Andy's parents were incredibly generous and took us all on a cruise this year the week before Christmas. His parents, Andy and his two brothers, their girlfriends, Nate, and myself sailed out of Miami, Florida and visited Cozumel, Honduras, Belize and the Grand Cayman Islands.A few photos of the landscape from our travels:
It was all very blue, and very hot. I have never experienced an expanse of cool hue in that temperature. My favorite place was Honduras- the lush landscape and mellowness of the local people was refreshing. If we would have had more time, we would have loved to venture off the main path. We had about 8 hours or so per day to visit each country, and with a toddler in tow, off the path ventures were not in the plans. The first and last days of travel were at sea. We saw the sunset during dinner a couple of times, which was so vast, so beautiful, one of those "I am just a small part of this large, large world" kind of feelings. I only wish I had a picture of that image to share here. That one will have to stay in my mind.
You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap. -Henry David Thoreau
(c) Andy Buck, 2009
Andy bought the Sony alpha in 2008, and ever since I have loved putting thoughts of the American Transcendentalists to his pictures. I have already decided I am going to start taking more photographs, and would one day love to have something like this to play around with.
Maybe a good initial post would be on Thoreau. He is one of my most favorite writers, and he wrote, "Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion."
To me, "simplify" does not does not mean less intelligent, less abundant or less capable. On the contrary, it is a process, or even lifestyle, or eradicating the things that aren't true to who a person is, to allow space for those things that are.
I've decided to try my hand at blogging in this new space. I blogged a bit back in 2009 when Andy and I lived in Utah, but it was relatively short-lived and carried an different purpose than I suppose this one will. When we became a family of three, I always thought of starting a blog. The timing just must not have been right, because this is the first time I've actually sat down to do so. I believe that impetus is not coincidental or accidental.
Online and in person, I tend to be quiet and shy. I've become slightly more reserved with age, which I don't totally understand. Really, I see all of these words that will be written and pictures that will be posted will be about about being our own little family. I am hoping it will help me learn to open up a bit, to share a little more of myself with the world. After 29 years I'm still in the process of discovering who I am. I think this space will also be about finding and being myself.
This space will be dedicated to my life: firstly, my family, but also anything else that constitutes a part of my life: parenting, creativity, homemaking, nature, American Transcendentalism, thoughts to words as they form about what's going on in my/our little world. And, I'm think the beauty of having a space like this is that it will take on a form that will unfold differently than I suspect it to now.
dasbucks, fall 2010
