The Accomplice of Restlessness

About four miles from my house is a place known as the Shrine of St Therese:

http://www.shrineofsainttherese.org/

I ride my bike past this place every time I go further Out the Road, but have only stopped there to visit once before.  It was a couple of months ago and in the dead of winter.  There was snow on the roads and it was cold, and I was riding my bike and it was a very very beautiful and quiet place.

I was alone at the Shrine that day.  Too cold for most people to be there.  And even though I am not a religious person, I was memorized and enthralled that there was such a lovely place so close to where I lived.

Two months later the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and it was 83 degrees.

I remember wondering a couple of months ago whether or not this shrine would continue to be a quiet place once the cruise ships and the hundreds of thousands of tourists decended on the city, or whether buses and noisy tourists would fill the parking lot.

Very happily, it is still a quiet place.

Probably because it is too far from downtown. 

Very good.  Because I feel as though this place should always be peaceful and quiet and provide solitude........

The church is hidden among the pine trees on the island......

I am beginning to feel restless again.  The pacing wolf again..........

My Mountain Boy will be in Minnesota for the better part of a week - visiting, resting, preparing for the rest of his trip out west to Bellingham.

I promised him that I would not walk alone in the mountains again until he arrives in Alaska.

I need time away from work.  I am working all day again this Saturday.  Still doing two jobs for at least another month or so.  Tired and overstressed.   And with pentup nervous energy to spare.

I hope that Sunday and Monday I can keep moving - walking or running or riding or.......something.

There is another trail at the shrine that contains a lot of "God things".......I honestly don't know the correct terminology when it comes to issues related to religion.  

I know that my "brother-in-law" is religious and (to a lesser extent) so is LC. 

Both of these men would really love this place because it is a spiritual place.

I love this place because it provides me with stillness - quiet water and quiet mountains. 

And that stillness on some days (along with intense physical activity on others) helps to calm me.  

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness........Joseph Contrad