River Gorge Reflections
"Pace yourself." Received shortly after my father died, it wasn't the advice I was expecting, nor immediately understood. I didn't yet realize the scope and duration of effort required to wrap up someone's life. I dove in with vigor thinking it was going to be challenging but a relatively short process with "just a few more things to do." The 24-hour day is but one timescale. It's easy to overlook others, like emotional and geologic processes that transcend 60-minute hours and carve their own winding arcs. I was traveling in the Pacific Northwest last week—where the ancient and new are so abruptly juxtaposed—visiting friends I've known for decades and originally met through our common sustainability work. Sharing different, but aligned experiences over time, particular striving, intensive ones like trying to inflect social and environmental trajectories, fosters enduring bonds. So many of my friends are weary, less from the current political climate (just a new degree of the same resistance), than the challenging nature of a long journey. We can be relaxed, genuine, and honest with each other, our common landscape of trust providing a soft footing and requiring nothing else. The visits last week were relatively short, mostly taking place at various coffee shops. They are what I came for, seeking no profound insights, but rather grounding and embodied reassurance, a recognition that we'll continue to get through it, whatever it might become, because we have, because we know and love each other, and because there is a belief timescale as well, that propels me forward and, we all know, will far outlast us. Pace yourself.
