Women Vitamins: Is It All In the Details?

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I am in Colorado for a week of vacation: staying in Breckenridge, smelling the fresh air, enjoying the mountain scenery, driving around, taking pictures like mad.  The snow still lingers on the high peaks. The days are crystal clear, the nights are crisp and cool. At 10,000 feet, I am almost 2 miles above my home, south of Houston, Texas.  

Everything looks so green and beautiful. It's so darn beautiful. The water cascades down the mountains in bridal veil falls.  The rivers and creeks are running over 4 times normal volume.  I have booked a white water rafting experience for tomorrow morning on the Arkansas River about 2 hours south of here.  I am excited.  I have returned home and my heart is gladdened.

And yet, when I really take a close look, I see something disturbing: millions of dead pine trees.  Lodge pole pines ravaged by the pine beetle....mountainsides covered in dead brown skeletal remains of once stately evergreens....and my heart breaks.

I read in a local paper, that the snow fall this last season was average to below average, and the run-off waters are so much more because the pines are dead....every pine consumed 10 gallons of water, that now flows down, unused, and unimpeded.  I don't really understand how the pine beetle infestation became so overwhelming...why nothing was done to prevent this, or to stop it, or to minimize it. 

It's sort of like the oil tragedy occurring in the Gulf....miles of our fragile eco-systems under assault...by overwhelming forces that we can't seem to alter or affect.  Forces that will affect all the inhabitants, the effect of which will impact all our lives for years to come.  

Who should have noticed the first few beetles killing the first few pines?  Or paid closer attention to the details of running and overseeing a drilling platform?  Maybe we all need to start paying attention to our hearts and our minds, our mouths and our bodies.....watching for the first signs of our own potential disasters.  Unkind words that wound unnecessarily, stress and issues that age and debilitate us, friends in need we ignore, exercising that we avoid, the junk foods we continue to eat, the consequences we trivialize.

I took this week off to center and  to heal myself from a stressful year.  I realize that I forgot to attend to my needs and attended the needs of others instead.  I am breathing in the pine scented air.  Thank God, all of the pines are not dead....the valiant still stand tall among their fallen brothers.  I am breathing in health and courage for my own spirit, and I will take that back with me when I return home. 


Note to self: Do not over look small details that signal problems; deal with them before they become unsolvable disasters.

Be safe, be healthy, take your women vitamins, and be blessed, Kersten

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