Aspen Wildlife Sanctuary: Walking The Sunriver Labyrinth
My Family and I have been monitoring a little tree through our kitchen window. We watched it sprout neon lime buds in April and develop into a verduous green by July. As school began the leaves slowly paled into a golden yellow. This Saturday we fried breakfast and remarked on the leaves latest shade, crimson. This morning every leaf was gone.
I am reminded that life is fleeting. What is here today, dazzling to behold, may just as easily blow away tomorrow. It is nearly the one year anniversary of the passing of my Father-in-law, Greg. I had the pleasure of knowing Greg for 12 years and in that time he became an integral part of the team that has loved and supported me on my creative journey. I am inspired daily by the urgency his passing has brought to our life. As a family we have learned the importance of appreciating THE NOW. We show love daily, praise often, and on the darkest of coldest days we rise and give our best.
I had been avoiding the recent cold. I'd rather sleep, I said. Solitaire and Netflix, I said. Seeing my little barren tree though; it got me going. If the leaves had gone from my own yard would they too be gone from The Aspen Lake Sanctuary? If I didn't go to see today I might not have tomorrow to find out. I layered up, dropped my daughter at school, and drove to Fort Rock Park.Walking Sunriver is like coming home. This is my Labyrinth; my circled maze of introspection, of inspiration and wonder! A jaunt on these paths has never been a disappointment. I always come away a more relaxed and energized soul. It is here that I learned to run after my daughter's birth. It is here that I learned that I am NOT my brain; that my brain is simply a tool that I control. So who am I?
It is here, on these paths, that I learned who" I" really am. 
...and I truly am a happy and grateful person.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”― Albert Einstein
