I have to try making Solar jars!

The ascetic in a canoe

How can you describe the feeling which wells up in the heart and stomach as the canoe finally rides up on the shore of the campsite after a long day of plunging your paddle into rain-swept waters?

Purely physical is the joy which the fire spreads through the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet while your chattering mouth belches the poisonous cold. The pleasurable torpor of such a moment is perhaps not too different from what the mystics of the East are seeking. At least it has allowed me to taste what one respected gentleman used to call the joys of hard living. Make no mistake, these joys are exclusively physical. They have nothing to do with the satisfaction of the mind when it imposes unwelcome work on the body, a satisfaction, moreover, which is often mixed with pride, and which the body never fails to avenge. During a very long and exhausting portage, I have sometimes felt my reason defeated, and shamefully fleeing, while my legs and shoulders carried bravely on. The mumbled verses which marked the rhythm of my steps at the beginning had become brutal grunts of "uh! uh! uh!" There was nothing aesthetic in that animal search for the bright clearing which always marks the end of a portage. I do not want you to think that the mind is subjected to a healthy discipline merely by worrying about simplistic problems. I only wish to remind you of that principle of logic which states that valid conclusions do not generally follow from false premises. Now, in a canoe, where these premises are based on nature in its original state (rather than on books, ideas and habits of uncertain value), the mind conforms to that higher wisdom which we call natural philosophy; later, that healthy methodology and acquired humility will be useful in confronting mystical and spiritual questions. I know a man whose school could never teach him patriotism, but who acquired that virtue when he felt in his bones the vastness of his land, and the greatness of those who founded it.

-Pierre Elliott Trudeau

This is a part of how I felt after some of our longer portages through the Lakes at Powell River. I remember reading an Essay by the same author and the same topic earlier in my life but I can't remember if it was the same essay. When I tried to search for it this came up repeatedly so I'm thinking this might be it.... or my memory fails me. We had a great time in Powell River though not a much wildlife nor ruggedness as I might have been expecting.

My Mandala's Go Green

Mandalas are cool to begin with but when I started creating them with natural objects they became even more enigmatic. Sand, snow, leaves sticks and shells... This idea comes from the philosophy that creating something beautiful and interesting should be free excess . I also like that when I am using natural objects the art stands on its own. The free factor lets me hold the ownership over the creation process but relinquish worry over the product. When I am finished I normally just walk away, leaving the mandala for others to enjoy or wonder over, and to naturally diminish with time.

Plus we mustn't forget the 'coolest' natural mandala of all, the snowflake!