Fall behind

One float trip on the river (on the day of the solstice), a few hikes along moving water, a summer of sailing and a road trip along the Clark Fork River have left me with moving water on my mind. As we focus on negotiating the shoals in the river of life we flow past so much beauty and meaning and often are too busy avoiding a grounding to appreciate what we are passing by. During the fall is the perfect time to pull over and let the flow go without you for a bit, to contemplate how gorgeous this place where you are is and perhaps how wonderful the person is that shares it with you. There is something about the variety and intensity of the fall colors that give everything more depth, more detail and more meaning. Before we head into the winter, it is nice to take stock of the harvest, physical or metaphysical, put away the toys and tools of the previous warm weather season, carve a pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern and eat a caramel apple. It is a good time to practice mindfulness. That reminds me that it is a good time to get to the studio to practice yoga and start attending Ski Prep classes. As another year winds down to the end, we have an opportunity to start new activities and learn something new to carry us more mindfully into the new year. Fall sports help to slow us down too, if we are the spectator, anyway. A game is a great excuse to accomplish nothing for awhile. That is restful and allows your psyche to process the past and prepare for the future. In the fall, many of us get away on a holiday, to hunt or to escape the coming winter and with that travel our outlook shifts a bit and we focus on what lies ahead.  Looking through the trees I see the white ski slopes and know that soon we will be challenging ourselves to negotiate some new shoals. Perhaps we will see the trees and not just the forest as we fly by.

Norman Maclean quote “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”