California – Love Beauty Peace

Today is a perfect day for cloud hopping. What, you ask, is that? Well, I have a particular proclivity to daydream in the clouds. I like to look up on a day when there are puffs of cotton ball clouds that dot the blue sky. I imagine myself leaping from cloud to cloud, landing in a soft and springy embrace in the next cloud. I might bound from a low cloud and vault up to a higher one, or take a long lead and jump a great distance between clouds that are far apart. Mostly I hurdle like a dancer leaps, one leg stretched out in front of the other; a jeté. Rarely do I jump with two feet together. Sometimes I soar from cloud to cloud in one long stretch as if I were playing checkers and jumping over 10 pieces in one successive move.

My favorite days for cloud tripping are breezy days when the clouds are moving with a moderate to brisk pace so that I can vary which cloud I go to next based on what is floating nearest. A few weeks ago, Andy and I were working in the garden on such a day and it took a great deal of restraint for me to focus on the gardening task at hand and not go cloud hopping. I did manage to squeeze some jumps in when I took a break to lie down on the grass and stretch my back (the gardening work was intense!).

Flying is something that I have been doing since I was a little girl. My first early experience was at night in my dreams. Probably due to watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I began my treks in the sky on my four-post bed as a child. In the movie, the children go on adventures on a magical brass bed with their caretaker (who is a witch). I went on my own adventures as I flew my bed way above my New Jersey hometown. Mainly I would just watch the goings on from above. I still love to go up high into the sky and watch the world and I have had those floating dreams many, many times over the years beyond childhood.

Another media impact on my (you might say unusual, I say wonderful) flight behavior was the TV special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. As a little girl, I have a very distinct memory, one that seemed real even when I was old enough to know it wasn’t, of looking out my bedroom window into the sky and seeing Santa and his sled with Rudolph at the front. I determined when I was a bit older that the angle of Santa’s flight that I saw was exactly what occurs in the very last frames of the animated special. My lifelong fascination with the sky and memories of my night flight adventures are very dear to me.

Day skipping in the clouds, conducted while awake, is very calming to me and something I am happy to do anytime. It’s a form of daydreaming so not surprisingly, the clouds can be very distracting, even as I sit here and write. My desk is in front of a large window and I have a great view above our tree line of a piece of neighboring mountain and best of all, the sky. I might be in the middle of a sentence when a cloud catches my eye and I decide to go on an adventure in my mind – and in the heavens.

But cloud hopping is also very useful and productive. Because of the meditative quality of the experience, I often solve problems or just become more relaxed when I am way up there. If something is upsetting me and I am lucky to have the right conditions in the sky, I do a little bouncing from puff to puff and whatever was bothering me becomes less important. Or I suddenly have clarity and make a decision that is authentic, based on my gut knowledge of what is best for me. Like the time just a few years ago when I was on a bus in Florida and the sky was particularly splendid in deep blues and puffy pristine clouds. I realized during that 15-minute bus ride between the media conference and the hotel that I was done with my corporate gig. I immediately began my serious plans to leave. The clouds served me so well that day because now I am happy as a child, floating above the sky and doing my own creative work.

Walking around a lake while camping or day picnicking in a camp area has magical memories for me. When I was between the ages of about 7-9, my parents, my older brother Erik and I went camping in Southern Jersey two times. Both times we drove south on fairly small roads through the Pine Barrens to Bass River State Forest (I am pretty certain it was called a State Park, not a State Forest back then). One time we rented a cabin and the other time we pitched a tent. On the trip where we rented a cabin at the edge of Lake Absegami in Bass River, Erik and I decided to go for a hike (though as I think about it we probably didn’t call it a hike then, just a walk on a path or trail).

Venturing off on a path was not so uncommon for Erik and me. Every summer for perhaps 5 years or so, our parents took us to Washington Crossing Park to see outdoor theater. Around the theater were wooded trails that snaked around gentle hills above the amphitheater. Before the show started, after we had our picnic dinner or got hotdogs at the concession stand, Erik and I would go off and explore the paths.

I don’t remember if we told our parents that we would be away for long, but I do remember that when Erik and I left the cabin we went out on our walk with no particular plans. Of course as a child that is the norm whereas as an adult I never leave without looking at a trail map first. We started our walk and before we realized it we were nearly half way around the lake and had to make a decision. I remember being tired and grumpy but our only method to get home to the campsite was to walk back or continue and either route felt too long. So we decided to continue and complete the loop.

I have no sense of what we did other than walk – perhaps we were quiet, perhaps we talked or in a rose-colored memory maybe we sang songs. However we progressed we eventually made it back to the cabin and I do remember the feeling of immense satisfaction for having made it around the large lake. When I glanced at the lake, I could hardly believe that my legs actually took me around it. I have that similar sense of amazement when I hike a trail that has elevation and look back to where I started – is it possible that I made that much distance in my human vehicle?

In grad school, when I was dating Andy who later became my husband, I went with his family for a day trip to his childhood camping area in Northern California. His grandparents had a cabin that they owned nearby Pinecrest Lake, and for several summers Andy and his two sisters and brother and parents got the cabin for their own week long vacation. We arrived and walked around the camping grounds and meandered around the roads to look at the cabin that had been unfortunately sold by Andy’s grandparents before anyone of their kids or grand kids could have bought it. We had lunch at a picnic table near the looming lake.

This was the 80s and “jellies” were in at the time. “Jellies” are rubber shoes styled to look like elegant flats. Now these days it isn’t uncommon to find rubber shoes but the difference is that today they have good construction and lots of padding. Jellies were almost like walking barefoot except that you always got blisters. (Mine looked like these without the bow).

Not realizing that we were going to be doing anything other than lounging around (what was I thinking), I wore my favorite pink jellies and sundress. The kids (Andy, his siblings and me) decided to go for a walk around the lake. I went and I remember feeling the same sense of grumpiness as my childhood experience after walking and sweating and getting sore feet about half way around the lake. But soldier on I did, trying my best to be sweet to Andy’s siblings who I didn’t really know all that well yet. They thought I was nuts, of course, walking around in the pink jellies, but what was I supposed to do? When we got back to the picnic table where Andy’s parents were hanging out, I again had the feeling of personal triumph as I conquered yet another camping lake trail. By the end of that trip my jellies had ripped, but I had made it. And as I gazed at the lake, I was again astounded that on my own, I had gotten around that large body of water. I am at awe of how resilient and powerful our human bodies are, including my own.