Renaming blogs:

A friend of mine has set up a new blog with a new thrust for his new focus. Noting that, it occurred to me that I might do the same, except that I am not positive that I have a new focus. No, my blogs title goes way, way back. I've used it for my blog since '04 even as I have changed the location of it three times. Before that it was the title I used for my private journal.

I'm thinking of calling it, "The Walking Stick". I'm still considering the implications of the meaning of it. It is symbollic of my life and my view of life. My blog is like a walking stick for a journey over rough terrain. I hear an echo from way back even to poetry that I wrote while I was still in high school. I'm always thinking and speaking in terms of paths, crossroads, stumbling stones, climbing mountains and reaching summits.

Unfortunately, the photograph above doesn't do justice to my real walking stick. Creating such a stick was a spiritual experience. When the wood was new and fresh as its soft flesh created curls at my feet as I cut away the bark, I learned a new appreciation of living wood and our connection to nature in a way that I'd never experienced it before. The rest of the journey, and an interesting one, then took several more years.

As a Cub Scout leader, my husband and I walked out near the river to find young saplings we could cut for the boys to have an end of the year project to do. The largest was a recently dead pecan tree with a natural balance to it, although it wasn't straight. It was too large and too heavy. So, in an effort to trim weight off of it, it occurred to me that I could carve it. I picked up the various leaves I found and used them as patterns and worked leaves down the trunk of it. At the very bottom I copied the intertwined vines of a trumpet vine. The top, however, remained uncarved because I had no idea what to carve on it. Then one day I felt inspired to create wings. I had an hour to spare before I intended to go to the nursing home to visit my father and so I began to carve the wings. I just roughed them out. Then I heard the phone ring. I will always wonder about that particular moment of inspiration and why it turned out to be that day. Since then my son has given me some scouting emblems for it. It has a great big buffalo on the front of it from his visit to Philmont. I suppose that it will continue to grow as the years go by, a support for uncertain ground.