Solvitur Ambulando

  By Nancy | April 27, 2013 - 5:39 pm |
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I’m preparing for another long hike. Every now and then I just need to get away to spend an extended period of time in the woods. Lots of people wonder why I do it. There are various reasons, and it goes way beyond just going for a walk in the woods and camping, beyond getting “in touch with nature.”

“I walk chiefly to visit natural objects, but I sometimes go on foot to visit myself.” –Alfred Barron, Foot Notes, Or, Walking as a Fine Art,1875

The past three years have been hard on me. Several things came together at once and left me wondering who I am. My inner peace is gone, and I’ve been slowly sliding into depression. One thing I do know is that problems can’t be solved by continuing to do the same things. In order to heal my spirit, I must remove myself completely from my current flow of life and get into a different environment.

“Solvitur ambulando” — Latin, meaning “it is solved by walking.”

For several months now I haven’t even been able to think. My brain has been too full of “stuff.” I can’t follow a single thought through. For that I need solitude…and walking.

“I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.” –Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Confessions, 1782

Ever since my Appalachian Trail hike in 2001, I’ve recognized that I gain insights into problems and possibilities whenever I walk for a long time. Usually it doesn’t happen just walking around the block. I mean walking for hours, miles, days. Especially days. It can take a lot of miles just to shed the tension that’s keeping my mind tied up with issues. Only then can I relax into walking meditation. Only then do the solutions reveal themselves.

You can read more about the benefits of walking — even just short walks — at The Art of Manliness

A Reason To Be Negative

  By Nancy | March 6, 2013 - 11:55 pm |
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Finally, my natural inclination is vindicated! I can’t help it, I’m a natural pessimist. People tell me to not be so negative, and I try. Sometimes I even pull it off, though it can be exhausting at times. Now, a German study contends that pessimism is healthier!

Monte Morin of the Los Angeles Times writes that the German study shows that “people who are overly optimistic about their future actually faced greater risk of disability or death within ten years than did those pessimists who expected their future to be worse.” Hah!

The study analyzed surveys conducted every year from 1993 to 2003, and involved 40,000 German subjects aged 18 to 96. They found that the younger participants tended to overestimate how satisfied they would be about their lives in the future, while older respondents underestimated. The adults in the middle predicted their futures more accurately.

Then, the optimists suffered more disabilities over the years. Of adults 65 and older, “the older pessimists seemed to suffer a lower ratio of disability and death for the study period.”

Okay, so I’m not going to stop trying to be positive. But when I have a pessimistic moment…or week, or month, or year…I’m not going to beat myself up for it. Trying to be something I’m not is too stressful. I’m just going to be the best me I can be.

Read the Los Angeles Times article.
Read the study for yourself.

Solo Travel

  By Nancy | February 22, 2013 - 10:43 pm |
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Here’s a good thing to have confidence in, especially for women: solo travel. If you can travel alone, you can do anything. And in my case, if I didn’t travel alone, I’d never get to go anywhere. I live alone, and my friends and family are busy with jobs and kids…it’s just too hard to coordinate everyone for trips or excursions. But I like to travel, so I’ve learned to do it alone.

When you think of traveling alone, you might first be concerned about safety. Maybe you worry that you’ll be bored by yourself, or that you’ll be too intimidated. Those are things that you’ll figure out after you’ve put yourself out there a few times. It’s not that safety isn’t an important concern, but just apply the same common sense you’d use at home. “There” is not that much different than “Here,” and people everywhere are really good and helpful.

One thing you might not think about is how to get where you’re going. Unless you’re going on a bus tour, you’ll need to be able to navigate your way around in unfamiliar territory. Even if you fly somewhere, you’re likely to need a rental car to get around at your destination. But think about this: how do you drive and read the map at the same time?

Oh, sure, you could rely on a GPS unit. But what if it doesn’t work? The batteries die or something weird just happens. What then? Part of the confidence that comes with learning to travel solo is knowing how to handle anything that comes up. I think the best way is to rely on your brains instead of an electronic gadget. People have been navigating with maps for ages, and maps still work.

The question still remains — how to drive and read the map? I have a system for navigating without electronics that has worked for me on many trips. The key is in a little preparation that you should be doing anyway. Study the map. It’s good to have a feel for the lay of the land. What’s north of your route? What’s south? What’s the next big city? Then take notes. Write big. Put the notes where you can see them easily while you drive. It’s such a simple system, and it has never failed. Try it on your next solo trip, and see if you don’t gain some confidence and maybe even feel more connected to the areas you’re driving through.

Who inspires you?

  By Nancy | February 13, 2013 - 10:40 pm |
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Who inspires you? Someone famous? Someone you know personally? An athlete? A spiritual leader? It’s important to have people we look up to, someone to inspire us to achieve our own greatness.

The people who inspire you don’t have to be famous. They don’t have to have huge achievements to their name. They don’t even have to be public figures. Maybe they are family members or friends, or just acquaintances.

I am most inspired by strong, independent women. I admire confidence and self-reliance. When I read about women who strive to be their very best and don’t let nay-sayers stop them, it encourages me to aspire toward my best self. Not all the women I admire are well-known. Some are just friends who have a quiet strength. But I find that the women who inspire me most are out there in the world. I know it takes even more personal strength to do whatever you do when you’re in the public eye.

And that encourages me to keep on dreaming and doing.

Food Self-Sufficiency

  By Nancy | February 3, 2013 - 7:38 pm |
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Some of the things I love to do are things that I’m not able to do at this point in my life. I love to raise and preserve my own food. It’s the greatest irony of my life. I had a garden and chickens and everything else I needed for the kind of life I want years ago when I was married. But I didn’t want the husband. When I left him, I lost the ability to live the life I wanted.

I’ve had many adventures since that time — adventures that I couldn’t have done if I’d had a homestead, so I don’t regret the way life went. But I’m still working on getting to a place where I can live close to the land and be more self-sufficient.

After establishing a garden, the first thing I will do is get a small flock of chickens for my backyard. Farm-fresh eggs from free-range chickens are the best. The yolks are so orange and full of nutrients from all the good stuff the chickens scratch up to eat. I want to have heirloom chickens. They are the old, traditional breeds that are at risk of dying out.

Modern chicken farms grow a standard, hybridized chicken that has been developed for fast, consistent production. They feed them a scientifically constructed diet of weird things that chickens wouldn’t actually eat on their own. The results are bland, sometimes unhealthy eggs and meat. In addition, these chickens are stupid. Their smarts have been bred out of them, so they don’t have the sense God gave a rock. They need to be cooped up and coddled.

Heirloom chickens, on the other hand, still retain the chicken instincts to raise a brood of young, scratch out a living on natural foods, and avoid predators. In return, they give us rich eggs and flavorful meat.

Another thing I want to do is preserve the food I grow. Of course, fruits and vegetables, but also meat. Many people don’t realize you can can meat at home. I’ve done it before, and the meat comes out tender and delicious. I especially like the idea that I won’t lose it if the power goes out (like I would if it was in the freezer) and that it’s already cooked. So quick and easy at meal time. If it’s something you’d like to try, realize that you need a pressure canner to safely can meat.

These are things I dream of. To me, life like this is real life. It is really living, rather than working to be able to buy a living.

Shaping Up

  By Nancy | January 20, 2013 - 7:25 pm |
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Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been diligent about my quest to condition this body of mine. I’m amazed at how little it really takes to feel so much better. I doubt that I’ve lost any weight to speak of, but I feel so much more balanced and centered. I have a goal that I’m working on, and normally I would impatiently push myself harder and harder. This time I’m being patient with myself because I don’t want to get hurt and set myself back…like I did last year when I ended up spraining my ankle.

My objectives are greater flexibility, endurance, and strength. I want to strengthen the knee and ankle I injured in the past — both on my right leg — so I can avoid future injury. My goal is a healthy second adulthood. Okay, I admit, I have another goal that I will talk about some other time. It’s a physical one that will call upon all the conditioning I can muster.

So, three weeks in, I’m walking about 3 miles a day, stretching for 30 minutes, and doing some upper body strengthening. I feel great. I can bend over, pick things up, twist, turn…and not feel like I’m about to hurt myself. I’m over 50 and had kinda let myself go for the last couple years. Now I can stretch just about as far as I did in my 20s.

I’ve found that I’m already pretty good in my upper body, due to picking up my granddaughter all the time. In the next 3 weeks I’ll be adding abdominal and lower body work and adding free weights. I’m using A Woman’s Guide To Weight Training that my daughter happened to have on her shelf. It convinced me that I don’t have to do a dozen exercises every day, which is good because I don’t have that kind of time. I can pick and choose the lifts I do, as long as I work a major body part every day. And it has really good pictures.

Safe Harbor

  By Nancy | January 17, 2013 - 7:01 pm |
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I know I’m late to the game, but I am finally reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. I thought the book in the beginning and all through Italy was an okay read, but I’m in India now and I find it much more interesting. I suppose that says something about my own emotional, psychological, and spiritual health.

I especially like the part I read this morning where Elizabeth compares her mind to a harbor into which she will only allow good and positive thoughts. My own harbor had, for a long time, been beseiged with the plague ships, slave ships, and warships that she turns away. Like her, I’ve recently taken back control of my harbor-mind, but it’s a constant struggle to keep it safe.

I own my harbor. I control the thoughts that enter. I choose to allow only positive, peaceful, and productive thoughts. And I am grateful for the image Elizabeth paints, which will help me remember to be always vigilant.

How Not To Care For A Tent

  By Nancy | September 25, 2012 - 5:20 pm |
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I love my Eureka tent. Over the past eleven years it has accompanied me 2,168 miles on the Appalachian Trail and 700 miles on the International Appalachian Trail and 9,339 miles on my U.S. perimeter bicycle tour. We’ve bonded. It’s my home away from home.

I always took good care of my tent because I wanted it to last as long as possible. Then finally, at a state park in North Carolina during my bicycle tour, I slipped up. A lapse of judgment. I set up camp, tossed my food bag inside the tent, and pedaled into town for some supplies. When I returned to my campsite, I felt a certain foreboding as I noticed several squirrels scampering away from the area of my tent. Filled with dread, I slowly approached the tent and peeked under the vestibule. My heart just sank when I saw the gaping wound in the lower side wall. The squirrels had scratched and chewed a two-inch square hole in the tent and had begun doing the same to my food bag, which they’d pulled toward the hole. I felt horrible, like I’d let my faithful companion down. I was fortunate to have just barely enough tent repair material to patch the hole.

Now that I’m thinking about possibly getting out on another trail, I’m thinking I should let the tent retire. It was starting to leak anyway. I’d love to get the same model again, but I don’t think they make it anymore. So I’m looking around. I think maybe the Eureka Apex would be a good replacement. Or maybe I’ll try something completely different and attempt to go ultralight. That would be a good way to stretch my boundaries.

Sometimes I Need Direction

  By Nancy | September 17, 2012 - 1:54 pm |
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I’ve always wanted to know how to use a map and compass. I don’t think it’s something I can learn from a book, like I do most things. I want to take a class. So I was looking at compasses for sale to see what I might want to use in a class…I think I’d better just get a basic one. Some of the sighting compasses look confusing.

Anyway, I learned some new things. The simple ones that don’t intimidate me are “orientation” compasses. You use those to figure out where you are. The more complicated ones are “navigational” compasses. You use those to guide yourself where you want to go. They can be interchanged to an extent, but the orientation compasses aren’t as accurate for navigating.

I already knew about declination — the difference between true north and magnetic north, but I thought you always had to figure it out yourself. But lots of compasses are adjustable for declination. You set it for your location and then all your readings are correct without having to do the math every time.

I didn’t know that there are five areas on earth where magnetic “dip” causes a compass needle to point up or down. That’s not very accurate. And I hadn’t given any thought to differences in northern vs. southern hemispheres. I probably won’t have to worry about any of that, since I don’t plan on bush-whacking in any other countries.

It shouldn’t be too hard to pick out the best compass, but maybe I should wait and see if the class I take requires a particular type.

Occupy Monsanto

  By Nancy | September 15, 2012 - 8:08 pm |
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Unbeknownst to many people, there is a force working against our health. That force is delivered to us in our food. That’s right. The food we’ve come to know and love is no longer the food we know and love.

Although not the only player in this game, the Monsanto corporation is certainly the largest. Their GMO foods are in 95% of the food we eat…and we are not even allowed to know it. The company strong-arms the government to prohibit the labeling of GMOs, so we cannot even choose to not eat them.

What are GMOs (genetically modified organisms)? They are organisms — plants and animals — that never occur in nature. They have been created by scientists splicing genes from one species into another. Sometimes they splice pesticides and herbicides right into the food plant. And we end up eating them, even though they have never been proven safe.

The splicing methods are imprecise. Geneticists tell us that results are unpredictable. Our immune systems recognize the spliced genes as foreign and set up an immune reaction to attack them. This manifests as inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, which is the beginning of all sorts of diseases. It is interesting to note that the incidence of all our major diseases has increased dramatically since the advent of GMOs in our food.

More than just the food on our table is at stake. It is a whole ethical can of worms. GMO seeds are patented. That means that no one can grow them unless they pay Monsanto. It is wrong for anyone to hold a patent on life. It is wrong for any one entity to control food production.

There is much more to it than this. But bottom line is…we are no longer eating the food our bodies were designed to eat, and our health is suffering. It is up to each of us to take a stand and take back the control that Monsanto has usurped. There’s a movement underway. Find out more at Occupy Monsanto.

If any of this alarms you at all, you can learn a lot more about it in Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of Our Lives.

If you hurry, you can watch the film for free at mercola.com until September 22.