Celebrating my Autumn stoke.

My dog bounces down the trail on a mission to sniff out, hear for, and chase innocent chipmunks and squirrels. She pops her head out from behind a tree pausing a moment from her fruitless chase to see where I am and she bounds like a giddy deer through the bushes back to the trail. The aspens are bursting yellow here and there, around the river bend, past the railroad, and through the valley swashed between coniferous green and exposed alpine rocky cliff. The breeze tickles the trees and a leaf, a needle, here and there, begin their final dance to the forest floor. Along the trail a Saturday’s worth of hikers and trail runners and get-out-and-explorers chat and point and greet each other and the day. There is something in me, in us, in the air, in the hills that is stoked to be out and about. Even while fields and orchards burst their autumnal harvest and the metaphors of summer’s bounty become cliché, it is a wholly different thing to experience it. To be out in the woods, the fields, and the mountain tops observing and feeling a sunny autumn day is a unique and glorious moment of time. I have a little more bounce in my step since I’ve played a fair amount (never enough, but still fair) over the summer. Yes, I’ve built my stamina up to hike this trail easily, to flow. Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow, discusses this phenomenon as a practice of seeking personal happiness, of optimal experience. I flow and I am happy. I exercise and I am happy. I exercise regularly and I am regularly happy. Even while the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion forward numerous benefits of regular exercise (See general guidelines here.) that should be acknowledged, there is something else that is at play during such an amazing autumn day. I think it has to do with a collective stoke to be experiencing everything that we observe and everyone that we are with. The French tell stories about La Joie de Vivre (the Joy of Living) were active ecstasy is found in absolutely everything…even the mundane, such as eating. Tell me you don’t enjoy your weekend morning cup of coffee or sitting in the warm sun. I do...anything and I am happy. There is an idea at play here which I think is significant. It is important to reflect on the importance of appreciating the simple experience of life and all that it is for a moment, for a series of moments, from time to time. What gets you stoked? What senses tingle during moments of flow, fun, appreciation and connection? How do you access this feeling on a regular basis? How do you share it? There is an attitude between lovers, among friends, within various communities where people share stories of their days, their adventures, their exploration, their observations, their triumphs and even their struggles in a way that celebrates their lives. Our daily lives become our stories; our stories become our journeys. Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind calls on the autumnal western wind in all its power, force, and catalytic inspiration to renew and empower him even in times of challenge and difficulty towards greatness. “Make me thy lyre,…Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit!” We experience nature and culture and each other and essentially life with greater intensity if we are more appreciative, more aware, more stoked. True stoke, the well of happiness, does not end with us; it runs, bounds like my dog, exponentially through us and between us and throughout the living world. "By waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe." Tom Robbins. The challenge is practicing our stoke on a regular basis. At this moment at this time in any way that you choose, I hope that you are stoked….on everything, shared with everyone, and regularly.  Be well. Be stoked.