Raven graces a final hike to the Ziggurat before our journey west begins.
If you are not learning, you are not living. Gregge Tiffen – The Journey Continues: Near Life Experiences (March, 2010)
I’m living! And, my mantra for this month where we will welcome spring reflects the curiosity I hold for the learning opportunities available to me moment to moment, day to day.
Since posting last week’s blog suggesting an adventure in my future, Luke and I traveled 1,226 miles across four western states, and we’re settling into a new environment from which I’ll be creating my experience for the next few weeks. The learning opportunities are vast: adaptability, flexibility, patience, courage, along with some very specific learning about canine care and how to travel cross-country with a dog. And, those are the ones I’m aware of now. I suspect others to join me on the journey.
I’ve come to eastern Washington to take care of a family member’s dogs so that she can make a long-planned trip abroad. She has courage and passion in places where I don’t. She loves the adventure of travel to other cultures, this trip to Nepal. She has the courage to follow her passion despite the chaos in the world and the possibility that she will not see her beloved canines again. One is elderly. The other was diagnosed with cancer late last year.
With support from her vet, Cousin Marty and I have outlined the possibilities and I’m prepared to both use my judgement and follow her wishes regarding decisions that may present themselves while she is away.
As I write this morning, Luke is at my feet, ever the model of composure and adaptability. Gilley and Bonner are alertly waiting for their mom to return. She’s out for a last round of pre-trip errands before departing tomorrow.
So often when we step out of our routine life, as I’m doing these next few weeks, we let events define us. I’m aiming to follow a different path, the road less traveled of awareness in the moment of each event as an opportunity for learning and for using what I’ve learning to this point in choosing each step.
Our home away from home in March.