Powaqa invades my dreams...

Powaqa invades my dreams...

Powaqa invades my dreamscape...

Twenty years ago, death infiltrated my life when my father, at 73 years, was diagnosed with stage four cancer that had already spread to his brain, bones, lungs, and liver. Much too late for any real hope at a cure or much, if any, reprieve. He did endure one regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, which, if it did actually prolong his life by a few weeks or months, left him wheelchair bound then bed-bound until his final breath was breathed while he was in our home living room, surrounded by all but one of our family. Seeing the horrid effects of chemo, I don't think I could ever submit to that therapy. His death came 22 years after he underwent an emergency quad bypass, with one artery being 90% occluded. He used to joke that he wanted to be buried in the backyard beneath the above-ground pool.

Growing up without many things due to the economic realities of a large family, I splurged on stuff once I started earning money. Probably not the best use of my limited financial resources, but that is water under the proverbial bridge in a raging river from which it is not possible to claw back the money that floated away. It wasn't until later in life that I learned money invested in experiences pays dividends far exceeding money spent acquiring things. Thankfully, it is a lesson I learned prior to retirement, allowing me to build a nest egg that will provide for future experiences, adding a richness to my final years that would otherwise be risky as far as finances are concerned. All that purchasing has saddled me with many things that accumulate as clutter that I struggle to dispose of, while adding only items that bring value to my life.

Having a place that feels like home provides profound psychological comfort, reduces stress and anxiety, and enhances physical as well as mental well-being. There have been places I have lived for extended periods. While some gave me a measure of comfort, I have always felt as if I were a transient, a vagabond mole burrowing into a place to lay my head temporarily, knowing it will be fleeting. Paradoxically, the homiest places I've ever been are lands where I have spent at most a few days to a week before moving back to my "official" home, as per my driver's license.

As an A-Deist, I struggle with the conceptual existence of separate spiritual and physical components comprising a whole human being. Atheists tend to deny that humans have a spiritual side, along with having no place in their worldview for an immortal soul, attributing consciousness, an emergent property of complex brain activity, to electrons firing in the human mind. While I mostly agree with the Atheists, there is no denying the life force departs from the physical at body death. While it may go against convention, I define that leaked out life force as the spirit or the soul, with the understanding that there is no after life component. Dead is dead. The living spark animating the body is termed the Anim.

I have spent time lying in a meadow surrounded by a circumambient blanket of color and felt a deep and abiding joy, infected as I was by the laughing and tittering of the flowers radiating ephemeral colors accompanied by heady perfumes and evanescent arias wafting from the throats of radiant birds rapturously praising the glory displayed by the flora. Alighting from flower to flower, drunk on the nutritious nectar, the butterflies flutterby clothed in kaleidoscopic hues, clap their wings in a delicately raucous celebration of their own joy at the visual and olfactory bouquet. Surrounding the meadow, stately trees shield those less robust from buffeting winds that would rip petals from receptacle and hypanthium,

Now that I am retired and no longer obligated to occupy my mind for the benefit of a large corporation, I am free to focus on topics of personal interest or follow my mind as it wanders to and fro. Sometimes, those wanderings are drawn to a topic that elicits deep focus. My monkey mind tends to bounce between being the horse drawing the cart and the cart being drawn by the horse. I must be careful to prevent the tail from wagging the dog for too long lest I succumb to doom scrolling the day away.

Beauty, it is said, lies in the eye of the beholder. I oft wonder why formal definitions of beauty tend to omit the feral in favor of the carefully coiffed, eschew the chaotic in favor of the meticulously organized, believe anarchy should bend a knee to the ordered, even if the ordered is dysfunctional. Letting the chaos reign long enough, complex patterns will emerge, a type of intricate order born of the anarchy. Wilderness, in its feral state, has existed long enough that the early pandemonium has settled into an elaborate harmony, forming a system that is beautiful for its cooperation between constituent inhabitants. Thus, all nature in its untrammeled state is beautiful, including that which is dangerous to humans. The Grizzly Bear roaming the backcountry is a dangerously beautiful sight that quickens the primordial soul of a lone hiker with awe.