My Last Hurrah of Summer: My Acts of Bravery for the Week

For the past couple of weeks I have participated in the "Be Brave" project started by Jessie. This weekend I found myself being brave on two accounts. First (and silly as it may sound) I left my laptop home when we went to the coast the past weekend. It has gone everywhere with me this summer, even the Odell Hall weekend, which to my surprise everyone was grateful it was there and we used it a lot! Ha! But this past weekend, it stayed home. And I lived although, I thought about many things I wanted to look up and I had to wait to post my weekly 7-kicks at 7 Imp until returning home.


Next, on Sunday morning, I awoke and headed down to the beach. The tide was almost all the way out and was a minus tide at that. I watched the birds on the cliff, realizing they were cormorants which reminded me of a favorite childhood book, Island of the Blue Dolphins. The camera only showed them as specks. So the only thing I could do was to move in closer. This meant climbing on the massive amounts of slimy slick bull kelp, rocky uneven surfaces.

Squishy, slick bull kelp

Anyone who knows me, know that my middle name is "grace" (NOT) and so I had to be particularly brave and cautious as I moved in closer to the cliff. And although, I still wished that I had my film camera with its telephoto lens, I did get a better photo of these marvelous birds and their young.

Okay, still not the best but there they are.

Finally, after photographing the numerous starfish and anemones, I headed back to the motel.

A staircase is hiding to walk up the cliff.

What have you done to be brave?

Chair Lifts

Chair Lifts

What scares you in your life? Is it the dark? Roller coaster rides? Being alone? Spiders?
I realized this summer that ski lifts are really not my cup of tea. I realized it when I politely turned down an offer to ride the ski lift to the top of Humphrey’s Peak in Arizona earlier this summer. I was reminded of three summers ago when my college friends’ group rode the ski lift at Winter Park, Colorado during our annual women’s weekend.
A double chair, bare terrain and rocks below you without a blanket of snow to break a fall, should that happen. What if I dropped my cell phone? What if my camera fell? And then the getting on, getting off dance of the chair lift? It is like a moving object that even my Rubenesque body has a hard time hitting the target. That only brought to the surface memories of my skiing days; the time I fell face first getting into the lift and the time I was afraid to get off the lift. Not my cup of tea.
So when I was in Flagstaff, I said no thank you and that was that. We found other things to do in town.
Ski lifts. Who would have thought that I would eventually end up on one this summer anyway? I am writing this during the seventh annual college friends’ weekend and we are in central Oregon. Adventures had been planned for us and one was to lunch at Pine Marten Lodge, 7800 feet above sea level. We certainly were not going to hike to the lodge or helicopter in. Yep. Ski Lift.
I took a big breath and bought the ticket. I managed to scan the ticket too many times and the turnstile would not let me go but luckily the staff showed me the secret way to get ready to sit on a moving object.
But surprise! This chair lift was moving very slowly! It was almost as at a stop as I sat. Oregon has rules and regulations about the speed of the chair lift on the off season. The ride to the top was breezy and thankfully my friend and I chatted the whole way, a welcomed distraction for me.
This was my reward for being brave:

Looking toward Three Sisters

We ate a deliciously wonderful lunch and then headed back down. The ride was scary (I prefer the up to the down) but we moved along, did not stop for any length of time, and the exit was smooth. I gladly placed the lift ticket in the recycle box. It will be a while before I head up the chair lift.
Today I write this as my friends are bicycling around the resort. Ahh, another opportunity to be brave but I did decline that adventure. One adventure per trip is quite enough for me.

Be Brave Project. Will You Join In?

I have been spending some early morning surfing the blogs I usually read. This is a return to a practice I have not done in a while. This morning I followed bread crumbs from the 7-Imp post to this blog, Diary of a Self-Portrait. In October, Jessie began the "BE Brave" project by challenging herself to be brave in her life. She invited others to join in. In October, I was into that world of national boards for teaching so I missed it, or perhaps, I was on my own "be brave" project. So now I am going to commit to doing at least one brave thing a week.

Here are the "rules" as Jessie wrote in her post:
(most important:) MAKE YOUR OWN RULES.
Do this for yourself.
Make a commitment for the length of time that best suites YOUR needs--one day, one month, one year, one moment...it's all up to you, and you alone. ;)
The "brave" or "scary" things that you choose to do can be as big or little as you want them to be. Sometimes it's the little things that can be the most scary (and beneficial)!
(not to quote Nike, but...) Just do it.
Be on your own schedule. You don't need to make a commitment until YOU are ready.
This is your unique journey--make it whatever you want it to be.

Glad I didn't know about this last week or I would have had to rethink the decision about NOT going on the "tilt-a-whirl" ride with my granddaughter.

As I write that, it does seem so inconsequential to what some people or animals (as Monday's post at Jessie's blog shows) in the world must face on a daily basis. It makes me feel very blessed to live where I live and have the job that I have.

Will you join me?