Global Explorers Blog 
Dancing Leaves
One brilliant day in late fall several years ago, I watched quietly from an apartment window as leaves red, gold and orange trickled slowly to the ground. They swirled, spun, and tumbled in such a way that their falls seemed choreographed; I was entranced. Two days later, a cold front came through and everything froze for the first time that year. The leaves that had yet to turn colors and fall to the ground had missed their chance, and now sat lifeless, brown and cold in piles waiting to be collected and thrown away. It was sad to me, that the single most glorious moment of their little lives had been missed by the unexpected early freeze. And it struck me that it wasn’t all that different from our lives as humans. How often we get stuck holding on to what we know and missing the chance to truly experience all the world has to offer. Letting go is always scary. We don’t know where we’ll land or how it will all turn out…but in the end, if we never try, it will still be the end.
Share on Facebook Post to Twitter Posted by Katie Watkins · January 26, 2011 · inspiration
A Horse is a Horse
Anyone who has spent time abroad knows how utterly disorienting the experience can be, in the small things as well as the big ones. Handwriting has a strange slant or swoop to it, street signs are cryptic, and grocery store etiquette can be downright elusive. I was in France when I discovered the one thing that felt familiar.
Munster was a dream of a village, nestled gently in a valley in the Vosges Mountains. Its name derived from the ancient monastery whose ruins crumbled in the center of town and gave rise to Munster cheese, which is anything but mild in its native land. Traditional half-timbered houses boasted brilliant window box flowers. Great white Alsatian storks built colossal nests on chimney tops and often struck the quintessential pose: perching on a single orange leg, their eyes soft slits smiling down on me.
It was a gorgeous little place, and I was delighted to stroll the streets and just breathe in the beauty of it all.
