Crisis Of Faith

 This post is going off the rails.  I have been struggling this week with a lot of questions regarding who I am, what my purpose is, and other self depredating questions.  This has led me to look deep in myself, and though I don't have the answers yet I feel that putting these thoughts out here might help me organize them in my mind.   Who knows maybe this side journey will help you all find some truths in your own life, at least that is the hope for my own. 

First crisis I have been experiencing is a struggle with value.  My wife and I do not see eye to eye on the value of money.  I don't care for it. It is a tool that helps us survive to me but to her it is a way to prove herself as worthwhile.  Normally we move through this very easily but for some reason I have been looking deep within myself this week after a budgeting disagreement and I feel that I have let her down.  I start so many projects that I never have the legs to finish which causes undue pain, especially when it comes to money and the making of it.  One of the goals of this blog was to try and live a life closer to nature and to find value elsewhere but as I pursue this I feel that I need to find a better paying job, I need to finish my degree, I need to go work for the corporate elites and fight my way to the top. It is hard for me to decide where to put my values.  I know that I value free thought, creativity, and the pursuit of joy over anything money related but for some reason I feel that I have to give myself up in order to live a life better filled.  

My second crisis is one of faith.  I have some family members that have embraced a more natural path towards salvation.  They have been looking at alternative faiths or in some cases developing their own spirituality.  Growing up in the Mormon church I was always taught that there was only one path to the highest degree of heaven.  Once I was in college I found that I did not really feel comfort in the church and stopped going. I still go for my families sake when we get together for the holidays but I really find no peace in the organized religion of Mormonism.  This week I have started to struggle with questions regarding the actual reality of Jesus, heaven, hell, and all that most western faiths are built on.  I began to think of Jesus as a tool of the Roman empire to make their citizens worship one faith in order to conquer and maintain power across the world.  I may be wrong but this crisis of faith has caused some sadness as I start to question whether all that I have been taught is real or not.  As I have looked at the books and research of the more earth based faiths I have found some truth but I do not feel peace in them either.  If anything I am starting to wonder whether religion is real or just a construct to maintain power over a populace. 

The final struggle this week is in my value as a writer.  I have always loved to create.  I would go out of my way to write through any and all problems that came up but I was always too shy to share my musing with the world.  In fact I have started many of these blogs that I had every intention of sharing with the world that I end up not following through because of my own insecurities and the small inner voice that nags at me about how nobody would enjoy that, or you are not worthy of anything good.  It is a hard voice to smack down. I feel drawn to the pull of its constant interference. My hope is that I will not be giving into it this time and that I will be able to push through the uncomfortable feelings of putting myself out there and that I will be able to at least follow this goal of mine.  I fear that I will not be able to keep this up but I promise that I will try as hard as I can to post at least once a week in order to keep the dream alive.  

Thank you all for taking the time to read this.  I know that personal journals are not always the most fun to read but if they give you an insight into your lives, into my life, or in any way help you understand me a bit better then I believe that it is a win.  See you next week as we look at the book "Where the Water Goes" and discuss the conservation of water along the Colorado River. 

Alaska's Grizzly Gauntlet from National Geographic

 Hello everyone.  It has been a couple of weeks and I apologize for taking some time off of writing here but life has a way of getting crazy. I have been thinking about what I wanted to write about for this weeks post and realized that I have watched an amazing series on Disney plus called Grizzly Guantlet and I thought it would be kind of cool to share my thoughts with you all about the series. 

When I was a child I very much wanted to work with animals.  At one point I thought I wanted to be a cattle rancher because there was nothing more exciting than being a cowboy, at least in my mind.  I then moved on to loving to hike and backpack with my father and then later with the Boy Scouts of America. At the university level I enjoyed my biology courses the most which is why I actually watched this show. 

Summary and Thoughts:

This show follows photojournalist and adventurer Les Stroud as he tries to get in close with different wildlife in the Alaskan Frontier.  In the first episode he goes to Kodiak Island and follows a group of brown bears as they gorge themselves on salmon before the hibernation season begins.  He is even able to capture a juvenile brown bear putting her scent on one of his field cams, a very cool and precious moment if I do say so myself.  The best part of this first episode is the look at a family of bears where a cub is lost, learns to survive on its own, and is reunited with it mother.  

In the second episode we travel north to a small island where polar bears have started to come into town. This episode is one that I think everyone that wants to live a more green, or conservation minded, life should watch.  It shows the problems that our receding ice shelf is placing on the bear populations of the north. I never thought of bears as being the most intelligent beings in the natural world but this episode changed my mind on that.  We hear stories of patrols that are sent to look out for bears and how the bears learned to hide in the shadows and avoid them almost like they were extras in the movie "The Great Escape".  This is an absolutely sobering look at the struggle these massive animals are going through as their means of  migration and hunting have been taken away from them.

I don't want to give too much away from the remaining three episodes as they are equally informative and entertaining but I have to wrap this short summary up here soon.  In the remaining episodes Les travels by helicopter and sees the Caribou in their natural environment.  We see how these majestic animals scout out predators and the way the herds have adapted for survival.  We then travel to get up close and personal with moose.  That is one animal that I would avoid if I ever cam across one as they are frightening. We finish off the series checking out the salmon spawning season in black bear country.  Another amazing look at how animals have evolved to survive and what it looks like.

Overall:

I highly recommend that you all take a moment out of your lives and watch this show. It lit a fire under me to do all I can to help save the arctic and the animals that are threatened because of the loss of our polar ice caps and ice shelfs. It doesn't only paint a picture that is grim for the animals of the Arctic circle, it also paints a grim picture for the people that live and work in the arctic. 

I rate it a 4 out of 5 because of the awareness it brought us and the information that it shares.

Transitions

 Our life is a series of transitions.  In the morning we transition from sleep to alertness.  We transition from home to school or work.  We transition from place to place, action to action, and leader to leader.  We even transition from friends and family in order to better protect and live our best lives.  

I was going to write about how watching the sunset can make for a wonderful mood booster.  I was going to talk about the relaxation and the joy watching something so naturally beautiful can be, but in light of some things happening in my personal life and the transition that most Americans are experiencing right now I decided to write a short journal post about a transition that I am going through.  

I grew up in a faith that demanded strict adherence to its set of life.  During the beginning of the pandemic I started to look into it again because it was something stable, concrete, that I could latch onto during these troubling times.  I created some social media accounts to see if I could find a place to fit in and cut out a small community of people of my childhood to see if I still belonged.  I have to admit that my choice to leave the church in my youth might have been the best decision that I ever made.

During this week of political uncertainty I wrote a microblog about how now we need to figure out how to come together and learn how to repair a broken country. I was met with calls of repentance and being told that I am not a Christian because a follower of Christ would never accept people that lived certain ways and had certain beliefs.  It made me laugh at the amount of time I wasted in my youth trying to win the acceptance of a group and always feeling outside of the group.  I do not believe that this group is my tribe and I do not want to be a member of this groups tribe anyway. 

I have always felt way more at ease, way more at home in the woods and hills.  There is a connection there that fills my spirit with a rejuvenating power that I do not get anywhere else.  I have been a borderline pagan for a long time, constantly talking to the land as I work it and leaving small offerings and tokens to the land as I see fit.  There is a peace and an acceptance from the belief that the world is the provider of all mankind and that we should keep Her in our thoughts as we go about our day.  

The world does not judge us or tell us that we are going to perish in hellfire if we don't follow her teachings.  She does not differentiate between one species and another.  She balances the best that she can by making sure that we are provided for.  This is a god that I can honor and why I will be transitioning from the new gods to the old gods in my life.  I am tired of people using their faith and beliefs as a way to control others, and I refuse to be a part of that.  

Sorry for the rant.  I guess I needed a bit of a journal today.  Tomorrow we will talk about some way of connecting to nature.    

One Hour Without Screens

 In today's pandemic driven society we are spending a lot more time on screens than we are off of them.  I have never in my life spent so much time in front of a computer, and I have noticed that it is really taking its toll on me and my psyche.  I guess I am assuming that you all are feeling the same way to some extent if you have read this far but hey I could be wrong.  

Steven Jobs once said in an interview that he doesn't let his kids have screen time at home.  I found this to be very telling, almost like when the person who developed TNT saw the ugliness of his creation and created the Nobel Peace Prize as a counter to the destruction that he unleashed upon the earth.  Screen time is not necessarily a good thing.  One way that we can reconnect to the nature around us is to let go of the computer, tv, phone, tablet, etc... for one hour every day. 

I started to do this one week ago and have found a great increase in my creative power.  I wouldn't say that I have spent every second of my technology free hour outside, but I have done something other than stare at a computer screen.  It has been amazing.  

Some of the activities that I have done while on my technology fast:

• Read a book
• Make tea
• Think
• Listen to the Birds
• Go for a walk
• Clean my house

Like I said I have not done things every time outside or in nature, but I have started to feel a strange relaxation surrounding not being connected to anything.  

The challenge:  Implement One hour every day of zero screen time.  I promise that you will start to feel a change in your mental state after just one week.

Program

 Hello Everyone!  I wanted to take a moment and introduce myself to you and share what this project will be.  I am creating a series of blog posts that I hopefully will be sharing every day in a way to help others connect with the nature around them.  

I believe that it doesn't matter if you live in the city, in the country, or in the wilderness (granted if you live in the wild I doubt that you will be reading this) we all have the ability to connect to the nature around us.  Over the past ten years I have gone from a climate change naysayer to someone who believes that something has to give in order for us to be able to survive on this planet.  One of the easiest ways that I have found to battle climate change in my own life is to spend more time in nature, more time observing the gifts that the earth have to offer us, and more time putting myself outside and less time just thinking about it. As I was brainstorming different ways that I could change the world I realized that maybe someone would love to follow this journey with me.  

My goal for this journey is to share one tip, story, experience, thought every day and try to live just a little bit more in line with the environment that we have around us.  This will be a challenge, but I am looking forward to learning about myself and how I can make an impact.  

"Never Doubt that a small group of Thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; it is the only thing that has." ~Mararet Mead~

I hope that you all join me on this journey and hopefully we will be able to change the world one step at a time!