Leaving Las Vegas....

I have to laugh when I see photos of me from my travels. In a way it makes me want to get out and take a portkey to certain parts of the world and other times it might spark a memory that I don't want to deal with. This one in particular is from when I visited Lake Mead. That's right, I saw seagulls there too and I was outside of Las Vegas in the desert of Nevada. That I have no clue on how or why the birds came to the area and I found it to be quite funny in a way.

What I can say from this photo is that I was really unsure of myself and my full potential is what I'm picking up from looking back at it, ten years later. I do recall how my father had sent me the Patagonia's "Live Simple" T-shirt for Christmas when I was living in a tent cabin on the resort I was working at in the Sierra's outside of Yosemite National Park for Christmas. Honestly, I love this line from Patagonia cos it's just a smile message, yet such a power one in fact. Not many people, I know would ever take the risk of  leaving everything they know as "comfort" and would go out in the wilderness to learn about themselves. I found my time while working at the resort to focus on what the gifts of being with nature had in store for me. Often, I would go into Yosemite to go hiking solo, and that meant hike solo to the top of Yosemite Falls, as I recall it was my father's birthday before Christmas when I made the trip. I would take the time to learn about my camera and play around with it. I would also soak in the beautiful that the mountains had brought with it. For me, nature has been an incredible healer. I do recall that that time for me was particular rough, I think it was a year or so after I just return back from living in Japan for a couple of years. During my time in Japan, I experience a dark night of the soul with 3 family deaths and one when I return along with some other stuff. I sought out nature and the practice of yoga to go deeper within myself.

There's an incredible force in all things as the Jedi wisdom teaches. It come from honoring and surrendering to what is. As I look back, that's when I started to uncover who I truly was all along with encompassing the wisdom of the heart. Heart wisdom is there all along and it's delicious,  we just tend to put up walls from other people's perspectives and forget our own inner light to shine. Travel is a wonderful healer and being out in nature's beauty is even more beautiful to seek out the real you that is buried away. It's there, it just might take a while to uncover the beauty from within, but it's worth it in the end!