What do you really know about me? Here is something; I like to walk on the beach with my eyes shut. My feet can feel the water on one side, and the dry sand on the other, and the firm wet sand between. I can go a long way like this, feeling my way along, trusting, resting my eyes, (the hungry eyes). I’ll peek after a few minutes, just to check where I am, but I’m always fine where I am. It is so restful to do this. One day this week I walked ten miles down the beach at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, but not with my eyes shut the whole time. Wouldn’t it be great someday to do that?

While paddling with my friend K., I had this thought: Great lives are not the same as the lives of the great. The lives of the great follow a plan, tell a story and reach a goal. Great lives are made of beautiful moments of experience, without direction or conclusion. In that way, they are not novels or biographies, but are better told as small stories of wonderful moments spent of an afternoon, or a single day’s joy in glorious Nature, a brightness of shared companionship, simple contentedness, or personal achievement, known only to one’s self. Great lives are like a collection of photographs which capture the memories of the profound experiences of living itself.