Posts
Continued from the same writing.
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Nature is the greatest healer that we all have. I have used her beauty to soothe the mind and body numerous times and continue to see outdoor adventures as a time to let go and free the mind. Having the opportunity to be in the whitewater rafting community as a photographer the past two seasons I have found a real love for a job that puts me outdoors on a daily basis. From the sweltering hot summer days to the chilly fall mornings with fog and rain. I Love It!
This has given me new desires for what I want out of life and the things I will be able to do in the future post-transplant. A life with new lungs gives me a much more inviting future knowing that I will be stronger and with the ability to breathe. I look forward to the day I can take off running down a forest trail, watching the trees and ground cover pass me by in a blur. Every step will be timed and planned out strategically, placing each foot on a rock, a root, or piece of dirt so that it may just for a moment as I pass thru.
Meanwhile, all this activity of hiking in and out of river valleys has been great for my health. But I must also say that not every day was an easy one. Going to work is a great motivator when I dont feel like leaving the house. On these days and more recently the river has left me with ample time to strengthen the mind. Reading books about nature, adventure, philosophy and of course science has provided me with great insight into human life and the determination required to continue.
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Those days on the river were the most therapeutic and in good timing. As life always is in the right time. I can not express now or then how I needed those days; alone, under and umbrella with pouring rain, camera gear, a book, and myself. I will use the word meditation to describe how my brain worked while on the banks of the Gauley river. It wasn't just the rain or the sun, it was mountains, birds, and water. The way the fog would lift off the river in the mornings or after a rain. It was the hiking into the woods early in the morning listening to birds announce my presents while passing thru. It was those days that showed me life. Not just my life but theres all of the trees, bugs, snakes, birds, the Earth.
Now 13 months post transplant I have went running down forest trails seeing what I dreamed of when writing that. Having gone to several places in this time and hiked what I could not before. Even ran on trails I could have only walked up with oxygen on. To read what I only dreamt of and for those things to become reality has become the greatest gift of life. Life Itself!
"But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him, as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years ahead, and how carefully would they use them. And yet it is easy to organize an amount, however small, which is assured; we have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point." ~Seneca
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Nature is the greatest healer that we all have. I have used her beauty to soothe the mind and body numerous times and continue to see outdoor adventures as a time to let go and free the mind. Having the opportunity to be in the whitewater rafting community as a photographer the past two seasons I have found a real love for a job that puts me outdoors on a daily basis. From the sweltering hot summer days to the chilly fall mornings with fog and rain. I Love It!
This has given me new desires for what I want out of life and the things I will be able to do in the future post-transplant. A life with new lungs gives me a much more inviting future knowing that I will be stronger and with the ability to breathe. I look forward to the day I can take off running down a forest trail, watching the trees and ground cover pass me by in a blur. Every step will be timed and planned out strategically, placing each foot on a rock, a root, or piece of dirt so that it may just for a moment as I pass thru.
Meanwhile, all this activity of hiking in and out of river valleys has been great for my health. But I must also say that not every day was an easy one. Going to work is a great motivator when I dont feel like leaving the house. On these days and more recently the river has left me with ample time to strengthen the mind. Reading books about nature, adventure, philosophy and of course science has provided me with great insight into human life and the determination required to continue.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Those days on the river were the most therapeutic and in good timing. As life always is in the right time. I can not express now or then how I needed those days; alone, under and umbrella with pouring rain, camera gear, a book, and myself. I will use the word meditation to describe how my brain worked while on the banks of the Gauley river. It wasn't just the rain or the sun, it was mountains, birds, and water. The way the fog would lift off the river in the mornings or after a rain. It was the hiking into the woods early in the morning listening to birds announce my presents while passing thru. It was those days that showed me life. Not just my life but theres all of the trees, bugs, snakes, birds, the Earth.
Now 13 months post transplant I have went running down forest trails seeing what I dreamed of when writing that. Having gone to several places in this time and hiked what I could not before. Even ran on trails I could have only walked up with oxygen on. To read what I only dreamt of and for those things to become reality has become the greatest gift of life. Life Itself!
"But if each of us could have the tally of his future years set before him, as we can of our past years, how alarmed would be those who saw only a few years ahead, and how carefully would they use them. And yet it is easy to organize an amount, however small, which is assured; we have to be more careful in preserving what will cease at an unknown point." ~Seneca
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