Randomness

It's been almost a week since I've checked in over here. I've been busy - not with anything in particular, just life :)

Yesterday was probably the highlight of the week. We travelled to a friend's house and spent most of the day outside in sunshine and 60 degree temperatures. Our visit included a nature hike that included frog egg sightings (protected by green slime which truly impressed my boys), two beaver lodges and several fallen trees and stumps that had been created by the previously mentioned beavers.

While we were hiking my four year old (who is known for being a little awkward) put together a mantra of sorts and I couldn't help but smile while he chanted "Balance. Balance. Balance. Balance . . ." It must have done the trick because while we were a little slower than our hosts who take these kinds of hikes regularly, we emerged from the wilderness without incident and both boys wanted to know if we could hike through our woods at home.

It truly was a beautiful day in which I actually found myself taking deep breaths of the fresh, spring air. And, of course, the adult conversation couldn't be beat ;)

And while it's not exactly the same as conversation, I finished reading Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" today (which, by the way, is timeless and has reignited my political fire - at least for the time being) and now I'm onto D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers as part of my Banned Book Challenge. After finishing this one I'll be just over halfway to my goal of reading 12 "subversive" and "controversial" books by June 30th.

I recently read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and it was amazing! I had never read anything by Vonnegut before and I will definitely read more. The biggest impression it left on me was to reinforce my own viewpoint about how pointless war is; that war isn't about soldiers fighting other soldiers in order to preserve freedom or some other moral ideal, but war is really about countless civilian murders that often go uncounted because they don't happen in an "official" capacity and besides it doesn't put the combatants in a very good light.

But enough of that . . . I want to think some more about my peaceful nature hike . . .

It Happens All the Time

This was the entry from The Blog of Henry David Thoreau today. (If you want to read something really interesting this is one of the good ones. The blog updates daily with an excerpt from a journal entry of Thoreau's that corresponds to that particular date. And since he was a New Englander it's a great read for me, especially when he talks about the changing seasons as I can see the same things, more than a hundred years later, in my own backyard.) Anyway, here's the quote:

"No sooner has the ice of Walden melted than the wind begins to play in dark ripples over the surface of the virgin water. It is affecting to see nature so tender, however old, and wearing none of the wrinkles of age. Ice dissolved is the next moment as perfect water as if it had been melted a million years. To see that which was lately so hard and immovable now so soft and impressible! What if our moods could dissolve thus completely? It is like a flush of life to a cheek that was dead."

I always find it so amazing how cyclical and repetitive things are. In this world of new technology and never before seen medical advances, etc., in everyday life and in most people's realities things haven't changed all that much. Sure there are cellphones and our perception that we have "less time," but the very essence of our daily living, of our families, of what we do with our spare time - not much has changed. While our great-great-grandparents would probably think we look like chickens running around with our heads cut off, they would still be able to recognize the majority of what we do in our 24 hours of time day in and day out.

And this entry of Thoreau's is particularly intriguing to me because he could have written it yesterday; it's exactly what I've been seeing myself for the past three days.

This is just one of the many reasons why I love to read . . .