My Year In Review...

And what a year it's been! It included my divorce finalizing, my dad dealing with a variety of health issues, me finally coming to terms with who I am and how I want to live my life, putting down roots once again in the Michiana area, embracing my new role as the medical power of attorney and primary care coordinator for my Great-Aunt Dorothy, falling in love with a wonderful woman and subsequently coming out to my friends and family, my parents putting their house on the market in the spring and having it sell 24 hours later, their move to Minnesota after living in Indiana for almost 40 years, going on an epic 5,000 mile road trip to California to close out that chapter of my life, completing my first 5K race, and ultimately realizing that the best things in life are often hidden in plain sight.

I want to thank those friends and family who've known about and helped me through all these changes this past year! I'm blessed beyond measure to have your unconditional love in my life. To those of you I haven't seen or talked with in a while, I carry many happy memories in my heart and look forward to making more with you in the coming years.

As usual, I feel like pictures say it best. Here's a compilation of my adventures over the past year...

Hiking at the RES, a local preserve where I attended girl scout events when I was little girl

Rum Village Park - a new favorite hiking place right in South Bend

Finding happiness

My mom lost in the petunias at Varner's Greenhouse

Sunset over the Rockies near Denver with my cousins

My reward for a long day's drive from Denver to southern Utah

Visiting the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park with my friend Alysia and her little boy

A bit of silliness with family at my goddaughter's high school graduation party

Fourth of July fun

Warren Dunes State Park along Lake Michigan

Go Boilers!

Celebrating my nephew Andrew's 4th birthday

Discovering the jazz scene in South Bend

Pond reflections on the Notre Dame campus

My first 5K race on Thanksgiving Day up in Niles, Michigan

Celebrating Thanksgiving with Aunt Dorothy, Uncle Jeff and Michelle

Happy holidays and best wishes for 2016!

Unintended Beauty

I love taking pictures of architecture almost as much as I do the natural world. But rather than admiring the front of a building, I often find my eyes being drawn to the side streets and back alleyways. Over the years I've accumulated a collection of photos that capture my fascination with these spaces. 

True beauty exists independent of our human intentions. With the perfect combination of line, color, texture and light a functional space can become a work of art... 

Even more interesting to me are the spaces between buildings. These gaps offer visual breathing space and a slice of blue sky that hints at the infinite expanse beyond the densely packed city streets. 

I enjoy stepping a few feet into the space between two buildings on a hot summer day to feel the coolness of their shady walls and taking a break from the icy wind in the middle of winter. Without any visible present day reminders, I sometimes feel like I've been transported back in time.

Places of unintentional beauty fill me with a sense of gratitude and humility. They transcend our ideas of what should be considered worthy of appreciation. When we look for them, we find they exist all around us, especially in the most unexpected of places.

Where do you find unintended beauty?

Welcoming Change

February in Indiana was long and cold and very white. After a relatively balmy January, a parade of winter storms marched across the country, and the Arctic wind blew long and hard over the waters of Lake Michigan. The temperature plummeted as the snow piled higher and higher. I shivered and shoveled my way through the month with the consolation that at least I didn't live in Boston...

And then all of the sudden it was March. Within the span of one warm week the snow disappeared into the ground. Although the initial color change was welcome, the muted shades of mud brown and dried leaf eventually blurred together. 

During this in-between season, I was enrolled in an online photography course called "Everyday Magic", which forced me to stretch my mind beyond the damp, dull surface of my surroundings. I was pleasantly surprised to see beauty in places I never expected to find it...

Sometime during the month of April, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the grass in the yard turned from khaki to emerald... 

...and succulent pastel colored shoots began to emerge from the jet black dirt.

New leaves unfurled along bare brown branches...

...as droplets of rain coalesced in their folds like tiny precious jewels.

Fair weather clouds drifted across the bright blue sky...

...while a burst of stunning colors and shapes decorated the ground below.

The cold, blank canvas of February seems like a distant memory to me now, replaced by this technicolor landscape I dreamed about and longed for only two months ago. But just yesterday I noticed the daffodil petals in the front yard are already wilted and fading, a reminder that everything changes. At the end of the long winter during that time of in-between, if I weary of snow white, mud brown and faded leaf, may these colorful memories give me faith in that eventual first glimpse of a new spring.

Coming Full Circle

After spending the first twenty-five years of my life in Indiana, I headed west after graduating from college and never looked back. Since that time I've moved from Southern California to Wyoming to New Mexico and then to Central and Northern California, living in three different towns along the base of the Sierra Nevada. Each place offered me the opportunity to see beautiful sights, have amazing new experiences and meet an array of wonderful people. To say that my flat, seemingly commonplace homeland paled in comparison was a complete understatement.

Up until very recently, I could imagine no scenario in which I would a) willingly move back to my hometown or b) find Indiana as appealing as the West. And yet, here I sit in my parents' guest bedroom in Mishawaka, Indiana, marveling at the decision I've recently made. I completely surprised myself two months ago by deciding to move back to the place where I grew up and with each passing week I find that Indiana has more to offer me than I ever could have imagined. Never underestimate the power of perspective to completely alter your life - even the parts you thought were set in stone.

It all started on a cold day back in early November. My dad asked me if I wanted to go on a hike at a local state park and I took him up on the offer. As we drove through the gates of the park, I began to have flashbacks from my childhood - riding bikes down the paved trail to the general store for ice cream cones, walking the well trodden path from the campground to beach on a humid summer afternoon and hiking in the forests throughout the park.

The peak of fall color had passed, but as we hiked along the trail, I was caught off guard by the beauty of the hardwood trees. Their lithe trunks lifted high above me casting a net of branches across the pale blue sky. The crunch of ankle deep leaves filled the air. It was sunny, but a cold breeze occasionally passed through the treetops, sending a cascade of withered leaves down to the ground. I was charmed by the whole experience and found myself falling in love with a place I had dismissed as painfully ordinary so long ago.

A week or two later, I began attending services at a local Unitarian Universalist church. I had discovered this denomination while living in New Mexico and everywhere I went afterward, I knew that if I found a UU congregation I would be surrounded by people who also valued acceptance, tolerance and the responsible search for truth and meaning. I quickly felt a sense of community and discovered an opportunity to fulfill my goal of teaching workshops related to my new coaching career.

As family medical issues began to surface, I realized that rather than spending just a few months in the area, I might be living here for an undetermined amount of time. To my surprise, I was delighted by the idea! I discovered a myriad of places to rent cross-country skis and began dreaming of day trips all along the shores of Lake Michigan in the summer. I thought about fireflies and fresh vegetables. Apple picking in the fall. The sandstone grottos of Turkey Run State Park, where my great-great-grandfather's covered bridge spans the width of Sugar Creek.

And then it occurred to me that this place I had dismissed so long ago has always been this filled with wonder and beauty. I just wasn't ready to see it. I needed to get past the surface of things, the grand canyons and the rugged mountain peaks, to realize that each place is what you make of it. You'll see what you expect to find and experience what you seek. If you want to be swept up in the remote, epic beauty of a vast landscape, Indiana may not be the place for you. But when you recognize that vast and remote are also a state of mind, you can immerse yourself in that world any time you choose.

My parents have moved three times in my life, each within the same subdivision. The tracts of houses have expanded into the surrounding forests and cornfields with each new addition. Just down the street from their house, the pavement comes to an abrupt end and over a hillock of discarded soil lies a wide dirt road that cuts through one of the remaining stands of trees. They aren't large or even all that beautiful. But they're there. And when I pass beyond that boundary from the subdivision into those trees, I enter a vast and remote stretch of undeveloped land. I can feel my heart open and my lungs expand in the same way they did when I first saw the Grand Canyon or climbed a peak in the Tetons. What we see with the eyes, we judge. What we see with the heart, we feel. I know that no matter where I live, if I look with my heart, I'll feel at home.

Through Space and Time

Driving across this vast and beautiful country is like watching the ever shifting canvas of a landscape painting brought to life. 

The low-angled autumn sun strikes the slopes and plains with a luminous glow, intensifying the colors of the changing leaves and dried vegetation. 

A diversity of geologic forms and textures undulate into and out of view as they tell their stories of creation and destruction. 

Drifting clouds decorate the wide blue sky with shades of gray, occasionally obscuring the bright white bulb of the sun.

Mirrored in the lakes and rivers are impressions of a deep blue watery world where trees and mountains ripple in the wind.

The hand of humankind is evident across the blacktopped roads and gently curving wooden snow fences, on the faces of history carved into stone, by the blanket of crops and scattering of cattle, and in the buildings and towns that rise above the horizon.

Each of us at the intersection of past, present and future, moving through space and time, counting down the hours and the miles as we marvel at the miracle of it all.

Lambs Canyon, near Park City, Utah

Along I80 passing through Rock Springs, Wyoming

Late afternoon outside Casper, Wyoming

The Black Hills of South Dakota

Mt. Rushmore

Custer State Park

Sylvan Lake

Rapid City, South Dakota

Where the Great Plains and the Badlands meet

Badlands National Park

Near Alden, Minnesota

Naperville, Illinois