Look Up

I have fallen into the habit of reading articles on my phone while I walk in the forest or listening to music when I jog.  I head outdoors first thing in the morning because the dog needs walking but I’ve always found it to be a pleasant way to kick off my day. It has rarely felt to me as if it were a chore despite it being something of a necessity because I choose to look at it differently.

However I’m not watching where I’m walking lately and the idea of this morning walk being a nice way to welcome in a new day is slipping into habit and something I just need to do.  In other words it is slipping into the realm of chores no more pleasant than scrubbing the tub.

What brought about this realization was on my walk back down the forest path this morning when I finally looked up.  Less than a dozen feet off the path stood a doe and her fawn, they were grazing contentedly on the grass in a manner which suggested they had most likely been there awhile.  Probably they had been there when I passed the first time heading up the path and I simply hadn’t seen them.

I do often speak negatively about the local deer population as they can be frustrating to live near.  They do after all manage to do some pretty significant damage to my gardens each year.  It is awfully irksome to see your garden in full bloom one day only to find nothing but stems the next.  Despite that though I still find them to be beautiful animals to see and I’m always enchanted by the sight of a buck or a fawn.

I haven’t been seeing them though I’ve been too distracted looking down to look up and it makes me wonder how many other creatures I’ve missed recently.  I don’t recall what the last bird I saw was, if the owl which sometimes perches along the path has been there, if the butterfly population is still going strong or if there are as many 4 leaf clovers as last year.

I’m missing out on welcoming in my day surrounded by nature at its finest and it’s time to leave the distractions at home and remember to look up again.

Lifelong Learners

I want to teach my children a love of learning that carries through their life.  I want them to find a way to say they learnt something new each and every day.  I want books to be a haven of things they can explore, science to be a wondrous place where explosions occasionally occur. I want them to get messy and play with everything to never lose the wonder at the world before their feet. I hope they always look for questions, to ask and to answer, as there is always something worth doing when your learning is never done.  

Picture Day - Creatures of The Sea

These are some of my favorite sea creatures as seen at underwater adventures a very interesting walk through aquarium in Minnesota at the Mall of America.  

Wild Thing

There are two types of people in the world when it comes to amusement park rides those who love them and those that hate them.  Most of my life I’ve been firmly placed amongst the lovers of rides.

I once had no fear when it came to rides and the taller, the faster and the more spin to the ride the better I enjoyed it. As I’ve gotten older however things have changed quite a bit. 

While I still love the idea of rides I’m no longer quite so fearless and my stomach can no longer handle the spinning. I suppose as an adult having heard many more horror stories about deaths or injuries resulting from an amusement park ride gone wrong you can’t help but develop a little fear.

What this is leading to is Valley Fair in Minnesota where we spent this past weekend and in particular to a roller coaster aptly named Wild Thing. I looked it up this morning and it is identified as a “hyper coaster” which means it has a drop of over 200 feet, 207 actually. It is also over a mile in length reaching speeds of up to 74 miles per hour.

There was apparently also an incident in 2006 in which a train derailed, good thing I looked this up afterwards.  

As a kid I wouldn’t have thought twice about going on this ride now however I thought twice and third and forth times. Wild Thing as the biggest and longest coaster in the park it can be seen from every area and so it was constantly looming catching my eye time and time again.  

Finally I had the chance to go on some adult rides and after a coaster ride I loved and a swing I hated the Wild Thing was up next. As we stood in line and got closer and closer the more my anxiety grew.

By the time I actually got on the ride I had begun to think that this was a really bad idea. While sitting in a train car waiting for the ride to start that first 207 ft hill looks REALLY big. As soon as the cars began to move I decided that getting off would have been the much wiser decision.

It takes quite a while to get up that first hill and with each click-clack as it went higher and higher I had plenty of time for recriminations and ample time to prepare for what at that ever increasing height felt like my imminent death.

I’m not ashamed to admit I screamed, in fact to give an idea of just how high this coaster is, I had stopped screaming before we reached the bottom of that first hill. Not because I was no longer scared half to death but because I had run out of air.

I survived, I got off with a smile on my face but I’m no longer quite as sure of my place in life as a lover of amusement park rides.