That Confinement Box

Black-crowned Night Heron

I could write about the details.  Become mired in the facts. I learned early on while blogging that I didn't enjoy such things.  I figure I do enough of it every day.  The artist inside wants his blog to capture the magic of our world because quite frankly, the experiences are magical.

Pike's Peak

Everything is explained.  Everything needs an answer.  Everything must fit with this or that.  There is no in between. I get into a car and drive away from people and society.  The further I get, the more my mind relaxes and opens up to the possibilities.

Ladderback Woodpecker

I imagine standing in the grand vistas of the world.  The sunny bright arctic circle.  The snowy dark forests of Canada.  The Egyptian deserts. The Himalayan mountains. The Congolese rain forest.

Vermilion Flycatcher

I imagine that there are people wanting to be standing where I naturally explore. For them, it is also foreign. My foreign.  My familiar.  As a boy, I dreamed of these things.  In my twenties, everyday was different and crazy.  In my thirties, I paid for those twenties.  In my forties, I am alive again. I began to realize that there aren't as many days ahead of me as there are behind.  So I wake up every day with a quick pace similar to that of my youth. However....coffee first:)

Northern Waterthrush-Life bird!

National Geographic magazines exposed me, as a kid, to the world at large.  I read my Ranger Ricks, Arizona Highways, and National Geographics the minute they arrived in the mail.  I built a wooden airplane with my neighbor friend.  We knew it would fly and take us to foreign places.  I sat in the cockpit and imagined flying out of snow covered Wisconsin pastures over tropical waters watching whales breach the waves below.  Maybe I would discover the last dinosaur on Earth.  It was in Brazil hiding within the unexplored Amazon rain forest! (or so the article in my Ranger Rick stated)

Northern Mockingbird

I wanted to escape my hometown as a child.  My 8th grade year, I babysat for my cousins in Flagstaff, AZ.  I left the lakeshores of Wisconsin and discovered the mountains of Arizona. And I knew that I wanted to see the world.  But I had to follow the details.  Study. Work.  Earn my right to dream.

Verdin

Today I still have to study, work and earn my right to dream.  But it has become so much easier.  And it is reality.  I live a life of adventure.  There isn't a formula for this.  I had to feel it inside. And it took me over a decade to discover my inner child again. There is nothing worse than feeling dead from within. That feeling of mundane. What is that?  That's not life and it's certainly not how I want to live.

Head down I-10, take the exit to Tubac and turn right.....blah blah blah.  Boring. Instead, I think, "Head to the open air, away from society onto that beautiful river along the historical DeAnza trail. Follow history.  Follow your heart."   And discover what lies ahead.