Living in the Moment

Frenchman's Bluff, a 120-foot-high cliff of limestone, overlooks the Cuivre River (pronounced "Quiver") Valley near Troy, Missouri, in the Cuivre River State Park. The Frenchman's Bluff trail, a 1.5 mile hike, runs first along the lovely Geode Creek inside the woods, and then emerges to this vista from the cliff top. Right now, bluebells and yellow bellworts in full bloom decorate the trail. The Cuivre River is about 40 miles long and empties into the Missouri River.

After a difficult week (for all of us; suffering seems epidemic) I've been doing my best to "live in the moment," just be alive and appreciate all I have and the human and natural beauty around me. It's hard, I complained to a more spiritual friend. She said, "Living in the moment is easy. It really is. It's just that we're doing all this multitasking and thinking ahead about what needs to be done and where we need to be next, and we've programmed our brains that way, and we have to re-program them to live in the moment. That's why it seems hard at first, but keep trying."