Lessons from Geese

Fact 1
As each goose flaps its wings, it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock has 71% greater flying range than if each bird flew alone.
Lesson
People who share a common direction and sense of community can get where they are going quicker and easier, because they are traveling on the thrust of each other.

Fact 2
When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.
Lesson
If we have as much sense as a goose, we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

Fact 3
When the lead bird tires, it rotates back into the formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.
Lesson
It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership. As with geese, people are interdependent on each others’ skills, capabilities, and unique arrangement of gifts, talents, or resources.

Fact 4
The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.
Lesson
We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, the production is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and to encourage the heart and core values of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

Fact 5
When a goose gets sick, wounded, or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay with it until it dies or is able to fly again. Then, they launch out with another formation to catch up with the flock.
Lesson
If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we’re strong.

Appreciation

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen

Ephesians 3:14-21

A Look at the PCT

Well I thought it might be helpful for those who may be unfamiliar with the PCT to have a visual map to reference to. As you can see the entire trail is over 2,600 miles and runs from Mexico to Canada. Not something I can attempt any time soon but perhaps in the future I will accomplish this. For the purpose of our mission we will be concentrating on the Oregon portion of this trail.

We intend to travel from North to South which is not the typical route taken. Every one has a different idea of how to approach things and we are no different. Really we are choosing a North to South direction purly because North is closer to Portland which is where we will be coming from. So we will begin in the Columbia River Gorge area and move toward Mt. Hood.

I am really excited about the potential to see wildlife and yet a bit apprehensive at the same time. I am trying to study up on how to handle bear and mountain lion encounters. While I would love to catch a glimpse of these spectacular animals I do not wish to 'play' with them or be a chew toy for them either.

One precaution we are planning to take is to not cook in our sleeping areas. This should eliminate any smell of food which will attract all kinds of animals. We will stop and cook our meals and then continue on for an hour or two longer so that we ar well away from any smell of cooked foods.

This reminds me of a time when we where camping with some dear friends of ours and cooking around the camp fire. A well meaning park ranger, who I would describe as "Barney" from the Andy Griffith show (with an added 100lbs or so) came along to give us words of advice regarding the local wildlife. He was insistant that we keep our food locked up out of reach of potential pest. And in his own words he exclaimed " These here raccoons have claws that will slice through your tent like butter!" I was rolling. Of all the potential harm one could face in the Cascade Range we were to concern our selves with the ferocious raccoons of the west.

Here we go!

Well today is the first day of the rest of our life or so the saying goes. Today I hope to find time to get in one mile of walking. Doesn't sound to hard...... so then what is the problem? I don't know, that is what I am hoping you all will help me with. Discovering why it is so hard to make the important things in life the priority and so easy to make the unimportant things top of the list. So today I will make time to walk one mile. I figure I better start out small so I can accomplish the goal or I may give up to soon.

As far as nutrition goes I am going to make one huge change in my life: NO FASTFOOD! That is it, cold turkey. Should be easy the first week but we will see how it goes as the days add up. here is a quick look at the things we decided to change starting today:

1. No Fast Food (No driv-thru windows, ouch!)

2. More water, less soda!

3. More moving, less sitting

4. Daily prayer time!

So there you go. I'll be back to let you know how it goes. I picked up a great backpacking magazine and can't wait to share some great ideas and adventures featured there.

Two Fools

Welcome and thank you for taking the time to visit this blog and get to know us and what we are attempting to accomplish. I say attempting because I really do not know where we will end up when this is all over. But we do have a goal or direction set out and so we begin our journey.

I'll start by telling you a little about my husband and me and how we arrived at this adventure. My husband, Leonard, recently turned 39 years old. He has aways been quite active hunting and fishing, construction and restoring vehicles. My name is Trina and I am 36 years old. I to have always been active raising 4 children as well as hunting, fishing, and camping.

However something unusual began to happen about 6 years ago. Life began to....change. Outdoor activities all but ceased to exist. No more hunting and scouting. No more treks into the lake for a day of fishing. No more camping trips to Mt Hood or Central Oregon. As these activities disappeared new "things" replaced them. We are both as busy as ever but somehow we seem to be busy doing nothing......

With this decrease in outdoor life also came a decrease in healthy eating habits. We are now so busy that seldom do we sit down for a homecooked meal but rather do the proverbial fast food. As a consequence to this complacency we have both gained about 35 pounds. Our muscles ache at the end of the day (and if I am really honest they ache before I evn get out of bed in the morning!)

We also began to notice that with this decrease of physical life that our spiritual life began to transform from a hightened sense of all that was good in Gods creation to a focus on all that is wrong with mans current plight. I say all of this to say somewhere, somehow we became disengaged from discovering a deep relationship with God and fell into a trap of Satan's: The trap of meaninglessness.

This life of meaninglessness appears busy, active, and productive but upon closer scrutiny the fruit of this life is weight gain, loss of peace, and loss of true happiness. Spending day after day accomplishing nothing of any real meaning and being exhaustd doing it.

Once we realized we were locked in this trap we decided that we had to break out of it. That is where this vision of discovery was born in us. We have been studying Romans and how the attributes of God can be seen in His creation. So......to get back our physical and spiritual health we decided to study the attributes of God in His creation by venturing into the wilderness and documenting what we find and ultimately documenting what can be known about the God we serve.

So we ask you to travel with us over the next 8 months as we train our bodies (don't forget people we have gotten fat in the last 6 years.) and minds for this experience. We will document our excercising and weight loss, we need you as accountability partners. In order to accomplish this trek we need to be in top condition so we can carry our packs as well as breath at different altitudes. We will also be training our prayer life so it to will be stronger and bring glory to God.

We pray that you will join with us in prayer and exercise, to draw closer to God and look for His workmanship in this world.