Adding Value

Wild flowers, white and yellow, pink, purple and magenta explode in staged explosion along the black ribbon of road.  Magenta paintbrushes bound dizzily towards the sky, swaying in their seeming giddiness, while yellow starbursts thrust out of vibrant green leaves while their pure white neighbors spread wide with joy to receive the bright piercing summer sun. 

Lake Irely near Lake Quinault on the Olympic Peninsula

The bright colors offset the polychromatic shades of green that otherwise own the landscape.  Because it seems that here I have found the primordial stew, the original brew from whence we came.  The dark green that gives way to a blacker green that surrenders utterly into a grassy sky infused shade of green, I keep trying to name them and give up.  Verdant, fecund, damp, moist, these words were birthed here in this ancient forest teeming with determined life.

I thought I’d seen moss before.   I’d merely sampled moss.  I had an appetizer of moss. 

Really, I’ve never seen moss before.

This is moss.  This is moss on growth hormone.  This is moss with a vengeance to take over the world.  Even the moss has moss hanging from it.  Are you picking up what I’m putting down?  Moss.  That’s what I’m laying down here. 

Moss hanging over a mossy creek, this is with no filter

The Olympic Peninsula is wildly peaceful; the Hoh Rainforest may be the loveliest campsite I’ve yet seen.  A glacial river bending behind our picnic table, trees that pierce the underbelly of sky and provide a home for moss, smooth river stones and whole trees moved by the powerful river are strewn lazily across the riverbed while elk nap on the sun warmed stones. 

We’ve been holding some essential oil classes and it’s forcing me to move beyond myself and into the social hive that buzzes in a campground.  I’ve met some truly lovely folks.  People are keenly curious when they learn we are a family traveling the states sharing oils while taking in the breath taking beauty of the terrain.  People immediately drop into the fantasy of it all.  The epic nature, the sweet campgrounds, the freedom to roam and do what we please, it sounds great! 

More and more the road is feeling like work.  It’s exhausting, it’s wildly replenishing, and it’s the same every day as much as it’s different each day.  Life on the road becomes more about making lunch and finding good routes then it is about that epic hike we were hoping to take, because now the baby is tired and needs a real nap in the bed, not in the backpack. 

It’s creating structure where structure does not belong.  Finding the fluidity of travel amongst a family of individuals who have varying needs is something we haven’t yet found.

We are working on learning to listen, to hear the need of our loved one and not feel like it is a vicious attack on our own needs.  I am learning to ask for what I need, and then actually take it. 

I practice yoga.  When we were plotting this trip my mind was rich with thoughts of me and my mat in a hundred different natural spots, on cliffs overlooking the sea, next to a river, in the quiet of a forest and in a field of wild flowers to name a few. 

The reality?

I’ve practiced a total of 4 times in 34 days. 

I don’t ask for it.

Or I ask for it, and it seems unnecessary in the face of other needs. 
I am seeing the tremendous value of self-care.  I am seeing what happens when I don’t value me, how I become less the woman I want to be.  I am making a great effort to provide myself the opportunity to do the simple things like stretch my body, take 5 minutes alone to meditate, to focus on how I want to add value to the day.  These are the bones of what makes me a patient, kind and loving woman, there is great value in that.

In doing so for myself I am at wonderful liberty of heart to provide it for my husband, and when we are both soul fed, the whole of the gypsy wagon takes on a lightness and a fleet feeling that gets us singing, praising the world around us and cultivating happiness.

Ahhh, so here we are again, on the road, listening to the song of trees over the hum of tires on asphalt.  Listening, listening, always listening.

The Hoh Rainforest, absolutely spectacular

Wayland made Bay a wee hut to have some solo toddler
and truck time

This is a Maple grove providing ample terrain for
the moss to thrive.  The moss does not harm the
tree, they have a happy relationship.

Little man getting plump on berries.  He has a fistful of
blueberries in this photos and a mouth covered in logan
and blackberry juice.