Happiness is Star Wars

Posted on December 17, 2015 by Michael Kane

Happiness is Star Wars

The film is an iconic pop-culture creation and touches a bazillion film goers to their very core. It can also be very useful. Useful? What the hell am I talking about? Glad you asked. What I mean is the way that George Lucas’s masterpiece contains lessons that can and should be applied to real life. The one that jumps out at me is the message of The Force and how if you stay pure and good and mentally sharp you can, in fact, conquer the Dark Side. ~ Olivia Munn, Suck It, Wonder Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek

So tomorrow the latest Star Wars movie comes out and it’s time for me to reminisce a bit. I was 13 when the first Star Wars movie came out and as a science fiction nerd I of course went to see it. There were more people at the theater than normal for an opening of a science fiction film, word had started to get out even in my town that the graphics were something special. The movie blew me and everyone in the theater away. It wasn’t the story, it was good enough, but it was your typical western, bad guy in the black hat, or helmet in this case. The good guys were in their white robes and had special powers. No, the first Star Wars movie was unbelievable because the graphics were over the top many times better than anything we’d seen before. Watching that nearly forty year-old movie now that may be hard to fathom, but remember we lived in a world then where we had to walk uphill to school, both ways, in the snow!

I would go back a couple of times to see the film, that was a really new concept as well. You see before Jaws in 1975 movies came, occasionally were held over for a week and went away. Jaws changed that staying for months and shattering all records for a film being held over. Star Wars was now following in the footsteps of Jaws but there was a difference. Jaws would lead to Jaws 2, Jaws 3D etc… sequels of basically the same film over and over with a twist. Star Wars was in some ways an old-fashioned serial but on a grand scale. The other thing was the wait, you had to wait for years in between films, something that was both maddening but also helped ramp up the expectation for each film. My best friend and I would make every opening night for most of the films. Hell, we even got quoted in the newspaper while waiting online for the opening of Return of the Jedi.

Then the news from George Lucas, the original films were the middle part of a nine-part story, Star Wars nerd nirvana. We would get the first three and they seemed too commercial, a little bit tired, although I’ll watch anything with Natalie Portman in it. Personally I think George Lucas was done with his creation. Eventually he would tell us he was never going to do the last three films, and until it was announced he’d sold out the franchise to Disney it looked like the end of Star Wars on the big screen.

The Disney transfer is both a huge positive and negative in my mind. The positive is that Disney went out and got decent directors, and will give us what we have all longed for since the 80’s, Luke, Leia, Han and Chewey. A fond farewell to the characters I’m sure and a nice payday for a couple of actors who haven’t had much work in years. I’m looking forward to seeing the new film, but I will be nowhere near the theater in the first couple of weeks the movie is out. Going to the movies has changed, I love going to the theater, or I used to in the old days. People are now so used to watching movies at home that they treat being in the theater the same way, as if no one else is there but them. So they play with their phones and talk and create all manner of annoyances. It’s rude and I don’t tolerate it well, I’ve had some, shall we say interactions with people exhibiting these behaviors and it’s no fun. So I’ll wait for a matinée once the big crowds are gone.

One thing that will certainly change with Disney is Star Wars will no longer be an event you’ve waited years to see. It will no longer be a single serial story, no, will have at least one movie a year and there will be lots of movies in the Star Wars universe. Don’t get me wrong, if they are done well it will be fun, just not the same. So welcome to the new era of Star Wars with a little nod of nostalgia its past glory.

May the force be with you and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Posted in Random Happiness | Tagged disney, george lucas, Han Solo, leia, luke, movies, natalie portman, science fiction, star wars, the force, the force awakens, yoda | 2 Comments

Happy News – December 14, 2015

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Michael Kane

Happy News – December 14, 2015

Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see a shadow ~ Helen Keller

Our weekly tour around the web to bring you the type of positive stories that are so hard to find in the traditional media, enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

The first piece tonight is a really fantastic example of how reacting with kindness instead of anger can be not only the right choice but an amazing choice.

An amazing reaction

An unbeatable NFL Father and Daughter Team

The Power of a Random Act of Kindness

This is What Japan is Doing to Keep Turtles Safe

More Happy News!

November 30th

November 23rd

November 16th

Posted in happiness news | Tagged animals, autism, cancer, happiness, japan, kindness, news, NFL, positivity, random act of kindness, turtles | 4 Comments

Happy Christmas? Thoughts on the holiday season.

Posted on December 14, 2015 by Michael Kane

Happy Christmas? Thoughts on the holiday season.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live ~ George Carlin

I have been working on making the Ministry of Happiness posts more consistent, the schedule is supposed to look something like this:

Monday – Happy News

Tuesday – Art related posts (art, poetry, music, photography, etc…)

Wednesday – Resources for living a happier life

Thursday – Adventure related (Appalachian Trail, travel, other hiking, etc…)

Friday – Something light and entertaining

Saturday – Reruns, hey TV does it, why can’t I? A day to recycle older posts and spruce them up a bit

Sunday – Personal posts about my own life

Of course during the holiday season I also post something everyday to make sure those who struggle a bit with the season, like me, have something to try to pick them up a bit. So December means lots of posts, currently I’m doing a 12 days of Christmas set along with the Holiday Season Posts.

I sat down last night to do my normal Sunday night post and frankly I didn’t have it in me. I don’t want to call it writers block, I just wasn’t motivated to write about any particular thing. Eventually I caved in, pulled up episodes of Justified and vegged out for the night. I’m in one of those spaces where I just feel blah, it has a lot to do with this time of year. I know that, because I’m eating and sleeping well, working out six days a week. I’ve lost five pounds since coming here in November and that’s after also putting on a couple of pounds of muscle. I’ve fought past the surprising anxiety I was caught up in after my granny’s death. The weather has been spectacular, I’m writing and reading every day, I’m at the beach at least once a week.

This time of year just sucks for me, always has. I dread “Christmastime”, it is the time of year I feel most alone. The only way I can explain the feeling is if you were to go outside, someplace where there is real winter, go stand in a darkened field or on a darkened road with no lights around and just stand there alone in the cold. That is what this time of year feels like to me. I think it stems from the feeling that I’ve always been an alien. In my life I very often nearly fit someplace, I’ve yet to truly find my community. I’ve encountered members, I count them as some of my best friends, but a whole community of those folks to tap into has always eluded me.

The holidays drive home the fantasy of 1950’s America and the Leave it to Beaver nuclear family. We all see scenes of perfectly decorated trees, happy families drinking eggnog, perfectly wrapped presents under the trees. Happy smiling faces open presents on Christmas morning and the gifts are always, “just what I wanted, how did you know?” Beautiful Christmas dinners with hams and turkeys, long tables covered in crisp white table clothes, family members happily conversing and gathering that night to sing carols around the piano. Fuck, in my family, and I mean the whole extended family, I don’t think anyone even owned a piano and I’ve never heard anyone in my family sing a Christmas carol.

The reality of Christmas always was, grudgingly dragging out old musty smelling decorations, knotted strings of lights, fights over how much tinsel to put on the tree. There were no family gatherings of folks sitting around sipping eggnog, holiday gatherings meant far too much booze and inevitable arguments, Christmas trees fell down. Christmas dinner with extended happy family members getting along was a fantasy rarely if ever attempted. Don’t get me wrong, sprinkled throughout my Christmas history are shinning wonderful moments. The greatest first kiss of my life was a peppermint schnapps filled moment of bliss while watching Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Unfortunately those moments are dulled by the drape of discord, drunkenness and argument. It always seemed the pressure of the perfect holiday season combined with alcohol inevitably brought out the worst in folks. Add in times without enough money, tired hard-working people who felt like they weren’t upholding the Leave it to Beaver standards, the inevitable snow and ice storms of winter and quite frankly it’s a Christmas Miracle no one was ever murdered.

As a smart and curious child I’d busted the Santa myth before the age of five. But I was still young enough to believe that everyone else was having those perfect Christmases. This was further driven home by how damn excited everyone seemed to get about the holidays. As you get older you realize a lot of that is fronting and bullshit, reality is everyone’s family struggles with its own level of inbred insanity. Things are never as Hallmark would like us to believe. Of course we all put on the show for visitors and try to continue the illusion, it comes from a good hopeful place. By time I was old enough to pierce the illusion I was already fully disillusioned and overly cynical about the season.

The kicker of course being New Year’s Eve, as our neighbor Jack Wrigley called it, amateur night. I didn’t get that until I got older and bought into the idea of the New Year’s Eve party. You know, the party where people who hardly drink are given societal permission to get drunk off of their ass and become belligerent drunken messes. For some reason, once they do, I seem to inevitably be their target, I grew tired of that scene very early on in my twenties.

So my memories of this season are shit. I can recall few good Christmas and New Years, the first Christmas I hosted in Tennessee does count among them. A very wild New Year’s Eve in Times Square when I was 19 another one. But most have left me depressed and lonely.

The trick of course, is not to wallow in the morass that the holidays have become for me but to find ways to make them better. That’s what I have endeavored to do, this year I’m purposely staying out of the cold, I’ll spend Christmas at the beach for three days. New Year’s Eve will be spent writing and listening to music as it normally is and that has become a night I enjoy for that reason. I work very hard to try to help make the holidays better for my nieces and nephews, the one part of the season I like is gift giving and I work hard to find them gifts they’ll like. One of the biggest things I have done is the Ministry of Happiness Holiday Posts and putting myself out there for others who feel the same way. My holiday posts include my email address for those who need someone to talk to even if it is through email.

Likely I’ll never find my way out from under the weight of the season but it has become soooo much better over the years. This time of year used to mean fairly deep depression for me, now I get times like last night where I’m just blah for a bit. The advice I give on this blog goes two ways and I have far more tools now than I ever did before to bring my mood back, including working on the blog. Today, as I sit in the library writing this, the sun is shining, I just smiled at an old lady in a wheel chair with 10 books in her lap, she smiled back, her eyes lit up and she said, “I like to read.” A smile can be an amazing thing.

What I want most for people to take from this window into my Grinch-like Christmas existence is to just keep your eyes open. In America it’s ok to dislike any other holiday except Christmas. I can tell you from much personal experience, show any dislike for this season and you get a lot of crappy comments. What’s wrong with you, why do you have to be such a Scrooge, the script we follow in American society works very hard to reinforce the Hallmark, Leave it to Beaver, Norman Rockwell view of the holidays. Some people really struggle this time of year, they appreciate your invitations to your house even if they will never accept. Instead of running them down for their lack of Christmas cheer, just tell them you hope this is a good year for them. In this time of insane busyness, shopping, holiday parties, and gifting try to find a little space for kindness to those who don’t enjoy this time of year, folks who may actually be hurting. These folks are incredibly good at hiding in plain sight, so please, for their sake, just keep your eyes open a bit more than usual and have a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Festivus, New Years and any other holiday you celebrate as well as a very happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Gear Lists

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Michael Kane

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Gear Lists

My gear pile right before I left for the trail, I didn’t carry the computer it just ended up in the photo

Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking; You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits. ~ Cindy Ross

There is a ton of preparation that goes into most people’s thru-hike attempt, that means reading, talking to folks and test hikes. Toward that end I’ve put up a resources page on the blog that I’ll be updating periodically. So today I’ll address one of the big questions.

What should you carry on your thru-hike? This is a matter for fabulous amounts of discussion, eventually of course it comes down to hike your own hike. I met hikers carrying, in my opinion, insanely small amounts of gear. I met hikers carrying insanely large amounts of gear. Some people had to have multiple books, lots of maps, multiple pieces of electronic gear, several cameras and/or lots of redundancy. Some people sleep under a tarp, don’t have a camera, carry toothpaste dots, wipe with leaves and say redundancy be damned. It all comes down to what you need, what makes you comfortable and what you can comfortably carry.

The best piece of advice I can give you after doing 1000 miles on the AT last summer is to not freak out about it, it will certainly change. I started with about 42 pounds on my back, by Virginia I was in the low to mid 30’s depending on how much water I was carrying. Test hikes can help this a lot, if you do four or five test hikes with all your gear and you have stuff you haven’t used, you probably shouldn’t carry it. The exception of course being safety and first-aid equipment. Almost everyone starts carrying too much. I remember meeting other hikers on the train down to Atlanta, our packs, (we were all carrying 61 liter Osprey Exos packs), were bursting at the seams. It was barely possible to shove my water bottle into the outer pocket in the beginning. By time I hit Virginia there was plenty of space in the pack. A result of changing the way I packed, but mostly because there were a lot of things I’d stopped carrying AND I was finally learning how to not carry too much food.

So tonight I’ve scoured the web to give you lots of gear list options. How do you decide between them, well, common sense, your gut, talk to people who’ve done this sort of thing (you can e-mail me at happinesskane@aol.com if you want) and the most effective method, load up and do shakedown hikes. Of course I realize that’s not always possible and it doesn’t have to be the same terrain, that helps, but you’re mostly gauging what you need and don’t need to carry.

A couple of small things I will say that were my personal preferences. I used a rain skirt instead of rain pants and loved them. Except for one day where a 40 mph wind on a bald did a one-eighty and soaked me, it worked great, is super lightweight and packs into anything. This is the one I used, but there are lots of places to find them and you can make one yourself. If you google DIY or how to make a rain skirt/kilt you’ll find a ton of links from using anything from garbage bags to Tyvek to using old rain pants and coats.

Rev Kane on his first day on the Appalachian Trail

My other recommendation is don’t carry gear for a long time before or after it will be necessary. I carried my spikes from the Springer through the Smokies. I never put them on once. Now, had a been a few days earlier into Fontana I would have needed them in the Smokies, but I could have easily had them shipped to me at Fontana. Would have saved me space and weight. Now if you’re starting in January obviously that changes and if you’re starting in mid-April they are not even on the gear list. Again gear really is a personalized thing and highly dependent on seasons, terrain, etc…

GEAR LISTS

Appalachian Trail Conservancy list – This is really just the very basics, if you are contemplating a section or thru-hike on the trail and you just don’t know where to begin this is a great spot. However, if you’ve done a lot of hiking it’s probably only worth a quick scan.

Appalachian Trail Gear List – My favorite gear list written by Bruce “Buck” Nelson. There are a lot of gear lists on the web, I just prefer this one for the focus on ultralight and the gear links to where he purchased each item.

Serials 2012 Gear List – I like that there’s a lot of description on this list

Hammock tips – For those who choose to hammock, I did and will write more on that soon, I loved it, here are some basic tips out of a great book, The Ultimate Hang.

Zach Davis’ list – Zach is the author of Appalachian Trials and did a guest post on the REI blog, I like the way he breaks down the list into essentials, almost essentials, etc…

Section Hike list – Here’s a nice list for a 3 week section hike.

Risky Business Gear Video – Here’s a YouTube link and good discussion in the comments.

Linthikes – An interesting ultra-light list

From Wander the Wild Blog – an updated list of what they “actually” ended up carrying on the AT

Run, Hike, Live, Love – A really detailed gear list, ultra-light but the detail counts in this one, you may just need to note weight differences for non ultra-light components.

Andrew Skurka – A great list by Andrew for a 32 pound total weight

Hiking for Autism – Another list that lands in the mid-30 pound range

Cleverhike.com’s – Video series on gear

Ultra-light Tips

One last set of links related to ultra-light gear tips. I love these folks, some of the ideas are just nuts in my opinion, but in looking at these sites pre-trip I did learn a few ways to reduce weight and the sites really got me thinking about the difference between what I needed and wanted to carry.

201 Ultralight Tips – Absolutely awesome site but I don’t like the title of this piece, the tips are FANTASTIC but I wouldn’t consider a lot of them ultra-light tips but rather great tips on how to trim weight from your pack. Don’t let the ultra-light in the title keep you from looking through this.

Backcountry.com’s – Tips for lightening your backpack.

Ultralight Backpacking Tips – A YouTube video with a good set of recommendations

My pack sitting in the train station on my last day on the AT this summer.

If you have any other links to gear lists please pass them on in the comments or by email. Have a great hike and a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Holiday Happiness: Ten Tips for the Tenth

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Michael Kane

Holiday Happiness: Ten Tips for the Tenth

Whatever makes you happy,as long as it doesn’t hurt you or someone else, do it. Schedule pleasurable activities into your life with the same dedication, precision & priority you give less-than-pleasurable ones ~ Peter McWilliams
The holidays are a very stressful time for everyone and an exceptionally hard time for some. So, until the New Year I’ll be posting a Holiday Happiness post each day to try help folks out who are struggling. As always you can reach out to me at Happinesskane@aol.com for a kind word or someone to listen. ~ Rev Kane

Tonight I decided to have a little fun with the number 10, since I’m posting this on December 10th, so pieces with a focus on both happiness and the number 10. Enjoy and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Ten Rules for my Life – A really nicely written blog piece on one persons personal code.

Ten Keys to Happier Living – A gallery of 10 items that can help you be happier

Ten Ways to Jump Start Your Happiness – Some points and some nice practical advice.

Posted in Holiday Happiness | Tagged Christmas, depression, happiness, holidays, sadness, tips | Leave a comment

Happy News – December 7, 2015

Posted on December 7, 2015 by Michael Kane

Happy News – December 7, 2015

The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us. ~ Ashley Montagu

Tonight our weekly tour around the web for the kind of positive news you can get on your local or cable news, enjoy, and have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

The Science of Smiling

101 Year Old Man Playing with Snow

Little boy hiccups his way through the National Anthem and it’s adorable

93 year-old WWII vet reunites with love from 70 years ago via Skype

Posted in happiness news | Tagged good news, happiness, happy, happy news, love, news, positive news, smiling | 4 Comments

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Change can be a good thing

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Michael Kane

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Change can be a good thing

As many of you know I hiked 1000 miles on the Appalachian Trail this summer. A long trip like that is bound to create some change in you personally. On the trail you spend a lot of time thinking. In your hammock/tent at night you have a lot of time to lay there and think about life. Throughout the day as you walk, your mind is cranking away all of the time, not at a conscious level but down underneath things. When you are walking you have to be unbelievably present, the moment your mind wanders off of the trail there’s a root on your toe and you’re on the ground. The forced mindfulness is one of the things I love about being on the trail.

But underneath the wheels grind, at night you process more consciously. A couple of different times on the trail this summer I had conversations with people who woke to epiphanies about things that they had struggled over for some time. For me, like most of us, I had some of my own baggage to work out, past relationships, family relationships all bring their level of noise into your life that you have an opportunity to quiet on the trail.

Eventually as Colin Fletcher says, you examine yourself and there is time to get into the true depths of who and what you are. You have time, for one of the few times in your life, to really examine yourself and contemplate these ideas. I’ve written previously that I thought the trail and this process had some definitive impacts on me. I felt that I had slowed down, become mellower, softer if you will. The trail I believed made me more open to others and a little less anti-social, it showed me that with the right community I really did have a need to be social and connected to others.

The last few weeks have been rough, my grandmother’s passing hit me like a ton of bricks. I generally held it together but emotional trauma robs you of the buffers you have to interact with other people, you become raw. Typically in this state I’m a dangerous person to be around because my tongue is free and unfiltered and I have been known to inflict damage with it. That hasn’t happened this time, I found myself in a situation with a friend where ordinarily I would have unleashed verbal and emotional fury and walked away. That didn’t happen, I’ve slowed down in life, I paused and did something that I haven’t always done and put myself in their shoes. This led to a phone call that was honest and direct (that will always be me) but I pointed out I understood why what happened had indeed happened. I stressed our friendship and the connections and what behaviors couldn’t happen again. I asked my friend what they needed.

This brought us to understanding, friendship with this person will never be easy, it hasn’t been easy. But I care about this person, so the effort is worth it. Realize, I’ll never be a doormat and I certainly still play by baseball rules, three strikes and your out. I have always advocated ridding yourself of people who bring you down, but now it seems I’m a little less quick on the trigger, a little more forgiving, a better friend.

Tonight I’d ask you to find a few minutes my friends, contemplate your own trigger, how fast you pull it. Ask yourself how often you’re putting yourselves in the shoes of your partner, your children, your friends and to just pause a bit longer than normal before you react. It’s been making things better for me, perhaps it can help you as well. So maybe what I have found is a new version of me, a version I like and one that I hope will continue to bring me happy days my friends ~ Rev Kane

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 3

Posted on December 6, 2015 by Michael Kane

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure–Part 3 (The Bears)**

I love that I caught him with his eyes closed

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a unique and biologically special place that should be preserved. ~ Dan Lipinski

As many of you know, a little over a year ago I sold my house, quit my job and hit the road. I spent the Summer hiking 1000 miles on the Appalachian Trail, my thru-hike ambitions were cut short by a knee injury. But after rehabbing my knee I went north to check off an item on my bucket list that has been near the top for the last couple of years and this is the third part of my writing about the trip.

After arguably the best day of my life, I awoke to the smells of breakfast coming from the lodge kitchen and more activity and noise than was normal. So I dressed pretty quickly and grabbed my camera guessing the activity was bear related and I was correct. The big bear who had been hanging around was still hanging around and was napping outside of the dining room.

A little bit of polar bear biology, polar bears hunt on the Arctic Sea ice flows. Their primary food is the seal, they find air/escape holes and stalk the hole, when a seal pops up, voila, dinner. They do hunt in other ways, running down not so smart humans on the ice, jumping off ice onto prey in the water, they are great swimmers, they also scavenge a lot. However hunting seals on the ice is their primary source of food. So as you can imagine, Summer, kind of sucks for a polar bear. They can handle temperatures well into the minus category and hunt off the ice, so sunny days even in the 40’s and 50’s are brutal and the lack of ice makes food scarce. What this typically means is that most polar bears spend months off of the ice eating little or no food.

This reality spurred on a lot of discussion about this particular bear. You see he was sleeping right outside the dinning room/kitchen, with open windows so we could photograph him, while we were making bacon. Seriously, it seemed more than a little bit cruel. So you may ask, why not throw the brother a little cooked pork. The problem with feeding any wild animal is they lose their fear of humans. In the case of the squirrel in your yard, maybe not a big problem, although squirrels in North America do carry the Bubonic Plague. However in the case of large predators, bears, alligators, mountain lions, making them less afraid of humans, and worse, food conditioned to humans means they will get close and expect food. This leads to bad interactions and unfortunately almost always to the destruction of the animal. So, as cruel as it seemed, as much as truly I wanted to toss him my whole breakfast, it’s not a good idea for the bear. Eventually, it also seemed to be a little too much for him as well.

He began to walk around and finally became enamored with the tires on the lodge and a lot like a dog gnawing on a piece of rawhide in your living room, decided to chew on the tires.

This bear will always hold a special place for me, he was the first polar bear I ever saw and one I got within two feet of face to face. But later that day I would fall in love with a lovely white furred lady.

We hit the rover with mixed emotions, we would be out looking for wildlife again that day on the rovers but would finish back at the base station and be moving into town for the next couple of nights. We spent most of the morning rolling around with little success and stopped and had lunch in the rover. Right after lunch things picked up as a couple of different bears had been spotted in the area. We got a good look at this guy for a few minutes.

And then our rover driver proved herself to be really, really good at her job. There was another bear spotted a long way away and instead of driving up on it, she pulled around and positioned the rover about a quarter mile away. Why was this so smart, because the bear walked on an almost bee line right to us.

She’s about an 800 pound female and as you can tell even from a distance was quite aware of us.

When I say walked right up to us, I mean right up to us and looked me dead in the eye.

I’m directly above her about 12 feet looking down off of the observation deck and this was the moment I fell in love with this beautiful bear.

The little white plugs in her ears are there because the other bears snore. Actually, they are ear tags placed on her by biologists who are monitoring the population.

photo credit to our guide Drew, he shot this from the other rover, this is the bear I just fell in love with and that’s me on the right corner of the rover.

Here are a couple of other shots of bears that I took but haven’t posted, enjoy.

I like this shot because it shows how gigantic their feet are, that thing is nearly the size of a Frisbee.

I hope you enjoyed these, the final part of this series will feature a rare flying polar bear. Have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Precious Moments

Happiness is Swimming with Whale Sharks

Three Questions & Some Thoughts from Anza Borrego State Park

Mount Everest Travelogue

Posted in Happiness is Adventure | Tagged adventure, arctic, canada, happiness, nature, photography, polar bears, wildlife | 2 Comments

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Light Show)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Michael Kane

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Lightshow)**

Photo credit to our guide Drew

When I look at the northern lights … I see our ancestors dancing around a sacred fire, lighting the way for us when it’s time for us to cross over from this physical world and join them. ~ Molly Larkin

As we were getting ready for bed on the first night at the Tundra Lodge, our guides explained a weird little sign that was on all of our doors. Unlike the signs we’re used to at hotels, these signs said, please disturb. The signs let the staff and guides know that if an Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) show erupted that they should wake you up so you could check it out.

Everyone on the trip was hopeful that we would get to see the Northern Lights given that Churchill may in fact be the best place on earth to see them. The absolute best time of year is the late winter/early spring but they can be visible any time of year in Churchill. The first night however it was warm and cloudy and we had absolutely no luck and knowing that we all got a full night of sleep.

So there was no evening photography but the mornings are pretty on the tundra as well:

We would spend our second day out on the tundra searching for wildlife and quite frankly the morning was frustrating. As often happens when searching for wildlife you can go hours and see absolutely nothing and then see a bunch of animals in quick succession. Wildlife photography in particular is an endeavor for the patient, I do not count myself in the category of highly patient humans but it did allow me to focus on more landscape shots, this one is my favorite.

The temperatures had dropped over night and it made for some pretty Rime Ice in certain areas. Rime Ice forms when water gets sprayed in the wind and freezes, in this case on plants.

We spent most of the morning without luck on the wildlife front, we had a quick view of some Ptarmigan but I didn’t get any photos of my own. For illustrative purposes here’s a picture off of the web of what they look like.

We got some distant views of bears and couple of quick good shots but all in all it felt like a bust of a day as we rolled back towards the Tundra Lodge. We all hoped that the bear who had come to visit the lodge the night before might return.

By the time we got back to the lodge the temperatures had really dropped and the skies had started to clear, so we were all starting to get hopeful about a lightshow. I was the pessimist in the group but was assured by the Australians on the trip it would happen as they’d brought the Aussie luck with them, they should bottle the stuff.

With clearing skies we got a really great sunset, it started with the early rays setting the tundra on fire with beautiful red light.

Then as the sun hit the horizon things really started to fire up.

Then a trick I hate to admit I learned from reading The Bridges of Madison County, many times the best sunset shots come after you think it’s all over after the sun’s gone down.

Even Mr. Polar Bear decided he wanted to check out the sunset.

Happily on this evening, Mr. Polar Bear (a roughly 1100 pound male) had decided he wanted a closer look at things including the rover that had stopped in front of the lodge to watch the sunset.

Apparently, the rover had caught his interest.

That’s 11 feet and 1100 pounds of polar wondering, how can I eat them?

After realizing he wouldn’t be able to eat the people in the rover he noticed all of us out on the decks of the lodge and he decided to come visit. This shot is a bit hard to see but what it is showing are the grates at the bottom of the decks about 6 feet off of the ground. The bear is walking underneath us and is only a foot or so away. One person put their hand flat on the grate and the bear lifted up its head, decided to sniff the shoe next to the hand and dropped back to the ground. When that happened I was crouched down and my face was 2 feet from the face of a polar bear, it was AMAZING to be that close to such an incredible creature.

He took a good close look at us.

And I share this next shot because I love that I caught him with his eyes closed.

I had joked before I went on the trip that for the money I was spending I should be able to get a polar bear selfie. Given what they advertised could happen at the Tundra Lodge, this didn’t seem completely impossible, and it wasn’t.

POLAR BEAR SELFIE!!!

Dinner that night was a buzz of activity, everyone excited from our close up bear observation. In fact the bear was now laying down just outside the lodge while we were eating dinner. Between the sunset and the bear sightings it had been a truly memorable day, one I would classify as one of the best of my life.

After dinner each night there was a presentation and that night one of our guides, Drew was presenting on Grizzly bears.

Drew and the Rev

Can’t imagine by looking at him how we have anything in common 🙂

Drew was presenting on Grizzly bears in Alaska, he works with the Alaska Fish & Wildlife Service and he had lots of close up observation videos of Grizzlies to show us. He also runs a trip where you can get just as up close and personal with Grizzlies in Alaska. This trip seems absolutely insane to me, but if you’re going to do something like this, he’s the guy to go with and his stories about the trips and his work were absolutely amazing. As Drew wrapped up his talk we started asking about auroras and our please disturb signs when the staff said, “don’t bother”, I was bummed until I heard the rest of the sentence, “it’s already started.”

This of course initiated a mad dash for cameras and tripods. It was my first time shooting aurora and honestly I didn’t do a great job but I got a few good shots and have borrowed a couple from Drew including the one at the top of the piece.

The show started off with just faded green light, then things started to get interesting, you can see in the last shot above traces of red at the edges of the green. It’s hard to get these shots you need long exposures and a stable camera. I had brought a crappy little travel tripod that was useless, so I ended up taking these shots braced against the building with my fish eye lens. The traces of green quickly turned into massive waves of green light.

From the massive waves the most amazing thing started to happen, the light organized into two rivers of light screaming past us, then they started to swirl.

Photo credit to Drew

u64EHajnGBt0S2bO0wPnP-rTU0AczPY_jh54Ea2ovgo,YcM7A1DxOunL2prdO0N684vY-j60xWbGgv5UahmtjlM

Photo credit to Drew

lJi22FYS8_YuXJx89MN1iMs4jG5a3oBw1gdhSuEXghY,YsRr-exApSAReo8T2niVC6U-_5N8fYsBIDMk_0hB_A8,xedR8MV2F4pqMfF46dIcxvsHZ1iKT-NqFylP1u-neco

Photo credit to Drew

At one point, my hands frozen and in pain I finally stopped shooting, put my gloves on, buried my hands in my parka and just watched. The show was beyond description, I was sooo happy, I can’t even relate to you the level of joy that was coursing through my body. Someone said, “oh my good look straight up.” I did and saw the most magnificently beautiful thing I might ever see. The two rivers of light arcing across the sky, one green, one red had intersected each other and were spinning into a spiral of alternate red and green bands like one of those giant lollipops. People were literally giggling with joy like little children, I was one of them. The whole display lasted about two hours and as it was fading I went to watch the dying lightshow through the window of my room.

In the last twelve hours I’d seen a magnificent sunset, been two feet face to face with a polar bear, got my polar bear selfie and saw my first Norther Light show and it had exceeded my wildest imaginations in its scale and beauty. Simply the best day of my life so far.

When we got into town the next day everyone was buzzing about the lightshow. Locals who had lived in Churchill their whole life said they couldn’t ever remember seeing a better aurora and we caught it in the middle of the tundra on the shores of Hudson Bay with no light pollution, a once in a lifetime score and a very, very happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Precious Moments

Happiness is Swimming with Whale Sharks

Three Questions & Some Thoughts from Anza Borrego State Park

Mount Everest Travelogue

Posted in Happiness is Adventure | Tagged adventure, arctic, aurora, churchill, happiness, Northern lights, photography, Polar bear, sunset | 13 Comments

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 1 (The Tundra)

Posted on December 4, 2015 by Michael Kane

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure –Part 1 (The Tundra)

Photo credit to our guide Drew

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death. ~ Leonardo da Vinci

While surfing the web about three years ago I stumbled upon an ad for Polar Bear tours in Churchill, CA. The idea intrigued me so I did a more detailed search on the idea and as I scrolled through tour pages I started to get excited. Finally I landed on what I thought was the perfect tour, spend a week in Churchill, the polar bear capital of the world, but not just in Churchill. Spend two nights in a tundra lodge out where the polar bears congregate. A little hotel on giant wheels with observation decks and lots of windows. Spend four full days rolling around the tundra on giant rovers looking for bears, arctic hare and foxes, snowy owls, etc…

Of course the price tag knocked me for a loop, it was quite a bit of money for a one week adventure and so I put it on reserve. Move ahead to this year and I had decided during my year off I wanted to one really amazing (read high ticket price) event and was caught between doing the polar bear excursion or a cruise to Antarctica. Finally what it came down to for me was both time and timing. The polar bear trip was shorter and allowed me to do the trip and still make a friends 50th birthday celebration in Key West. Also, with climate change causing the habitat in the Arctic to change rapidly, there’s a lot of uncertainty around how this will impact polar bear population levels, movement patterns etc… So now seemed like the right time to go north.

Sure, the Antarctic is changing as well but the Arctic Tundra is a really fragile system and polar bears depend on ice flows in the Arctic Sea and this pattern of freezing is really changing. So there are two big potential changes coming soon for polar bear populations, first, a loss in vitality and reproductive rates related to temperature, and secondly changes in population locations due to changes in the ice flows and freeze over dates in Hudson Bay.

So go north it was and in late October I took off to Winnipeg, Canada the starting point for the adventure. I spent two days in Winnipeg before the tour started and it was an interesting town and a good place to rest up a couple of days as I was sure I would be burning the candle at both ends in Churchill.

We had a trip orientation dinner the night before we left and the tour group seemed like they would be fun people and that turned out to be true. A pretty diverse group from New Zealand to Pennsylvania and included doctors, nurses, attorneys, scientists, Peace Corps workers, the wife of one of my favorite NFL coaches, and a former AT thru-hiker. The ages ranged from early twenties to retirees in their 70’s so it was an interesting mix of folks. We had two great guides who were very knowledgeable and easy to get along with which is always a huge bonus.

The Churchill Airport is not large.

We flew to Churchill on a charter flight and landed in the Great White North which had almost no snow on the ground and was actually quite a bit warmer than expected. We actually had temperatures above freezing when we landed and no snow. This was actually a bummer as higher temperatures meant less active bears and more clouds which would likely preclude any good aurora (Norther Light) shows. I was particularly pessimistic about the aurora as on my 40th birthday I flew to Fairbanks, Alaska in March at what should have been the peak of aurora season. I spent three nights there freezing my tail off and saw nothing, although as the picture above shows, that definitely changed for me on this trip.

After we landed we took a bus out-of-town and to the base station where we boarded the tundra rovers we would be using for the week. These things are gigantic:

And this picture I shot later in the week shows why they need to be so big, these two rovers are identical in size. Compare them and you’ll quickly realize that on it’s hind legs that polar bear is about 11 feet tall:

Given polar bears actively hunt human beings extra measures of safety like really high observation decks are necessary. Additionally there are guns everywhere, the rover drivers are carrying and anyone who has responsibility for any kind of public safety is carrying as well.

Just another day watching for polar bears at the park. They also did helicopter fly overs to look for bears as well.

Once on the rovers we spent the afternoon riding around looking for wildlife, especially bears and then heading out to the Tundra Lodge where we would be staying. The tundra was beautiful the first day, sunny and wonderful and I took a lot of landscape shots the first day as the wildlife was few and far between.

Krumholtz, one of my favorite words, it refers to trees that are small due to living in environments with really short growing seasons. Although these look like young trees they may be decades old and only a few feet tall.

Photo credit to our guide Drew. The lichens on the tundra can be incredibly beautiful.

However we did find a snowy owl

Lots of snow buntings, which are very hard to photograph

And finally our first bear, who played peekaboo through the brush

Our accommodations for the first two nights

The Tundra Lodge

Laying in bed in the lodge with my view of the tundra

We would end the day with a wonderful dinner at the lodge and during the social hour before dinner someone pointed outside the lodge and we had our second bear of the trip and our first at the lodge. A bear and dinner was a wonderful way to end our first day. It had been a long first day, and apparently for the bear as well, if you look closely at the bear below, he’s yawning. Have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Precious Moments

Happiness is Swimming with Whale Sharks

Three Questions & Some Thoughts from Anza Borrego State Park

Mount Everest Travelogue

Posted in Happiness is Adventure, personal happiness | Tagged adventure, arctic, aurora, churchill, happiness, Northern lights, Polar bear, rover, travel, tundra | 2 Comments

The Ministry of Happiness

Happiness is Star Wars

Happiness is Star Wars

Happy News – December 14, 2015

Happy News – December 14, 2015

More Happy News!

Happy Christmas? Thoughts on the holiday season.

Happy Christmas? Thoughts on the holiday season.

Other Posts You Might Enjoy!

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Gear Lists

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Gear Lists

GEAR LISTS

Ultra-light Tips

Other Posts You May Enjoy!

Holiday Happiness: Ten Tips for the Tenth

Holiday Happiness: Ten Tips for the Tenth

Happy News – December 7, 2015

Happy News – December 7, 2015

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Change can be a good thing

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Change can be a good thing

Other posts you might enjoy!

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 3

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure–Part 3 (The Bears)**

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Light Show)

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Lightshow)**

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 1 (The Tundra)

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure –Part 1 (The Tundra)

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Follow Blog via Email

To Follow this Blog Click Here!

The Ministry of Happiness

Categories

Ministry of Happiness on Facebook

Become a member! Just add your e-mail

Follow us on Facebook

Happiness is Star Wars

Rate this:

Happy News – December 14, 2015

More Happy News!

Rate this:

Happy Christmas? Thoughts on the holiday season.

Other Posts You Might Enjoy!

Rate this:

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Gear Lists

GEAR LISTS

Ultra-light Tips

Other Posts You May Enjoy!

Rate this:

Holiday Happiness: Ten Tips for the Tenth

Rate this:

Happy News – December 7, 2015

Rate this:

Appalachian Trail Happiness: Change can be a good thing

Other posts you might enjoy!

Rate this:

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure–Part 3 (The Bears)

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Rate this:

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Lightshow)

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Rate this:

Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure –Part 1 (The Tundra)

Other pieces you might enjoy!

Rate this:

Follow Blog via Email

To Follow this Blog Click Here!

The Ministry of Happiness

Categories

Become a member! Just add your e-mail

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure–Part 3 (The Bears)**

**Happiness is a Polar Bear Adventure – Part 2 (Bears & The Lightshow)**