I’ve been reading a wonderful book recently — The Nature Principle by Richard Louv — and I’ve realized something: I don’t spend nearly enough time outdoors.

Okay, so this wasn’t actually the revelation I’m making it out to be, though, in some ways, it is.

It was easy to be outside in San Diego: the weather was almost always gorgeous, I walked to classes, my friends were doing things outside. But since I’ve returned to New Jersey, my outdoor time has plummeted. In the summer, I blame the hot, humid days and mosquitoes, which always manage to bite me at least one or two dozen times while I’m out. In the winter, I blame the snow and frigid winds.

I know the restorative effects of being outside — on our health, our minds, our communities — but after reading this book, I’m determined to not let the days pass me by.

This past weekend, I went apple picking with a friend. We walked around outdoors at the orchard, just enjoying the long rows of trees, the sun that kept dipping behind the clouds. We searched trees for the perfect Red Delicious, a Macintosh that swirled red and green in a way I liked. I rolled the car windows down on the ride home to smell the autumn air. It was a very good day.

How was your weekend? Did you get to spend any time outdoors?

{image by me}

There are many in-between periods of our lives. Summers when we were young, when it was a bit hard to claim you were in 6th grade because, well, technically, you hadn’t stepped foot in the middle school yet. That period in college where you weren’t quite sure that you were majoring in the right field. That period after college where you still weren’t sure you had majored in the right field. The time between relationships, between countries, between homes.

This is the grey.

It is equal parts of frightening and glorious.

But if you begin to embrace it, you’ll find home there — a fleeting one perhaps, but there you have the opportunity to grow more than ever before.

This is where I have found myself since I left San Diego. I’m somewhere between there and the next step. But this step has such potential, it holds such growth for me. I am no longer thinking about the past or anticipating the future. I am living in the now and planning for the nows to come.

{image by me}

My grandmother (my mother’s mother, that is) used to tell me the most incredible stories when I was little. Stories about how she and my grandfather met, about the summer she spent on a farm with her aunt and uncle — a farm she was convinced was haunted, about people from her childhood and life. I’ve been thinking a lot about all of these stories lately. About the stories from my other grandmother, the stories told by my great aunt as well. Of the three, I only have one left. These stories slip away so fast. We talk about them less and less as the years pass and I worry that one day, they’ll disappear entirely.

I’ve been wondering if the same will happen to my stories, to the stories told by my parents, my aunts and uncles, my friends. I’ve been thinking about ways to gather my favorites, like a bouquet of flowers. And I’ve been thinking about the stories I tell everyday. Do I really want to repeat or create a story that I wouldn’t want to keep?

But this is not just about the big stories. It’s about the little ones too, the ones the help you learn more about someone you care about, those that paint the picture of their life.

I’ll be asking for those stories more often from people. I’ll ask my father what happened in his childhood, I’ll ask my mother what having an older sister was like, I’ll keep asking my family and friends, because even if I can’t gather all the stories and pass them down, I can at least gather them in my heart.

{image by me}

This weekend I realized I’ve been depriving myself of one of my greatest joys in the world: a proper weekend brunch. I’m not sure why. All I know is I have had morning after morning of boring oatmeal lately, and I think it’s time to change that.

There’s something to be said for having little weekend traditions, especially indulgent ones that remind you to get together with friends or family, disconnect for a little while, and just enjoy your time together. I’ve decided my new weekend tradition will be brunch. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Saturday or Sunday — or even in the morning, but there will be proper breakfast food, a little bit of music, and some inspiring conversation.

And maybe a nice long walk outdoors afterward.

What will be your weekend tradition? Do you already have one?

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I sincerely hope that the mysterious never disappears from this world. As Einstein said, “The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science.” The mysterious inspires us, leads us to question. It infects us in the best of ways.

As I was driving home from dinner with a friend last week, I was suddenly afraid that the mystery and magic in the world had disappeared, that our world has no place for the creatures of mythology and imagination.

“For as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant.” (Bronte, Jane Eyre)

That quote found its way into my mind, from some buried place in the past. Is our land no longer wild? Have we given up those spirits?

My challenge that night was to find that magic again, and I discovered it in the glow of the moon. The world around us is only partially what we perceive. There is so much science can explain and still so much it cannot. Gravity is a mystery to some extent. We know what to expect when you drop an apple, but the mechanism that makes that possible, the deep truth of it has escaped us thus far.

I truly believe it’s out there: the mysterious, the magical, the awe-inspiring. Where will you find it this week?

{image by Brandi Bernoskie}

Last week, I spend some time working outside on the patio. There I was writing, working on cover letters and resumes, and doing other odds and ends when I looked up. Above me, a light breeze was moving through the leaves of the tree, rustling them. I felt the breeze on me, the sunlight.

I don’t nearly take enough time to appreciate the simplest things in the world: the smell of freshly brewed coffee (I only wish I could enjoy the taste), the sensation when a warm tea hits your lips, the taste of strawberries that have just been picked in the field, the heat from a warm fire on a cool summer night outdoors…

This week, I’m going to do my best to appreciate those little things, the simple flavors, the quiet beauties that fill my life.

What simple thing are you experiencing right now?

{image by me}