I threw water and a snack in a backpack, double-checked the first aid supplies (for a human and a dog), and grabbed a small journal, while clicking a leash on Sadie as we headed out the door. Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot by a trailhead on South Mountain.

We huffed and puffed up the northern Ridgeline Trail, or to be more accurate, I wheezed, while Sadie bounded over boulders on her 17-month-old Sheepadoodle legs.

I stopped to photograph an ironwood tree covered in pink foliage like a high school senior dressed for prom. A few minutes later, I leaned backwards in an attempt to capture the saguaro blooms nine feet…twelve feet…fifteen feet above the ground.

We passed two different rocks covered in petroglyphs, attributed to the ancient Hohokam people. My brain tried to wrap itself around the fact that this recorded history is just twenty minutes from my house.

It was a head-clearing morning. A time to let my mind wander, to lose myself, until things settled. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the story I had been working on untangled, and I knew how to fix the sentences when I got home.

I had inwardly questioned my decision to escape to the mountains, but I realized something in that moment—

Walking is part of writing.

St Augustine would agree. He is credited for saying solvitur ambulando or It is solved by walking. For Augustine, walking was part of the thinking process. Other famous thinkers who were habitual walkers included: Thoreau, C.S. Lewis, Albert Einstein, Beethoven, and Charles Dickens. And of course, Jesus walked. He could have zoomed around in a chariot or teleported to new locations, but he chose walking instead.

I had berated myself for lacing up my hiking boots, but it turns out, it was just what I needed.

How about you? What is your clear-your-head activity that you scold yourself for doing? Or tell yourself that you don’t have time for the activity, that you have more important things to do?

Don’t neglect it. Place it on the calendar or grab it in an unplanned moment of ditching your agenda.

As for that time management book? Author, Kendra Adachi would agree with me. She wrote in The Plan: Manage Your Time Like a Lazy Genius,

“Name your have-to’s – these include fun and rest. Prioritize taking care of your body, soul, creativity, and relationships,” that ultimately our goal is to live “whole-hearted lives.”

Amen sister. Amen.

INVITATION 1

The Month We All Become Prayer Warriors

We are in the month of the longest day and the shortest night. No matter an individual’s belief system, this is the time when all desert dwellers look to the skies and pray for rain. We will see our hottest day of the year this month, typically flirting with 120 degrees. Clouds will roll across the skies each evening as we pray for the release of life-giving moisture.

The saguaro fruit will ripen, consumed by white-winged doves, finches, and other birds that will deposit the seeds all across the desert. And sometime this month, no matter how early we awaken, we will discover it is already over 90 degrees. That, in my opinion, is the first official day of desert summer. I will try to squish yard work, watering the trees, walking the dog, and going to the grocery store before 7 am.

At an elevation of over 7000’—up near Flagstaff—the wildflowers will be prominent, over twenty varieties: butter and eggs, doubting mariposa lilies, fleabane, milkvetch, firecracker penstemon, bluebonnet lupines, Richardson geraniums, desert evening primroses and more. The elk will come to a nearby freshwater spring each evening. The birds and forest critters will entertain us. And we will pray for rain as we face another wildfire season.

June drops Arizonans to our knees.

Please join me in praying for rain.

INVITATION 2

Your Soul’s Backpack

A verse to carry in your soul’s backpack:

Then I will give you rain in due season,

and the land shall yield her increase,

and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.

- Leviticus 26:4

INVITATION 3

Consider the Beauty Where You Live

“I don’t want to master my body; I want to tend to it.”

Kendra Adachi in The Plan

One way I tend to my body and soul is to look for beauty in the season—right here and right now—where I live.

Three recent moments:

INVITATION 4

A Giveaway!!

Congrats to Jeanne T, Carol D and Maggie B who won last month!

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a project and wondered, “What have I gotten myself into?” That is the question I asked when Kevin and I decided to take out our grass and put desert landscaping in our front yard.

All the trees we planted kept dying, until I realized we were digging the holes wrong. But I also realized I was digging a hole in my marriage. What was I going to do?

This story is in the June/July issue of Guideposts Magazine.

Click on the link below and send me an email for a chance to win! I will draw two winners on June 8th.

LOCAL EVENT

The art exhibit, Ceangal/Connections has been extended until August 24. I would love to have you come see the work by eight artists, photographers, filmmakers and writers. My desert poetry is on display.

Location: Chandler Museum, 178 E Commonwealth Ave, Chandler, AZ 85225. The museum is always free!! (Closed on Mondays.)

June 3: Lunch and Learn from 12:00 - 12:30. Hear about our Sister City relationship with Tullamore and the details behind this exhibit. (Bring a lunch!) I will be one of the speakers.

*****

NEW BOOK WITH GUIDEPOSTS:

Where I Found God Today contains over 100 devotions of moments when the collection of writers discovered God in their ordinary lives. In the dairy aisle at the grocery store. Putting a sign in a window.

My five devotions include seeing God’s presence and love for me when I saw wild horses on my birthday, in the blue shadows of distant mountains, under the canopy of paragliders, in a circle of redwood trees, and in the ripples of a stone skimming across a calm lake.

Guideposts is offering a 15% discount on their website with the code AUTHOR15. Amazon and other retailers will have the books available on June 17 but can be preordered now.

*****

VINTAGE TYPEWRITERS:

All Photos are by Lynne Hartke, unless otherwise noted.

• Sadie overlooking a dry Mormon Lake. (We need rain!)

• Ironwood trees in bloom

• Petroglyphs on South Mountain

• Saguaro in bloom

• Saguaro Fruit

• Turtle Sundial at Gilbert Riparian Park

• Tassel-eared squirrel at Mormon Lake

• Spiny lizard at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix.

• Claret cup cactus in abundance, Mormon Lake.

• This month’s giveaway.

• Ceangal art exhibit at the Chandler Museum.

• Cover of Where I Found God Today.

• Vintage typewriters at past events.

• Cliff Chipmunk at Mormon Lake.