Intellectual Wallpaper

I Got High

Windy Point Vista

I got high on Wednesday!

Okay, I got 5,000 feet higher on Wednesday.

Fine, if you want specifics, my husband and I drove the S-curve road up nearby Mt. Lemmon on Wednesday to go hiking -- the Bigelow Trail was at an elevation about 5,000 feet higher than where Tucson is in the valley.

I was thrilled to be walking -- and sitting -- beneath huge, old Ponderosa Pines!

I brought along Widget's carrier in case he got tired, but he was quite the trooper, sniffing and usually leading the way.

Phoenix the Corgi was with us as well, but was hanging back with my husband.

Before heading back down to Tucson, we stopped for pizza and a snack at the Cookie Cabin in Summerhaven. YUM!

The drive to the Bigelow and Butterfly trails is about an hour and a half from our home, but the trip was well worth the reward. I definitely need to do it more often.

Four Questions

While listening to an interview on one of my favorite podcasts -- OnBeing with Krista Tippett -- four questions mentioned in an interview with Seth Godin immediately aligned with the concept of writing for audience, and how we go about doing that. Narrowing my focus to a particular audience when I'm writing can be grueling, which is why this resonated. Maybe these four questions will give someone else direction or support or a new way into viewing their audience (Godin's prospective customer) as well, so here is the excerpt:

Who is your next customer? You mean that conceptually. Their outlook, hopes, dreams, needs and wants. What is the story he told about himself before he met you? How do you encounter him in a way that he trusts the story you want to tell him about what you have to offer? What changes are you trying to make in him, his life, his story? And then you wrote, start with this before you spend time on tactics, technology, scalability.

Softness Sings

The gentle kiss of winter rain in the desert feels as if Softness woke up and decided to sing a lullaby. 

Drinking my chai outside with the rain falling is bliss. The pitter-patter on the patio is sweet music to my ears. I hear Gene Kelly’s voice “singing in the rain” and I listen to the rhythm of the raindrops so that my voice can join the water-song that is nourishing the earth and me. The rain makes our sidewalks slippery so I walk on the gravel instead, feeling it give slightly beneath my weight. The dogs don’t approve of the squishy ground that causes the small rocks to shift, but I do — I approve of all that is rain-associated in the desert.

An exquisite milky-gray mist hovers thickly upon the nearby mountain reaching nearly to its base, gradually thinning as more rain falls, emptying itself upon the slopes where droplets find old cracked-earth pathways to travel down. Will it rain all day? It might! This is a steady, gentle effort, not the torrents of monsoon. Both are welcome and needed, each in their own way, to nourish the variety of plants accustomed to different cycles. 

There is no wind with this rain so it maintains its distance, soaking the circumference of the patio that is open to north and west, but not wetting the interior where I sit with pad and books and Widget curled up invisible beneath my poncho and buffered against the cool sixty degrees that is too chilly for his Chihuahuan nature. 

The birds chat periodically from their hideaways in the mature lemon and sumac trees; I don’t know the birds’ names, nor can I match voices with individuals, but I invite their conversation with a smile and a tilt of my head so that my stronger right ear can listen. They don’t seem to mind my eavesdropping. The former thick mist on the mountain has now become a wispy veil dancing its sultry art. Raindrops are smaller but remain steadfast in their devotional offering. Is it bad that I don’t yet know my feathered neighbors by name? Or is it acceptable to simply love and appreciate them when the visit?