Tsaves a horseshoe crab from certain death on the beach below right.

T and I hiked nearly 8 miles of beach yesterday, barely made it back, (of course we took no snack, no water) up to and around the northeast end of the island, most of which is just a gorgeous stretch of unspoiled bird sanctuary land, eddies and shell middens, what appeared to be an old fishing weir, one old shipwreck (over 300 have occurred here over the years), the odd surf fisherman, and just an all around nice killer walk. I recommend walking long distances, a meander, a saunter, Mr. Thoreau called it, to relieve the spirit of burdens and recast one's perspective as to what's truly important in life. Not to mention the added benefit of having one of those "I made it!" moments of physical triumph.

Money Worries? Who doesn't have them? (Sane people, that's who.) But nothing works better to put the almighty dollar in perspective than to, for a brief part of the day, get up, go outside, and, as you start to meander, mentally disengage from the press of material life and have an adventure. With an entirely new agenda you adopt a new paradigm concerning lucre. Let your free will off its leash, look around and decide that little things you find for free, pinecones, feathers, rocks, even plastic toys or things others have cast off, are the most valuable treasures on the planet. Gather these to your bosom. What begins as a game ends up a real attitude changer. If you are someone who feels incapable of such fantasy, I got news for you. No amount of money on earth will ever stop you worrying about money or the future. This thought should underlie our every waking moment: The material(-istic) world I live in is a false construct geared to enslaving the human spirit.

T and I have been walking the beach every day in search of 'treasure', those translucent, golden shells we call tinkleshells. Each and every time we cast our eye on one, half buried in the sand, we bend to pick it up with an excitement that's every bit as acute as if we had found a priceless gold dubloon. We tuck them carefully in our sweatshirt pouches and, later, when we gently desposit all this booty on the kitchen table, we are rich as Croesus. (It's how I used to feel as a struggling single mother when I'd return from the public library with a mile high stack of books -- I'm rich!) All because we allowed our imaginations a couple of hours of unburdened meander in search of what was 'treasure' only because we perceived it as such. But who's to say is isn't treasure? Greenspan? Who listens to him any more? He's just a sodden, sagging collection of lame excuses and liver spots. So... you get the idea? Daily meandering -- and I mean meander, not purposeful exercise walking! --is important, every bit as important, perhaps more so, than those hours we spend trying to figure out how on earth we can possibly come out ahead in this twisted game of life where only the bad guys seem to be carrying off the planet's riches.

Cuz if there's one thing decades of walking this planet have taught me it's that the one thing that will keep me from solving a problem, from "getting ahead of the game", (what game? whose game? Quoi? I don't want to play your crap game!), from figuring out solutions to apparent dilemmas, it's WORRY. Worry closes the door to imagination and dreams and love, slams it shut in fact. Before you know it, the very dreams that made you want to live before --you can't even recall! So, take a one hour meander, if that's all the time you can spare. Give yourself over to a childlike fantasy while you walk. No matter where you're walking. Imaginations are people too! Take 'em out and let 'em dream and breathe! I highly recommend it. Have faith in tiny treasures found along the way. Every spiritual teacher you can think of said the same thing: Unless you become as a child you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven... the one that is "within you".

Today's word? TAKE A HIKE! And pretend you're Nancy Drew while you're out there!

SO... get this.

In the "too funny to be believed" Harpers Weekly this week:

..

Why Europeans have more fun.

Hundreds of Carlsberg brewery employees walked off the job in
Copenhagen to protest the company's new policy of allowing
beer drinking only at lunchtime

AND

For better or worse?

two women were arrested after
attempting to board a plane from Liverpool to Berlin with
a dead 91-year-old whom they claimed to believe was
sleeping. "He was alive," protested the dead man's
wife. "He was pale but he wasn't dead."

How many men have I known of whom I could say that very thing?

later, agitators

Oh, might i mention that i am not impressed with these new ant traps i got. It would appear the sugar ants have got the word about and are conscienciously avoiding the traps. Snubbing them in fact. what i get for buying from dow chemical, the lovely folks who brought us useful household items like agent orange. Looks like i'm gonna have to get my shoe out again...