Thank you. I was sitting struggling with the start of the post this AM and looking out at the morning fog. Usually it is pretty quiet here at this time, good for writing, and I was hearing the owls so close and so loud as to hear them through the walls. It is full moon time and they probably had a big time hunting overnight and have to brag about it. That’s what it seems like.

As for us we aren’t doing that much bragging lately. We are hunkered down in the fog and smoke with the Covid hunting. The news came out last evening that the Prez and First Lady have now contracted the virus. That is going to throw a whole new monkey wrench in the works such as it is, a most crazy time. We wish them well with this challenge as we try to keep politics out of this.

Yesterday I called in to order my allotment of chemo pills from the new supplier. My days on the clinical trial are coming to a close and my people at the Institute have figured out how to supply me with the same meds for my continuous benefit. This is a big deal and I am so grateful for them and their efforts.

I heard from Debra this morning on the Comments thanking me for mentioning her blog and of course, it is worthy. Let me repeat it here and give you some others that you might check out. There is so much fine writing out there that you can access easily.

Debra Jarvis’s monthly on the website for the University Congregational United Church of Christ, Seattle.

Richard Rohr’s daily.

Terry Hershey’s weekly entitled Sabbath Moment.

Joyce Rupp’s monthly. (Joyce wrote the Camino book Walking in a Relaxed Manner.)

I check in on these regularly. They are all major efforts and contribute to our overall well being. That’s what I would say!

Well, that is it for today. I have a drawing and a bid to work up for two doors that I would like to build for friends. Love my projects!

owly loves, Felipé.

Extreme low lying dense fog here this morning. Visibility is less than a hundred yards. Sound is muffled. It brings a sense of isolation to the immediate area that smothers but ultimately it is not permanent as the sun will “burn” it away from above as the morning progresses. Somehow the ability to keep in mind that the present situation is not permanent is an important skill to have in these times.

So many factors are alive today that want to separate and isolate us. It is the worst ever. It will take some real doing to dig deep within ourselves to keep things in equilibrium during these trying times. And of course reaching out to God to pray for strength is always a winning idea. But the notion that the situation is ultimately temporary will go a long way to help us out too. “This too shall pass” is the archetypal statement of this sentiment. We are with you on that!

This is a rough stretch of the trail right here if we put it in our Caminothink. As Caminoheads we should readily be able to do that, no problem. One hour you are happily walking on Astroturf and the next you are slipping and sliding on a rocky downhill. One hour it is easy peasy and the next it is concerning. Back and forth it changes, hour by hour, minute by minute, mile by mile, foot by foot. We know this drill!

Off to walk in the fog momentarily. Great morning to see a cougar or Bigfoot or maybe even the old alien spacecraft. Anything to break the spell!

breaking the spell loves,

I would like to have us all pat ourselves on the back for getting through the first debate last night. Wow, that’s a major accomplishment! What have we got two to go, yea but who’s counting.

Me, I couldn’t sit down and watch it, haven’t the stomach for it. I crafted a couple of meatloaves and got dinner together in the next room but within hearing range. So, is it meatloaves or meatloafs? Someone help us out here. Somehow in my half baked brain I see a problem there.

I am not trying to down play the importance of this election but somehow it is not the end all be all of life. We have so much work to do outside of this realm. I say we pay it it’s due and move on. Things won’t change til people’s hearts change. Did Pope Francis say that?

Well in the meantime as we have been “watching” the debate the wildfire smoke has been creeping toward us here in Seattle. I think that this is some long plume that went westward over the Pacific and decided to turn back and bother us. Fortunately it is supposed to stay high altitude due to some physics of weather, which we are happy with.

Maybe I’ll wrap it up for now, have an early dump run to do before things start for the day. The truck is running for me so now I have to use it. OK, see you in a day’s time.

high altitude loves, Felipé.

Last night just before dark I got done with the work I was doing on my truck. Three days worth of screwing around and that wore me out. Will be off to Jim and Jen’s to start their job shortly this morning. It’s. Tuesday in late September.

I have been wanting to tell you about a blog that comes out monthly by a friend. Debra who is a minister, chaplain, Caminohead and now blogger. Her blogposts are in the Comma at the website for the University Congregational United Church of Christ. Here is a link:

Heart making link

There is even a new word for us, “heartmaking”, cool! So check that out and maybe leave a comment and say Felipé sent you. She needs some more readership, don’t we all.

Well what’s next Felipé? Oh, tonight is the big Presidential Debate! I suppose I should watch it. Well, I will try it for a while and see how it goes. What kind of tapas do you serve for the watch party? Oh, that’s right we have isolation. I will be so glad to have this election over with. They always seems to take up more space than it deserves.

So, walk this afternoon at 4 at Phil’s Camino. It should be beautiful and no smoke. What more do you need?

what more do you need loves, Felipé.

Some mornings I just have to stare at the screen for five minutes before I can start. What to blog about? Well, for one one My Rebecca and I had a bang up few days with our anniversary and her birthday. That was sweet! And yesterday Catherine and Dana showed up to walk and have tapas just like old times! I had made hot spicy chicken wings for that because the big Seahawks Football game was happening too. (we won!)

Now it is a quiet and sunny Monday morning. The air is clear and the weather is looking favorable for the week to come. We are blessed. Lots of stuff happening around the ranch as we transition from summer mode to winter mode. So that is happening. Also I am starting a job this week for Jim and Jen working on their house and grounds. They have an outbuilding that they are going to turn into an art studio for Jen. That will be a fun project!

Rebecca is working relentlessly on getting her second novel to the publisher. She is close. It is somewhat of a chore since she really wants to be writing and researching for novel three about the 1918 flu epidemic. This is all fun for me to watch since I don’t really have to do much but occasionally make wisecracks.

Walking momentarily in the wet grass of morning. The tractor is out by the trail pointed toward the corn. I have the mower hooked up so the 2020 crop can be mowed down and put out of it’s misery. Then to till it under in prep for the clover cover crop for the winter and things next year.

And it is time to harvest a few deer. Last year we only got one between the three of us so maybe we can do a little better than that. I think we have five tags so five is possible.

That is a lot of what Fall looks like around here. The seasons march on before us. We do what we can to keep up with it all.

We saw a hot new documentary film entitled something like Octopus My Teacher a film out of South Africa. Here is a hot new word too: petrichor – (n) The pleasant, earthy scent after a heavy rainfall. That may be a word only for the Northwest since Autocorrect is not buying it, anyway…

anyway loves, Felipé.

Yesterday I skipped my early morning Bible Guys to catch Annie O’Neil and Terry Hershey for the Pilgrimage in Place Zoom. It was a great meeting and I hope everyone else got as much out of it as I did. It had Camino Dust all over it.

To the best of my knowledge Terry has never walked the Camino but he is a prime candidate for some future adventure in Spain. He lives a few miles from us here on Vashon Island. We’ve been to his place a few times for dinner but have never gotten a tour of his property. One of the things he is known for is his garden which he calls his sanctuary.

But what I wanted to get to was… Sorry, I need to digress a moment. I remember from somewhere in my early learning at Buffalo Public School 24 that we writers should never start a sentence with “But”. But I am so glad that I am over that and have now progressed to starting paragraphs with it. I am taking momentary joy in this, thanks. So, what I wanted to get to was that Terry is such an encourager for me and undoubtedly for others. He always says when we part, “Keep spilling the light!”

Keep spilling the light to you too! Right? What a great thing to say and then think about. It sort of implies that you have such an abundance of the darn stuff that people around you can’t help but get some on them. Like Camino Dust it just happens when you are around. “We can’t help ourselves”, as Annie says.

Which gets us back to one of the major lessons of the Camino, that we are here to buoy each other up. That maybe we even exist to buoy each other up. We are not hermits. Although there seems to be a time and place for that too. So, our neighborhood will be kinder and stronger if we can keep this light moving. What was that old Sunday School song about not hiding it under a bushel (a basket).

no bushels loves, Felipé.

Just got off a Zoom with Annie O’Neil and Terry Hershey and that’s all I can think about. What a great hour! This is Annie’s show with the FaceBook group Pilgrimage in Place. You can join that group and get with this weekly interviews with Camino people, authors and other personalities.

I feel so indebted to the Camino and the Camino Spirit. I can’t help myself as Annie says or we can’t help ourselves is more to the point. This is such a powerful commodity that is here for the taking. On the Zoom today there was talk of gardening and the Camino as parallels or as places this spirit can be found. These things are hard to talk about for words only seem to go so far.

Terry has remarkable story and insights. Maybe tune in later at 3:00 Pacific time to catch the second installment of the Annie and Terry show. You may have to join the Pilgrim in Place FaceBook Group to get started.

Ah, so may thoughts streaming through my head after that hour. I can’t seem to settle on one to write about. Over stimulated I think is the term.

I think that I will go for now.

marvelous loves, Felipé.

Rain in buckets large and small coming at us as we peer out from under whatever shelter is handy. There will be some nice days yet this Fall but today is not one of them. But it is My Rebecca’s birthday so that puts a good and different spin on it. I am sure Wiley and Henna will be over later for a piece of birthday pie.

Oh, I am off to town to give Jessika a ride. Will be back to finish this exciting episode. Let’s see where did I put my water wings?

OK, back again. Soggy out there. I am supposed to have an archery lesson today but that might be postponed. This is the nature of life in these up, dogging in and out of the weather.

We have a new reader here at Caminoheads who lives in England and comments often. His comments are very deep, far ranging and entertaining. You can find them in our Comments section under Kevan. I don’t think any of us consider these messages private and you can read other people’s mail there. By the way if you do want to communicate something privately to me put it is an email. Anyway, I discovered that he had read an obscure book that I also had read. It is not a favorite book for me but a very memorable one. It was one of the hardest books that I have ever read. It was about a very grueling pilgrimage.

I may have written about this before and if so it was years ago so I will continue. The Long Walk is by and about Slavonic Rawicz. And according to Kevan he resided in Cornwall, England later in life and has now passed away. The story goes that Rawicz was a Polish Officer that was captured by the Russians during World War Two and sentenced to a gulag in Siberia. At some point in his captivity he and several others escaped by walking all the way to India. They started out in winter by the way with nothing just the rags on their backs. They lived off the land and were befriended by backwoods folks along the way, the providence of God.

But the one story of the many in the book that has always stuck in my head was this one. And it is important because we now live with such abundance of physical commodities. We have to continually jettison stuff to survive. These guys and the folks along the way literally had nothing. But the story goes: one day as they were traveling they found a roll of wire that had dropped off a wagon maybe from the army or a survey crew perhaps. Anyway they decide to carry it as trading stock. One of Rawicz’s fellow travelers wore it around his neck. So one day somewhere they were taken in by a man who lived in a cave. The man owned one thing, a cast iron pot which he cooked in. I picture him being a hunter/gatherer who foraged all day to stuff something in the pot to cook each evening. He takes the walkers in, he who has “nothing” also. But he does have that one thing, the pot. And the pot has a place for a handle but never he had never had one. So Rawicz and his buddies fashioned one from the wire that they carried and it was one of the best things that ever happened to this guy!

Something so simple was something so important! I think about this often actually. Sometimes something so simple can make a huge difference. So, I will put my copy of the Long Walk back on the shelf held together by exactly the right rubber band, nothing to tight that would harm the fragile pages.

some important loves, Felipé.

I am getting my day going with two slices of banana bread baked up by our daughter-in-law Henna. She and Wiley rolled through last evening bearing gifts for us. We got them trained. They also brought three wooden bowls perfect for tapas so you will see those at some point. I trust that there will be tapas on a grand scale in our future!

It has been raining off and on which serves to lessen the fire danger that we were exposed to recently. I don’t know how far south that goes but it is here for us in the Seattle area anyway. One less thing to worry about these days.

Rebecca and I went into Vashon town last evening to treat ourselves to a sit down meal. Boy, town was really dead and there were only two places that offered indoor dining. We chose the Hardware Store Restaurant. And there was one other couple in there to start and then they left and we were the only ones in the whole place. Pretty grim I’d say.

We came home and watched the adventures of Gil Pender in Midnight in Paris. One of my all time favorite movies. I skip the first third with all the introduction to the future in-laws and get to the good part when the bells toll.

Have a walk in a few minutes. Will have to find my rainy day boots which have been put away. It is time to go and buy some sunflower seed for our feathered friends next time I am in town. The seasons are changing. Not too far away we will be walking the afternoon walk half hour earlier when the time changes.

We put up our old hummingbird feeder outside the kitchen table. We haven‘t had it up in two years and it is such a joy. My Rebecca and I bet on how long it would take for them to find it. I said two days and she said one and it was one. They are so quick! Anyway, it is my personal belief that every new cancer patient should receive one of these so it can be set up and enjoyed. It is such cheap entertainment and absolutely no batteries needed.

OK, time to go gear up. I think Jen and Jim will be here for the walk. Not many folks are coming these days and it is like the near empty restaurant in town.

no batteries loves, Felipé.

Oh, the rains have hit the area. It is pitter pattering on the sky lights overhead. The return of good blogging weather! Less distractions in the smaller more compact world of falling water.

Here on the blog we had that special message for us yesterday from Richard Rohr. That was a life preserver thrown to us that are floundering in these stressful times. We love you Richard, thank you!

It is our Wedding Anniversary today! Yea, forty three years ago we had an outdoor wedding in the rain. What else? Oh, forty two years as I double check. My Rebecca is right on top of the math. We are going out to dinner this evening if we can find anything open with indoor dining. And we will have cards for each other and maybe some little gifts. No shiny BMW’s with big bows on their roofs (rooves?) this year.

Well, I have serious homework to do today. A rainy day is a good day for it. Catalina has we reading all the way through the manuscript for the blog book. All the years I am crossing. Starting with 2014 and then 15, 16 and 17. I am in September 2018 at the moment. A year to go as the book is to end with last year’s Veranda. I did have fun in 18 reading my thoughts on my pilgrimage to Lourdes. In some ways it was a long time ago and I forgot my exact words so I get to relive it like any reader.

OK, time to go. Hang in there in the midst of everything going on.

keeping sane loves, Felipé.