Five questions

My friend, Christine, was interviewed by a fellow blogger and she recently posted the responses on her blog, Quiet Paths

. I loved reading Christine’s answers and thought it was a fun way for her to connect with her readers. So, I decided to participate in an interview. If you don’t want to read my answers, but want to skip to the bottom and find out how you can participate in the interview exercise, the “rules” are all right there!

Christine: What have been your most profound experiences involving nature or being in the outdoors?

Three years ago, we hiked with some friends up to beautiful Glacier Lake, which is the source of Rock Creek that runs through Red Lodge. The hike had produced a chorus of complaints from my family, as we were not all acclimated to the altitude and we discovered half way up that Patrick’s shoes were truly two sizes too small—perhaps anyone who has tried to stay ahead of the growth spurts of adolescent boys does not find this as horrific as those who go on every outing well equipped and well prepared. But there we were. When we reached the lake, I sat down to take in the spectacular view and enjoy a respite from suggestions that I continually choose hikes akin to the Bataan Death March. We were above the tree line, which in itself always makes me feel humble and exposed. I was sitting alone composing my spirit, when I felt a presence next to me. At first, I thought Patrick had climbed up the rocks to my left. I turned to see him, and looked into the eyes, not of my son, but of a mountain goat. He was so close to me I remember being amazed at all the matter that was caught up in his coat and how rough and craggy his horns seemed. There he was, just studying me, eyeball to eyeball. I quickly snapped a photo before calling out to my companions, “guys…am I in any danger here?” After shrieks from the group of “GOAT!!” My new neighbor quietly disappeared. I got up to see where he’d gone, and he seemed to have vanished. It was an encounter I’ll never forget.

Second is not an experience as much as an emotional connection I feel. In a place called Walnut Canyon, just east of Flagstaff, Arizona, you can hike down to the cliff dwellings that were inhabited by the Sinagua Indians more than 700 years ago. In this Canyon, I am blessed with the a sense of Spirit I can’t adequately describe. I don’t know if it’s that the canyon has been so beautifully preserved that I feel connected to the life of those who once inhabited its walls; if it’s the way the wind stirs the native plants and carries the echo of a distant hum; but it is absolutely the most personal and spiritual experience I have with a natural space and it never fails.

Christine: What binds you or attracts you to the place/ space where you now live?  This can imply either location or your house.

Well…this is a bit tricky, as I don’t feel bound to Phoenix. At all. In fact, my heart often longs to be in somewhere else—namely Montana. Yet, several years ago when I was coming in for a landing at Sky Harbor, I was surprised to find myself thinking, “I’m home.”

Home and those ties that bind us to it implies to me a sense of connection that is born of people, not place. Even the house I love to transform into a home is still just a house. It is the people that gather around in the kitchen…the friends and family who put their feet up around our fire pit and laugh with us under the desert stars…that is what binds my heart to the space. As long as one has love in a place, that is the place that calls you back and says, “welcome home.”

Christine: What do you seek when you are choosing a new pet to come live with you?

We’ve been giving this a lot of thought, lately! Since losing Hunter, it’s hard to imagine any replacement. Then I have to remember, I didn’t always love him so. There were times in his first four years when I really wanted to drop kick Hunter into someone else’s family. He was strong willed; he was high strung…everything I heard a Golden wasn’t . But we learned about each other and, eventually, we became inseparable. I’m trying to remember that as I embrace the idea of a new puppy joining our family. So in myself, I seek patience!

And I guess I seek a new pet who will look at us with an expression that says, “what shall we do” and “what do you need”. Pets have an uncanny way of extending this mutually beneficial sense of care. They come to know us…and they love us anyway. I’m looking for a face that says he or she is ready for that kind of growing along together. And a nose that will alert me that I’m about to encounter a moose…but that’s another story.

Christine: What are the five writings you have read in the last three years which have spoken to you most?

Wow. Three years is a good condition!

First, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Non-fiction work by Tracy Kidder. It’s the biography of Paul Farmer, who reshaped health care in Haiti and the way the world treats tuberculosis. I loved the book for stretching my sense of how we care for one another; demonstrating the shortfalls of global policy in meeting health needs and for introducing me to the concept of liberation theology.

The Shack, not because it is a great book, but because it expressed much of what I believe to be true about our relationship to the Trinity. And I hope with all my heart that it puts skin on Jesus for more people.

Angle of Repose. I finally read this decades after it achieved critical acclaim, but just when I needed to read it. I think that’s the way it is with the books that we cherish. I took from it a sense of appreciation for the chapters in our lives and supporting one another through their openings and closings. I am richer for the words and better for the story. And I’m a Wallace Stegner fan forever.

A New Earth, again, not because it was a great book or very well written, but because I enjoyed reading and discussing it with three wonderful women, who became new friends, and with my father, who at age 85, loved reading about the ego and the “danger of looking backward and inside yourself instead of forward and out,” as my Dad paraphrased it.

Well, here I go breaking the rule. I can’t look back over the last three years without mentioning two more. Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies in non-fiction, and in fiction, Leif Enger’s So Brave, Young and Handsome, which I finished two nights ago and loved!

Christine: What three genres of music do you listen to most frequently?

On any given day, I listen to more than three genres. I used to think it was a sign that I had expansive tastes, until a young staff member riding in my car saw my cd collection and suggested that perhaps I had a multiple personality disorder! (She was a new employee back then…you would have thought she would have been kissing up! Her honesty is one of the many reasons she’ll be a life-long friend!)

Top three include alternative rock. In my car CD player right now is Jason Mraz. I love the range of his voice, and I listen to his song Details in the Fabric so frequently that a casual observer would consider me to be obsessed. And I love classic soft rock—our children grew up listening to Carole King and James Taylor.

Most of the rest of the time, one will find me listening to classical and “other” instrumental music (that’s my sneaky category that can encompass new age, jazz, Celtic, folk, etc.). Of favorite classical artists—Yo Yo Ma or Itzhak Perlman performing anything. And in the instrumental favorites category, even if Christine hadn’t been the interviewer, I would say I am especially fond of the music produced by Earth Passage Media. It has become the soundtrack of much of our family’s existence. We begin listening to White Cloud Big Sky the minute we hit the Montana state line. Rising Wolf Mountain on the Glacier Journey CD reaches into the essence of me and lifts me up. And, as my mother once said of that piece, “What a mellow cello!” So thank you to Janet, Christine, Matthew and their friends for giving me music I love to live by. And thank you to Christine for these fun questions!

So what can we learn about you? If you want to participate in the fun, just do the following:

Please let me know if any of you wish to do an interview.  Here are the instructions if you wish to be interviewed by me:
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me”. Or emailing me is very OK.
2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions (I get to pick the questions)
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions, or comment back to this blog with your response if you don’t have a blog of your own.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

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