Life is always another first step each day!
As we go through life there is always another first step to
take each day when you wake up on this road called Life. As I have traveled along with the experiences
in my life the concept of the journey (making your way along the different
paths and highways) has been a recurring theme for me. Creating the “Where’s The Flamingo” Facebook
page is my attempt at writing about this subject so laugh with me when I make
mistakes and forgive me as I learn where I am going with this.
I have always been a storyteller and as I traveled down
Life’s highways I met a lot of people who gave me inspiration and material for
more stories in my Icewind’s Ramblings blog so the idea and concept is to put
some of my stories in writing and to maybe show some of the things I have found
interesting about life and where I’ve been. One of my goals for retirement is to travel
the country and write stories about the places and people met along the
way. Slowly the next first step leads to
that reality.
Along the way I found that I could carve out a story or
two as I sat and find myself on my laptop trying to make sense of it all. I like working with wood and the feel of
things you can make with your own hands.
I guess it is the pride that comes with a good project or item comes to
completion. Now I’m not saying I’m a
good wood worker, but I do still have five fingers on each hand but I will
admit they carry more than their share of scars. We all have scars in some form or fashion
whether kept on the inside or shown on the outside but it is interesting to me how
the words flow from our mouths and onto paper or computer ‘paper’ when we have
something on our mind. It keeps us
occupied and we learn more about ourselves and those around us. Communication is the key to almost anything
in life. The old adage if you get two
people or more together and they start telling stories there is no hope for the
truth. There is probably only laughter, fellowship,
and a warm feeling among everyone listening to the good stories.
I spent a lot of my life in the back country of America doing
things I loved like hang gliding off majestic mountaintops or chasing the
elusive fish, moose, elk and a few bear or two then one day I came to the
realization the animals and nature were smarter than I, so I put up my weapons
and picked up a camera. From then on
when I traveled through the back country of Alaska, Canada, the United States I
kept track of my adventures with pictures.
Now in later years I am going back through my pictures and wishing I
knew how to paint so I could put them on canvas. I find as the memories come
back I can almost smell the flowers or the sun warming up the fir trees and I
can hear the rushing of the water as it flows down the river or stream. I see the hole where the elusive trout is
hiding behind that rock in the stream and I wonder if I could paint should I paint
him leaping after a mayfly or hiding under the rock waiting of the next meal to
float by.
Today I remember a beaver pond that I came across in the
high country of the Wasatch Mountain Range in eastern Utah close to the Wyoming
border. I fished there before I moved to
Alaska. It was an interesting little
pond surrounded by a grove of Aspens turning yellow in the fall
sunlight and a Bull Moose standing knee deep in the water of the pond eating.
The sun was shining on the orange
and yellow leaves turning the hills to gold. I sat and watched the scene
until a storm rolled in and the snow began to fall. When I left I took a second
picture from the same location of the first photo except in the second picture
everything was grey, dark and foreboding. By the time I got back to camp
there was six inches of snow on the ground.
As I remember this outing I have both photographs sitting
side by side on my desk and I realize how life is like these pictures. You can be on top of the world with the sun
shining, the birds singing and along comes a strong breeze and it changes your
perspective on things and if you aren’t careful it will show you the dark
side of life. The thing to remember is
it is a passing phase. If you have patience
the sun will come back out and life continues down the road.
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