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One of the super-powers of mindfulness is that we get to observe our thoughts and let go of the ones that don't serve us. We learn that our thoughts are not who we are, we don't have to believe them and that we are the ones who create them, so we can just as easily choose to uncreate them. -
Exoplanets are planets beyond our Solar System. Speculated to exist for centuries, the first exoplanets were only discovered in the 1990s. But since then, thousands of exoplanets have been discovered and confirmed, and that list grows longer every month. So, some of these exoplanets must be like Earth, right? Well, we still don’t know if that’s true! The easiest exoplanets to find are worlds that orbit very close to their parent stars, and are often fiercely hot, or massive gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn in our own Solar System. No exoplanet like Earth that orbits a Sun-like star has yet been found.
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Last week we talked about the key components of a retreat and today we're going to talk about the benefits. Retreats are one of the many ways that I feed my soul and reconnect with my heart. They take us out of our habitual thinking, doing, pursuing, perceiving and place us in a whole new context completely geard towards peace, intention, healing and insight. They have the ability to get us unstuck from tough places by shifting our environment and routine, and surrounding us with symbols, sounds, movements and people that represent a pure and supportive energy. -
Have you traveled along a dark road and been temporarily blinded by bright oncoming headlights? I think we all can relate.Vehicle headlights are among the most widespread and least regulated sources of artificial light at night. A full moon produces roughly 0.1–0.3 lux. Lux measures how bright light appears on a surface, specifically the amount of light that falls on a given surface. One lux equals one lumen per square meter. Lumens measure the total light output from a source. Lux depends on distance and beam focus: the closer you are to a light source or the more focused the light beam, the higher the lux reading. -
When fire commanders try to figure out how to contain a major wildfire, the last thing you might expect them to deploy is a herd of beef cattle. But on the recent Gold Mountain Fire in western Colorado, cows are eating the “fine fuels” along a three-mile fire line on the Big Cimarron River.Putting that idea into practice five years ago would have required miles of electric fencing and a range rider to gather strays. Now, new technology has changed the game for cattle grazing by putting electronic collars — all solar-powered — on cows and linking them by satellite. -
Many of us have heard about or participated in a mindfulness or meditation retreat. Retreats vary in length, cost and content and it can be overwhelming to deciding which one, if any, would benefit us. I do believe that retreats are very beneficial but I don't believe they have to be organized or costly in order to be so. Some of my most beneficial retreats have been those that I have done for free on my own in nature. Today we'll talk about the key components of a retreat and next week, we'll talk more about the benefits.
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Picture a clear stream where spawning salmon undulate over clean gravels, pressing upstream through waters the iconic fish once vanished from entirely. That’s Lookingglass Creek, in the Umatilla National Forest.In the Wallowa National Forest, Huckleberry Mountain sustains rare species like the Wallowa rosy finch, and on the Malheur National Forest, there’s an Alaska yellow cedar forest hundreds of miles inland from its core range.These three national forests in eastern Oregon share something in common: They are intact roadless forests now on the verge of losing the protections that have kept them free from industrial logging and new roads. These lands are also common ground shared by Tribal members, hunters, anglers, wildlife watchers and anyone who values a quiet trail into the backcountry. -
Last week, we began answering the question that I often get when teaching Mindfulness which is "Does this get easier?" We started by examining how it can make life easier, and said "Yes, it absolutely does". And today we're going to talk about how the practice of Mindfulness itself, gets easier.
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If you’ve ever stepped outside on a clear night here on the Western Slope, especially away from the lights of the town, you’ve probably noticed something so obvious we rarely question it; the sky is dark. Not just shadowed – but truly, deeply dark.It seems simple, but for astronomers, this idea leads to one of the most interesting questions in science, If the universe is full of stars, why isn’t the night sky bright everywhere you look? -
When I was 18 and first worked as a river guide, I assumed I had to be as tough — or even tougher — than the guys I worked with.It was the early 2000s, when few women were guiding. Though I loved being on the river, I often felt isolated, thinking I had to work harder than anyone else to be taken seriously. I believed that in part because I didn’t know the stories of women who had come before me.Little by little, I began to hear about Georgie White, the first female guide on the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. She started Georgie’s Royal River Rats in the early 1950s and made a name for herself running huge motorboats — stocked with Coors and manned exclusively by Los Angeles firemen. Her trips were known to be raucous and so were her outfits, leopard prints preferred. But the stories sometimes made her seem more like a caricature, a wild and outrageous woman. -
In my classes and sessions I often get the question "Does this get easier?" I find that people are asking this about two different topics. One is about life - "Does mindfulness make life easier?" and two - "Does practicing mindfulness and being mindfully present, get easier?" The Answe to bor is yes, with explaination of course. We'll talk about the first topic today.
