Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.
“Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons.” –Ruth Ann Schabacker
We rose at seven to a misty morning in the mountains. I was a new woman! I had finally slept. Yes I did it! I managed to sleep in a room of 40 fellow smelly hikers head-to-toe, all thanks to my new technique of using my long-sleeved shirt as a mummy wrap around my eyes and ears. Oh how good it felt to finally sleep! I was ready to seize the day…
Morning mist over the Alps gave a mystical effect.
September is a special month. My youngest child Sophia reached a huge milestone. She started Kindergarten. As thousands of children across the United States headed off to their first day of school, millions of children around the world did not have this opportunity. In fact, the number of children dying every year from preventable diseases in developing countries is nearly equivalent to half the children entering kindergarten in the U.S. This devastating statistic alone should be enough to make you want to do more.
My daughter started kindergarten this fall. Will this girl have the opportunity to do the same?
September is also a special month for the millions of voiceless children around the world who fight hard each day to stay alive. September is Child Survival month. The Child Survival Call to ActionSummit was held in June at our nation’s capital with an urgent message: A plea to world leaders to act now to promote efforts to curtail child mortality. One of the outcomes of the summit was a call to non-profit organizations, businesses, celebrities and journalists to spend the month of September drawing attention to Child Survival.
The urgent need to address this unacceptable, changeable reality has lead to many amazing initiatives launched this month in honor of Child Survival. Save the Children, the leader in the field of saving children’s lives around the globe, has taken things a step further in their “Every Beat Matters” campaign by using social media and rock stars to literally sing their cause, giving a voice to the voiceless.
Every Beat Matters aims to make basic lifesaving health care available to children around the world so that millions more survive. Every year, more than 7 million newborns and children die before their 5th birthday-mostly from preventable and treatable causes, such as pneumonia, diarrhea and malaria. Every Beat Matters champions training and supporting frontline health care works as the best investment to sustainably improve children’s health in the world’s poorest and more remote communities”.
We all can relate to the power of a song. Music has the power to bring you back to your youth and relive an experience that meant the world to you. It also has the power to inspire you, motivate you and change your outlook on life. Save the Children has brilliantly championed the power of a song to help save lives around the globe.
Every Beat Matters is not your every day social good campaign. It is extraordinary. In a strategic partnership with the popular American band OneRepublic, Save the Children has done something completely off the charts. They recorded the heartbeats of children that they serve in far off, remote places in the world, and carried their heartbeats back to be placed inside a new hit singled called “Feel Again”. When you listen to the song for the first time, it feels as if the children are somehow present.
On Every Beat Matters’ website, you can listen to the children’s heartbeats that made the song. It is extremely touching.
When you listen to “Feel Again” the music lifts you up and makes you want to dance. As one of the members of the band says in an interview about the making of the song, “Having an opportunity to be a voice for these children and be basically yelling to people that this is unacceptable” is a truly powerful feeling. OneRepublic hopes “Feel Again” becomes an internet sensation and travels far through social media to educate and motivate people to act.
Download the song. Share the video of Feel Again on your social media sites. Like the page. It is amazing how easy and simple it is to give back and help save the world’s children, our hope and our future for a better day.
Following is the YouTube link to three amazing videos that are bound to inspire you to act:
A Heartbeat’s Journey – Every Beat Matters (perhaps the most powerful one of all).
The Making of OneRepublic’s song Feel Again.
An exclusive interview with OneRepublic on what making this song means to them.
People can visit Every Beat Matters to download “Feel Again” and learn more about the campaign. A portion of the proceeds from each download will benefit Save the Children and help increase child survival.
Its been five months and I still can’t stop obsessing over Guatemala. Lovely, picturesque Antigua obviously captivated my soul and has held it hostage. I can’t seem to break free from reminiscing about the past. You see, Guatemala is a land of a million colors and with color comes texture.
Texture can be found in nearly everything – from the cobblestone streets, to the peeling paint off of Antigua’s colorful buildings. Texture can even be found in the most unusual places too. In the lines and breaks along the tiled rooftops. Along the half-destroyed ruins of the churches and fountains. It is almost as if the earthquakes were intended to make Antigua truly a spectacular, textured place.
Follow me through the cobblestone streets of Antigua and see for yourself if you agree. I hope to see the lovely texture of Guatemala again soon.
Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.
All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you. – Walk Disney
L’Arpont refuge. About a ten-hour hike from our starting point in Pralognon-la-Vanoise.
After a long day of hiking we finally arrived at our destination for the night: l’Arpont refuge. From afar, it looked like an old rustic stone dwelling left over from the old days. Yet inside it was actually quite nice, with bright open windows overlooking the mountains, wood floors and ceilings and a beautiful bakery. Perhaps I’d get a better night’s sleep.
Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series,click here.
The real beauty of realizing your true nature is in the freshness, peace and deep bodily relaxation which touches to the core of your being, flows into your everyday life and bursts forth naturally into blossoming from within itself. Without you ‘doing’ a thing about any of it.
This is a beautiful and simple change of lifestyle. A lifestyle of letting go and living openhandedly curled up in the sunlit warmth on the lap of the Divine (your heart). – Julie Sarah Powell
After another breathtaking picnic lunch in the heart of Vanoise National Park, we continued on to our accommodations for the night: l’Arpont refuge. The terrain had become much more barren, rocky and remote. By this point in our trek, we were at least seven or eight hours walk away from where we started back in the village of Pralognon la Vanoise. The further away from civilization we got, the more my spirits soared.
September 11, 2001. A day we will always remember. A day that we will never forget. A day that changed our world as we know it. A day that made our lives never the same.
Copy of “First Pass, Defenders Over Washington” by Rick Herter. The painting depicts Capt. Dean Eckmann in his F-16, as he was the first to arrive at the Pentagon. A copy of this print is hanging in my sister’s Virginia home in honor of her husband who was one of the three pilots.
Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.
“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” - John Burroughs
Morning clouds over the Col de la Vanoise.
After a rough night’s sleep, I gathered my wits and set off with our group a little past nine o’clock to the rising sun. The fresh air seemed to help immensely and draw me in. Soon, my three-hour night’s sleep was all but a distant dream and I was in my element. Embracing life and breathing it all in with each and every step.
I am thrilled to be taking my life and blog one step further in my quest to write and advocate about Social Good, by attending the upcoming 2012 Summit for Social Good being held in NYC this September! I have heard a number of amazing things about this conference and can hardly wait to hear all the phenomenal speakers that will be talking about innovative ways to use social media to change the world.
Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.
Sunset over Col de Vanoise.
If you have never been on a mountain hiking trip before, you probably haven’t been properly introduced to “les refuges” or mountain huts. Over the years of my travels, I have stayed at many, some nice and others not so nice. Mountain huts are generally basic shelters in which hikers can sleep and eat for the night at a relatively low cost. Normally mountain huts are quite rustic either with or without electricity, running water and adequate “loo’s”.
The nicest one I’ve ever stayed at was in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park. This refugio (as it is called in Spanish) had heated indoor showers, “Western” toilets, decent food and separated bunks. Some of the worst I’ve stayed at were in Nepal and Peru where a real live toilet was around the bend, under a bush and electricity was a distant dream.
Author’s note: This is a continuation on my series of trekking La Vanoise National Park in the high Alps of France. To see all posts in this series, click here.
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods; There is rapture on the lonely shore; There is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.” -Lord Byron
Our first site inside Vanoise National Park, France.
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
I read this quote and couldn’t think of a more fitting way to begin my journey inside the heart and soul of Vanoise National Park. If you haven’t guessed by now, my preferred method of seeing and exploring a new place is on foot. Many of my recent travels abroad have involved hiking. I experienced the highs and lows of rural village life in the Himalayas of Nepal on foot. I explored the wild wind and crazy weather of the southern tip of Patagonia on foot. I followed the ancient Incan trail of knee-busting stone steps on foot. And, I explored glaciers, mountains and volcanoes of Peru, Guatemala, Iceland and New Zealand all on foot.
If I’m not moving, I’m not really there. I like to feel where I am. I like to see with my eyes wide open, the amazing beauty of this incredibly diverse and sensational earth and its people. I like to smell the flowers and feel the rough earth below my weary feet. There is no better way to travel the world than on foot.
Big brother Max next to his sister Sophia, a new kindergartener today.
Today was an emotional day. One that every American mother envisions in her head on the day her child is born: My daughter’s first day of kindergarten.
Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins
We rose after a glorious, wine and french-food induced sleep to the brilliant sunshine blanketing Pralognan-la-Vanoise’s lush alpine valley. After a long, tiring journey, it felt like heaven to finally sleep. Our “rucksacks” (as the Brits call them) were packed and ready to go. My body and soul were ready, eager and anxious to begin. I could hardly wait to begin the journey.
