Lately life has greeted me with many challenges. Between stress from big projects at work, to the seemingly never-ending events for our kids, it has been a challenge to find space and time to just be.

But amidst it all – I’ve tried to keep things in perspective, and remind myself that each day – today – is a gift and a new beginning. Even with the stress, and the part-time uber-driver for kid gig, there is still beauty all around.

I was fortunate enough though last weekend to escape the grind ( thanks Mom and Dad for watching the girls! ) and go take in the beauty with my favorite adventure-mate. We went old-school style. Didn’t haul a big fancy trailer along, just packed minimal gear and food, some sleeping bags, and headed to the Oregon Outback.

Of course some fishing gear was brought along – and I did wander along the banks of one of my favorite desert streams the first morning… nothing was caught. But I was fully able to just be in the moment – take it all in.

Perhaps one of my favorite things we did all weekend was make a campfire in the morning. Just chilling by the fire, with instant coffee, talking about random things… reminiscing about past trips that were also spent camping in the back of a pickup truck… re-connecting with each other and our past.

We did get some nice hiking in on empty trails – up gentle canyon ridge lines, and into deep volcanic cracks in the desert. We enjoyed some stiff drinks at a small town saloon, and drank beer right after breakfast.

While it would be grand to wander around and play like this every day – we of course had to return to the hectic real life this week. But I’ve made an effort to set aside some time to just be throughout this week, and I highly encourage you to do the same.