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Using the Proprioceptive Sense for Balance on a Rough Trail . by Alice B. Clagett

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Filmed on 1 August 2019; published on 3 November 2019

  • VIDEO BY ALICE
  • SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO

Dear Ones,

Here is a video on using the proprioceptive sense to maintain balance while hiking on a rough trail. There is an edited Summary after the video  …

VIDEO BY ALICE

SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO

Hello, Dear Ones, It’s Alice. I Am of the Stars.

I have hiking lore for you. This is about the proprioceptive sense, and how it steadies your balance in case you are walking on uneven ground or downhill, on a trail that is not too well defined. So you are walking along, and you are not certain of your balance. So what you do is you touch a twig on a nearby bush. Touching the twig while your feet are walking along steadies your balance.

I will give you an example here. I am going down this slope … [shows moderately sloping, rough trail.] It is not so hard to balance here, but I will pretend that it is, so that you can see. I am going along … Let’s say I need to step down now. Here is the twig; I just lightly touch this twig, see? … [Shows two fingers just touching a twig, not grasping it.] … I just lightly touch it as I am walking along. I do not hold on. And touching the twig steadies me. So here I am, walking along.

Now you may be wondering why this works. I do not know why it works. All I know is that one day, when I started to slide down a very precipitous cliff, and there were no strong branches to hold onto, I touched a twig, and it steadied my balance, and I stopped the fall. You will have to try it, and see if it works for you.

In love, light and joy,
I Am of the Stars

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Alice’s Perilous Tales: The Man with the Serrated Scimitar . by Alice B. Clagett

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Alice's perilous tales

Image: “Illustration from the 1922 book “The Boy’s of King Arthur”, p 306, depicting the final duel between King Arthur and Sir Mordred in the Battle of Camlan,” by N.C. Wyeth, 1922, in English Wikipiedia … https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boys_King_Arthur_-_N._C._Wyeth_-_p306.jpg … in CC BY-SA 3.0 … DESCRIPTION: “Illustration from page 306 of ‘The Boy’s King Arthur’: the death of Arthur and Mordred – ‘Then the king … ran towards Sir Mordred, crying, ‘Traitor, now is thy death day come.'” … COMMENT: Although this is a drawing of a battle between King Arthur and Mordred, it reminds me, by its deadly intent, of the battle between the Saracen and the Christian that was an example for me, in a past incarnation, of my own self embodied in ‘another’, whom I sought to kill, only to find myself mortally wounded through my own murderous intent.

  • ALICE’S PERILOUS TALES: THE MAN WITH THE SERRATED SCIMITAR
  • MORE INFORMATION

Dear Ones,

ALICE’S PERILOUS TALES: THE MAN WITH THE SERRATED SCIMITAR

On 13 June 2019 I parked my car at the trailhead at the end of Decker School Road in northwestern Leo Carrillo State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains, California, and began a walk along Nicholas Flat Trail, which leads to Nicholas Pond and then down to the Pacific Ocean, had one a yen to walk that far. The thing I remember most vividly about that walk was this …

I parked my car at the trailhead and began walking along the trail. There was a gentle rise to my left, and a gentle descent into a dry stream bed to my right. It looked to me as if the terrain had been burned over during the great Woolsey Fire that began in early November 2018, and burned about 100,000 acres of land in the Santa Monica Mountains …

Link: “2018 Woolsey Fire,” at National Park Service … https://www.nps.gov/samo/learn/management/2018-woolsey-fire.htm ..

I heard two men conversing from down the trail in the southerly direction I was heading; from the sound of their voices, they were heading toward me.

I was carrying my camcorder and dawdling along the trail as I took photos of the landscape and plants along the way.

Pretty soon I saw two young men, maybe in their late 20s or early 30s, coming toward me along the trail. They were strangers to me, walking side by side, and taking up the width of the narrow trail. One was a little taller, maybe nearly 6 feet tall, spare and lean. The other was maybe three inches shorter and a little more muscular; he was an athletic weight for his age.

The shorter man, who approached along the left edge of the trail, was carrying in his right hand a curved scimitar that looked about like this 25 inch stainless steel blade …

Image: “Personalized Scimitar Swords Set with Custom Engraved Text” … https://i.etsystatic.com/16516687/r/il/d98d5f/1885968716/il_794xN.1885968716_efu2.jpg ..

… except that, as I recall with puzzlement, part of the top edge of the scimitar was serrated.

I stepped to the left-hand side of the trail, which was higher and, I felt, more defensible. From that slightly higher elevation I faced the trail. In my left hand was my camcorder.

The man with the scimitar sized me up as he approached, swinging his two-foot steel blade lazily back and forth as he walked. Then his glance fell upon my camcorder, and his energy field contracted slightly.

He said to me: Is that a camera?

I said: Yes.

As the two men drew abreast of me, the hairs of my left leg, which was a foot beyond the left side of the trail, sensed a change in the breeze as the scimitar swung past my lower body. Then the men walked by.

As I waited, I heard them reach their car. Then two car doors slammed. As I looked up, their cars drove back up Decker School Road.

As I began walking farther along the trail, a vision came to me on the astral plane which seemed to me to be the daydream of the scimitar-carrying man. In the dream, the two men were walking together in the southerly direction I had been heading.

They came to terrain that was flatter and more open. A young man was there, standing all alone; it seemed to me he importuned them sexually. In the dream, the man with the scimitar gathered his strength and will to slay the stranger. Then suddenly, the vision vanished.

. . . . .

Aside from this encounter with the two men, it was a very pleasant outing. I was pleased to find hundreds of tiny California toads hopping through the wetlands around Nicholas Pond. This is indeed a rare sight in Southern California, most likely occasioned, I thought, by the greater than average rainfall last winter.

The pond, too, was more full of water than I had ever seen it before, in my many years of wandering the Santa Monica Mountains.

In love, light and joy,
I Am of the Stars

Happened on 13 June 2019; published on 4 October 2019
Previously titled: The Man with the Serrated Scimitar . a story by Alice B. Clagett
Location: Nicholas Flat Trail, Santa Monica Mountains, California

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MORE INFORMATION

Here are photos from the hike on the day described in the story … Link: “Nicholas Flat Trail,” photos by Alice B. Clagett, filmed on 13 June 2019; published on 3 October 2019 … https://wp.me/p2Rkym-env ..

Many of these photos are featured in this video … Link: “Nicholas Flat Trail and the Music of Chris Zabriskie,” compiled by Alice B. Clagett, filmed on 13 June 2019; published on 3 October 2019 … https://wp.me/p2Rkym-eno ..

Link: “Trail of the Month ~~ May 2013: Nicholas Flat” … https://smmtc.org/trailofthemonth/trail_of_the_month_201305_Nicholas_Flat.php ..

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Saga of Peace and Quiet at Vallecito Lake . by Alice B. Clagett

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Filmed on 31 August 2013; published on 2 September 2013; revised
Location: Vallecito Lake, Colorado

  • VIDEO BY ALICE
  • SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO

Dear Ones,

Nothing much going on here … just a walk at Vallecito Lake in Colorado. An edited Summary follows the video …

VIDEO BY ALICE

SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO

Wow, so check it out! I am over here by Vallecito Lake, and the wind is up! Look at that! [shows view of lake, through pine trees] … Maybe you could see a little bit of the lake out there … Yes, off in the far distance.

And then there is this fallen tree [shows fallen pine tree] … very cool. Can you hear the wind? And look at this [zooms to a granite rock about 8 inches on one side] … Is this not pretty? [zooms to pale green lichen on rock] … See the lichen? Wow!

And if the Light were not glancing off of this rock so much, you could see that the lichen is almost in a complete circle … Like a fourth dimensional, magical ring on the rock. So, maybe it is a lucky rock. [laughs]

All right, everybody. See you on down the trail. [shows grassy footpath amongst trees] … So, I was walking a forest path by the lake, And then I got to a clearing here … you will see it in a moment … [shows shore and lake] … See there? That is the lake. Nice, huh?

Lake Vallecito. The water is down. They used a lot of the water for agriculture already, in the farms and ranches around the area. And off in the distance [zooms to roadbed raised up on rocks, at the far end of the lake] … This is a road. This is how you access the hiking trail. [pans right, to bridge] … See there? See that bridge?

The road goes along the high embankment there, and there are no guardrails in this part of the woods, so you have to be very careful, what you are doing. [zooms back to the shore view] … Well, let us see what awaits. [shows tree stumps on shore] … Gosh, I wonder what happened here? Out along the shoreline, and all along the path here, there are all these tree stumps.

It looks like something happened, and they … for some reason … maybe it was very high water sometime … I know there has been a drought here for five years, so it was not recent. But somebody came along, and cut down all those trees. There is a story there, huh? Would this be about the 2002 Missionary Ridge fire?

[pans left, to new, metal picnic bench, painted green] … And look, right over here … right beside the path … there is a nice bench; is that not nice?

[pans right, back to footpath] … Now let us see what is coming up … [shows view of lake, with billowing storm clouds above it] … Well, Dear Ones, it is turning into a gale. And $5 or no $5 for an entrance fee, I cannot help noticing those clouds over there. And the wind is coming from there. So I am going to head very quickly back to the car, and see what comes up. Bye!

[shows view out front window, from inside car] … Well, I ran to the car, and I made it up the incline from the lake up to the road that goes round the lake. I was waiting for a deluge to take place. And then … what do you know … Nothing happened! [laughs] … The wind dies down. Everything is fine. There is a little seed caught up on my rearview mirror here. [shows gossamer white milkweed seed on car rearview mirror] … And that is the action. See you all later.

[shows view of lake from inside car, farther down the lake rim road] … Well, first the wind drove the storm clouds over that mountain range over there [the mountains beyond the lake] … far over that way. And then the wind changed direction, and came towards me. And it drove all those clouds all the way around to this side of the lake, where my car is parked.

But it looks now like maybe there will be no rain. But because the clouds were so threatening, and the wind was so high, all the fishermen left the lake and came on up here, and got in their cars, and took off just now.

And that is the saga for today: It is a whole lot of, well, peace and quiet. See you all later.

In love, light and joy,
I Am of the Stars
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Colorado scenery, hiking, Vallecito Lake, nature, sanctuary, protection,