus stop. This seagull was there three days this past week, and I finally decided to capture a picture of him. He can fly, but he must have figured out this is a good place to watch for food prospects. The lady sitting next to me on the bench started to eat her bagel and he inched forward, interested. We shooed him away, but he kept coming back. I was surprised to see him there, day after day.

I also noticed when I downloaded the picture how long the morning shadows have become. It was taken about 7:30am, and it reminded me that we have passed Lammas, the day between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox. We are losing more than three minutes of daylight every day now, which adds up to almost a half an hour each week! And the weather has been hot, by Pacific Northwest standards anyway. We almost reached 80 degrees F here in Bellingham a couple times this week. The weather on our hike last Thursday was terribly hot, as we trudged upwards in full sun. My little thermometer read 88 degrees; I was carrying almost two liters of water and drank every drop.

I also pushed myself pretty hard to get to the top of the peak, along with several of the other hikers. Whenever I get lightheaded and cannot eat my lunch when I stop, I know I'm dangerously close to heat exhaustion, so I drank as much as I could hold, which eventually helped. Next week I will carry some electrolytes to boost my energy levels, which I did for a long time but never seemed to need them. Last week I really did wish I had some.

Perhaps it explains my current feeling of enervation. Although yesterday (Saturday) I woke feeling great, I noticed a bit of scratchiness in my throat and wondered if I might be coming down with something. Although I went on the five-mile walk with the Fairhaven group in the morning and felt fine, it was becoming obvious as the day wore on that I might be in danger of catching something. Today I woke with the same scratchy throat, but it is no worse and there's no congestion, so I'm hoping that, if the weather cooperates, I'll be able to join my friends in Snohomish today for a skydive or two.

Tomorrow is another hard hike, the second in our "extra" hikes of the summer, but I'm beginning to think it might be smart for me to skip it and let myself rest. That's hard for me to admit, so I'll see how today goes before I make any rash decisions one way or the other. It's not much fun to realize that you're sick and have no energy when you're in the middle of the wilderness with your friends. And that there's nothing to do but soldier on until you get home. The older I get, the more I realize it's important to listen to my body and what it tries to tell me BEFORE I become indisposed.

My baby sister Fia married her beau, Russ, this past Friday. I call her my baby sister, but she's fifty now, but since I'm seventy, I can call her that. She looks radiant in her pictures, posted on her daughter's Facebook page. It's hard for me to realize that Fia is a grandmother already; Aiden was the ring bearer (he carried them on his little fire truck). A joyous celebration. I'm so glad for her to begin this new chapter in her life.

Yesterday I went to see a movie with my friend Judy, The Way Way Back, which I enjoyed very much. It's a coming-of-age movie about a 14-year-old boy who is forced to spend the summer at his mother's new boyfriend's beach house. Steve Carrell plays the despicable boyfriend; he is so good that I hated him throughout the entire movie. We are so fortunate to have an independent theater here in Bellingham, the Pickford. We get to see lots of movies that don't make it to the regular theaters. Another one that I enjoyed tremendously was a documentary about backup singers, 20 Feet From Stardom. I don't see many movies that earn a 99% "freshness" rating on Rotten Tomatoes (check out the link), but this one did and deserves it, too. It's about women, mostly black women, who are as talented as the main singers they back up (or more so), but for one reason or another they don't make it big. If you get a chance to see either of these movies, I'd love to hear what you think.

Well, that's pretty much all I've got in me this morning. The sun is finally beginning to lighten the sky at 6:30am, and I'll be checking the weather obsessively for a while until I figure out whether it makes sense for me to drive for an hour and a half down to Snohomish. Of course it was sunny and beautiful until the weekend, and then a front moved in. It did clear out early yesterday, though, and I almost changed my plans, but decided to hope for another good day today.

My partner is still sleeping next to me, my tea is finished, and the day beckons. The time I spend here every Sunday morning has become precious to me. I have a chance to think about what's on my mind, where I am right this minute, and think about my dear friends out there in Blogland. I hope you are all well or trending in that direction, and I hope the same for myself. Until next Sunday...

Can anybody become mean and cruel?

I've been watching the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, about a woman who ends up going to a women's prison for fifteen months for something she did a decade earlier. The series is based on a book written by Piper Kerman, who spent a year in prison for much the same reason as the character in the series. I'll have to read the book after I finish watching the 13 episodes. From everything I've been able to ascertain, it follows the book pretty closely. An excerpt about the book:

From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance. 

It's hard to tear myself away from binge-watching one episode after another. This morning as I sit here thinking about what I want to write about this morning, I feel the turmoil I'm experiencing about the cruelty of the prison guards towards the women in their care. Is it simply because the act of giving people complete and utter control over others would cause anybody to become so cruel and unfeeling? I remember reading a while back about an experiment that recruited ordinary people (college students) and put them in a setting where half were prisoners and half were wardens. It was supposed to last two weeks but had to be terminated early because the "wardens" became abusive and the "prisoners" had nervous breakdowns, within a few days! (I just found the website for the experiment, which was held at Stanford University in 1971.)

It must be something inherent in all of us, to either be kind or cruel to others. There must be a reason for the rise in reality shows (which I don't watch) that give the watchers a chance to relate to these emotions without actually putting oneself in the position of being cruel. Somebody watches that awful wrestling show, which I immediately turn off when it comes on. Maybe these shows provide an outlet for feelings that everybody has. I wonder.

Or is this true at all? I know I've done things in my life that I'm not proud of, but I truly cannot recall a time when I inflicted pain on anybody or anything on purpose. I remember a young playmate when I was a kid who loved to torture little animals. I couldn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. But I do remember once, a long time ago, when I was playing with my little sister, I held her down and tickled her until she screamed in terror. It must have been traumatic to both of us, for me to remember the incident all these years later.

Maybe I am being naive, but I don't think that cruelty is something that everybody develops in such circumstances. During the Holocaust, there were people who were able to find joy and happiness in concentration camps, in spite of the most horrendous circumstances. I remember a book that still resonates after many decades; in fact, I recently re-read it to see if it was as powerful as I remembered, called Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. He was a prisoner in Auschwitz during World War II and not only managed to endure it, but he developed a theory to explain why some people are able to survive such atrocities, while others died. The book was different for me to read after all these years, but it still resonated deeply. He felt that there are decent and indecent people, whether they are guards or prisoners.

Oh boy, this is definitely not turning out to be a very uplifting post. It's filled with all the turmoil I've been experiencing as I have reacted viscerally to the awful injustices I've related to while watching that show. I guess I've answered my own question (the title of this post): no, I don't think we all have a mean and cruel streak. Some people have the ability to be mean, I believe, but they fight against it, while others embrace it totally. Maybe it comes down to the age-old question of good and evil. Are we really fighting against two strong tendencies in our nature, and sometimes one wins and sometimes the other wins?

No, I don't think so. I believe we get to choose which way we go in life. Perhaps it's a series of choices, and as we get stronger in being kind to one another, it becomes less likely we will be seduced towards the dark side. What do you think?

A very sunny week

Me and Jonelle after our skydive

Last Wednesday we finally got that skydive in, Jonelle's first and my 4,192nd. I wrote about it on my other blog here, but since it was one of last week's highlights I'd like to discuss it a bit more. She was cool as a cucumber, unflappable but excited. She was more concerned about a young man who was in the class with her, in his early twenties, who was so scared he was shaking. He was in the plane with us and did just fine, too. In fact, he was bouncing all around and smiling from ear to ear afterwards.

I was really afraid before my own first skydive, a tandem. I slept poorly the night before and worried about it, and I asked my instructor dozens of questions, trying to delay the inevitable trip to the airplane. I wrote a long post about it, How I Became a Skydiver. Seeing the difference between our responses to the same experience, it makes me wonder if it's necessary to get into a state of anxiety or dread to have one's feelings translate into their opposite. Over the years of working as an instructor, I noticed the difference between those who saw the experience as something on their "bucket list" and those who felt driven to work through the fear they were experiencing. If something terrifies you and you do it anyway, you gain an advantage over it. And it never turns out to be quite what you feared anyway.

In the book I finished recently, Hallucinations, the author points out the difference in how memories are processed when one is in an altered state. Although our normal memories are not fixed but fluid, those traumatic events that can cause a flashback or PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) are stored in a different part of the brain and are recalled in vivid detail. Oliver Sacks (the author) said it is almost impossible to alter those memories, and researchers are still working to find ways to help those who suffer from debilitating flashbacks. That said, there is a huge difference between being in a war zone and the manufactured fear of jumping from an airplane in a controlled setting. Your mind may know the difference, but it's a rather unnatural thing to do. One's body has a tendency to react as if it is not going to survive. And when it is all over, the strong emotions remain, translated into happiness. That's my theory, anyway.

Not only was it sunny on Wednesday, our Thursday hike up Welcome Pass was without a cloud in the sky. This is usually the beginning of the "dry season" here in the Pacific Northwest, but we have not had a drop of rain in this area for more than a month. And now it's going to get drier, it seems. When we were on the ridge line after gaining the pass, we commented on the dry state of the plants. Usually at this time of the year there is still quite a bit of snow at that elevation, but not this year. Instead, much of the ground cover was burned and crackled under our boots. Although this is good for  us, giving us access to our hiking areas, it must be hard on the critters who are used to abundant water sources.

I know this may sound strange to some of my readers, but I really miss the partly cloudy skies and marine layer that gives us fog in the morning. Fortunately for me, I see that we do have a chance of a bit of a marine layer this morning and tomorrow, although it's pretty weak. Now, at 6:00am, the sun is rising into a clear blue sky, and it's calm with no wind at all. Maybe it's cloudy on the coast south of us, but nothing here. Tomorrow is the first of our "extra" hikes, an all-day affair where we drive more than a hundred miles to the Mountain Loop Highway and spend the day going up a hard hike. I'm hoping for at least a little bit of cloud cover, but I'm not expecting much. I'll be slathered with sunscreen and using my new hat with a wide brim.

The Trailblazers decided two years ago to add these hikes so we can go to places we cannot reach on our usual Thursday outings. I've really enjoyed learning more about this beautiful part of the country. We head out every other Monday and visit some spectacular areas. It's not actually considered part of the Senior Center's schedule, so we usually meet in the parking lot and figure out the carpool logistics. The group is usually smaller, too, since we start at 7:30 and don't return until more than twelve hours later. We certainly do get to know each other pretty well! I've been going out on these excursions with some of the same people for five years now, and a few of them feel like family.

Maybe it helps to suffer together, too. Since some of these hikes are steep and challenging, we have been known to moan and groan together as we make our way through the switchbacks and unremittingly beautiful scenery. I'm very happy to be in good enough shape to keep this up, for now at least, and I'm enjoying this very sunny summer season. Since the days are getting shorter already, and we will reach the point in between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox in a few days, I intend to squeeze every drop of enjoyment out of the summer that I can!