When it’ time to relax, your phone cannot be anywhere near you. In this day and age the phone is an addiction. It’s obvious to everyone. To prove my point I was sitting outside a Starbucks waiting for our pup cup to arrive and observed all the drivers in the drive up line staring at their phones while waiting in line. It wasn’t even a remote possibility that someone could just sit for a few minutes waiting to get their order.
That’s a disturbing revelation. Another example was when walking our dog through the neighborhood I saw a man get into his vehicle that was parked in his driveway and back out into the street. As he proceeded forward he grabbed his phone and started texting on it. He wan’t even ten feet away from his driveway and was already on his phone. Phone addiction has gotten worse.
When we go up north to visit friends who live on the lake it’s as if we took our phones and threw them in the lake. We turn them off and don’t touch them until we head home several days later. If we need to make a cll for work then we turn it on, make the call and then turn the phone off.
How can you relax if you’re tied to an anchor around your neck? How do you have interesting conversations if you’re always looking at your phone? You can’t.
Take an inventory of the things that are important and build on them. When you’re in a beautiful spot filled with natures sounds in all it’s glory, embrace it. the sky is bluer than you ever saw and the trees have eagles in them. Buy a nice pair of binoculars and get some close up views of birds and other wildlife. I love watching the Loons in the early morning and with a pair of binoculars they are AMAZING to look at.
In the boathouse where we stay, an eagle loves to perch in the tree branch that hangs over the roof. If you’re really quiet you can sneak out onto the deck and see him about 100 ft above you. If you have the binoculars you can almost reach out and touch him. It’s fantastic!
I remember a time when I spotted a dead sunfish that was floating near the shore right next to the boat house pier and I knew that if the eagle was there he would want that fish. Sure enough, the eagle was on the branch above the boat house and I set up my camera on the tripod and pointed the lens right at the fish. I was going to capture an image of an eagle grabbing that fish as the stars lined up perfectly that day as I had my professional camera, tripod and L series lenses with me on this trip. What luck! I waited for an hour completely hidden from the eagle underneath the soffit overhang and had the shutter connected to a remote release. I was sitting in the lounge chair with a blanket over me and just my head was showing. It should be noted that the ‘boat house” is an amazing guest house as well.
I was staring straight ahead because I knew that eagle would swoop down and probably pick the fish out of the water in flight and this would happen is seconds. I was ready.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Nothing. I could hear the eagle calls right above me so I knew he was still there and it wasn’t until I had to go up to the main house that I walked under the eagle, who saw me by the way. I was there for two minutes and when I walked back to the boathouse the eagle was gone and so was the fish.
I now have a new found respect for nature photographers who will site for days in one spot waiting for that one amazing photo. I waited an hour and became distracted, impatient, bored, who knows what but I missed the shot. Or, the eagle was never going to get that fish as long as he knew I was there. That too, is amazing. When he saw me walk away he went down and grabbed the fish. I don’t need to over think it. Thats what happened.
My eagle story got a few laughs around the fireplace and it seems as though the eagle was smarter than I was. I always wondered why an eagle comes back to the same spot almost every morning and many times during the day? It’s a big chain of lakes with millions of trees but this eagle loves that little perch above the boathouse.
We often joke about getting awakened in the early morning when that eagle starts to chirp and squawk. It wakes us up almost in a startle as an eagle call is very distinct and when it’s right above the boathouse it’s so loud it seems like it’s right in the living room. I would then make a joke to the owners asking them if they can do something about the eagle waking us up every morning. I can take the Loons because it’s peaceful and kind of haunting but that eagle, C’mon.
