The best men are not those who have waited for chances, but who have taken them -- besieged the chance, conquered the chance, and made the chance their servitor.
~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Imagine words here. Lots of them. Descriptive ones. Words about hopes and dreams and love and goals and disappointment and life's trials and tribulations. The truth is, there's a lot I want to say. The truth is, I can't make sense of the words just yet.

Stress is a funny thing. Stress compresses a bunch of snowflakes into a river of ice. The stress of gravity pulls the river down from the mountaintops, the pressure carving out a new face on the rock below. Stress keeps pieces of the glacial face from staying attached and so, when finally pulled too far, it breaks its ties and falls into the water waiting below. Eventually it melts and becomes part of something else, something bigger. So it goes.

When we watch all of this happen, we see the beauty, the wonder, the splendor. The end result. We see the 15% of the iceberg above the water and don't think at all about the 85% below. We don't think about the pressure that had to be applied all of the way down the line, just for the snowflake to turn back into water.

Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

~ Jeremy Collier

I have a nearly paralyzing fear of flooded water. High, fast-moving rivers and streams make my stomach twist into a knot and I can't breathe if I get too close. Somehow, completely opposite to that, I have no trepidation at all about the ocean, which seems vastly greater and more powerful. I don't know why and I don't care to analyze it too much, but a few hours of listening to waves crash, of staring out into endless blue, of feeling the sun on my shoulders and tasting the salt in the air, provides me with a calm that I don't find in too many other places. I've been pretty lucky to have some quality time with the ocean this week.

Lately I've done a lot of thinking about the things that have gone on in my life. A year ago in June, I decided I wanted something different from my life than what I was doing. A full year has gone by... 13 months in fact! And I have done little to make the changes that I decided would be important in my life in that time. Maybe things fall into place the way they should - the options I thought I wanted a year ago changed just a few months later, when I started thinking that maybe there were other possibilities I hadn't considered that were just as valid. It's still months later, though, and nothing has changed. I haven't done anything to change it.

So I guess this is my "don't be surprised" warning. I've reevaluated the things that are important to me. My life will be changing to realign my daily life with the things that enrich me and the things that wear me down will have to go by the wayside. This chapter of my life, the post-college chapter, was all about establishing myself professionally and reaching a specific dollars-in-income amount, and I can say pretty confidently that I nailed both goals. The next chapter puts the people I love front and center... it was nice being selfish for a while, but the good job is just a thing that prevents my heart from being happy and the most incredible beaches are just sand and water if I can't share them.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
~ Vaclav Havel

Two roads diverged in a wood and I -- I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
~ George Moore, The Brook Kerith

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
~  Nathaniel Hawthorne

I don't know what it is, but I really am drawn to the illusion of trees and branches and other items that look like hands reaching out of the ground (in this case, as if waiting, always waiting, on guard to prevent something important from leaving land and entering the water). These rare Oregon days, like today, make you forget that the water is ice cold, that yesterday we were wearing sweatshirts and heavy socks, that the sky was ever gray. I'm grateful for days like today, they remind me of the good things about being here when my heart and mind spend most of their time somewhere else entirely.

 I am restless. I am athirst for far-away things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

I am eager and wakeful, I am a stranger in a strange land.
Thy breath comes to me whispering an impossible hope.
Thy tongue is known to my heart as its very own.
O Far-to-seek, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that I know not the way, that I have not the winged horse.

I am listless, I am a wanderer in my heart.
In the sunny haze of the languid hours, what vast vision of thine takes shape in the blue of the sky!
O Farthest end, O the keen call of thy flute!
I forget, I ever forget, that the gates are shut everywhere in the house where I dwell alone!

~ Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener

The gold on the ground is pretty. I wish it was in the sky. I try to appreciate the ordinariness of a cloudy day, but long rainy season is long.

Today I had to drive to the east side of the Cascade mountains in southern Oregon. Of course, my luck being what it is, it rained like crazy below 2000' yesterday, last night, and this morning, and snowed like crazy above 2000', which meant the passes across the mountains were treacherous at best. Chains were required to get through the Willamette and Santiam Passes, the Willamette being my usual route

I decided to take a southern route, which took longer - over four hours of driving in the rain - but I hoped would not be as difficult to travel.

It was perfect.

The road between Medford and Klamath Falls is a normal two-lane highway, lightly traveled this time of year. For 67 miles I had the eastbound highway nearly to myself. On an empty, forested mountain road, with the cruise control set at 60, movement seems nonexistent, time slows down, and all that matters is the color of the trees and sky and clouds as the sun touches everything. Add a playlist of amazing music to the mix, and it makes a damn good end to a long day.