InTheTemazcal

The trail just above New Mexico State University at Alamogordo, NM. Image from My Track app, on Google Maps satellite image. My most productive and enjoyable days at work include a hike. My workplace, located in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains of southern New Mexico, affords me the opportunity to hike a trail just above my workplace. It's the closest trail and makes for a reasonable 30-35 minute work out. The Benefits of Hiking During My Work Day Hiking during a break in my work day has benefits for my work goals and my personal well being. Here are a few of them... Improved Focus.  This particular trail has a few stretches of unstable rocks that will roll under the feet of a distracted hiker. I've actually sprained my ankle on this trail once, and I've taken a hard, headfirst fall while hiking there on another occasion. The rough trail conditions force me to practice focus (or suffer the consequences I just described). I focus, especially on t...

The medicine wheel in my back yard. Having missed yesterday, due to illness, writing a post dedicated to Jordan's mission in Manaus Brazil, I decided that it was time to visit a medicine wheel that I had made and frequented near my home. The Oso Mario, in Durango, Mexico, had introduced me to the medicine wheel, and I read about it in John G. Neihardt's book, Black Elk Speaks .  During the waxing moon of mid-June, when I returned to Durango, the Oso Hector asked me, in the temazcal, to share with the fellow caminantes how I dealt with the four years away from the temazcal while in the U.S. Hector knew that I had moved from Durango to a small village just below the Mescalero Apache Reservation in the foothills of the Sacramento Mountains, in southeastern New Mexico. There, the Apaches, my brother, Kelton told me, do not traditionally practice temazcal , or sweat lodges, as they're known in most of the United States. Because I had no nearby caminantes with who...