being outside

[Voltaic]

days are long, years are not. summer has already passed, giving away to autumn. though it has only started, it seems the best days are over. golden canopies interlaced with green of the pine and spruce give way to bare grays of bark, all the colour falling to the forest floor in a carpet of yellow and brown. it all seems to have passed so fast.

i am blessed in some ways, curesed in others. my city is a blessing. with a park reaching from one end of the city to the other, following allong the curves winds, and bends of the river, and the rocky mountains only a day trip away i am happy to be where i am. though i have to suffer the sound of trafic before a few short steps into the trees drown away the active reminder of the ceaseless activity of the city, being so close or at least close enough to my local park has given me a refuge from all the pressures and my mind that only seems to slow down when my surroundings are the same.

before i know it, fall will come to a (semi) officail end when the snow starts to fall and not melt away. the summer has been good. it wasnt until last nights ride (and walk) that i really reflected over how the summer has went. it did not come without its struggles and disappointments. that is life though, to live without struggle is to disperage the good times, without the bad, how would we know what is good?

weather i am at the top of a conquered hill on my bike overlookiing the sunset lit grays and reds of the river bank or stading on my skiis with two meters of snow underfoot, in the middle of a spruce forest on the mountain side the thought creeps into my mind, this is what i live for. with all the bad in life, i remain yet to be convinced all of this is worth it. in the end, i dont think it really matters if it is worth it or not. maybe the bad is disproportionate, but the good still exsists. no matter what, time moves forword. not matter how bad, i will always end up back in the places that make me happy.

this is turning into more of a blog post than something on the forum. so i will end off with a questions. what is weather being home, snuggly in your comfort zone, at work shouldering responsability living up and achieving. what is your place that keeps you going? the good has a way to disguise itself as something it is not. a climb on a bike may seem like a bad thing, but i gain mussel, achieve a goal and get rewarded with the ride back down. the best reward is the one it takes effort to gain.

 

[the_tortoise]

I have no physical place that does anything to help keep me going. But I do have small things that bring me joy and comfort, and those don't really need any specific place to happen.

 

[Pats]

A cool autumn, looking over the rocky mountains or tetons and I go there often in my mind. Other than being fortunate enough for an occasional trip west, I'll have to continue to find comfort of those places in my mind because all my children and grandchildren live in NC. You know, my mom needed to be close to her kids. My dad didn't, but preferred to be in Arizona and Florida. I take after both of them but my need for my kids win out.

 

[Progster]

I find being close to a body of water soothing, a lake or the sea front or river.

 

[SusanLR]

My dad didn't, but preferred to be in Arizona and Florida

That line struck me since I was born in Arizona and now have lived half my life in Florida and my Dad didn't like either one!

Looks like we have several Calvin and Hobbes fans on here, self included.

What is the place that keeps me going? No certain place really.
It used to be certain people I loved that are now gone that made a place I called HOME.
I always disagreed with the idea you must know bad to know good.
You can't know what you've never experienced, so what if you had been created in a place where
you knew no pain and felt only peace and happiness?
Then you would have never known pain or bad.
You wouldn't feel discontent at not knowing bad, because you wouldn't know what that was.
Seems that way to me anyway.

When it gets right down to the why are we here...who really knows?
I think that's why the fear of death was a built in mechanism of creation to keep us fighting for
survival against the inevitable.