Missing My Thunder Shirt

I was struck last evening about how nice it would be to have my own thunder shirt. Our golden Gracie gets very upset at beeping noises like trucks backing up, or the weight scale noise on the TV show, the Biggest Loser. She also falls apart at the sound of thunder. So we invested in a garment called a thunder shirt. It's principle is based on the work of Temple Grandin who was a pioneer with Autistic Children. She invented an apparatus that would gently squeeze an autistic child and give them comfort and calm their aggravated spirit. Her work is revolutionary in that field. Her principles helped us to overcome the flight instinct in horses.
Watching our twelve year old golden chilling out after a beeping episode, I thought that perhaps it would be nice have my own shirt that I could slip on when I started to obsess over anything. Over the years I have passed through phases of obsession and have come out the other side a better man. How nice would it have been if I could have just slipped on my Thunder Shirt.


Information for Temple Grandin.
Temple Grandin

A Song for Old Hippies to Relax To.
"Orange Skies" Love

False Summits

A Must Read!

Summits And Secrets-Kurt Diemberger

Om Mani Padme Hum - Om Mani Padme Hum - engraved on a stone tablet - Om Mani Padme Hum.
 Over and over again.
 'Oh, thou Jewel in the Lotus!'
 The prayer of those who worship Buddha. Just a prayer.

 This stone tablet here comes from Nepal; from the foot of Dhaulagiri - from one of the stone monuments one continually meets by the wayside, fashioned out of the mountain's slate.
 'Oh, thou Jewel in the Lotus!'
 Somebody who wanted to use that form of prayer engraved the letters of those words and laid the tablet there, next to all the others bearing the same inscription.

 It is supposed to be unlucky to remove one of those prayer-tablets; no native of Nepal would ever even think of doing such a thing. One of the climbers on the 1959 expedition had brought this one home with him.
 Later he began to have misgivings. One day he brought it to me, which was a sensible solution.

Om Mani Padme Hum - just a prayer.
Sometimes it seems to come right out of the stone.

Kurt Diemberger


A Prayer Song
 "Om Mani Padme Hum," Deva Premal

False Summits in life as in climbing are extremely frustrating you must push past them to obtain the goal. Summiting is the hardest thing to accomplish I can't tell you the number of times I have had to turn back just short of the summit. Don't be discouraged try again! I wouldn't be writing this blog if I didn't get back up dust off the cob webs and go at it again.

In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, preface, The First Forty-Nine Stories

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/h/hemingway_ernest.html#KQkt3JwAw3XB5Mkt.99

My friend Bobaloo and I always liked to ski Solitude Ski Area in Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. He related a story about a particular slope he liked to ski that was out of bounds. If he had gotten caught skiing it he would have been reprimanded for the action. After a very heavy snow storm, he slipped on to the slope and laid down a set of tracks. On his next run up he picked up his radio and said, "Blue Leader this is Bobaloo, there is a suspicious set of tracks to the right of the lift out of bounds." The Blue Leader responded, "That's a closed area, I want you to go over and search the area thoroughly Bobaloo." He did, he skied it half the morning. We laughed often about the incident.

"Believe," Cher

Tranquillity

 Energization exercises like Kriya Yoga have allowed me to calm my kindred spirit. The same energy that I once burned off through skiing and climbing and being outwardly physical I am now able to channel in to productive energy through scientific stretching and meditation. These days I am far more sedentary than I was in my youth. My mind returns often to the exciting exploits of younger days. Left unchecked the excess energy can build in my life and aid in disrupting my calm. By focusing my mind on meditation and exercise I am able to release the excess energy and enjoy a calm spirit.
Soothing the soul through massage aids in relaxation. It helps immensely to have a massage table set up in your living space. There are also massage chairs available. Listening to quite soothing music designed for healing during massage and meditation helps.

Tranquillity

With tranquillity, the small goes and the great comes, with auspicious success: this means heaven and earth interact, and their wills are the same. Yang inside and yin outside symbolize inward strength with outward docility, being a cultivated person within while appearing outwardly to be an ordinary person. The ways of cultivated people go on and on, the ways of ordinary people disappear.

I CHING
The Book Of Change

A Song for Tranquillity
R. Carlos Nakai, Peter Kater, "All Souls Waltz", From Honorable Sky

Listen to the Music

Sometimes the best medicine is to just listen to the music!

"Can't Find My Way Home," Blind Faith

Just let fly your golden lance!

A Walk In The Park

My flights of Fantasy are impossible to control once you let them flow. I started making a mental list of my prerequisites today while I was on Red Mountain in Aspen looking down on Aspen Mountain. I thought of my early years listening to my grandfather talking about Whiteface Mountain in New York State. I started skiing Gore and Whiteface in high school and quickly graduated to Vermont Mountains. Places like Killington, Stowe, Mad River, and Glen Ellen. In the early days it wasn't enough to just ski them. It was a challenge to get a free day pass or figure out a way to ski for free some how. Some of our early trickery was to Ski Glen Ellen early where they would let you take a free run up top to test the conditions. If you wore heavy ski clothes you could take off your coat and tell the lift op that you were too hot and your ticket was on your coat below. They would buy it for a about a half day. Then you could leave and drive to Mad River and buy two $2.50 ride tickets and ski the bumps there. The moguls used to get as big as Volkswagens parked sideways. Voila, a complete day of skiing for chump change. It didn't take much undergraduate work to realize that skiing in the East was a cruel hoax. Time to graduate.
The West, discovered on a ski trip in Fast Eddy's (The Bucklemeister's) Micro bus with the bursting Orange Suns in the window. The trip brought us through Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. It also brought us home with a Van load of Coors Beer. I was hopelessly hooked on deep powder and steep ski runs. So much so that I moved West to pursue my dreams. Life is funny though because I originally was on my way to Big Sky Montana. A ski bum's true ski dream. Except that as I was leaving a gas station wash room in Dillon Colorado I happened upon a friend named Angela. She informed me she lived with Mary and Melissa and they had jobs at Arapahoe Basin and a condominium. It was the late 70's and times were much more free then. A quick overnight visit and I had a season's ski pass and a home with the girls. I had hit the ski lottery. During that season I had the opportunity to get to Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. The home of Solitude and Brighton. I would revisit there many times for the grandeur that they were. A ski patrolman friend who had fallen in love with Utah was kind enough to take me under his wing and show me all the powder stashes he knew. Although that Little Cottonwood Canyon is much steeper and grander, Big Cottonwood Canyon had unknown places.
One of these was Honeycomb Canyon. The Powder Stash of all Stashes, I lost my mind (or what little I had left any way.) I was hooked I visited and revisited there as often as I could. Like all great places and most cities the rest of the world discovered it and (my suburbia) stash grew into a popular place.
There are many places that you ski and while you are skiing you realize that you are just a visitor. You can find your way back but it is always just for the moment and then the moment is gone. You change or deep inside it changes you. You touched it, caressed it, put down tracks on it and the wind and snow will fill then in and you were never there. Was it just a dream? A beautiful romantic love affair that only you experienced. How do you share it? Do you speak of it respectfully among friends they way you would of a great lover? Do you go through life never talking about it again? Now that I am older I still have no answers only the fond memory of the freedom and liberty to pursue my dreams.
Honeycomb Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Utah

It is funny in life that certain songs and lyrics become Anthems to you and when you are young and making life decisions the words almost speak to you. I remember a room mate of mine telling me that if a Played Bob Dylan late at night when I came home after a night out drinking that he would break all of my Dylan Albums. Listening to this song, I was a young college student again struggling with trying to stay in College and get my degree or be free and ski. I stayed and got my education buy flew to the hills as soon as I was able.
"What About Me," Quicksilver Messenger Service

Remembering Aspen

Today with the bleakness and inundation of snow in Aspen, I would like to go to Portland Oregon and learn the proper way of tea. It might be nicer to be wet and warm and comfortably inside sipping Pu Ehr tea (fermented tea) than cold wet and snowy.

I noticed in Aspen that the Explore Book Store is for sale for 6.4 million dollars. www.explorerbooksellers.com/What a joy my early days in Aspen were. The book store was a short walk up the street from my 200 E. Main St. apartment. I was working on several projects. My short story collection White Dreams, Out of Amereka (I have since mellowed and call it America) and outlining my Historical Novel. A hot cup of coffee and all the time in the world to linger in front of the poetry section and fiction novels. It is a unique Victorian in downtown Aspen. They sponsored the Aspen Writers Foundation and Winter Words, bringing in talented authors from all over the world. I will always have a special place in my heart for those creative times in Aspen.

I know that there are more creative times to come and I find myself gathering resolve and determination to complete the projects that are presently before me. I can't leave my projects  unfinished they need to be wrapped up and put to bed.

A Song of Conviction to a Goal
Voice of Truth by Casting Crowns

The Sage

Today with in excess of two feet of snow expected in Aspen, my thoughts have turned to Encinitas, California. I am picturing a quaint little bungalow on an estate overlooking the ocean and a wonderful garden that I am writing in. I am working on a screenplay for Appaloosa Lake, my wife Kathy's novel. She is working on the music score on her Roland Juno DI synthesizer and I am enjoying her music. Our hearts are filled with happiness and joy. There has always been a draw of enlightenment for me in Southern California. Often in life I have gotten in the way of my own success, when I should have, "let go and let God."



A Song of letting go and letting God.
Mr. Mister "Kyrie Eleison"