Now, Now. Don't Go Jumping Off a Cliff.

About ten years ago, a guy named Dean Potter and a friend, Graham Hunt, put on their wingsuits and jumped off a cliff. The wingsuits enabled them to soar in flying squirrel fashion. Potter, age forty-three, and Hunt, twenty-nine, were experienced BASE jumpers. The acronym stands for Building, Antenna, Span, and Earth, the locations jumpers jump from. 

Both Potter and Hunt were expert jumpers, but Potter broke the record in 2009 for the longest BASE jump, at two minutes and fifty seconds, after jumping from Eiger North Face in Switzerland. By accomplishing this feat, he earned the title of Adventurer of the Year by National Geographic magazine. 

Surviving the storms of life

 

    I found an old bucket in the woods and planted a mum in it. Over the years, the roots of this plant have been buried under snow, frozen in subzero temperatures, covered with ice and pummelled with rain. Yet, every spring, bits of green peek through the soil, and it grows and thrives. 

    Last year it was leggy and about four-feet tall but still pretty and loaded with yellow blooms. This year, my beloved pinched it back, and it is more beautiful than ever. 

    This flower is resilient; it perseveres; it survives every storm, no matter how severe, and comes out smelling like a mum. I want to be like this flower. I want to survive the storms, and after they pass over, I want to bloom again. I am not quite there yet, but maybe I will be, someday.

Short in stature; tall in brilliance

    Mrs. Loggins taught English at a high school in rural North Carolina where I grew up. If she had stood on her tiptoes, she might have barely stretched past the five-feet mark on a door jamb. She was pleasingly plump and wore her dark hair in a cute pixie cut. As one of the younger teachers, she connected well with 16-year-olds. I had the luck and privilege of being one of her tenth-grade students.