Aug16
Posted on Aug 16 by Ruth Davis
Morning begins in fog, a thick gray layer of quiet that mutes the colors and the sounds. Fat drops of moisture hang on the thick grass at the park and everything is wet. We take our first walk before the sun rises behind the fog and the air is balmy and moist. But I put on a sweatshirt because I know that, as soon as the sun comes up, even if I can’t see it, it will turn chilly. Some days the gray moves out before noon, revealing the colors of ocean and sky, the horizon line, the enormity of Morro Rock. Other days I don’t see any blue in the sky and only the top of the rock appears between streaks of moving gray. This is summer on the coast. A far cry from summer in the Phoenix desert, where it doesn’t cool below 90°, not even in the middle of the night. Where it’s already 100° at noon, and sometimes as high as 115° by the peak of the day. And the temperatures are measured in the shade....
Aug15
Posted on Aug 15 by Ruth Davis
Luck is winning the lottery. Or making all the green lights. Or getting the perfect camping spot with an unobstructed ocean view. Living out a vision that you’ve been dreaming about for years is all about intention, effort and taking actions that may mean you give up one thing in order to get something else. But it has nothing to do with luck. When I tell people about my new lifestyle, that I’m living and working in my motorhome two blocks from the ocean, often their first response is, oh, you’re so lucky. Or worse, they respond with envy. I want to sit them down and tell how long I’ve been working for this dream, how much I’ve invested in my business to get it where it supports me virtually. I want to share some of the creative tools I’ve used to keep the dream alive. And I want to offer them hope and a starting place so that they, too, can begin manifesting their own biggest dreams. The first step might be to take the energy...
Aug14
Posted on Aug 14 by Ruth Davis
There is a philosophy in the healing arts community that our toes are great indicators of our deeper selves. The study of toe reading, or foot reading, explores the idea that each toe is connected to an emotion, an element and a chakra, and that the left toes have different meanings than the right. For years, I’ve had a thick callous on the outside edge of my right foot that needs regular trimming by a podiatrist. As I’ve been walking more, I’m noticing that, while my weight is evenly distributed front to back, left to right on my left foot, I walk with most of my weight on the outer edge of my right foot and not equally balanced between all of my toes. In fact, when I am acutely aware of my walking, my entire right ankle turns outward and my right big toe bears very little of the pressure of walking. And so I wondered what the big toe on my right foot represents in toe reading, that I might need to pay attention to. According...
Aug13
Posted on Aug 13 by Ruth Davis
It is my second Monday on the road and already we have a regular morning routine. Laddy stands at the foot of my bed sometime between 6:15 and 6:45, awake and ready. I pet his happy head, do my morning hip stretches while I’m still lying flat, then get up and make my bed. He’ll either jump onto the bed or return to his dog bed under the dinette while I go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and throw on some morning walk clothes. With my phone, keys and a pooper bag in my back pocket, we head over to the nearby park for a short leg-stretching pooper walk. The grass is thick and green and damp and there are usually gulls and ravens on the softball field. We are usually the only ones there, though twice, I’ve seen city workers pull up in their trucks for their fifteen minute breaks. Back in the RV, I feed Laddy, pour my own cereal and check my email while my single cup of coffee drips. Beyond that, the routine ends....
Aug11
Posted on Aug 11 by Ruth Davis
The Morro Strand RV Park offers free wifi, but the signal goes out at least once a day, often for several hours at a time. This would be fine if I were on vacation and ready to unplug. But my business can only support me if I have reliable internet access. So this morning I drove to the Verizon store in Los Osos, an easy five miles down the road, and purchased my own mifi hub. Now I can connect my iPhone, iPad and laptop and be assured that I will always have fast internet access. It would have been so easy to just head back to the park and hang out in the motorhome, relaxing, watching the hubbub of activity of families and dogs, surfing the internet, even getting some work done. But my intention for today was to get out, explore, maybe even take myself somewhere I haven’t been before. I parked on the dead end street at the back bay in Los Osos where the narrow sandy trail winds around the inlet. The tide was lowing...
Aug09
Posted on Aug 9 by Ruth Davis
I am officially COLD. It’s a little after 9 am and it is only 53° outside. In Phoenix it is already 97, on the way to 113°. I am not complaining, just reporting. I hear no gulls, no ravens. The entire Morro Rock has disappeared under a blanket of morning fog. New campers arrived yesterday: several families with kids and dogs, a young couple with a pop-up trailer and bicycles, a mid-century couple with two fluorescent colored kayaks attached to the back end of their RV. The man next door is by himself in a GMC Envoy towing a 26’ trailer. I watched him back in then out several times, unhitch and level his trailer, then sweep the white aluminum sides of the rig. This morning he has already swept the steps and smoked two cigarettes. Across from me, the matriarch of the family hoists two navy blue suitcases onto the picnic table and pulls out a small pile of brightly colored kids clothing. A young boy about seven emerges from the trailer in superhero pajamas. The woman picks...
