Evolution

When I find a fossil, I feel like I have gone back in time, my consciousness all wrapped around the physical remains of a living being, long gone. It makes me think that maybe we are always having an impact, maybe lasting long after we ourselves are dust. Are we that powerful? If the leaf did it, traversed time and space, why can't I?

35 million year old leaf impression, Clarno Unit, John Day Fossil Beds, Oregon

Our spiritual evolution can be painful. The lessons worth learning force us out of our skin, out of our comfort zones into pain and movement and new ways of thinking and behaving. When it's all over, the absence of pain can feel like pleasure.

My friend Lara has known me since we were six. Our friendship has evolved over the years to be harmonious, nurturing, truthful, playful, adventurous and oh so FUN!

Last week we hit the road in a rented RV with Lara's husband, Roger. We contemplated our impact on planet earth while gawking at fossil remains of plants. 

We met these nice horses. I believe they were sisters.

Lara and Roger demonstrate how to use this ancient communication device.

Absolute LUXURY and the best night sleep they could have ever had!

Part of the fun was learning the RV culture like dumping the "honey bucket"

 44 year old me in front of 40 million year old rhyolite lava flow

Fossilized tree trunk that got caught in the flow of ash after an eruption.

The kids weren't really there. That's a decal on the door to fool peepers.

Lara proved that you can enjoy beautiful, healthy meals (all vegetarian and multi-coursed) while on the road.

You make a difference, you have an impact. Let your evolution be smooth and painless, more of an adaptive adjustment to circumstances, with a healthy dose of gratitude.

LOVE.

CREATE

Otherwise known as.... go ahead and make a mess.

Everyone in my house has been excessively creative this month. I kept wondering why the house was so messy.

Then I remembered....

I was the one who lit the candle.

I was the one who created it.

We are all Messiahs

The project I placed at the top of my list for mastery in January was unconditional self love. The theme keeps coming up again and again and I have seen the impact it (unconditional self love) can have.

All you have any real control of is your own attitude, your own feelings about things around you and yourself. We strive in our society to package ourselves so that we might be perceived a certain way by those around us. what we end up with is a bunch of insecure people who can't see beyond themselves because they are so consumed by what others think of them. It's binding. It may as well be shackles. Self love is the key to peace and freedom.

I keep getting more and more information on what Source Energy or God is. What keeps coming up is that we are all god. We all carry the source energy within us and like a hologram, we are all part of a greater whole. Those who might think it arrogant to see the god energy within yourself, something worth revering, something to love and cherish, I ask you to just try to wrap your heart around what it would feel like if you knew all that you wanted to be were already within you.

My friend David came to town last weekend. He is someone who doesn't fixate on himself in a destructive way and although we haven't discussed the topic of self love, he is someone who exudes the positive energy and LOVE of someone who knows that the universe is flowing through him.  His story is so compelling that he has written the last ten years of it into a beautiful book. His passion is to motivate, support the dreams, and hug as many people on planet Earth as he can. He is even willing to go to the hotbeds of conflict to add what he can in the way of love and kindness to all sides. He has no fear of what might happen to him, he only sees his body as a vehicle to spread as much uplifting optimism around as possible.  A true messenger, David spreads the message of "you can do it!, whatever your passion is, YOU CAN DO IT."

Traveling at the Speed of Life

We are all messiahs. We all have a message of love for ourselves.

Best Fossil Find Yet

Last week I took the kids for a "fossil walk" on my favorite beach in Santa Barbara. I was on a hunt for more fossils but specifically, for teeth. I found no teeth but I did find this; my most interesting find yet.

It was partially buried behind some movable rocks but its symmetry was as distinctive as a neon sign.

I exposed as much of the rock as I could, wiping off the wet sand with a rag I happened to have in my pocket.

The bilateral symmetry, and features such as the sinus cavities and cochlear spirals made me think later that it could be part of a skull.

I sent a picture of it to Andy Wyss, a Vertebrate Paleotologist  at UCSB (I love google). He told me that he believes this is the cross section of a Miocene whale. The matrix rock is part of the Monterey Formation.

I took my husband Tom back to the beach two days later to see this fossil again. I found a couple new specimens while I was there.

My fossil has it's neon sign illuminated.

Dr. Wyss (he told me to call him Andy) said I have an eye for finding fossils. I am so happy to have this gift. I have asked my kids many times if they would like to go to the badlands of Hell Creek with me to search for dinosaurs. Who could of imagined that I would find my own bed of ancient bones with stories to tell, right here, at home? 

True

The truth is, I love rocks. I love rocks and animals. I love animals who return my affection, like my dog, London. I love stars and the mountains and my family. I also love to create.

I love to create and share.

I love being inspired by things like stickers.

I love sparkle.

I love trees and birds and bugs.

I love being silly and sending my husband  commanding texts like this one:

I love it when he responds by entering my domain (the very messy garage) to do what I ask of him (kiss me).

I love giving.

I love the power of innocence.

I love the ocean waves when they are glassy and you can see inside the barrel when they break.

I love my life (said in an accent like this : "aye luv ma laif"), in imitation of my son, Aidan, who makes me laugh.

Vertebrate Fossils of Santa Barbara

I am perplexed. Hungry for information on the fossils I have found, I google "vertebrate fossils Santa Barbara" and images I have taken from my own blog come up. I research "Miocene fossils of Santa Barbara" and find only evidence of invertebrates and whales, all embedded in shale or a different kind of rock all together. I am hungry for information.  I post this in hopes that someone will have some information for me.

My first fossil find, identified only as a bony fossil but an unknown part of vertebrate anatomy. 

I sent these pictures to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History several years ago and received no response.

I found this rock that greatly resembles a fossil egg on the same day I found my first vertebrate fossil. 

I began finding specimen after specimen on a particular beach in Santa Barbara. Every walk on the beach seemed to reveal a new find.

This is me in front of a particularly rich fossil bed

My educational background is in human anatomy, anthropology, medicine with geology and paleontology as hobbies. I don't have a lot of experience with comparative anatomy so I am having a hard time figuring out if these are mammalian, reptilian or ichtheoid  (bony fish) fossils.

If you, my future reader, have any insights, please comment.