For one, you can eat your sack lunch anywhere, even along a refreshing snow-melt stream in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. 
Of course, you have to hike up there first. “Up there” is about 8,000 feet, which is no small feat when you are living day to day at 500 feet above sea level. 
I’m not saying I wasn’t up for the challenge, even in my slightly older, slightly pudgy state. It helps to have a husband who carries the actual lunches, water and miscellaneous gewgaws on his back. 
As a person who lives for shade, the open meadows were beautiful, but sweltering. When I checked the temperatures before I left, the prediction was 90 degrees every day wherever we were headed. 
So I simply braced myself and wore a cooling scarf — a neat doodad with swelling beads that you can dip in a freezing cold stream — which helped keep my body temperature in check. 
When we reached an enticingly shady spot, we sat on a rock and ate our sack lunches. I’m quite sure the glorious view enhanced the tuna salad and made it taste that much better. 
My husband cajoled me onto a rickety bridge with promises of a better view. Naturally I succumbed, and he was correct. 
Hiking back to the trailhead I felt God winking at us through snow-capped peaks, 
dramatic clouds, 
charming flora 
and enchanting fauna. 
As with all remote hiking and lunching, we tried not to leave our mark. But a mark was definitely left on us.
Photos © Sondra Sula.
Take a walk with me by reading my daily devotional book, Meditations on Mendocino by Sondra Sula. Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle versions.
If you’d prefer a daily river walk, Reflections on the Fox River and Beyond by Sondra Sula, might just be the book for you.
Gardening. It’s something I once did with relish. 
Hmm. Reminds me of trying to thrust my will upon God. I want this, even though You are leading me to that.
Hmm. Perhaps I need to follow where I’m being led.
Plant what grows here.
Maybe then the struggle will end
and the unimpeded flow will begin.
I was born in a city surrounded by water—a river and two bays. And just beyond Fall River, Massachusetts, was the wild and tempestuous north Atlantic Ocean. I’ve spent almost my entire life living near large bodies of water, so it makes sense I would end up on the Mendocino coast.
I was never one for flat, endless beaches of pristine sand; I felt more at home among craggy rocks and fistfuls of seaweed.
I now live near verdant stretches of land that end unexpectedly, overhanging hard-to-reach beaches.
Beautiful butterflies float near the frightening edges
and metallic green sweat bees plunder pulchritudinous posies poking up along precipices.
Mendocino paintbrush dab orange onto a vast landscape encompassing the blue beyond.
This is my home now; this is where I’ve pounded in my stakes.
Where I have been called to grow and bloom in any circumstance.
What leaves me gob smacked about the Mendocino area’s headlands in the spring is the sheer volume of flowers that flourish there.
Whether planted,
natural,
or a combination of both,
the blooms often continue as far as the eye can see.
I often feel embraced by them,
especially when I get down to their level.
Hugs can be hard to come by these days. But allowing the embrace of benevolence—through the natural world—can soothe us.
Sondra Sula's Blog: The Nature of Spirituality 