Snow carved boulder
Warms my freezing hands
Pine tar sticks to my sleeve
July 11, 2024
Summer raindrops wait
To return to the sky
snails without shell
Here are some notes from a journal entry written when I wrote that Haiku while camping.
"The hike was strenuous. The evening difficult. At 11,000' your actions in a snow cave are restricted. Muscles quelled by oxygen debt when outside the cave moving around to build the snow structure. In the am, promptly made camp, thanked the boulder, and headed for a day hike on the other side of the mountain. Found a waterfall, 150' rapids to cross, to where the wild flower grove welcomes you to spring, all in raw Colorado style."
It is fitting I found this haiku today from 35 years ago, as I once pushed my limits in finding what I was made of in the mystery of the wilderness. Because just a few days ago, on July 12, 2024 I took two friends to the Boulder Environmental / Nature / Outdoor Film Festival to see the film, Wild Waters. We meet an inspiring French kayaker, Nouria Newman. Her refusal to conform inspired so many. Yes she did use her kayak to realize her truest gift, which was to become a once in a generation kayaker, but to watch her be one with nature was quite moving. The scene that inspired me the most was the footage after she became the first women to kayak down a 100 foot waterfall. Watching her understand natures 4th dimension, as she navigated a force completely one with the waterfall's space/time continuum and succeeding was euphoric to watch.
There was so much before me to come when I wrote that haiku while camping, and speaking to my younger self, I just want to say, thank you. Thank you for giving me this deep grounding, as I did use nature to ground me, to find my own way, not conforming - but creating a software company where I could be my truest self. It was from being seeped in nature that pushed me to overcome all the expectations of society in the 1990s. Thank you for all those weekends and holidays where I camped and hiked over a decade. It was a good decade of dedicated wilderness exploration that grounded me deeply while forging a new kind of software company that was to distrupt several industries.
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