Full On Summer

Slowly, day by day, the rain has dried up, the sun has reappeared and we’re finally into summer.  The days are long and delicious and the breeze carries the scent of Ponderosa pine and nearby hay fields.   The sun sets so late and rises so early that, aided by a moon climbing towards full, the nights are hardly dark at all.  Most days I’m up at 3:30am taking to my mat for an hour of silence.  It’s deeply quiet – by far the quietest place I’ve lived in since my three years at the monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.   The refrigerator occasionally hums in the kitchen, the sound of the creek is slowly fading away as the flow drops and sometimes the air carries the sound of mules braying down the road or one of the distant peacocks or the local owls calling from somewhere in the woods.  This quiet place, in the midst of a full-on-summer, is amazing.

We’re gearing up for family visits.  Mothers, fathers, siblings and kids are all finding their way out this summer to what we think of as our full time vacation home.  The Texas sib (Karen, Tory, Hannah, Cord and Day) escaped from the hellishly hot Austin summer and ran full into the worst part of our mosquito outbreak.  It lasts about two weeks and they saw two days of it.  But they also got some snow on a ridge-line hike we all took and I hope it was a worthwhile tradeoff for them.

Molly, Waiting For The Discussion To End

Cord Gets Some Snow Action

Mastering The Technique of Glissading

Hannah, Just Before the Snowball War Begins

It’s a great time of year.  For awhile now it’s where we call home.

Home on the (Blue Mountain) Range

Lupines and Green Summer Grass

Busy Busy

It’s been cool and very wet but that hasn’t stopped things from needing to be around the place.  It does mean that at the end of the day I am tired and want to preserve some small amount of time for a return to quiet either by some simple walking or sitting quietly before sleep demands its due.   Since I’m on the computer all day long for work as it is I often times just don’t want to be on even longer during the evening.  Its also difficult to find the right balance between just gabbing (which I don’t do very well – just ask my wife) and boring folks senseless with the stuff that I find interesting but very difficult to write about.

We all have hidden, inner lives.  We all are looking to make sense of what we see and hear.  At any point in time there are only six things happening:  We’re either smelling, seeing, feeling, tasting,  or hearing something or experiencing something of the mind – a thought, memory, emotion, etc. – and from these very simple sources we fashion an entire outer universe and a lifelong inner world that we either come to understand and learn from or push away and block from view.   Usually it’s a mix of the two I guess.  Be patient and compassionate towards those who have difficulty with the aspects of all this that you find so very easy to deal with.  Be aware that you are the object of someone else’s compassionate inclinations for your own inability to see what you are unable or unwilling to see.   Life is a dream – strive to wake up.

Molly the Mountain Dog

I Saw A Yellow Wind

It must be the perfect combination of warmth, moisture, humidity and whatever other magical elements are necessary, but it appears that we’ve hit that splendid place where something in the world just gushes forth.  Yesterday and today it was pine pollen.  It was everywhere.  It covered the deck, the truck, the window sills, the kitchen table, couches, the grass and barn roof like yellow buttered popcorn salt.  The breeze would blow and soft clouds of greenish yellow pollen would waft through the trees coating everything in it’s path.  On a bike ride down into town and back again I saw a yellow hazy cloud moving slowly across the lower reaches of the Blue Mountains.  It’s where we live and it’s part of the cycle of things here, as is the creek that’s flowing now and the smell of pine pitch in the air when it’s warm.

On another topic:  Notice the Twitter feed on the right side of this blog page – I’m experimenting a little.  WordPress will show the last five tweets.  If you’re following the blog in an RSS reader you won’t see it, but feel free to follow my feed directly from Twitter:  @KevinAMills.