Stop and Look, or It will Pass you By

I remember my dad taking the same train into Hoboken each day, so he could work in Manhattan. It was the same route day after day, just so he could sit in an office all day without interacting with the world outside. Then taking the same route in reverse to get home. Each day was almost as if it was programed. I looked up to my dad, even though he probably never knew it for all the grief and aggravation I gave him. I often thought that it would be fun to travel each day on the train to and from the City. But life had other things in store for me.

I traveled the same route to and from home to work for many years. Just a few blocks for the first 16. After that work wasn't always in the same place. The past 17 years it was in one local until last April. But during all the past 35 years I worked outside. I could see, feel, taste and embrace all four seasons. Summers were ungodly hot, winters down right nasty and fall and spring could be no picnic. But persevere I did as I enjoyed seeing how the earth lived and breathed with each passing day. But yet I couldn't see the forest for the trees.


Spring and Fall are my favorite times of the year. Summer is a close second but I'm still having a bit of trouble getting my arms around Winter after 35 years of working out in the cold and damp collecting garbage, plowing or shoveling snow and just never getting warm enough to feel good.

For the past 20 years I ran my own business and I tell you it couldn't have been located in a better part of the world. I've traveled extensively around the US and some parts of Europe. I have seen a lot of this country but I still feel the Catskills and Hudson Valley reign supreme. The Rockies have their snow covered mountains and all, but here it's just something to see these mountains rise up from the river and reach almost a mile high. At early evening looking westward, as the setting sun silhouettes the Catskills. You can see the "purple mountains majesty" as the prolific words penned by Katherine Bates, the author of "America the Beautiful" standing right there for all to see.

The Rockies start at one mile in elevation and grow to about a mile above that so the height issue is negligible. The Western States have their forests and streams and rivers. Well so do we. I'll stack any waterfall in the Catskills against anyone anywhere (I'm bias as you can see) in the US.

So, I have been driving around on all these highways and back roads of the Catskill / Hudson Valley Region for the past 20 years and enjoying it. Like the other day for instance; I came across a heard of 20 or so deer just wandering around. I also saw a group of beavers working on their latest addition to their lake side villas. Besides the animals I love the birds.


On Friday morning, on a ride up to the Ashokan Reservoir I saw blue birds, gold finches, cardinals, orioles, blue jays, red tailed hawks, and many more colorful birds I can't begin to name. Woodchucks abound in the woods, and I'm not talking about the environmental types. Rabbits go scurrying about trying to decide which way is safe? Ever the nervous Nellies. And the squirrels, those useless "park rats", running and hesitating, just waiting to become the latest pot hole filler.

But now as I am slowing down my life style and not living solely by the "clock" I have been able to really appreciate the view outside my window. Like my dad before me, I began to take everything I saw as being "just background" to the everyday work routine. From time to time I noticed something spectacular or different, but those were like candid snap shots in life. Filed away in some distant scrap book in the synapse of our memory. Today those candid stills are becoming more like an I-Max presentation. Showing feature length in our mind when we sit back and close our eyes and relax.

If I see something now, I stop and take the moment to fix the scene in my mind. Breathe a cleansing breath and give thanks to God for his beautiful handiwork on our Earth.

Like this morning the visuals with all the flowering trees and the small green leaves awakening into bloom for this year, and a low angle sunrise made true "Kodachrome Moments." Moments we all take too much for granted. We need to just slow down, appreciate and give thanks for a wonderful world we live in. For if we don't stop and look, it will pass us by.