Outdoors

Some people have had decorative signs on their lawns tha say one word - BELIEVE. It always annoyed me because I want to ask believe what? Believe in miracles? Belive in Karma? Believe in God? Just believe seems pretty dip - so open your brain falls out.

But here is something I believe - the Outdoors heals! As you know I have been sruggling this summer with what I would have to describe as a mood disorder - a deep state of sadness. Is it depression? I don't know exactly what depression is. I can still function,s o perhaps not. I wrote you about the death of my cat Booty and my dog Uma and those were the events that rode on the back of the pain and sorrow train that is Old Age!

Old age is so hard. Losing beauty is ok, but losing vision and hearing is awful, but even worse is losing mobility. When I speak of what I am going through, it is a reflection of the experience of 2/3rd of the people I know who are my age. Four of my friends and two of their husbands are experiencing what I experience a couple even worse. Only two people I know my age are so far free of these disabling conditions: one has had two knee replacements with resounding success and is traveling and climing hills and mountains. Two others walk over 10,000 steps a day with a fluent and confident stride. Those two walkers do have their on situations to contend with but less life altering: kidney stones, and a mild form of dementia.

When I described my cobdition to my Philadelphia brother, he said, "Now you know how I feel." That aame day, I found "7 minutes of chair tai chi for old people" on YouTube and gave it a try. It was easy and I will do it again.

The next day, I went to Proprietor's Park and did the little walk, which is 900 steps from the car to the statue and around and back. I hope in a week, I will be able to do the longer walk along the river. I made a deal with myself, I could have my decaf latte' as long as I drove directly to the park and did the little walk each day. I have done it two days in a row. It does make me feel better.

I know and have proved it experientially at least to myelf that getting outdoors is healing and beneficial emotionally and physically. The key however, has always been how to make myself do it when I am depressed and lethargic. For the month of July when I was experiencing the pet losses and heart episodes, I just couldn't make myelf do it. Now somehow I can. I recommended the "7 minute chair tai chid for old people" to my brother and he said he would look at it. I hope he does. My brotehr in W.Va. does better than either of us in mood control and I think it is because he walks his dog outside every day - every day! Outdoors is somethign I do believe in!

Get Outside! Start with a car ride to the park if you can't make yourself walk, even a sit on a bench can get the magic of the trees and the ir and th natural world into your sad and wanting body.

Happy Trails!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

(I don't make my e-mail a clickable link because it lets in bot spam which has already polluted my comments section)

What's Missing?

Tuesday August 18th, 2026 noon. Just finished lunch and I was sittting here thinking about what exactly I have been missing in this period of trial and sorrow. This morning, I spoke with my brother in Philadelphia. I think there is an invisible kind of radio wave whereby siblings might feel that there is something they should know and get in contact with another sibling.

I brought him up to date on my sad state of affairs, my heart trouble, my dead pets, our West Virginia brother's diagnosis of eye melanoma. Meanwhile, I had contacted all my most communicative friends to find out which one had been telling me about someone they knew who had undergone treatment for this very thing. It was Nancy and she told me her next door neighbor had melanoma of the eye and had radioactive seeds implanted in his eye and had been cured. It was good news.

Telling my brother all the things that had happened caused me to admit I was depressed. He said, "Now you know how I feel." And it is true. Now I could empathize with his apathy and his gloom. He stays in all day and gets high and watches tv. When he tells me, I alway ask him to get outside and go for a little walk and to try gummies instead of smoking because smoking is so bad for his arteries and heart. I know he won't but I have to try. I called him later and left a message for him to look on YouTube for "7 minute chair tai chi for old people." I tried it yesterday and it was quick and easy and I am going to do it every day.

While I was sitting here, after eating my lunch of crackers and tuna salad, I realized that I felt a little better today. I had taken a short walk at a local park, Proprietor's Park, down on the Delaware River. In the beginning of the summer, when I could harly walk, I took to driving down there with my dog, Uma, and walking from the car to the statue, around, and back to the car, about 1000 steps. There was a bench at the statue where I could stop and sit when I needed to in the beginning. After a week, I was able to walk the longer path along the river and afer a week of that I was able to go further along that path, about 2000 steps - the point being that there was alway improvement.

Maybe the chair tai chi, maybe the walk, but for whatever reason, maybe TIME, I felt better after lunch today. I have my car back and my second tire situation resolved. And I began to wonder, what it was that felt better and what it was that I had been missing when I was depressed. It came to me that it was a sense of happiness in myself. Not a happiness from an outside experience but an inner sense of just feeling good inside myself. That had been missing and in its place had been a feeling of doom and sadness, loneiness and pointlessness.

Whatever helped me, walking, chair tai chi, or time, I am grateful to have had a short flush of that good feeling and it gives me hope that the fulltime sense of happiness in myself will return at some point. It is a reminder to me, however, that it is best to try to get moving and not to just sit steeped in sadness. The bigger world outside is a tonic, even taking a car ride to the park is a window opening on to the big world and sky and the healing powers of air and trees and space.

Sorry I have spent so much time on my inner workings and not on activities or bigger ideas but perhaps this is what was needed, if not to you, definitely to me. And maybe it has helped someone also struggling to get over a series of blows.

'Happy Trails to You until We Met Again!

wrightj45@yahoo.com

Change the Channel August 15th, 2026

Just as in the lives of everyone, sometimes several sticky anxiety producig situations arise at once in my world.

So it has been in my life this summer that I had a crisis each week. First I had a serious and frightening heart episode (I won't go ito details as I make things too long). The following week my cat Booty disappeared then turned up dead in my recycle can. The week after that, my dog, and best friend, Uma died of a heart attack. This week, I just heard from my brother in West Virginia that he has been diagnosed with melanoma in his eye.

There are five of us siblings in our family unit of my parents, Mary and Joe, now deceased, and their offspring. I am the oldest at 80 and next to me is my brother, Joe in W.Va., about 77 or 78 (I am never sure which), then my brother Neal in Philadelphia who is in his late 60's, my sister MaryAnn, estranged from us in W.Va. in her med 60's, and the baby, Sue who is 61. Sue ad I are the closest.

My personality from birth is to be anxious and see many angles of potential disaster (like my father) and my position in the family predisposes me to worry. Too often I feel like "my Brother's keeper" literally, although, I have been out of that job for a couple of decades. Slowly over time, I began to say "No" to their requests for money or assistance and they all matured and found ways to resolve things on their own. Not feeling responsible was my task. Still, when my brother Joe, told me yesterday that he was diagnosed with melanoma in his eye, I awoke this morning wondering how he was going to get his groceries if he couldn't drive.

Joe lives on a mpuntain a half hour drive to the closest small town, and an hour tp Walmart; a car is a necessity. Joe inherited living rights to the house when my father died, which instigated the rift betwen four of us up North and the sister in W.Va. who had expected to inherit the house outright. My brother had moved to W.Va. to stay with my mother and father who had declined terribly after my mother's death, so my father wanted to make sure Joe had a place to live but that maryAnn who was committed to living in W.Va. would own the house when Joe died.

My sister Sue gave me the advice I needed this morning: "Joe is Captain of his own ship. He will work it out one step at a time as things evolve, stop worrying about him." She is right, of course. Not worrying is the thing I need to work on - not feeling responsible for everyone and everything - not thinking that the way people behave is in some way attached to me. Sometimes people do things because of who they are and it has nothing to do with me.

There was another situation recently, a problem arose and I had to step back and stop looking at this small and recent problem and expand my focus to take in the whole, larger successful and beautiful situation Expanding the focus - like moving the camera lense to panoramic.

I had made a cartoon type drawing in my daily journal once of a radio dial, a metaphor to mysself about changing the channel. This is a far harder thing to do than one might suppose. Our minds get stuck on one station, maybe an angry complaining talk show, and we have a hard time moving the dial. That is a skill. That skill is acquaired by practicing meditation, in my life anyway.

Pema Chodrin calls those places where our minds get stuck, "sticky shenpas" and they are like parasitic leeches in the lake of the mind, they sink their teeth in and suck away your vitality and creativity. Detaching them is a practice, not allowing them to feel fixed and immutable. Recognizing that they have no real hold upon us and shaking them off.

I think I have been working on that my whole adult life from my first acauaintance with the subject of Buddhism sixty years ago, through college and psychology and to my Quaker practice. I am still a novice, still learning, still practicing and still seeing how I fall short. But owning the concept that we can change the channel is the key to freedom.

Happy Trails to you until we meet again.....

to comment or converse, you can reach me at my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com

I write this as a reminder to myself!

Perseid Shower - a Summer Memory

Some years ago, two close poet friends and I set off in the night with lawn chairs and light weight blankets (for night coolness), to find a place far enough away from the city lights that we could view the Perseid comet shower.

Dan Maguire was not only a charming man with a beautiful Irish enor voice, he was a gifted poet. Together with Tom Clapham, a brilliant librarian and poet, we were members of the Mad Poets Society in Pennsylvania. It was a lifetime thrill of mine when one of my poems was chosen in the top ten one year in their annual publication. Generally the greatest thrill for me was to be included in their publication.

Eileen D'Angelo was and is he founder and head of the Mad Poets' Society and she is also a brilliant poet and a gifted singer, songwriter and musician. We had many wonderful nights under the stars in Ridley Creek Park during the summer Mad poet camp-outs, with a bonfire, singing, and reciting.

The year that Dan, Tom and I went to the country to see the Perseid showers was a charmed and magical night. We were so happy! We parked in the back lot at the Mickleton Friends Meeting House, set up our chairs, and began to scan the black night sky. It was a great night for viewing - no clouds.

Oooohh and Aaahhhs abounded as the little fireballs shot across the sky, one after another. It was remarkable. I started counting but I got tired of counting around 100. We had no idea then, that Dan would die from an aneurism, and Tom would descend into a dungeon of silence from Dementia. We were never really together again, after that mystic night. Our friendships, and their lives went out in a blaze like the comets in the night sky.

I was fortunate enough to view Haley's comet make its slow ride acrosss the black sky of West Virginia in 1986 when my daughter was 3 years old. It was so slow, I did a color pencil drawing of it. It was huge! The Perseids had been like tiny pin points of light trailing white thread, but Haley's comet was like a lightbulb.

Gone with the comets are my friends, my parents and my youth. The comets however, will be back! Haley's will be back in 2061 long after I ahve left to join my friends and m parents in what I like to think of as the Universal Consciousness.

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine wrightj45@yahoo.com

The process of recovering

It is Wednesday, August 5th, 2026 9:12 at night and just a few minutes ago I felt a strange small flush of my former well-being. It has been a week since my dog died and every day has been a reminder of our lives together and my loss. Every day I have cried and experienced that pain of heart break which is a hot aching swollen lump of pain in my chest and the throat closing of the coming tears. That particular feeling comes upon me like a wave, while I am in the car, or sitting on the sofa.

A sign of my recovery was that today I could work on a painting for a memorial piece I am making for both my lost friends, Booty and Uma. It has been two weeks since Booty's body was found and he was buried. When I worked on the painting of him today, remembering him, his little face and his expression which always looked as though he were mildly startled, the wave of pain came. The fact that I could actually work on the painting was a good sign. The past two weeks, it has been hard to do anything, except errands and this blog.

Just awhile ago, surprisingly, came the little wavelet of good feeling, being alright with my ife, comfortable, not drenched in sorrow, only a short visit with the good feeling, but it gave me hope.

It will be a busy few days: lunch tomorrow with an old friend who is moving far away, Isabelle. On Friday, lunch with my great-niece Alex; on Saturday, the memorial service for a member of my Woodbury Friends Meeting who has passed away, Nora. I used to drive Nora to and from Meeting on Sundays. She was in her 80's and had dementia - a lot of anxiety. She would suddenly be struck with the fear that she had lost her handbag or her keys and she would gasp and call out.

Sje lived alone, but had adult children not far away. Like most of the adult children I have known, hers were distanced and involved in their own struggles. Nora eventually had to go into a nursing home which is where she died. Her daughter organized the memorial for this week.

Each day in the past few weeks of pain and loss, I have had a sliver of light, like a reminder to hold on, and a promise that I may at some point be able to be back in my life again in the way I once was. Surrrounding that sliver of light has hovered a dark ominous shadow, a foreboding that I will never get back and this is it - this is old age.

When I am felled by the sorrow wave, all my losses gather and it makes me think of the old New England witch torture where the villagers would pile heavy stones on a prone woman until she suffocated from the weight. It was witch 'proving'- Looks like sh died either way and that was the purpose - justified torture and murder. My old losses are like those rocks, romantic betrayals and losses, rejections and abandonments, all the streams of love that turned to fire and burned down my life.

That's the trick, to rise above all these rocks of despair crushing us down, those of us who live long enough. People lose their lovers, their family members, their hopes and dreams. We all lose our beauty, our physical comfort, our vision, our hearing, and we become walking wounded, leaning on a branch for a cane or a crutch, or the hhoulder of a fellow sufferer, or just plodding, shuffling through the pain on the long road to - whatever comes next.

I have contemplated adopting another dog to give it a home and honor the love, but I quail at the thought of all the adaptation and the caring and the emotional demands - going through all that again. I have given myself the month of August to get well and make the decision. I could do that one more good thing with my life and give a loving home ot a dog in a shelter - I could do that.

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.....

to comment or converse: wrightj45@yahoo.com

By the way if you are looking for places to go - Animal Orphanage in Voorhees is where I adopted my last two canine companions, Trixie and Uma, and please adopt rather than buying from breeders. It is cruel to use those female dogs in that way and millions of dogs languish in cages all over America hopeing for mercy. Keep your money and abandon the vanity of "breeding" and adopt a dog who needs you. After all, WE are all mixed breeds and it is a proven fact that mixed breeds are the healthiest.t

Humid and Stormy - ME TOO!

UMA Died Friday night 7.30.26 and was buried Saturday morning 8/1/26. Today I will pick up my sister and a grave statue to put on her grave from Platt's Farm. Her friends John, Mark and Sue got together to dig her grave. My sister will stay for 3 hours today after we place the grave statue to do a kitchen job (and to help me be distracted from the pain and suffering of the loss).

Our weather forcast for the week is humid and stormy and that is how I feel. Pain and Suffering: what it feels like to me - a burning ache like a bruise in my heart and suuden spills of hot tears and pain because - Uma and I did everything together so everything I do is a reminder that she is gone. I got up in the morning and I didn't need to let her out. John will not be stopping by to give her a walk and we won't chat. I drive to Dunkin to get my latte' and her leash remains on the handle on the porch, and when I get in the car, she isn't getting in the back seat and I am not opening the windows. Her food prepared for breakfast and lunch sit in the fridge - I will throw them out for the animals in the yard later today along with her dog treats.

All day and night there are these reminders and with every reminder there is a punch to my heart and a hot spill of tears I can't control and my throat closes and I can hardly swallow.

How long depends - for my mother it lasted hot and heavy for 4 years - overwhelming attacks of sudden catastrophic loss, sobbing cries would overcome me. Similar for Dad. For both now, a memory now and again, a piece of music, something brings it back in a squall and I cry and then it is over. For Booty, two weeks and then right on top, Uma's death. I looked at Booty's favorite lounging spots. The ghost of Booty and Uma lying on the flagstone of the porch together.

Big thought - do I get another dog? I am too old - I have been told so by my brother and sister, but on the other hand, I can do one good thing for dogs and save another dog from a cage in a shelter. And maybe save myself. I am telling myself to wait a month. Wait out August. Give it thought and let the healing help me decide if I can do this or not.

My sister has been my life raft - she has been brave and strong and deeply helpful throughout this ordeal - she has been unconditionally loving. That is something I must remember and appreciate and be grateful for.

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.....

to comment or converse wrightj45@yahoo.com

A Good Day to Die - Uma

Yesterday, Friday, July 30, 2026, my neighbor, John came to walk my big dog Uma. She is a blonde Labrador retriever, about 80 pounds. Fortunaely my kind neighbor walks her every day because I can't walk very far anymore due to my bad back and knee and it is hard to catch my breath due to heart disease.

Uma came home and had a nice breakfast and then we drove to Clarksboro to pick up my sister to take her to the bus to go to work. She lives on Platt's farm and it is a good ways from the farm to the main street where the buses are, so we often pick her up and take her to Gloucester City for the bus. Uma loves this ride - windows down, taking in all the smells and sights and the fast moving air!

We came home for lunch, I did some chores, then later, we picked Sue up at the bus stop and drove her to the farm, another ride for Uma. Back home, dinner! She had her special food since she was diagnosed with pancreatitis last summer: Science Diet prescription canned food mixed with white rice and mixed vegetables with a sprinkle of dry prescription diet dog food on top.

My sister had said she thought Uma was breathing heavy, and I had thought for a week or so she was panting more than usual, but I thought it might be the heat. But in the evening, she threw up a couple of times, then she wandered from place to place - the sofa, then under the piano, then into the corners, lying down and then getting up and wandering with her head low and her tail down. She seemed lost and confused. Finally she went to her bed in the bedroom.

Every night I put her out around 9:30 to go to the bathrooom before we go to sleep and the cats all get a night time treat in their little dishes in the back room. It is a ritual. But last night, she didn't want to get up from her bed, so I left her. I thought if she has an accident in the night, I will jsut clean it up.

In the morning around 7:00, I went to check on her and I thought she was dead. I called my sister, my nephew, my neighbor, John, and my neighbor, Mark. Mark was the only one who answered. He came right over and he said she was definitely dead. I drove to the farm and woke my sister and she came back with me and said that rigor ortis had set in and Uma was cold and hard. She had died in the night

Mark and Sue dug a big grave for her in the backyard, then Sue wrapped her in a piece of cloth and John came over and they buried her. John brought a piece of flagstone that he had to put on her grave and tomorrow, at the farm, I will buy a dog statue to mark her grave.

I have closed off my mind from thinking of anything, put up a protective blank because it is too painful and I can't face it yet. I still have to go and get my sister and give her a ride to work. I took her home after the grave digging so she could get cleaned up and dressed for work today.

First Booty dead, and now Uma. It is all just too painful. I have to protect myself until some time goes by and I can process it. I am afraid I will have a heart attack from the pain and stress of the emotion.

My comfort is that she had a good day - walk, rides, food, and she died in her own bed, loved and sheltered and put to rest by people who loved her. I will have to find a way to cope. I just feel too crushed right now.

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine......

wrightj45@yahoo.com