Saturday, February 7, 2009

I begin to share my thoughts...

This is my first entry and I have exhausted my creativity coming up with a name and address for my blog. I consider myself desk bound, not because I am headed towards my desk, but because I am stuck behind it. And, being stuck behind my desk, my mind and spirit frequently wander far from the financial-aid related tasks before me.

These are two of the places where I wander in order to sustain my stamina for the work that must be done. I regularly watch two webcams in Portugal:

http://www.portugal-webcams.com/Salema/webcam-salema-algarve.htm

This camera is mounted to the side of a tree at the edge of the beach in Salema, a small village near Sagres, Portugal. I have watched it for a year and visited this beach while in Portugal in October, 2008. Each day I check and there is a man who arrives at one of the tables between 17:00 and 18:00 - he always has a beer and he always brings a book to read. He has no way to know that he has a fan watching him from thousands of miles away. I like that he never seems to grow tired of the beautiful place he gets to call home. Some times he puts his book down and leans on the railing, watching the waves move in and out. Recently there was a big storm and the sandy beach is now covered with exposed rock rather than the white sand that was there in October. I am curious to see if the sand re-deposits in time, or will sand be hauled in for the tourist season.

http://www.portugal-webcams.com/webcams/webcam-sagres.htm

I walked this beach and poked around and looked and looked, but could not find the camera that records the days and nights of Martinhal Beach. The point in the distance was once considered the end of the world and I watched from there as the sun set on September 30, 2008. It was a spectacular sunset, and a perfect evening. I sat there knowing that I was having an experience that I would look back on and consider perfect - I knew that it would be an evening I would return to in my mind during the long dreary days of an Oregon winter. But, even as I captured it as a place to re-visit often, I took a few minutes to be present - to hear the waves far below the cliff I was sitting on, to smell the salt in the air and to hear the gulls that circled and dipped and eventually landed on the roof-ridge of the nearby chapel, with one lone gull perched on the tip of the cross.








I will stop with this for today and soon expose some of the other wanderings and musings that allow me to live fully, even while spending 8 hours a day confined to a desk chair in Oregon.

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