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The Chaos of Life

Posted in Journeys, Writing, tagged crisis on January 4, 2015| 10 Comments »

Shortly after the daily crisis in my life went away, I took up white-water rafting. I have to admit I loved the challenge of conquering the rapids. I now wonder if this was a way of creating an artificial crisis?

“There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.” – Henry Kissinger

”Any idiot can face a crisis – it is day to day living that wears you out.” – Anton Chekhov

You Can’t Escape It

I once made a comment, when my daily life required moving through a debris-filled landscape dotted with landmines, that I knew I would be all right when the crisis was over.

“And what will you do when you have no more crisis in your life?” came the reply.

That comment, made 40 years ago, has stayed with me. Perhaps because a couple of years later, the daily calamities I had been facing went away. Overnight I found myself with holes in my days.

Sometimes it is easier, I realized, to have a crisis to face because they give purpose to your life. You have to be strong, and usually have no choices to make except what it takes to survive.

Isn’t life strange?

Thankfully, I found new purpose for my crisis-free days and the freed up hours; and now a crisis in my life is a rare occurrence. But when one does pop up – and it does because this is life we are talking about – the crisis doesn’t freak me out as much as it did when I was younger.

That’s the silver lining the years bring.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: On a Dollop of Dali: http://tinyurl.com/nfj2lh5 Fun quotes from a strange artist. I love ‘em.

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Sense of Place

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Journeys, Travel, Writing, tagged sense of place, Texas on January 3, 2015| 6 Comments »

“Life is short, break the rules. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that makes you smile.” — Mark Twain

One of the highlights of my trip to Brazoria County on the Texas Gulf Coast, where I lived for 15 years, is an opportunity to go birding with my son, Lewis. He is as avid a birder as I am. We always see great egrets on our outings. -- Photo by Pat Bean

One of the highlights of my trips to Brazoria County on the Texas Gulf Coast, where I lived for 15 years, is an opportunity to go birding with my son, Lewis. He is as avid a birder as I am, and we always see great egrets on our outings. — Photo by Pat Bean

Texas in my Soul

I arrived in Texas, my native landscape, on December 19, after leaving my current home in Tucson and traveling all the way across New Mexico. I spent the night in a two-star hotel in Van Horn before traveling on to visit a granddaughter and her husband in San Antonio.

On December 20, I drove to West Columbia, to my oldest son’s home where I celebrated Christmas with two sons, seven grandchildren, three spouses, and a brand new great-granddaughter. It’s a family of large personalities but all was peaceful – perhaps because everyone was enthralled with the sparkling personality and cheerful giggles of Savannah Kay, the youngest family member.

Sam Houston played a prominent roll in early Texas history, and so like most things in Texas, here he is — larger than life. — Photo by Pat Bean

The day after Christmas I took the half-hour drive from West Columbia into Lake Jackson, where my middle son currently lives. The city’s moss-covered trees, winding streets and green-green landscape felt familiar, perhaps because I lived in Lake Jackson for 15 years, from 1956 to 1971, when I left Texas — and never permanently came back.

A few days and another road trip away, I celebrated New Year’s Eve in the suburbs of Dallas with my oldest daughter and her husband, a granddaughter and her partner, and a niece and her husband. Dallas is where I was born and lived for the first 16 years of my life.

I remember back when Dallas, the Big D, was Texas’ largest city. Now it’s only third having been surpassed by both Houston and San Antonio. While the Texas landscape of cotton fields, oil rigs and live oak trees still feels like home whenever I see them, Dallas never again felt like home after John F, Kennedy was killed here.

I can’t help but wonder how much of who we are is tainted by where we lived, from our accents to our way of thinking. I think of Utah, where I lived for over 30 years, as a full-blooming flower in my life; Idaho, Nevada and now Arizona are the leaves of my plant-being, varying in intensity and color like the seasons. Texas, however, contains my roots, the first glimmering of whom I would be and the catalyst of my personality.

But it’s the still the road itself that has always been the place I felt most at home. I was born, I believe, with wanderlust in my soul.

On Monday, I’ll be on the road again, although staying in Texas just a bit longer. I have one last Texas family member to visit, a granddaughter, along with her husband and my first great-grandchild, 5-year-old Junior. They live in Lubbock.

And then it’s back to Tucson, where I’m letting the desert creep into my being.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Miss Pelican’s Perch http://tinyurl.com/nmv9zeh Looking at the world in a different way.

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Soul Searching

Posted in Journeys, Travel, Writing, tagged blogging, Chincoteague, tucson on January 2, 2015| 10 Comments »

“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world.” – Neil Gaiman

A scene from my past: This pier is located on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, and I sat on it in 2006 and watched birds. — Photo by Pat Bean

I’ve Become a Non-Wandering Wanderer

I started this blog when I was traveling full-time with my canine companion, Maggie, in a small RV I called Gypsy Lee. I blogged mostly about the places I visited.

Today I live in a small, third-floor walk-up apartment in Tucson that sits in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains. I have a new canine companion, Pepper, a joyful Scottie mix who helped ease my grief when Maggie went to doggie heaven.

The Present: The view looking out over Tucson from my third-floor apartment. — Photo by Pat Bean

My feet are still itchy for the road, but I’m finding new ways to scratch them by sight-seeing closer to home, traveling via books and photographs, and reflecting more deeply about the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met. The latter is a luxury of time gifted to me for having survived in this world for three-quarters of a century. I love being an old broad.

The things that I still have great passion for include writing, Mother Nature, birds, family, learning new things daily, books, art, travel and helping make this planet a more loving and peaceful world. And these are the things I will be writing about in my blog in 2015.

I’m looking forward to the journey, and am thankful for readers who will be traveling with me. Life is good.

Bean Pat: Soul Writings http://tinyurl.com/q88ltoz The world would be a better place if everyone lived by these 10 rules.

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New Year’s Resolutions

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged new year's resolutions on January 1, 2015| 11 Comments »

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” — Edward Abbey — Photo by Pat Bean

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” – My grandmother, Mamie Truesdale

A Plan for 2015

My New Year’s resolutions are to start each day with a cup of good, cream-laced coffee, write in my daily journal, and plan my day.

May you keep your eyes open, and be appreciative to the little things like desert phlox, that help make this planet so beautiful. That’s my resolution for my readers in 2015. — Photo by Pat Bean

These are resolutions I finally think I can keep, unlike my usual January First list of goals in which I promised to write four hours a day, take a daily two-mile walk, don’t play computer games, do more art, and don’t forget any family members’ birthdays (my kids tell me I’m better at remembering where and when I first saw a bird species than their birthdays). These resolutions, however, are just the tip of the iceberg of the ones I made over the years – and broke before the first week in January was over.

This year’s resolution to plan my day was inspired by one of the 20 suggestions I came across in an article on how writers can be more productive. Reading it was an AHA moment for me. I suddenly realized that my days were always more productive when I started them with a plan, and especially when the list of tasks on it were prioritized.

Today’s plan included writing this blog as a first priority. I want to get back to daily blogging because I find it easier than writing one less frequently. But if I do miss a day or two in 2015, at least I won’t be breaking a New Year’s resolution.

So what are your New Year’s resolutions?

Bean Pat: Interesting Literature http://tinyurl.com/m7r2zpy Start the New Year off with these “verified” writer quotes. As a former journalist of facts, I love it that this blog points out the inexact fluidity of the internet

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Mistakes: Deadly or Merely Embarrassing

Posted in African Safari, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged deadly, mistakes on December 10, 2014| 5 Comments »

“In a nervous frenzy, I fling words as if flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something – anything – as a first draft.” – John McPhee.

It could be a mistake wandering around beneath this flamboyant sunset in Kenya’s Serengeti National Park. — Photo by Pat Bean

Thankfully, I’m a Writer

Working on a deadline, sometimes of just minutes, occasionally meant that typos and even factual mistakes made it into the newspaper when I was a reporter. It was at those times that I used to comment that if I had made a mistake as a carpenter, my product could have been used as firewood instead of being exposed to thousands of readers.

If a lion focused on you, such a mistake could e deadly. Thankfully, typos are only embarrassing. — Photo by Pat Bean

Recently, however, I came across a comment that made me look at mistakes from a different perspective. A blogger noted that she was thankful she was a writer instead of a brain surgeon because her mistakes weren’t deadly. I guess the same could be said of an airline pilot, an explosives’ expert, or a snake charmer.

Even so, I still recall with embarrassment the first time I had to write a front-page correction. I was still a green-between-the-ears reporter, and had arrived late to a city council meeting. I’m normally a person who is always early, but back then I was a working mother with five children so I’m assuming I had a legitimate excuse.

Anyway, the next half hour after I arrived, the council members debated whether or not to give residents a 5 percent reduction for the cost of a particular city service. They finally agreed in the affirmative, and that was the big headline on my story the next day. Unbeknownst to me, however, was the fact that before I had arrived, the council members had already agreed on a 10 percent reduction, in addition to the additional 5 percent.

I think that was the biggest correction, thankfully, I ever had to write, as I became an avid adherent to the philosophy of double-checking facts, and then checking again.

But then I’ve made plenty of other mistakes that have been doozies, some even that could have been deadly. Don’t we all?

Bean Pat: A thought to start your day http://tinyurl.com/of9dsgt I couldn’t agree more.

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A Splash from the Past

Posted in Journeys, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged kayaking, Salmon River, white-water rafting on October 27, 2014| 5 Comments »

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was 43 years old when I experienced my first white water adventure. Within the next week, I had bought my own raft, and for the next 20 years running rapids was my passion. The river taught me much about myself.

A Long Swim

Being a writer and journal keeper, the artifacts of my life are found in words, like those that popped up yesterday when I was going through a box of photographs. Among the pictures was a faded proof of a story I wrote as a personal newspaper column back in 1988.

Who knows what is going to pop up when you’re going through artifacts of your life? == Photo by Pat Bean

While the story is about an incident that will forever be hazily embedded in my brain, the words I had written, when the details were fresh and new, brought back the memory in vivid, living color. I just love being a writer.

Here’s what I wrote over a quarter of a century ago – with a bit of judicious editing because I’m a better writer, if not a better rafter, these days.

PIECE-OF-CAKE RAPID, SALMON, RIVER, IDAHO – I knew before it happened that it was going to happen. I was going swimming. Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoy swimming. But I didn’t have the slightest yen to take a dip in a fast-flowing, bubbling, chilly rapid.

The last piece of advice given me by White Otter River guide, Randy Hess, as I stepped for the very first time into a one-person, inflatable kayak, was “Just keep it straight. These babies are steady and designed so they slice nicely through the water.”

Somehow he forgot to say: “But don’t let the kayak get turned broadside to the rapid or it will flip.”

Actually I already knew that. I had even been down this stretch of the Salmon River before, only in a large paddle raft with six people to keep the rubber boat pointed downstream.

An eagle on shore spotted during one of my annual floats down the Snake River below Jackson Wyoming. — Photo by Pat Bean

Today, however, I quickly realized that I didn’t have the hang of maneuvering my wobbly (Randy lied. It wasn’t steady) craft, or the skill to easily use the two-bladed paddle, which was also a first for me.

I might have had a chance to overcome the learning curve if the first rapid, Piece-of-Cake, named I’m sure by some maniacal jokester, hadn’t been within sight of the launch point.

“Stay to the left,” I heard Randy, who was nearby in his hard-body kayak, yell at me.

I was able do that, but I didn’t have enough control to swing the raft around to meet the oncoming second wave – and so I flipped.

“Sh-ee-it!” I uttered as I flew out of the boat just a couple of minutes after getting into it. As the water drowned my exclamation, I told myself to just go with the flow, and almost immediately I bounced off the river bottom and back up to where the air was less thick to breathe – until a mean wave reburied me beneath the water again.

But finally I managed to get my life-jacketed, and thankfully wet-suited body above the waves, and then quickly pointed my feet downstream, so they, and not my head, would hit any rock obstacle in the way. This wasn’t my first time being dumped in fast-flowing water.

The current, however, stramded me in a patch of tricky backwash. Sh-ee-it! I managed to get my favorite “I’m-gonna-die” word out this time before another kayaker came up beside me.

“Grab on,” she said. I didn’t have to be asked twice. But with my weight hanging on to her hard-shelled kayak, she couldn’t escape the backwash, and although my kayak was just on the other side of her, I couldn’t get to it.

Finally the expert, Randy, comes in to save the day, maneuvering his kayak so I can grab hold of it. I breathe a sigh of relief, figuring I’m now in capable hands.

The feeling was short-lived. In a rare, slow-motion moment, Randy’s kayak flips When I realize I still have hold of the boat, and am hindering Randy’s attempts to roll up, I let go. The rapid immediately takes me to the middle of the river, shoving more water down my throat until the waves subsist and I’m floating in calm water. Exhausted now, I wait to be rescued.

I ride in the group’s raft with the lunch supplies for a while, but then get back in that dang inflatable kayak and spend the rest of the day without mishap.

The kayakers later congratulate me for dumping Randy, a “pretty sight” they say they had never seen before. An abashed Randy then gives me “The Salmon River Swimming Championship Award,”

“I think the river,” he said, “was a bit high today.” And then he grins. –30

A few years later, when the water wasn’t quite so high, I got back in another dang inflatable kayak and with a granddaughter by my side in a second inflatable kayak, stayed in the boat through Piece-of-Cake Rapid and the rest of the day’s float trip. No rewards for me this day, only a deeply felt satisfaction in my soul.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: A new mindset http://tinyurl.com/ovy7yh9 Ditto what this blogger wrote.

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Art and Words

Posted in Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged creativity, imprefections, mistakes on October 24, 2014| 11 Comments »

I wish I hadn’t made some of the coral so dark.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.” – Scott Adams

Life Lessons

One of the most freeing pieces of advice I ever received was the one given to me by a Weber State University art professor.

Quick sketch of a barn

“Give yourself permission to paint a bad picture,” he said, then gave us the assignment to do just that.

I absolutely hated the “bad” painting I did for the assignment. But when the professor posted all of the students’ “bad paintings” on the wall, he pointed out what he liked in each of them. I was dumbfounded at what he liked in mine, but in reconsidering I did see a few elements of saving grace in my ugly picture.

While I never did come to like that painting, I did learn from the exercise. From that time foreword, I’ve given myself permission to paint a bad picture every time I have a blank piece of paper or canvas in front of me. It frees me enough that I can actually paint without having to worry about messing up. That’s good because I always do.

I can honestly say I’ve never painted a piece that I felt was perfect — and probably never will. It’s the same with my writing. I can always see ways, after a piece is published, where I could have made the words sing more vibrantly, or whisper more gracefully.

Perfection simply isn’t within me. But that’s OK. It’s the imperfections that make me who I am – and unique.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Leanne Cole Photography http://tinyurl.com/ohj4k9t Abbotsford Convent, a delightful blog for the armchair traveler.

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Monday’s Art and Quotes

Posted in Art, Writing, tagged Roosters on September 29, 2014| 1 Comment »

The rooster walks with intent, wearing indifference as his charm. — Illustration by Pat Bean

On Writing

“The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.” – Norbet Platt

“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov

“Easy reading is damn hard writing”. – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when here was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. – Ernest Hemingway

“All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Wind Against Current http://tinyurl.com/k3mv8dp Fiddling along, crab style. I think these crabs look like pieces of art.

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Few Things Last Forever

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Journeys, Writing, tagged mindful thoughts, Vita Sackville=West on September 21, 2014| 7 Comments »

Yesterday's art and the first piece in a new journal that I have promised myself I'm going to add a daily quick sketch.

Yesterday’s art … a scene captured on the hop. — Quick sketch by Pat Bean

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

‘If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.” – Thomas Aquina

A Journey through the Mind

Pepper taking a break on the picnic table after a hard run around the dog park. She got groomed later this day. — Photo by Pat Bean

As a young, but erratic journal keeper, I quickly realized that what I would write one day would not be the same thing I would write the next day. Not only is memory an infallible tool, life changes us every day.

No one puts this reality into luscious words better than Vita Sackville-West in my favorite writing quote:

“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.”

While it can be confusing, irritating and even debilitating occasionally, I’m glad my mind, and hence my writing, is constantly in a state of flux. It’s a byproduct of my eagerness to learn something new each and every day, and my willingness to take my ship into unknown waters.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: The Return of the Modern Philosopher http://tinyurl.com/m3udejl A very large umbrella solves the problem. This blogger usually has a very upside down view of life. He makes me laugh.

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A Rainy Day in Tucson

Posted in Art, Journeys, Nature, Writing, tagged pat bean, rainy day on September 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

“Poetry is not the most important thing in life. I’d much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.” – Dylan Thomas

I was doing sky exercises with my watercolors, and came up with this one for a stormy day.

And It Captured too Much of my Attention

It rained here in Tucson yesterday, a hard downpour that pretty much kept up a steady pace from early morning until mid-afternoon. I got drenched twice trying to walk dogs during pauses in the rain. But each time it began raining again before I could get back under a roof.

I titled this one “After the Storm.”

I’ve always loved rainstorms, but there seems to be something magical when rain falls in the desert. My neighbor said she watched the patterns of raindrops as they flowed on and off the leaves of the tree that shades her balcony for hours.

I also watched the rain — but only for a few minutes at a time. Even as an old broad, it’s hard for me to stay still doing nothing for long.

Instead, I found myself frequently glancing at the rain out the window that sits in front of my computer, while I tried to do a serious job of line-proofing my book, “Travels With Maggie.” It seemed like a good occupation for a rainy day.

Or maybe not.

I just reread some of what I had proofed yesterday, and found missed mistakes. Some days I don’t think there is an end in sight.

Blog pick of the day.

Bean Pat: Martha died 100 years ago this month. http://tinyurl.com/pvoaxsk Who is Martha, you ask? Check out this blog and find out.

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