I completed the event twice, in 2000 and 2001, both times in my sister Sharon’s honor.  I figured if she could face two brain surgeries, chemo and radiation and all the other terrors she had faced with her body, I could sweat a bit with mine.

In 2000, my daughter Heather and I completed it together.  I wrote an article about that that appeared in our local paper in 2003 and here is the link.  If you look closely between Heather’s arm and her head, you can see Sharon standing in the background.  I didn’t see that till the article came out, after Sharon’s death.

http://www.theunion.com/article/20030807/TODAYSFEATURE/108070038

Marisha, my sister’s oldest daughter and I are doing it together this year, also in Sharon’s honor.  The event raises money to support Breast Cancer Prevention and in honor of a local woman who died at 42 of breast cancer.

If you’d like to support me in my sweat and endeavors, you can send a check to my P. O Box 1122, Nevada City, CA 95959.  Checks should be made out to: SNMH Foundation/Millar Fund.  (That’s our local hospital, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital.)  Please send them by 9/15 because we have to turn them in before the race.  Any amount will be appreciated.

I’ll be doing this blog on my training, which has been daunting.  Trying to keep up with the demands of the farm, teaching writing, writing, coaching clients and training—biking, swimming and running–on top of it all has me falling into bed at night exhausted.

But life is very good.   My partner Landon is here and very excited about me doing the triathlon.  I have to keep reining him in because he is very competitive and used to winning.  When he took up rowing, he quickly became both the national and international champion in his age group.

So I’m convincing him that I’m not going to win, I just want to do better than last time when I completed it in 2 hours, 11 minutes.  My goal this time is to break 2 hours.  I’m also nine and ten years older than I was then, but who knows?

Yesterday, Landon bought me a shiny new red road bike because he was worried at how slowly I was going on the mountain bike.  It is so beautiful, it made me cry.  I tried it out last night with him and took seven minutes off my time.  But it felt like I had Lance Amrstrong riding with me, coaching me around every curve.  He completed 13 marathons but now can’t run due to ankle pain.  But boy can he bike.  I was worn out and he hadn’t even broken a sweat.

So life is very full and good here at Willow Valley Farm.  I have an NPR commentary coming out in a few days on the California Report from the San Francisco station, KQED.  It is about the experience of having my farm.

This triathalon is really a push.  But I’m doing it to remember Sharon who I still miss in my life every single day.

More soon, stayed tuned!

Ready to go up in the glider

The fat brown Jersey cows munched the thick grass, flicking their tails against flies, then moseyed along. They never even glanced over at the light planes that zoomed past on the grassy runway, recently reclaimed from their pasture. The slender gliders raced up and down, landing and taking off, like birds in flight.

To go up in a glider, you get strapped into your seat, then the glider, attached by a cable to a wench, gets towed down the runway till it takes to the air, sort of like launching a kite. You’re taxiing down the runway, then whoosh, up, into the sky. No motor, no sound, just the feel of lifting up fast, carried by the wind. The wench releases, attached to a tiny parachute and billows down to the ground.

Up in the air, the sound of the wind rushing past the wings, a thin Plexiglas cover is all you have between you and the open sky. 1,000 feet above the ground, catching updrafts, lift as they call it, up, then down, circling, just like the ospreys, hawks and vultures, I’ve watched soaring, drifting, circling- -amazing.

I was stunned by the beauty of the perspective, thrilled by the closeness of the treetops, awed by the sensibility of literally ‘casting our fate to the winds’ and depending on the whims of Mother Nature to carry us along.

The sheep and cows below looked like little dots of white cotton or brown fuzz. The sun sparkled off the Plexiglas cover, the clouds danced along the ridges, almost eye level to us now.

It must be one of the most direct experiences of flying that a person could have, except maybe hang gliding. I was reminded of the myth of Icarus who fulfilled his dream of flying but soared too close to the sun and melted the wax holding his wings together and fell to his death.

I’ve had dreams of flying and this felt pretty close. I can see why Landon has logged over 600 hours in a glider, feeling out the air currents, riding them and soaring through the sky.

How could I have missed this for all these years? Where was I that I didn’t know this wonder?

It felt gentle somehow, like we were riding Mother Nature, in some sync with her moods and fancies, flowing, natural like a bird. It felt like she smiled at us in a playful way, played with us a bit, a game of hide and seek, hiding the currents—catch me if you can—down, down, down, then up, up, up, over, always gliding, soaring, falling, then soaring again.

I thought about life–where are the updrafts, the places where I can soar with ease and grace, the wind beneath my wings, carried by something larger than myself, but which I am a part of?

And saw that gliding and life both require that you pay close attention to what is happening, moment by moment. Looking for the gifts, like the updrafts, the lift, which will carry you on.

Cockpit of the glider

Nelson Lakes National Park

Hello everyone,

It’s now Monday 2/22 here, so would be Sunday there. We’re up in the mountains in a place called Nelson Lakes. Landon is teaching gliding for 3 days and I’m comfy in a Lodge with internet. Just down the road is a crystal clear Alpine Lake. He is going to take me up in a glider sometime during these 3 days, so another exciting flying exploit coming up. Hoping we don’t do rolls or loops, but with him, you never know!

Last night we camped by a river half way here–about 3 hours from his house. He has a van with a comfy bed in the back and New Zealand has great free parks where you can just pull in and sleep or camp. So last night about 11, we pulled in. The stars are so beautiful–you can totally see the Milky Way and of course, the sky is different here in the Southern Hemisphere. This morning we jumped into the river to rinse off and then headed up here where he had to start teaching at 10.

I’m doing articles, blogs and radio about the trip so this Lodge gave us 1/2 off on the room and we got a 2 story suite with a view of the creek, a jacuzzi tub and living room. Lovely. He took the van, but I have a bike and have already pedaled around and down to check out the lake where I’m going to swim as soon as I send this out. Plan to take some photos early morning when the light is good. I’m doing radio spots each Friday morning and last Friday it was about the bi-plane ride. This week it will be about this area.

I’ll be sending a few photos from the past few days. One is at Wharariki Beach, a beach that you hike to over hill and dale. It was very windy that day, so we didn’t stay long but it was worth the hike. I hope to go back when it isn’t windy.

Then a photo from Landon’s deck of the ocean below. It’s amazing to watch the tide come in and out each morning and afternoon. Yesterday we took another long bike ride and then jumped into the ocean again. Really fun and I’m loving the biking.

It’s been great to slow down and relax and be here. One of the articles I’m doing is how this area resembles California and it does. I feel comfortable here and many of the plants are the same. It doesn’t feel ‘foreign’ at all and the people are very friendly.

It’s a beautiful place and so worth the 12 hour flight. It’s so fun to get an ‘insider’s’ view with Landon and not be a tourist. His home is lovely as you will see from the photo.

More soon and hugs from here,

Diane

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a stunt pilot, soaring high among the clouds and doing rolls and loops, this is your chance!

Read the full story at TouristTravel.com

I’m currently working on a memoir that begins when my father was in France in World War II, before I was born. The book has been percolating in my brain and heart for about ten years now.  I had a few days after my time with the veterans to write and think about my life and the memoir.  Here are some of those thoughts…

My life and writing are intertwined.

The memoir that I’m writing is about fate, destiny and soul.  The mysterious map we follow through life that has been laid out for us ahead of time.   Why we go right instead of left in the twists and turns of our own personal labyrinth and how we learn to know which way to turn.

No one ever taught me this in school.  These are answers I’ve had to search out on my own. I’m talking about life as a vision quest, not a career path.  Some of my teachers have been pure and good, others evil and dark.  I’ve made mistakes, some big mistakes.

But I’ve also had the unmistakable fortune of being in exactly the right place at the exact right moment and the satisfaction of knowing that certain risks and lots of trust have gotten me there.

‘Croyez-en-soi’.   In French, that means:  ‘Believe in yourself’.  It means listening to the inner voice that takes something to hear and that is only available from making choices that don’t always turn out clean, pretty and safe.  But choices that take you to where you know you have something.

I’ve sometimes imagined that I have two guardian angels.  Those two plump cherubs you see on cards and posters, happy, smiling, agreeable little cherubs. But sometimes, as my angels, in my life, from my choices, they’re covering their eyes, gasping in horror.  ‘Oh No!  She’s going the wrong way’.  Other times, they’re shrieking in delight.  ‘She did it, bravo, hooray!’  A kind of ‘Mr. Toad’s wild ride’ through life that has as many near misses and crashes as straight-ahead easy roads.

But this book, ultimately, is about how to discern a life out of the chaos and confusion of choices presented to us each day.  How to have the strength to trust a choice when there is no ‘logical’ reason to trust it except your own inner knowing that you should.

“Go this way.  Yes, that’s right.   Good.  Now you’re on track…”

I imagine what it would have been like to grow up with adults encouraging me to listen to myself, trust myself.  In my fantasy of a perfect childhood, doting parents and teachers would always be there asking:  “What do you think?  What feels right to you?  Trust yourself, listen to yourself, follow your dreams, hunches and ideas.”  The way Joseph Campbell told us all to follow our bliss.

But I didn’t have a childhood like that and most others, I suppose, didn’t either.  I had a fairly typical, I imagine, childhood in the 1950’s in a small rural town.  The plusses were lots of freedom, fresh air and running around outside.  Time in nature, riding my bike.

Our family didn’t own a TV till I was seven or eight years old.  We spent two months in the summer in a trailer at the beach where my sister Sharon and I spent all day in the ocean.  I learned to feel how the swell of a wave could pick you up and carry you to the shore as a ride.

In the center of my childhood, I had a loving presence—my father.

Looking back, he was like a beacon for me, kind, open hearted and good.  I had a mother who was suspicious and jealous of me and of my relationship with Dad.  I had an older sister who not only tolerated me, she liked me and played with me.  We loved each other unashamedly.  In photos, we’re entangled with each other, arms around each other’s necks, smiling and squinting into the camera, a momentary still shot of the endless play we shared all our waking hours.

One of the advantages of growing older in our youth crazed American society is some well-earned wisdom that comes from perspective.  Looking back, the way seems straighter, the twists and turns less jagged.

I’ve heard that if you look down on a sailboat from above, the back and forth tacking looks like a straight line, even though it really takes many turns.

Stephen King, in his book “On Writing” says:  “Be brave.  Tell us all you know.”  This book is my attempt to do that.  It is the result of a lifetime of distillation of the everyday events and moments that add up to a meaningful life.  Or at least to some sense of a meaningful life, some sense of meaning.

This book is about:  How to have the courage to follow the inner voice that only you can hear.

How to have the courage to turn off the TV and to listen to your own life, not someone else’s made up life spiced with tricks to make you want to buy things.

How to turn right when everyone else is turning left and to know that you have to turn right, no matter what, you just do.  And even if it is lonely at times, that right hand path is the one you’re meant to be on.

How to have the courage to watch for the clues, the hints and signs that tell you ‘yes, that’s good, you’re on track’.

Because it is all written in a secret code and you have to really pay attention or you’ll miss it, you won’t be able to decipher it.

And in the end, or maybe not the end, in the middle somewhere as I hope I am with my life, there is a satisfaction that comes from living your own unique life.  And that is worth it all.

This book is about how to have the courage to stick to your own path even when it looks to others as though you’re walking captain Hook’s plank straight into oblivion.

My dad lived from the center of his power and the goodness of his heart.  He showed me that.  He was an extraordinary man living an ordinary life.

My memoir begins, on the Normandy Coast of France, above Omaha Beach, in World War II.  Somehow I got caught up in the war, through my father’s stories and his life there, before I was born.  I’ve learned a lot about the war since I first wrote about D-Day in Dad’s honor, in 1994.  I now can hold my own with any World War II buff, mostly men; I know what a Rhino Ferry is, the names of all the invasion beaches and the number of ships and airplanes that were part of the invasion.  (Over 5,000 ships and 11,000 planes.)

But what’s amazing about my father’s stories about France is that they weren’t about war, but about relationships.  How the French people were kind to him when he practiced his high school French.  Their gratitude when he shared the left over food from the Navy camp.  And most of all, about his relationship with a 7-year-old French orphan named Gilbert who Dad tried to adopt and bring home to America.

Those stories shaped my life and influenced me in ways I’m still discovering.  But most of all, when I was able to find Gilbert 50 years after the war, I experienced a deeper sense of the role of destiny.

I believe that our lives are affected by the interplay of our environments, relationships, what seem like chance events, and our own inner drives and longings.

This is one woman’s story of that rich weaving that became a life and I hope, is still becoming a life.

© Diane Covington 2009