Great Big Love: Sweeping Across the Sky

“I like my life just fine.” I definitely agree. This is a line from Bruce Cockburn’s Great Big Love Sweeping Across the Sky.

I spent the day, about five hours, helping my friends get their garage organized for a ‘moving sale’. While Pieper (my Golden Retriever) couldn’t quite grasp the whole idea and was none to happy as I was not devoting every other minute to throwing a ball for her to fetch. She finally gave up and laid in the car.

After musky hours in the garage we headed to the wilderness for a luxurious hike. Drizzling rain drapes the forest and sounds of trickling creeks and chirping birds are music in my ears; wings flapping heavy, could have been a hawk. The reservoir is like a mirror. Pieper dives in and waves ripple across the glass. I met Dorothy, Bette, Dragor and Brody, new friends on the trail. Tails waged and words were spoken softly. Ions lay heavy and I lap them up.

Homeward bound I tread, too tired to stand long enough to cook: Papa Murphies pizza, chocolate almond coffee ice cream, preheat the oven, wash dishes and hang upside down (I have an inversion table for my compressed Intervertebral discs). Woah! I’m ready for a hot soak and some Bruce Cockburn and Nothing But A Burning Light.

Before my soak, I decide to do a little house cleaning, empty the two litter boxes and vacuum the area. While emptying a paper sack a zeroxed copy of a page falls to the floor: ‘firday, august 1, 2008′ a prayer of the heart- How wonderful! I decide to read it before I hop in for a soak.

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Dealing with Identity and Credit Card Theft

I wrote my first draft for this post on a yellow pad. Sometimes I like to write on a yellow pad with long and broad stokes; much like a painter would enjoy a large canvas.Telling this story needs broad strokes; I need to find room between the lines to identify my emotions.

All my identifying documents, bank card and my wallet were stolen from my car while parked at a wilderness trail head; almost $2000.00 was spent by the villains in less than two hours.

Beauty

Pieper (my golden retreiver) and I were parked at the trail head of Stratton Open Space, hiking on Cheyenne Mountain. It was Pieper’s birthday (she just turned four) and I promised her a hike and a swim and after a trip to the doggie store for a toy and a bone. I love this girl.

The hike was wonderful. There was cloud cover and it looked like rain. Not at all what the weather person predicted (90 degrees and hot). The forest was lush and green and a light breeze played in the tree tops. Pieper went swimming and we ran into an old friend and continued hiking with her and her three canines. After about two hours we returned to the parking lot.

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11 Things We Can Do To Cut Expenses or How to Beat the ‘Gas Woes’!

Recently, after a minor fender bender, I put my car into a body. I chose not to have a rental; thinking I would spend time at home doing things around the house and save gas.

After spending three and a half days at home: cooking, eating, sleeping, watching Animal Planet, the news, movies, working on my lack of lawn, going through and getting rid of ’stuff’, I called my sister, a few friends, wrote two posts, installed Photoshop CS3 (anyone know a good beginners class?), and visited Steve and Marsha (a hike away) for some icy blended drink and talk about retirement life. Yes, it’s been a relatively easy first week of retirement.

Staying home was not difficult. However, by Thursday I wanted and needed to get out of the house. I called my insurance to arrange for a rental and treated myself and Pieper (my companion and Golden Retriever) to a hike and swim. The trip to where we hike and swim is about a 20 minute drive and a 30 minute hike. The temperature was a whopping 91 degrees. When you are over a mile high…well, we were cooking. Unfortunately, Pieper is the only one allowed to swim in the reservoir; I’m left panting on the shore.

After the hike and swim, my normal routine, in an effort to coordinate trips and conserve gas, is to stop at the market on the way home. I’ll find some shade and park; leave the windows half way down in my Blazer, and Pieper being damp is fine while I pick up a few items at the grocery.

The rental car (a 2007 Ford Focus), had huge windows all around, letting far too much sun into the car. The car would hardly cool down with the airconditionair on maximum! No way was I going to leave Pieper in this car. I passed the market, did not collect groceries and went directly home.

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The Power and Politics Behind What We Eat!

The more I read about pet food; the more I learn about human food and how the two are connected; which in turn brings me to the power and politics behind what we eat! Does this sound a little far fetched?

I so wish I could make this story more apealing…everyone needs to know what goes on with our sustainance. Think of it as ‘life and death’!

Ever wonder where dead animals go? Probably not. If you are brave enough, doubtful that you are; we tend to bury our heads when it comes to the “unpleasant facts of life” .

Help Wanted: person to operate bobcat mini-dozers, loading ‘raw material’ (dead animals) into a 10-foot-deep stainless-steel pit; operate giant auger-grinder.

Are you looking for work? Does this sound like your kind of job? Imagine at the bottom of this pit, a giant auger-grinder begins to turn and you hear popping bones and squeezing flesh; a grusome nightmare! Who does this kind of job? I’ve been trying to find out the job title for the person who does this job, with no success as yet. In one rencent article I read that these jobs are held by: Bandanna-masked men; undocumented workers from Mexico; doing a dirty job that no one else wants to do. Wonder what kind of pay they receive?

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Salvation: Walking on Four Legs and Wagging it’s Tail

I believe Living Holistically is treating humans, animals and nature as a  single system. Finding our way to thinking about this kind of consciousness is easy…implementing the idea is another. Is this a mind-boggling concept or a simple truth?

A WARREN OF RABBITS!

Sometimes I feel like Fever in ‘Watership Down’, Richard Adam’s novel; delving into the surprisingly violent world of a warren of rabbits as they seek to escape human development which is destroying their warren.

THE HEAVY PRICE WE PAY

The majority of humans do not acknowledge the heavy price we pay for our over-populating and development; those who do acknowledge this price are seeking a balance, we treat all as a single system. We are aware that the places we let ’slip and slide away’ hold inhabitants that define the balance we seek. As we seek this balance we look with a slow and long eye. We see the camouflaged beauty and unsuspecting inhabitants. We seek to populate and develop more consciously; we acknowledge those inhabitants as equally deserving to be here and that we each have a role to play.

MOVE MORE SLOWLY

There is hope if we move more slowly and follow the lead of our furry friends. Take a path into the forest and unpaved trails. Look more deeply at the nature around us… salvation does walks on four legs and wags it’s tail.

SCIENTISTS SAY

Nowhere is Living holistically more evident than in the four-legged animal we call ‘dog’. Scientists say we have walked with and depended on the ‘dog’ somewhere near 130,000 years (one millennium is a 1000 years)!

ANCIENT LEGENDS

There are two ancient legends which speak about our relationship with our canines. The Chinese tell a story about a Great Separation, as do the Native Americans.

Both legends speak of the separation between humans and canines; and how humans lived before this separation; the legends speak of how humans were able to communicate through telepathy; that we understood and respected all life and nothing was beneath or above us: we were all equal. A marvel of harmony!

HARMONY VS EGO

Where did this harmony go? Legend says our egos developed. We no longer wanted to travel on the same path as the other animals. We moved away from other creatures and forgot how to communicate with them. We lost most of the holistic approach to life that flows in nature.

The Chinese and Native American legends differ by one extraordinary event: When the Great Spirit of the Native American legend decided to create this ‘Great Separation’ an extraordinary event occurred!

ONE POWERFUL LEAP

Legend says, the Great Spirit of the Native Americans opened a chasm in the earth, and the Great Spirit wanted to make the separation between humans and animals permanent. The chasm continued to widen; dog looked to human as the chasm widened; then looked at the other animals…then at the last possible moment; dog made a powerful leap across the chasm; making a conscious decision to join humans forever.

OUR CONNECTION WITH NATURE

In the Native American version of the Great Separation we did not lose our connection with nature; our canines keep the connection ever present. I believe a key ingredient to keeping our holistic nature alive, is to listen to and follow our four legged friends as they urge us to enter the wild. While there, if we listen and watch closely, we can more fully feel and understand our connectedness to one another and recapture some of the holistic nature we lost.

Happy Trails!

Animals: Second Class Victims of Foreclosures

Animals Left Behind

In April 2007, there were 147,708 U.S. foreclosure filings–default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions, according to RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace based in Irvine, California.

Today nearly 2.2 million Americans may lose their homes. As these families struggle to survive and find rentals and housing they are faced with options that are heart wrenching…they can not always keep their fury family members. As a result, these animals are left behind. The suffering these animals endure is heart breaking. The foreclosure crisis makes these animals a ’second class of victims n the national economy’.

Heart Wrenching Struggle

I had never thought or made a connection between Real Estate Foreclosures and animals until saw the television news recently. The conditions and situations revealed are heat breaking and impossible to imagine.

As people struggle to keep their homes; animals sometimes go to the bottom of their list. Then, these foreclosure homes house starvation, disease and death for many animals. The trauma that people and animals go though during this stressful time is horrendous.

There are not enough homes for all the lost, homeless and abandoned animals–and when homes can not be found they are euthanized to make room for other lost, homeless and abandoned animals.

Resources

There are resources for pet owners facing foreclosures: If you are someone you know is unable to care for their animals; call a shelter such as the Best friends Animal Society. Doing so can elimante the unnecessary suffering for an animal.

Spaying or neutering may be the kindest thing you can do for your animal friend. Spay/USA is a nationwide network and referral service for affordable spay and neuter services with a hot line (1-800-248-SPAY). Surgery at one of the clinics in the network averages $50, about half of the average cost in a vet’s office.

May all your trails be happy!