“Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better.”
– Albert Einstein
On a recent work trip to Vancouver, Canada, I found myself facing two unassigned hours (nothing like an unexpected gift of time.) So I snuck away to the VanDusen Garden—a fifty-five-acre park named after Whitford Julian VanDusen, a Canadian lumber magnate and philanthropist. Inspiration can come from the unlikeliest places and be paid for with…
Nothing says Spring like the blooming cherry trees along the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. I don’t make the hike through the pink blooms every year, but when I do it’s something special. This year I learned that the existence of the cherry blossoms is a story of rejection and perseverance of a lone travel…
(Photo Credit: Shutterstock) As 2023 wound down, I began searching for a metaphor to understand the year that was. A hectic schedule found me immersed in unrelenting work demands that kept me away from the joy of writing. As I often do, I turned to nature to unwind and invite inspiration back into my world….
My recent four-month writing and blogging hiatus, caused by intense stress and workload from my day job, has come to an end, thanks to a hike through an elevator shaft. I sometimes can’t predict when the intensity of my day job will overtake my writing life nor how a creative dry period will end, but…
Hiking up to the remains of the Prizren Fortress in the city of Prizren, Kosovo, requires fortitude, imagination, and a few extra breaths. Our hike was steep and burdened by unreliable knees but lightened by the questions of young and curious minds. My hiking companions ranged in age from two and a half to thirty-five…
Is it the journey or the destination that matters? Last month, my husband and I walked the Sanders-Monticello trail outside Charlottesville with his parents. The four-mile round-trip walk through the forest on a well-constructed wooden pathway was lovely and relatively easy. Little did I know, it was inspired by Thomas Jefferson himself. “Of prospect I…
