I did not grow up camping. (I would famously sign up for girl scout camping trips, get all the way to the parking lot, then refuse to get on the bus with everyone else.) NO ONE would mistake me for a tomboy (even though I grew up playing outside most of the time). So when John first started expressing an interest in camping, hiking, and backpacking our junior year of college, my first thought was, oh HECK no. No, thank you. You go do your thing; I’m great right here.

However, a hallmark of our relationship has always been quality time together. We do almost EVERYTHING together, minus the eight or so hours per day we’re at our jobs. If John is mowing the lawn, I’m probably out weeding something. If I’m working on stirrers, John is probably researching a trip in the chair beside me. We do have our own interests and hobbies, but we love being together and try to maximize that as much as we can. So this new activity that I was vehemently not interested in caused a tiff between us for awhile… until I eventually gave in :)

And gosh, I’m so glad I did! We’ve had some amazing adventures over the last few years and seen so many beautiful things by traveling on foot and sleeping away from civilization. By far the most impressive was our post-graduation hike in the Presidentials, summitting Mount Adams (the second highest peak in the Northeast!) and Mount Jefferson.

Yes, that photo is showing you we hiked on our own two feet ABOVE the clouds!! The beautiful thing about camping and hiking, though, is that you can have equally fun, challenging, and inspiring experiences closer to home and without as much time commitment (or sweat!). We’ve had some great adventures in North Carolina, too:

These days, we do less backpacking (where we carry everything on our backs and hike out to a campsite) and more car camping (which still involves sleeping in a tent, but there are usually bathrooms and running water and you don’t have to carry all of your supplies with you!). Both are fun; the main trade-off is convenience for breathtaking vistas! If you want to spend quality time with friends, I can’t think of a better bonding experience than sitting around a campfire with no distractions and hours together stretching in front of you. It’s like the grown-up version of a sleepover!

I wonder if any of y’all were surprised when I mentioned camping on EFM for the first time. Either way, I hope my experience encourages you to give camping and hiking a try if you’ve been hesitant in the past!

In my next post, I’ll share some of our camping favorites. Once you have a basic stock of supplies it’s a delightfully inexpensive and beautiful way to travel, but it can be intimidating and expensive when you’re just starting out!

This year, instead of setting traditional goals, I am practicing a fruit of the spirit each month to move closer to the person I hope to be. I explain more here!

It did not go unnoticed by me that likely my busiest month of this year fell on my designated “peace” month. Peaceful, it was not. (Hence the fact that I didn’t get around to writing a post at all!) The peace I’m interested in pursuing for this project, though, is less about the circumstances I find myself in and more about the disposition and mindset that guides me through them.

The peace I’m working toward is the peace of an un-ruffle-able mind, a head space that’s calm and quiet instead of roiling.

I don’t spend a lot of time obsessing, over analyzing, or worrying about things, but one thing I can do is hold a grudge. If I’m in a grumpy mood and John does something to annoy me, I’m capable of freezing him out for as long as I want. (This is not new – my family nickname growing up was Princess Thundercloud because of the ease with which I could show my displeasure.) On the other hand, if I do something to annoy John (it’s difficult, but it does happen), he forgives me just as soon as I show the slightest bit of contrition.

This is one thing I love about marriage, that you can show your ugly and your person says, yes, I see that, and I still love you. At its best, it’s a lifelong, up close and personal opportunity to learn, with grace upon grace given and received.

I imagine this inner peace is something that’s always been with John, in some form or another, but when I asked him about it several years ago, I was surprised and tickled by his answer. Apparently in eighth grade, his English teacher led the class on a tangent about how holding a grudge is letting the past consume your future, and therefore is among the stupidest things you can do. John’s eighth grade mind immediately connected this to a particular scene in The Lion King.

In it, Rafiki bops Simba on the head with his stick.
Simba: “Ouch, what’d you do that for?”
Rafiki: “It doesn’t matter! It’s in the past!”

Simple as that! Of course, there are some things in the past that do matter, but the vast (VAST) majority of minor injuries and injustices don’t, in fact, matter, and don’t deserve to be carried into the future. When your mind isn’t consumed with trying to remember why you’re angry at so-and-so or how the scales are balanced between you and what’s-his-name, it is free to be at peace. You are free to be at peace. A lesson I’m still learning, but trying to take to heart more every day.

I’d love to know: how peaceful is your mind? Are you great at holding a grudge or quick to forgive? Do you have a family nickname that you can’t quite escape? :)

P.S. Love and joy.

I have a treat for you today! My spring playlist is light and happy, gentle but with a beat. To me, it sounds the way the silvery light of spring looks. It’s about an hour and a half long. It’s equally good for getting work done, spring cleaning, or an afternoon road trip in the sun you’re happy to be welcoming back. I hope you enjoy :)

Click here to listen to my spring playlist.

You do need a Spotify account to listen, but, well, Spotify is wonderful, so go ahead and take the plunge!

For several years, I’ve wanted to cut down on our paper towel use and introduce cloth dish towels to our kitchen. I wanted to do this for environmental reasons (my understanding is that cloth is better than paper!) as well as for financial – we were going through a lot of paper towels! We probably used about one roll every week and a half. At about $2 per roll, that’s almost $200 per year.

However, my husband, the chef in our family and the main paper towel consumer, was not on board. Since he does the majority of cooking, I wanted to respect his preference. Earlier this year, however, it occurred to me that even if he wasn’t interested in using cloth towels, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t. (Don’t ask me why it took me so long to figure this out.) I spent $25 at Target for 20 dish cloths and a little plastic bin. The dish cloths got folded and stacked on a cake plate next to our paper towel roll, and the bin went next door for the dirties (so we didn’t have to trek to the laundry room after every use).

Friends, this system is working better than I ever dreamed! I’m glad that we still have paper towels available, because cloth isn’t perfect for everything (I prefer to clean up cat vomit with something disposable!). But just the presence of the cloth towels has cut down both of our paper towel consumption to almost nothing – in the two months we’ve had cloth available, we’ve probably used about a roll of paper towels.

A few other items:

— We’re not doing any additional laundry – we just throw the dish towels in with our once a week sheets-and-towels load. We were already doing this with cleaning rags, and they’re so small they don’t make much difference!
— We started with 20 bar cloths/dish towels. As we became more used to having the cloths available, we started to go through them faster, so we just added five more to the collection a few days ago. I think adding five more (to get us to 30) will be the perfect amount to get us through a week.

This situation was a great reminder of the old adage – the only person you can change is yourself. Or my personal favorite, Be the change you wish to see in the house. We spent so long at a standstill, with him stubbornly on the paper towel side and me stubbornly on the cloth side. In the end, we ended up gladly on the same side because no one was being forced to change. I know I’ll be reminding myself of this lesson in the future :)

Have you tried to reduce paper towels in your house?