hello FB Friends and acquaintances. I have decided to take a 30+ day break from Facebook. On Monday night I will deactivate my account for the next 30+days.
I will miss the opportunity to connect and hear from you so feel free to drop me a note and share news with me via email: skisushi@gmail.com I hope to invest some of the time previously spent engaging FB into writing and sharing via my Blog: https://iterativeliving.wordpress.com/ Since I won’t be posting my blog updates via FB, Feel free to subscribe. I will still be obsessively posting my Nordic Ski and Openwater Swim adventures and pictures to Strave and Instagram. I do appreciate all the love and support and information you all have shared with me on FB. That is why I most likely will be back after this 30 day break. ☮❤🙂
Sharing another one of My 13 year old Son’s poems here as a guest post. Shared with with permission from Nate. Apparently he read some poetry by Amanda Gorman (inauguration poet) for a class and it inspired him to write this incredible poem. I hope you enjoy as much as I did. ~Seth
A Poem by Nathan Horowitz
Waking up.
The warm stream of sunlight runs across your face like a stream
Standing up
The head rush, the excitement for what’s to come
The gears inside keep chugging, moving along
You’re ready,
Ready to make a change,
Ready to make a difference.
Even in the hardest of hard times,
You can feel the rhyme,
Ready to write your way out of the dark world and into the light
My son Nate (13 years old) wrote this powerfully descriptive narrative of a Slot Canyon. I was blown away and got his permission to share it here:
A slow drip, drip, drip, running down a sandy mountain, that no one could hear, in the middle of a cold and desolate desert.
Occasionally, those drips of water would turn into a roaring river, rushing through the desert like a pack of howling coyotes.
Overtime, these simple events would continuously happen, unbeknownst to most souls, except for the occasional flock of birds, who had no interest in it.
Years upon years passed and overtime, the flat desert began to have a crack in it from the running water. Soon that crack would become a pit; a deep, dark narrow pit stretching for miles, and only the water knew.
Eventually, adventurers found these slots of whimsical wavy lines of orange and tunnels so narrow, only mice could fit through. The canyons would eventually fill up with people looking for adventure, and soon the lovely natural walls of the slot canyon became a hot tourist destination where the tunnels would be filled with voices to cover up the whistle of the wind.
In April after a month without swimming I was feeling desperate for an outdoor adventure and some exercise. So on a whim I decided to head out to the Great Salt Lake State Park Marina to attempt to swim in the cool 52 degree Salty Lake. Although I have lived here 30+ years I have spent very little time in, on or near the lake, and had no idea what I was missing. The mountains and desert of Utah have captured my attention while the Great Salt Lake rarely even registered except for perhaps an occasional glance of a beautiful sunset far away in the distance. What started as a pandemic whim, has turned into an obsession. Yesterday was my 90th day swimming in the GSL since April.
My “Hundred Acre wood”
My perspective and experience swimming this Spring and Summer has been transformative. Each morning when I enter the Great Salt Lake State Park I leave behind one world for a new one, I feel like Christopher Robin when he travels through a magic portal to the Hundred Acre Wood, an amazing world filled with new friends, discoveries and realizations about life. How is it that I could have missed it for the first 30 years I have lived in this beautiful state? The world I enter has magical sunrises and an incredible, underappreciated ecosystem.
I usually arrive in the dark a little groggy and still sipping my warm coffee. With the morning chill in the air I might exchange a few words with my swim partners and capture a quick photo of the morning sky, put on my cap and goggles, and make initial observations about the conditions as I look at the flagpole and walk down the boat ramp.
I quickly enter the water where the cold water shocks me awake into a sense of heightened awareness. After the initial shock I am enveloped by water. I slowly acclimatize to the cool water and shockingly strong salinity as I begin my stroke and settle into a rhythm as I exit the marina. After exiting the marina I swim to the first red buoy and pause to effortlessly float and take in the exquisite sunrise and morning light. A few inches above lake level my eyes fight the glare of the rising sun, as I sight on the deep buoy line to the east towards Saltair. As I turn the corner to head out the channel towards Antelope Island, I start to realize the vastness of this Great Salt Lake and the surrounding mountain landscape. With few boats, no recreational fishing and limited mass appeal the lake becomes a place of great solitude. On some early mornings it is amazing to think that my swimming partner(s) and I might be the only humans out in this massive body of water. Gone are the popular lakeside resort of Saltair and Blackrock Beach of the last century. In contrast the reservoirs in the nearby mountains often feel like Disneyland and are being loved to death by recreationalists hoping to escape reality on these relative pea size man made bodies of water.
The lake itself seems to have emotions and moods; one day it is calm and so glassy you could seemingly cut it with a diamond the next day a wind from the North may create angry seas with winds and waves and currents as large as a stormy ocean. I have observed a unique characteristic that I can only describe as heavy and dense water. This “density” combined with the Lakes size and shallow depth contribute to unique wave energy quite different from those I have experienced swimming in other bodies of water. The duration, direction and speed of the wind all contribute to these GSL “moods”.
As my body churns along the surface of the lake, I casually observe the vibrancy of the ecosystem through the lense of my goggles. I have observed the cycles of the Brine Shrimp; unobscured clear waters one week followed by slicks of orange egg the next week. Shortly after, the great number of tiny sea creatures obscure the water clarity and view of the lake bed. In the peak of summer incomprehensible numbers of brine flies feed off the nutrient rich algae and can form clouds so thick it is hard for the swimmer to avoid inhaling them. Although a great annoyance to us swimmers, it is clear these brine flies provide an endless source of food to the many birds which delight in the morning light and breeze. As we swim further out in the lake mirage-like flocks of seagulls appear bobbing on the water or playfully flying above the lake’s surface. Between April and September, I have observed a rather dramatic drop in the water level. As the lake level drops, a favorite offshore swim route that deviates off the deep water boat channel became unswimmable when my stroke was impeded by the shallow reef. I have observed so many things in the 70+ days I have immersed myself in the lake this year. Each and every one of those observations have been a gift.
As I enter into a meditative state during my swims; my mind wanders across thoughts from mundane to profound. My mind escapes reality, but also finds great clarity and creative inspiration as I glide through this vast Salty Lake. In this meditative state I came to realize that connecting with the Great Salt Lake in such an intimate and whole way is implicitly tied to my earlier experiences when I was coming of age in Upstate New York.
While churning through the Lake, especially when the water is cold and when the waves are big, my mind often wanders to memories of my dad jumping into streams, river lakes, and the ocean no matter how cold or rough. While swimming my mind also wanders to my teenage years when I spent time volunteering with a sloop club that took people out sailing on another underappreciated body of water, the Hudson River. Much like the Great Salt Lake, the Hudson River of my youth in the 70s and 80s was underappreciated and suffered from major human caused ecological duress. Like the GSL people generally did not swim in the Hudson River. Although a beautiful natural and wild estuary it suffered from a lack of stewardship much like the Great Salt Lake. These childhood experiences clearly were the seeds that germinated in my psyche and eventually led me to my connection with the the Great Salt Lake 30+ years late.
When I tell locals that I swim daily in the Great Salt Lake the reaction is consistently one of surprise. They can’t believe anyone would choose to spend time at the Lake and certainly not swim in it. Doesn’t it smell?, How can you stand the bugs? Doesn’t the salt water burn your throat and skin? It is true that the lake can be a harsh environment. However I have learned that it is also an incredibly calming and beautiful place. A place with an important and fragile ecosystem vibrant with life.
I will leave you with this amazing quote from John Muir:
“When the north wind blows bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism, for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed and swim without effort, rocking and whirling up and down and round in delightful rhythm while the wind sings in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fibre of your body, and at the end of your excursion you are tossed ashore with a glad God-speed, braced and salted and clean as a saint.” ~John Muir June 27,1877*
Fun to see my “season of Discovering the Great Salt Lake” Essay published in the fall Friends of Great Salt Lake Newsletter. This is a great organization to support in their advocacy work. Membership is quite affordable and donations are as last appreciated to help with there grassroots advocacy, education and outreach work. Checkout the full downloadable autumn Newsletter to learn more about why you should care about this unique terminus lake. Here is the link to the newsletter and website for membership and donations. But even more then your money the GSL needs your love and attention, there is no better time of year to visit the lake then the winter, go check it out while your waiting for the deep powder to fall.
Cattle Grazing on public lands….. I am not a fan of cattle grazing on sensitive public lands. However, I have gained a new perspective on it, based on an encounter with this rancher and his family while hiking on the east side of Mt Nebo.
He and 3 generations of his family were on the mountain placing 400+ lbs of salt lick blocks in the meadows for the health of his cattle.The horses with the rubber tire saddlebags carry 4x 50 lbs blocks of salt The cows are currently grazing lower on the mountain and are gradually grazing there way up to this higher ground. He has lost cows to injury, illness and even wildfires. The rain storm we had a few weeks back helped to grow the grass on the mountain. Another big soaking rain storm would further bolster the volume of grass for grazing. One year, he told me, two of his cows wandered on a narrow hiking trail over a saddle on the Nebo ridge and were found by other rancher in the town of Mona 5,000+ vertical feet down the other side of the mountain.
This modern day cowboy has a second job at a cement plant between Nephi and Delta Utah to augment his ranching income.
I still don’t like cows grazing on public lands! However, I do have a bit more empathy, respect and understanding of those multi-generational ranchers, that have their cattle grazing on our public lands
This spring when the Covid-19 Global Pandemic emerged in Utah, all of the pools closed. For the past 10+ years Pool Swimming has become a part of my fitness routine. Last Summer I got really hooked on Openwater swimming with weekly trips up to the nearby Mountain reservoirs. This past Fall and Winter I had a few chances to Openwater swim in the cold water of the San Francisco Bay. So in April after a month of no swimming I decided to head out to the Great Salt Lake to attempt to swim in the cool 52 degree Salty Lake. As of today I have swam in the lake 46 days since April 10th. After a particularly fabulous swim this morning I was inspired to put some thoughts into words to share with people what the experience of swimming in the Great Salt Lake has meant to me. I hope you have find your silver lining in these difficult times.
GSL #46 Smooth Rolling Waves Today….
The Great Salt Lake is a place where:
A place That is the opposite of “boring….
A place where you realize that a place so familiar can be different each and every time you visit it…
A place that so many people stay away from, but, has become your jewel….
A place and experience that started as an experiment, became a muse, then a habit, them an obsession and then a passion….
A place where the weather and waves can be angry, turbid and dangerous one day and then calm smooth and safe the next day…
A place that first was a silver-lining in a pandemic, but, then became the backyard salve to the anxiety, pain and sadness from social injustice…
A place where parking lot meetings inspire you…..
Meeting Harper a cat masked motorcyclist from Louisiana touring the country reminding me of lessons learned on my bicycle tour across country at age 18…..
Meeting Kyle with his homemade sailboat evoking memories and lessons formed while sailing with a bunch of “hippies” as a kid on the Hudson River…
Meeting Robert the Rainbow Ninja who inspired me with his life story and heightened my awareness of my white privilege…
Inspiration from fellow swimmers….
Like @swimrwill who inspired me to go further and faster until I feel I can swim forever…..
Like Kilo Z who speaks of social justice, solstice introspections and who teaches me that a life can be full of intentional purpose, if you stop treading water and actively. propel yourself in a new direction…
A place where you learn that your selfish time of day prepares you to be more present and available to your family and friends….
The Great Salt Lake not a boring place at all!
I found this gem of a quote from non other the John Muir about swimming in the great Salt Lake, in a Deseret Newsvarticle ( I couldn’t agree more John and love these descriptive words):
In Muir’s own poetic writing, here is a summary of his experience in the waters of the Great Salt Lake, as recorded in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper of June 27, 1877:
“When the north wind blows bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism, for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed and swim without effort, rocking and whirling up and down and round in delightful rhythm while the wind sings in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fibre of your body, and at the end of your excursion you are tossed ashore with a glad God-speed, braced and salted and clean as a saint.”
I found this gem of a quote from non other the John Muir about swimming in the great Salt Lake, in a Deseret Newsvarticle ( I couldn’t agree more John and love these descriptive words):
In Muir’s own poetic writing, here is a summary of his experience in the waters of the Great Salt Lake, as recorded in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper of June 27, 1877:
“When the north wind blows bathing in Salt Lake is a glorious baptism, for then it is all wildly awake with waves, blooming like a prairie in snowy crystal foam. Plunging confidently into the midst of the grand uproar you are hugged and welcomed and swim without effort, rocking and whirling up and down and round in delightful rhythm while the wind sings in chorus and the cool, fragrant brine searches every fibre of your body, and at the end of your excursion you are tossed ashore with a glad God-speed, braced and salted and clean as a saint.”
I am republishing this post from 2012 as I embark on a holiday break from Social Media and Smart Phone internet connectivity. I intend to take the time between now and New Year’s to suspend my use of Social Media and Smart Phone internet connectivity, save perhaps Google maps to Navigate my way around the bay area.
In the past few months I have enjoyed an increasingly active engagement with my network via social media and my smartphone connectivity(FB, Linkedin, Twitter, podcast). However the enjoyment has come with a cost. The addictive nature of these tools and their purpose built engagement algorithms have been very effective at sucking me in to an unhealthy amount of time spent both consuming and generating content.
After posting and sharing this post, I intend to disable my smartphones data for the coming week (except for targeted GMap use). After this Cold turkey diet week, I intend to return to the connected world, hopefully with some new perspective as I embark back into a more mindful and controlled usage pattern. I will post an update with the outcomes. Until then, please enjoy this blog post and my reflections on a similar exercise in 2012.
Happy Holidays!
Today is the 4th day of my self imposed “Smart Phone Diet”. I have temporarily disabled the WIFI and 4g internet connections on my Galaxy II Android mobile phone. WHAT? WHY? you ask… let me explain and share with you some reflections from this period of throttled down connectivity. Although i may joke to the contrary, I am by no means a “luddite“. I am not a gadget freak, but, I do love my smart phone. As a voracious seeker of knowledge, perspective and connections I would never want to revert to the pre-WWW world . I am amazed by the access to knowledge and the increased connections to others that the internet facilitates. During this Smart phone diet I did not go cold turkey on the Internet and social networks. I simply removed the real time pocket access that the smart phone provides.
Although it comes in waves and ebbs I have noticed that lately that the firehose of mobile fueled inputs and outputs had crescendoed to an all time high level. In the moment, I find this increased amount of incoming information and connections, thought provoking and highly engaging given my ADHD tendencies. With the awareness of the past few days, I am reminded that reducing the inputs and outputs to smaller sips through a smaller information straw, can increase focus and mindfulness. When I first disabled my mobile access, I became more aware of the habits and patterns that I had unconsciously been developing with my smart phone use. Any passing thought/question or idle moments would cause me to reach into my pocket for my phone for some instant information, news or social updates. Like a crack pipe, the more I engaged in this pattern, the more I needed it. One of the few things that kept my addiction partially in check, was the overt displeasure of my smart phone hating wife. With the time that I have bought back by limiting the time consumed by my mobile connectivity, I have been able to read an awsome novel, be more present with my family and increase my focus on extended thoughts.
I will likely re-enable my phones internet connections in the coming weeks, however i hope to be more mindful and responsible with it’s use based on the awareness this diet has raised. If you would like to discover more about the affect of distractions on creativity I would recommend this article from the Salt Lake Tribune: Study: “Turn off iPhone, take a hike – your creativity will soar”
After a long hiatus, I have decided to start blogging again. This is just a quick post as I warm back up. Stay tuned for a future longer post on the topic of education and teaching children critical thinking skills. In the mean time…here is something to chew on:
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When you are leading a business meeting are you the “sage on the stage” or are you facilitating decisions? Some casual research I was doing relating to the “flipped classroom” in education led me to this interesting article on business meetings. Anyone who has almost died from a PowerPoint centered meeting should appreciate this article 🙂
Have a read and leave me a comment with our thoughts…
The deep freeze we are in with this week’s inversion has inspired me to daydream about warmer days and outdoor living.
I was amazed by the transformative effect adding a small 9×9 ft. sitting patio to our front yard had on our home. Most of the houses on our street are brick bungalows with large front porches with sitting areas. In the summer these porches are a great place to eat a casual meal, read the paper and visit with neighbors. We have been looking for a solution to our front porch envy for many years. Our objective was to create a usable sitting space that would aesthetically blend in with our neighborhood and small xericscaped front yard. We settled on a ground level flagstone patio. Chase from Sage’s Way Landscapehttp://sagesway.net/ did a wonderful job installing the hardscape.
This summer we enjoyed the added outdoor living space immensely. We enjoyed eating meals visiting with friends and neighbors on a regular basis in this new space. It has proven to be a great social meeting space. After a season of use I will be considering some minor improvements like adding some additional shade and perhaps adding a stone bench for some additional seating. It has been really satisfying to envision a new space, design and implement it.
This morning I was staring at the outside thermometer trying to motivate myself to ride to work……My wife challenged me with the statement “aren’t you a New Yorker?…I thought you were tough!” So, I steeled myself with the resolve for the chilliest bicycling commute of the year. I prepared with smart layering and an appropriate amount of insulation and wind protection. On cold days even with neoprene booties I find my toes are the one part of my body that I struggle to keep warm. Looking for a solution to this problem, I decided to experiment to find a solution to this “cold toe” problem. In addition to warm socks and neoprene booties, I decided I needed one more layer to trap the heat near my toes. Thinking back to my youth I decided to try a trick we used when I was little. Over my socks I wrapped a plastic garbage bag to trap in the heat.
With this simple no cost solution my feet stayed warm today despite the cold. I suppose that on a longer ride I might have had problems with sweat/moisture buildup, however for my short 40 minute commute this did not prove to be a problem.
The point of this post is to get you thinking about simple, cheap solutions to problems you encounter. I am not suggesting that you should avoid sophisticated and elegant long term solutions. however, you should not be afraid to experiment, prototype and test your hypothesis along your way to finding the perfect long term solution. This idea of experimentation and learning from trial and error is at the heart of the concept of iterative living.
While visiting Northern California I visited the San Jose Tech Museum. My wife pointed out this quote at the Entrance to the Museum:
Optimism is an essential ingredient for innovation. How else can the individual welcome change over security , Adventure over staying in a safe places?- Bob Noyce
In this coming new year I encourage you to be optimistic and to welcome change and adventure over staying in safe places 🙂
In software development and innovation it is especially crucial to apply these methods. Often times a solution architects and CIOs will be attracted by an over-architected solution designs. When provided with a beta or early prototype design they might ask you, Is it scalable for the enterprise? Where is the redundancy? Will it be configurable for other use cases?…..
Conversely the scrappy agile software developer, the ambitious product manager, the hungry sales guy, might be willing to accept a less sophisticated beta solution or working prototype. They would argue; why should we invest in an overly sophisticated, scalable, redundant solution for a limited use pilot test. In the early stages of a product lifecycle it is important to test your ideas early and often. Much has been written about the value of prototyping, yet, I think you will find that this technique is not as widely used across many software development shops as would be expected. In manufacturing it is much more of a forced milestone since the cost to ramp up an assembly line and the ability to modify the solution after manufacturing has begun is much harder. I would argue that both the true and opportunity costs associated with skipping the prototype milestone with software development can be just as high and damaging. Chances are your problem statement and business requirements are speculative and should be treated as a hypothesis until proven. We need to accept that even the most envisioned, thought out software designs and solutions will need to be refactored many times in their product lifecycle. I have this popular cartoon printed out and hanging in my work cube as a reminder that we need to validate and test our software design ideas early and often or we will end up delivering something that does not meet the customers needs….
I hope this post inspires you to experiment and find simple and elegant solutions.
Happy New years!
Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas on this topic.
Iterative Living 