Tag Archives: advance planning

The Road to Diamond, Day 185: Heads or Tails?

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Posted by on in Assistance, Community, Family, Inspiration, Personal Values, service, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

June 1, 2025- I received a notice from the airline that I’ve been using most often ,these past four years, that my accumulated miles will expire in six months. I have plans to use them, and to add to them, three months from now. Where exactly will depend on a couple of family-related matters that will take clearer shape, in the next month or two. I may be needed at that point in time, or the matter will wait until later in the Fall.

There is an energy in June that says: “Hold off; rest; take care of small, procedural matters and day-to-day interactions. This month, you probably won’t need to go far afield. ” I like that, actually. It will be enough to stand my ground, regarding July, and others’ demands and expectations for that month. It will be enough to plan a bit for September and October. It will be more than enough, still, to resolve the important, when the most important looms over it.

Much of what goes on in life is a flip of the coin. I can only hope that those for whom the toss does not go in their favour will understand that this is not personal. Family is most important; then come those extended family who deeply touch my heart; then comes the community that I have carefully chosen to serve. I realize this is all rather nebulous, but here we are. A lot of moving pieces need to be helped to find their places.

The Bottom of The Top

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Hiking and Nature, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Striving, Travel

August 16, 2023- As a five-time hiker of the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail, from rim to river and back, I can attest that there is no appreciation of the bottom, without the top, and vice versa.

This afternoon, I completed reading “PrairyErth”, William Least Heat Moon’s “sequel” to his account of a back roads ramble around the United States, entitled “Blue Highways”. The latter took in travels through 38 states. The former concentrated on one county, in Kansas, which was one of the ten contiguous states he didn’t visit the first time. Mr. Least Heat Moon’s style is consistent, covering all bases of an area, telling anecdotes of his encounters with Man and Nature, weaving details of history, sociology, biology and geology into each chapter-in both books. The micro reflects the macro.

The writer, named for his having been born during a New Moon, entered the words of this post’s title, in the final chapter of “PrairyErth”, in the course of describing a walk which he and a friend took, tracing as best they could the route taken by the Kansa (Kaw) people, when those who gave their name to the state were removed to Oklahoma, in 1872.

He christened the base of a small, but steep, hill in the west of Chase County, as “the bottom of the top”, and thus connected beginning with end, east with west, north with south. Stephen Covey, many years ago, did the same in his life coaching book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”: “See the end in the beginning”.

Continuity and connection have been essential in my own approach to life, for at least forty years-and probably longer, on a subliminal level. Leaving someone out, not seeing a task through to its completion or omitting a detail have been foreign to my thinking, often to an extent that has been maddening to those around me-and sometimes to me, as well. Dr. Covey’s book helped, in teaching that planning things ahead of time can help enormously, with regard to remembering details-and so I have made that second nature-at least in the past fifteen years.

The first part of anything signals the nature of the last. The bottom is essential to the top. The converse of these is also true.