March 30, 2024
Looking Through A Straw
The sun was already up when we awoke. It was a rare treat for us to sleep in, but this morning it felt rewarding. My wife ground coffee beans we had imported by my father-in-law from HEB. The food store chain that dominated Texas’ grocery industry produced some of the most delectable coffee beans. I even had them shipped when I lived in the Northwest, the self-proclaimed coffee experts of the U.S. After downing a cup, my wife and I headed into the forest for a morning walk.
The rainy days were behind us, and the forest floor was dry. We hiked straight to Beaver Tooth Rock, where we stopped to take in the forest’s sounds. The birds were always busy on the first sunny day after a storm. This morning, the chatter was loud, and I counted at least a dozen different songbirds, all singing simultaneously. The forest, while relaxing, was noisy this morning. My wife noted that in the northern part of the woods, there were very few pines, and deciduous trees dominated the landscape.
We spent most of our time sitting at Beaver Tooth Rock overlooking the creek. While we hoped to see the otters or a beaver, being out in nature was rewarding enough. It felt good to be still and take in the experience as it was. There was a type of bias called publication bias, which was the tendency to evaluate the world based on information that was available, never considering all the information we did not see. I felt like solving problems that came up in daily life was a form of this bias.
Most of life was good, but there were always problems, issues, or challenges. Call them what you will. Because we mainly thought about problems and trying to find their solutions, problems became a focus of life, drowning out all the good things that were in the background. Since our minds could only focus on a few things at once, we spent more time dealing with negativity, cutting out the time we consciously spent dwelling on life’s positive experiences.
This reminded me of looking through a straw to see the world. Doing so, one could only see a tiny fraction of life at a time. And if I was always knee, waist, or neck deep in thoughts about problems, then I couldn’t see all the good things that were right under my nose. This way of thinking, in my experience, could lead someone with a wonderful life to feel stressed, since they spent a majority of their time dwelling on their few troubles.
I believed it was beneficial to move the straw away from the problems and point it toward the positive things. Sitting at Beaver Tooth Rock or walking around in the forest were opportunities to be aware of all the beauty and ease around us. While most people acknowledged that looking at the world through rose-colored lenses was foolish, many people failed to realize that seeing only the difficult things in life was just as senseless. I wanted to embrace both, but this often meant setting down the problems, or at least limiting the time I spent thinking about them.
The fact was that for us, most of life was pretty perfect and problem free, and the forest gave us the daily opportunity to remember that and hold it close throughout the day. Instead of living from a position of fending off issues, problem-solving was a temporary place our awareness visited to help improve our circumstances. But when it was time to rest, we always returned to a default place of being happy and satisfied with life just how it was now. This was the way of the forest that did not merely survive. It thrived.
After we came home from the woods, my wife pulled out her computer and we looked at dress shirts for my work. She ordered six shirts from a company I liked and then we purchased personalized dog collars for the pups. While they rarely wore collars, we liked them to have one on when we took them into the woods in case they got lost. My wife added a couple of fluorescent dog vests as well. It was best not to run around in the wild looking like a coyote or wolf. After the online shopping, my wife left to buy groceries in Wilson. I stayed home and cleaned my office before sitting down to edit photos. At some point, I got sleepy and lied down on my office floor with my head resting on my meditation cushion. Lights out.
After a quick nap, my wife helped me load a black metal picnic table and benches onto our cart. After, I wheeled them out to the middle of the pasture where twelve pines stood. In the spring and summer, we liked to have a shaded place to sit. We would use this place to work, relax, and sometimes eat. The grass in the pasture was growing tall, so we pulled the riding mower out of its winter home in the shed. I cut the grass in a large section of the pasture, wiped the pine pollen off the table, and set it up in the shade. After, I mowed a lane leading to the house to make the walk to the pasture more enjoyable. Once I was done, my wife took over and mowed the backyard. It looked super nice. Ah, the joys of a freshly cut lawn, not only a pleasure to look at, but a sure sign that I was getting old.
There was something about doing yard work in the spring and summer that made us thirsty for a cold beer. After cutting the grass, we stored the mower in the barn for future use. Then my wife, in her infinite wisdom, suggested we take some chairs and a couple of cold beers out to Beaver Tooth Rock to relax. Seriously, the woman was a goddamned genius. We grabbed our things and hiked out into the woods. I suggested the possibility of changing Beaver Tooth Rock to Beaver Tooth Bar. We thought maybe one day, we’d have this property available as a bed-and-breakfast, and have drinks ready at the large boulder where we sat daily. The outing definitely made me look forward to a great spring at home.
A little later, we worked our way back to the house where we had an amazing dinner of pork tacos made from pork shoulder, fried corn tortillas, fresh avocados, lettuce, cheese, with sriracha and habanero sauces, topped off with freshly squeezed lime juice. They were outstanding. Once the sun neared the horizon, we went outside for the evening, where my wife started a fire in the pit while I split logs into kindling. We listened to some music, talking for a while before my wife grabbed her iPad, and sat fireside studying. I grabbed my laptop and did a little writing. It was another great day in early spring, and we relaxed until nine o’clock and then went inside to shower and get ready for bed. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. We had plans to bathe the dogs and go fishing.