Girding Our Loins and a Mosacic in Everyday Ramblings

Because my place of employment pays for my Weight Watchers membership and I am hovering at 4 pounds over goal I need to go to meetings even though I often don’t want to. This is not necessarily a bad thing; outside accountability and all that.

During this summer Mrs. Sherlock and I have locked into a routine. I go to the 7:30 Saturday meeting, she meets me there with Frida after and we go hiking. That gives her time to feed the chickens and get a few chores done just after sunrise.

Last week we shortened our hike by about 45 minutes because she needed to get home for a social commitment and was doing a wine country bike ride the next day.

(This is just an aside; she is amazing! She rode 40 miles even though she thought she couldn’t and although tired survived without being too sore and was fully functional on Monday.

I couldn’t do that.

She weighs close to 200 lbs. and has two artificial knees. Just in case you are telling yourself you can’t be active because of your weight and age. She is turning 69 in a month. She hikes at least twice a week, rides her bike about the same and comes to yoga about twice a week. She was telling me yesterday how good she feels and how happy she is she is doing these things. She is a major extrovert so all of her activities are group ones.)

This week we went back and re-hiked the first part of the Marquam Trail we did last week, though we took a shortcut to start so we wouldn’t have to walk across the track with Frida, and then took the turnoff we didn’t have time for before.

For an urban walk the up was pretty impressive. I got 82 floors on the Fitbit. That means 820 feet elevation gain over all. Our destination was the Marquam Shelter, which is where I took the above picture.

It is a staging amphitheater. Something you would imagine seeing at a scout camp. And the trailhead is there. What they did is this amazing mosaic on the steps of the amphitheater. They employed 400 school children and dedicated it just 4 years ago. This is seriously maybe a mile from where I live. A mile! Literally a block from where I turn off by the lilac garden when I go up to the collection of buildings that house the institution I work for. I had no idea.

There is all this visible history over there too, a rough road, drainage pipes, busted grates and some minor ruins. My excuse is that there is no safe pedestrian access from the lilac garden to the trailhead. You have to walk along a shoulder on a curve with poor visibility. But still!

We only have two more weeks to hike together on this schedule. She is going to Europe just after Labor Day and the rains will be back in force. The trails we did yesterday would be treacherous when slick. They are narrow and full of exposed roots.

What an absolute joy this is being though.

We are girding our loins for the total solar eclipse tomorrow morning. (I looked that up, just imagine we are wearing long tunics and are preparing to engage). I have to work and we won’t quite have totality here.

But still, it is a big deal and I hope it brings us as a country together and helps us understand in a deeply visceral way our commonality with the source of our ability to be alive.

I feel so sad for those who suffer from mental illness that are unable to experience empathy.

Imagine how lost and separate they must feel without knowing that they are. Imagine the unease that opens that big hole in them that gets filled with rage and disgust as they experience that their fellow humans consider them dangerous.

We must love them as we protect ourselves from their worst impulses.
But man, they don’t make it easy.

Last updated August 22, 2017