Daily Archives: May 6, 2014

Aging, Colorado, Retirement, Third Phase, Travel

Journey Before Destination

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Beltane                                                                        Emergence Moon

A book I’m reading has these phrases: life before death, journey before destination. An adequate life philosophy and not far from the one I try to represent here at ancientrails. Which, in fact, emphasizes the journey. As does the Malay saying which I got from my sister, “Welcome to the journey.”

Kate and I now have a destination that reaches out from the future and pulls us toward it, yet we must go on the journey first. That journey involves preparation, execution, leave-taking and much more before the destination. I like the emphasis on the journey. Slow travel makes so much sense to me: car, train, ship. Slow by twenty-first century standards.

When the journey is as important as the destination, then a trip becomes whole. It is not a disjointed transportation from one locale to another with no appreciation of the changes along the way. Of course, slow travel is just that, slow, and often times cannot accomplish what our life demands. But, more often than not we can go slower than we think.

I want getting ready to move to Colorado to be as pleasurable as we imagine our life there will be. Journey before destination.  And always, life before death.

Colorado, Garden, Our Land and Home

Colorado Diary: First Steps

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Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

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Kate sorts through the first batch of items from the Jon-built shed. Keeps (move) went in the white plastic bucket. Discard was in two piles: trash and donate/sell. It’s a beginning. Just have to keep at it now.

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When we sold the house on Edgcumbe Road in St. Paul, our Realtor told us that our pictures of the property in bloom were instrumental in the sale. The one above and the one below are before pictures for the 2014 vegetable garden.

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This one of the cristata is the first of a sequence of photographs that will show our perennial flowers as they bloom over the season.
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General
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Beltane                                                                     Emergence Moon

Nitrates worked into the leek and onion beds, mulch removed and saved for the heat of summer. And, the first sort, about a third of Jon’s shed. Much stuff pitched, some kept. We’ll have a garden wherever we go. These touch it, think about it actions will get us to Colorado one rubbish bin at a time. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, after we’ve touched and sorted and packed, the move will become real.

 

General
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Beltane                                                             Emergence Moon

Ah. Four verses of Latin in 50 minutes. Back in the Aeron. Now for the outside.

Colorado, Our Land and Home

Get It Sorted

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Beltane                                                        Emergence

Let the sorting begin. Today, the Jon-built garden shed. A book suggested removing every object from its place, then sorting them into keep (move) and discard. Discard can be sell, donate, trash. Gonna start that process with the motley collection of garden tools we have acquired over many years of trying out this one and that one, while never eliminating any. Well, not only garden tools. There are old tarps, flower pots, wire, chemicals, and other things, lots of things.

And the planting, too. A wonderful day for getting those onions and leeks in the ground, fertilizing the bulbs. We’re going to put less emphasis on putting food by over the next couple of growing seasons. Just more things. To move.

Decluttering twenty plus years of accumulation will take us several months at a reasonable pace. I want this move to feel good, so I don’t want us to wear out at any point. This is a long distance hike, not a walk down for the newspaper. I also want it to build good feelings as we molt much of our carapace, not so that we can build a bigger shell, but so we can build a better one.

 

Health, Politics, US History

Flare For the Obvious

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Beltane                                                                           Emergence Moon

File under duh:

BOSTON — The death rate in Massachusetts dropped significantly after it adopted mandatory health care coverage in 2006, a study released Monday found, offering evidence that the country’s first experiment with universal coverage — and the model for crucial parts of President Obama’s health care law — has saved lives, health economists say.