Sustainability is the key to all facets of life...whether it be farming and gardening, camping and kayaking, or simply living on this planet from day to day.

Campers, hikers, and lovers of the outdoors have been doing it for years. We call it 'leave no trace' ~ leaving things nicer than we found them ~ in essence, the very same philosophy that we learned as little children but, which sadly, for many has fallen by the wayside as life just keeps getting busier and busier and as the world keeps moving faster and faster.

Slow down for a moment and sit a spell in the rocker on the front porch as I do my best to return my own life to those simpler times.

Enjoy your visit, come back as often as you like, and feel free to bring a friend every now and again~

MarySue

"We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public." ~Bryan White















Friday, October 7, 2011

Columbus Day: Love it...and Loathe it

Two things spring to mind for me every Columbus Day Weekend. 

First...the thing that I loathe.

Why do we celebrate a day of discovery for a guy who 'discovered' a continent that had already been discovered way before he got here?  Then...once he was here, he robbed and pillaged and killed the locals.  Gosh...if I didn't know any better, that would sound an awful lot like the guys who we consider to be the "very bad guys" today.  Remember what happened when Saddam Hussein went into Kuwait?  We didn't celebrate him, give the government workers a day off, school kids a holiday, and name cities after him.   


...and Second.  Something I love about this weekend. 
Paddling.  Perfect weather paddling.

I have kayaked every single Columbus Day weekend since I started paddling.  This is a video montage I made of my very first Columbus Day paddling weekend and when I truly fell in love with the sport.



I also started learning to play the hammered dulcimer around that same time.  (Nope…not me playing on the video.  That is my former dulcimer teacher in Baltimore – Ken Kolodner, an amazingly talented artist and musician.) 

Since that time, I have truly embraced kayaking and have paddled on Columbus Day Weekend at Cape Fear, North Carolina, the Chesapeake Bay, and this weekend, on the James River.  In between Columbus Days I have paddled the Saguenay Fjord in Quebec, Downeast Maine, and lots of wonderful locations along the MidAtlantic Coast.

Oh, wait…let me correct that. 

I discovered those places.  Hmmm…come to think of it, using that type of logic, I can say that I discovered the hammered dulcimer, too.

Yeah, right…about as much as Christopher Columbus discovered America.   

Have a safe holiday weekend. 

May it be filled with discoveries (as long as they are real ones).

Enjoy!





 
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