Something Beautiful Everyday: The Fogbow

“It takes sunshine and rain to make a rainbow. There would be no rainbows without sunshine and rain.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

This morning at dawn, I ran along the ocean on a barrier island near my house just as I have almost every day for the past year.  There’s only two directions to go in - to the right or to the left.  You might think it would be tedious to travel the same route every day.  In fact, If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said the prospect sounded limiting and boring, but there aren’t a lot of options in the area.  

After traveling the same route hundreds of times, I’ve learned that the beach, ocean, and sky never look the same from one day to the next. 

Each morning, I set out with an intention of seeing something wondrous, and this wish is almost always fulfilled.  Why?  Because I set an expectation.  Because I am actively aware and curiously looking for wonder.  Because the world is full of remarkable animals, plants, people and phenomena.  

This morning a dense blanket of fog crept in from the ocean obscuring the distant horizon and creating a mystical atmosphere. As the heat of the rising sun began to burn off the cloud cover a double white rainbow formed before me arching from the ocean to the first row of houses on the beach.  According to Wikipedia, “A fog bow, sometimes called a white rainbow,^] is a phenomenon similar to a rainbow; however, as its name suggests, it appears as a bow in fog rather than rain." 

I was in awe. I tried to run to the place where it appeared to emerge from the ocean, but of course I could never quite get there.  The fogbow remained out of reach.  

People often ask me how I happen to see so many interesting things, and I say…

because I am out there, and I am looking.  Try it. 

Fog Bow on the Beach

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

  

Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.  

I’m Wearing My Rose-Colored Glasses Darn It!

“She chose the rose colored glasses not because she was naïve, but because she knew the power of positive focus.”― Christina Sutra 

Seeing the World through Rose-Colored Glasses

According to Wikipedia, Rose-colored glasses or rose-tinted glasses may refer to:

• Optimism, the tendency to see things in a positive light

• Rosy retrospection, the tendency to view past events in a positive (often unrealistic) light

One crisp November morning deep in peak fall color season, I was driving along a country road I’ve traveled countless times.  I was awestruck by the beauty of the surrounding landscape, the warm shades of golden grasses in the fields and the toasty brown of the leaves in the trees against the pink glow of the morning sunrise.  I was filled with joy at the sight.

Then I realized I was wearing a new pair of sunglasses with rose-tinted lenses.  I took them off and found that the lenses had definitely boosted the beauty of the scene, adding a luminous, warm filter.

I put those glasses right back on and continued to bask in the joyful feeling of being surrounded by the beauty of nature.  You might object that I was fooling myself - that I was not accepting the reality of the situation.  

I would argue that I was just making a choice to see everything in the best possible light. No harm was done by throwing a warm filter over my world for the length of my drive.  I wasn’t putting castles where there were mobile homes or mountains where there were billboards.  I couldn’t hide the trash cans and broken-down jalopies littering a yard, but even the junk and the signs looked prettier in the lovely glow of my glasses.  The unsightly parts simply became part of a beautiful whole, and the end result was joy.  

Couldn’t we all use a little more of that?  The world is full of beauty and growth as well as the grotesque and decaying.  If a dose of rose-colored perspective helps me to feel more hopeful and positive in that chaotic world,  I’m going to wear them, darn it

With Rose-Colored Lenses

Without Rose-Colored Lenses

Arianne 

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

  

Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.  

Me and a Bird on the Beach: The Wingspan Effect

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all”
― Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I was running on the beach this morning but the tide was high and rising; and the sand was soft and unstable.  I slowed to a walk and noticed a shorebird to the left keeping pace with me, his small gray body balanced on absurdly long thin legs.  He darted along hurriedly, giving me the side eye occasionally with a toss of his pointy beak.  I began to feel as if the bird and I were taking a stroll together.  

Eventually I swung my arm a little too enthusiastically and frightened him into flight. He sailed away over the ocean chirping loudly only to return moments later a few yards up the beach, striding forward while glancing back at me.  

I might not have noticed him if I’d hurried with my mind lost in my daily to-do list.  But I did notice and experienced this small moment of communion in my busy day.

I’m also convinced it wouldn’t have happened without Wingspan.  Wingspan is a board game my kids and I discovered years ago.  I never imagined that a game about the characteristics, nesting habits and preferred food sources of birds would be entertaining, mentally challenging, and informative at the same time, but we truly enjoy it. I have to say that ever since I started playing, Ive noticed birds in a way that I never have before.  Birds began to enter into my awareness on a daily basis. Of course they had always been around, but now they had become part of my focus.

Which makes me wonder how easy it is to alter my everyday perception based on input. It emphasizes the importance of steering my brain towards beauty and connection; and of slowing down, so I’ll notice.  

Arianne

p.s. this was not meant to be an ad for Wingspan, but it is a cool game.  

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

  

Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.  

Finding The MST Trail in the Outer Banks, The Space Between Comfort and the Thrill of Change

Just west of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse near the town of Frisco on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, sits a national park campground nestled among the dunes.  I picked this spot for a 24-hour escape from the everyday.  Highway 12 led me down a narrow ribbon of sand running between the Pamlico Sound on one side with white swans calmly floating on the flat reflective surface and the shifting sand dunes and wild fury of the Atlantic on the other; threading the needle between calm and calamity, safety and the unknown.  

To me the Outer Banks retains an aspect of the untamed wilderness where we are constantly reminded of the power of nature over the plans of men - 130 miles of remote barrier islands connected to the mainland by only three widely-spaced bridges as a means of escape when the weather turns. 

Don’t be fooled by the images of sedate Charleston, SC masquerading as The Outer Banks in the popular Netflix show by the same name.  The geography is not the only thing misrepresented in the show. A streaming series would be hard-pressed to depict the feelings of isolation and remoteness you can’t help but experience on these beaches. The sand sweeping across and making impassable the one major highway connecting the outer banks to civilization during every major storm is one obvious reason for the atmosphere here.  The viral videos of houses collapsing into the surf due to storm surge and natural beach erosion is another. 

The Frisco Campground, operated by the National Park Service, in the off-season further adds to the feeling of an escape from civilization. The campsites are tucked in among the live oaks and sable palms, protected from the strong offshore winds by a row of tall dunes studded with sea oats.  I was only one of a handful of intrepid campers in the middle of November.  

On a walk around the campground loop at sunrise the next morning, a metal signpost caught my eye. It turned out to be a trail sign for the MST.  For those who aren’t familiar, the MST is the Mountains to Sea Trail - an ambitious project aimed at creating a recreational trail system running the entire 1200 miles from the North Carolina mountains to the sea, thus the name.  

I had run my first long distance endurance run back in 2015 (50K or around 31.7 miles) on the MST from Pilot Mountain SP to Hanging Rock SP in the central Peidmont section of North Carolina.  Back then the trail was somewhat hard to follow and not well marked, sometimes running down a driveway and through someone’s yard past a farmhouse or two. I assumed this particular segment of the trail had to be near the very end consider the sea was only steps away.  Actually the terminus is at Jockey’s Ridge State Park another 60 miles north in Nags Head. I had no idea the trail was here. Of course I needed to check it out.   

After winding around between sand dunes, the pine-straw littered trail straightened out in a shaded tunnel created by arching Loblolly and Live Oak trees forty feet tall.  I was surprised to find this secret pocket of maritime forest secreted between the sound and the ocean behind a campground.  It was silent here aside from the muffled sound of the waves washing on the shore off to my left, blocked from sight by 20 foot high natural sand dunes hidden amongst the trees. 

This was a sheltered place where time stood still, a space between the quiet stagnation of comfort and the stirring adrenaline laced thrill of the potential for abrupt change and sudden upheaval of the mighty ocean - the tides of change.  

This "space between" is where I hope to live my life - threading the fine line, veering off occasionally for a stretch of comfort or a shot of thrill.  I’m not meant to live fully on one side or the other. The Outer Banks were a nice reminder of the exquisite and seemingly precarious balance of life.  





If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

  

Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.  

Exposed as an Introverted Sign Painter by Myers Briggs Test

Sign Painter at Work

Upon graduation from UNC with a much sought-after (haha) degree in English, I decided to temporarily parlay my part-time sales associate position in the bridal registry department  at a Chapel Hill department store into a full-time position as Head Cashier/Customer Service Manager while looking for more suitable and lucrative employment.  During a team building event, the whole management team including me was asked to complete the Myers Briggs personality assessment.  Fun! 

I remember feeling uncomfortable. The questions were very personal, and I was a private person.  According to the test, I was revealed to be an INFP (Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Perceiving).

Much to my surprise, our personality types were shared with the team.  Next I was required to have a one-on-one with the store manager, who noted to my discomfort that INFP’s weren’t usually found in management positions, especially customer service.  I wondered if this was grounds for termination. I felt at the time like a dark, dirty secret had been revealed - my hidden introversion.

It’s possible that introversion is better understood and appreciated now, but back when I took the test, there was a clear bias against introverts, particularly in management.  Being a “people person” was touted as a most desirable trait.  I’ve always said that I’m an extroverted introvert.  I actually enjoy social situations and have been known to initiate conversations with random strangers at the drop of a hat.  Without question through, I charge my battery with time alone.  

After discussing the personality traits associated with my assessment - notably not being a "team player”was indicated as a potential characteristic, I was provided with a booklet listing suitable jobs for someone with my particular makeup.  While the job listings for other personality types, especially those with a big “E” for extroversion, took up many pages, I remember there only being a few pages for mine.  On my personalized final assessment which was reviewed by the store manager, the most suitable occupation for someone like me was listed as “sign painter” as well as graphic designer and artist.  At the time I felt mortified.  My parents had always cautioned me never to consider making a living as an artist.

Sadly, I could not appreciate at the time all of the positive traits associated with "my type" such as empathy, creativity, strong personal values, and the desire to make the world a better place.  I wish I had.  
As you might have surmised, the experience had quite an impact on me as I’m writing about it now many years later.  Being older and wiser (I hope), I understand that the test was not meant as a  tool to box me into a narrow definition of potential or a particular role.  Rather, it should have been used as a tool to provide insight and a degree of self-awareness to me, not others in charge of my fate.  It never should have been shared with management at my place of employment in my opinion.  Judge me by the job I am doing, not by trying to see inside my mind. 

 
I had a number of different jobs over the years including a very extroverted recruiter position at a major financial firm.  Was I suited for that job?  Maybe not, but I was darn good at it.  My life took an interesting turn after my marriage ended when I started my career as an artist painting portraits, commissioned work, and murals.  The people at Myers Briggs would have smiled smugly, thinking “I told you so”.

One day years later, I was painting a logo and sign on the exterior of a building when it hit me.  I was a sign painter after all.  There was no shame in it at all. I was proud of the occupation I had built from nothing.  I was doing exactly what I was meant to be doing all along.  Maybe we can’t fight our nature after all.  

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

 Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.   

Don’t Let Your Next Ruin Your Now

 

This morning at sunrise I was running down the beach as I usually do.  I was worrying over all the things I had on my to do list, planning a schedule for the day, and wishing I could be finished running.  Then I noticed something; the ocean lapping at my feet, the glorious colors of the sunrise reflected on the clouds in the sky, the seagulls winging and diving overhead.  

I realized that I had been absent, lost in my mind, and blind to all the beauty surrounding me while I fretted over all of the things I had to do NEXT.  I might have physically been moving down the beach, but I was not present.

I stopped, stood still and looked around me. I might have even smiled to myself.  When I resumed my run, I tried to enjoy the capability of my body, the motion of my legs, the strength of my muscles, the breath in my lungs; and I was thankful that I was running.

I paused in my run to say hello to the man I pass every morning who I secretly call the peaceful man, because he looks so content.  I stopped running to greet and pet the two lucky dogs who are walked daily; Biscuit, the eager Jack Russell and Max, the big dog in a little body.  I chatted with a stranger and agreed with him that it was indeed a beautiful morning.

I appreciated all the treasures the ocean had washed up at my feet.  I’ve found fossils and bones and whelks as large as my hand.  I’ve found a dozen pairs of sunglasses, mostly scratched or rusted.

I was thankful that I had the opportunity to witness another sunrise and didn’t want to take that for granted.  

I did have things to do that day as I do every day, and I will get them done.  What I don’t want to do is let my worries over those next things contaminate my appreciation  and experience of the present moment.  The future will come.  The past will stay in the past,  we are here now, sharing this space full of beauty, interesting people and animals. There are wonders to behold, if we will only stop and look.

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 
 

 

Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.   

I Have Zero Followers

 

When I started this blog in 2016, I was terrified that someone might actually read my words.  I had been writing all of my thoughts in secret journals for years and had made a commitment to myself to let my words see the light of day, but putting them out into the world made me feel vulnerable.  I was just fine with keeping them somewhat secret for years.  

I also had no idea how to create a blog back then and wasn’t computer savvy. I never really thought about search engine optimization or even about gathering followers.

But something funny happened.  I started to look at my blog stats and was absolutely thrilled to discover three people read my words.  When I looked back to my oldest posts, I found that some had over one hundred views.  I know:  One hundred views in nine years is nothing to crow about.

What I did not realize was that I had never even given anyone the opportunity to follow me.  There is no follow button on my page.  I also didn’t realize I had to make my blog available to search engines by clicking a button.  I have now clicked that button.  I don’t know how anyone found my blog in the past.  

I have also now added my “follow” button, but it comes with an embarrassing follower count.  As of now, I have zero followers.  I hope you’ll be the first one.  

Thanks for reading,

Arianne

If you enjoyed this post, consider purchasing my books, Solo Car Camping Across America, An Adventure in Courage, Solitude, and Questionable Bathrooms in America’s Most Beautiful Places, available on Amazon Books.  235 pages with full color images. Itinerary, packing list, helpful tips, and do’s and don’ts included.  Free shipping for Amazon Prime members.  Kindle edition also available. 

 Approaching the Blank Canvas, Real Talk on Fear, Inspiration and Not Giving Up in Art and Life. It’s full of true tales and tips from my 20+ years of making art for a living. It’s available on Amazon Books and you can also find the link to it and my other books on my DesignsbyArianne website.