The mapping of our Life. Some hang “photos”, we “Live” them.

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

“My  Personal Daily Therapy, published Weekly or so…”

“There is only one important point you must keep in your mind and let it be your guide. No matter what people call you, you are just who you are. Keep to this Truth. You must ask yourself how is it you want to live your Life. We live and we die, this is the Truth we can only face alone, no one can help us, not even the Buddha. So consider carefully, what prevents you from living the way you want to live your Life?”
~ Author Unknown ~

Box Canyon xxx

From her “live” Album “Mirrorball”, “Sara Mc Lachlan” sings “Do What You Have To Do”…

[audio:http://www.theoasisofmysoul.com/wp-content/audio/07_do_what_you_have_to_do.mp3]

Box Canyon-4 xxx

I don’t think I can even to myself explain the path of thoughts we are now on, and this will include Spirit’s as one look through his eyes makes me understand how much he misses his outdoor freedom and smells and senses all developed these past years. Added is his knowledge that I am leaving him behind. How does he know is beyond me, but I know he knows. We have to bow to certain situations that arise throughout these times passing on. "Freedom" is never of a 100% certitude. It is as such, regardless what we might think, only an illusion filled with Dreams we better live before they vanish. Responsibilities, compromises, all arise throughout the year and deviates us from the conquering aspects of laying behind the boulders of the lonely Deserts plentiful within this Journey.

Box Canyon-3 xxx

There is so much comfort here while house sitting for a few days, most likely envied by so many that it’s notion today scares me. There is a slice of my presence missing engulfed within the walls which right now harbor us. Kitchen, refrigerator, bathroom, desk, unlimited Internet. The stores are only a couple miles away. The concept is just… well, has been created for the Human comfort everyone seeks and desires and utilizes becoming programmed with such little thoughts of their wonders. Strange enough, it is not the ultimate comfort for me, for us. Not of a permanent one.

Box Canyon-8 xxx

Our comfort is a tent, it is shovel and a roll of toilet paper, a water jug, a multi fuel stove, layers of warm clothing, Spirit’s coats of different warmth, his boots, his electric blanket for the sidecar. A warm sleeping bag with a pad and if lucky enough no rocks under, it is cooking without the bother of refrigeration. It is the lack of walls, a ceiling of Stars or daytime clouds playing around with the upper winds. It is chasing a storm as we did tonight. A monsoon. It is rain, it is snow, it is not heat! It is mud, the one that builds up under your soles as if taking care of your own Soul. It is the sound of the creek near by, it is the lack of a calendar and no man made time as only the sun has the accuracy of the day and the night time stars paving the routes around us. It is "being out there" as we will be again soon as never before.

Box Canyon-6 xxx

I am always apprehensive of hurting my Friends feelings when I write as such as they are "true friends" with their trust into us taking care of their home, their dog, their plants even. It is not meant to be so. Please understand. So many strange concepts. Watering plants every day when in our World Mother Nature takes care of it all her own way, the natural way. Are they artificial? No, they are real but need the Human nurturing to make them so. Odd. So many controversies as I do understand and yet, they think I do not anymore. Maybe with some validity. I want to shout "I am not dazed or deficient…". But do not. I have lived this "Life" for many years myself.

Box Canyon-11 xxx

How many of us are there "out there" thinking alike? Maybe not many but maybe many "wanting to". Wanting to look at maps and go for as long as we can as us with a run now closing in on 6 years and yet, every day seemingly as a new start. I keep pondering how the path could change as I am ready for some drastic diversity, deviations from how we have been living. Away and more away into an isolation only experienced when I lived on a sailboat spending days on end 100 miles or more off shore. Alone. I understand the Mountain Man today, I understand Edward Abbey all too well who wrote "Desert Solitaire".

Box Canyon-13 xxx

His thoughts provoking and mystical. Angry and loving. Both Abbey and his Book are all of these and more. A book which vividly captures the essence of his life during three seasons as a park ranger in southeastern Utah. It is a rare view of a quest to experience nature in its purest form. The silence, the struggle, the overwhelming beauty, the senses acquired. But this is also the gripping, anguished cry of a man of character who challenges the growing exploitation of the wilderness by oil and mining interests, as well as by the tourist industry.

A Big Bend Flat Sunset

The observations and challenges remain as relevant now as the day he wrote them. They are real today in my own mind. I live them. We experience them ourselves. I feel as I am almost there but not quite there. Maybe never will be? Maybe it is the reason I am searching for better gear to have the ability to hold out in winter times by ourselves on this deserted island I always imagine we are going to reach. Not as much South as we have been, but on the Northern Plains where the beauty of the snow covered hills and Mountains have been a bit of a mystery to us.

A Big Bend Flat Sunset-2

"John Steinbeck" also said it so well in his "Travels with Charlie" writing about such Desert, those empty spaces which endure the four seasons and call us incessantly.

Oasis Magic

“ It is a mystery, something concealed and waiting. It seems deserted, free of parasitic man, but this is not entirely so. There is a breed of desert men, not hiding exactly but gone to sanctuary from the sins of confusion.
At night in this waterless air the stars come down just out of reach of your fingers. The great concepts of oneness and of majestic order seem always to be born in the desert. The quiet counting of the stars, and observation of their movements, came first from desert places. I have known men who chose their places with quiet and slow passion, rejecting the nervousness of the watered world.
There are true secrets in the desert. In the war of sun and dryness against living things, life has its secrets of survival. Life no matter on what level, must be moist or it will disappear. The beaten earth appears dead, but it only appears so. A vast and inventive organization of living matter survives by seeming to have lost.

Running down the road

The desert, being an unwanted place, might well be the last stand of life against unlife. For in the rich and moist and wanted areas of the world, life pyramids against itself and in its confusion has finally allied itself with the enemy non-life.

A Big Bend Flat Sunset-3

And what the scorching searing, freezing, poisoning weapons of non-life have failed to do may be accomplished to the end of its destruction and extinction by the tactics of survival gone sour. If the most versatile of living forms, the human, now fights for survival as it always has, it can eliminate not only itself but all other life. And if that should transpire, unwanted places like the desert might be the harsh mother of repopulation. For the inhabitants of the desert are well trained and well armed against desolation. The lone man and his sun-toughened wife who cling to the shade in an unfruitful and uncoveted place might, with their brothers in arms—the coyote, the jackrabbit, and horned toad, the rattlesnake, together with a host of armored insects—these trained and tested fragments of life might well be the last hope of life against non-life. The desert has mothered magic things before this.”

A foggy Oasis

So true. Just another Lifestyle. Better or worse? No such thing. It just “is”. A choice.

Box Canyon-15

In my effort to stay on the road “we” now have a T Shirt and Merchandise store. I think you will like it: “Spirited Oasis”
“Smugmug” for Photos and Digital downloads.
The recipes are on the “One~Pan Recipe”
section.
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Stay well… Ara and Spirit

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5 Responses to “The mapping of our Life. Some hang “photos”, we “Live” them.”

  1. Colorado Kid Says:

    Really enjoyed this post, Ara. Awesome photos. Travel safe.

  2. heyduke50 Says:

    it pleases me to see you understand the deeper meaning in Edward Abbey’s book… however, I had no real doubt that you would…

  3. Ara & Spirit Says:

    Well, I have for a while…
    It did not stop a comment however being send calling me a “hypocrite” because I am using fuel. The e mail of the sender unfortunately is a fake… Maybe I should have not deleted it.
    Oh! well… I am getting use to it.
    Stay well. Ara and Spirit

  4. Scruffy Says:

    soon to Germany I think, so safe travels Ara, and thanks as always for all you share~

  5. Ara & Spirit Says:

    Thanks Scruffy… How is that Gear Up?

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