Episode #46 Oregon’s NATURAL Wonders, BIG Thunderstorm & Get Happy Techniques
While visiting northeast Oregon with our traveling wooden tiny house on wheels, we are finding wonder as we adventure in the great outdoors and complete more tiny house DIY projects. In this video episode adventure story, we are sharing with you some of the crazy thunderstorm weather we experienced along with more natural wonders to inspire awe. As wonder seekers, teachers, and artists, we also share inspiring ideas for how you can practice finding wonder in your daily life and give you techniques for helping cultivate greater meaningfulness and joy in your life. Later in the episode, we are back on the road again with our custom wooden fifth wheel on a couple record shattering hot weather days when we witness a really serious near disaster with a trucker on a mountain pass. By the end of this trip, we decided to start a new tradition.
Click to WATCH the video!
We came to northeast Oregon to find and appreciate wonders and take our traveling tiny house on wheels on a small, yet significant trip in our northwest region in preparation for a much larger and longer journey that is to come when we journey, very soon, down through the American southwest.
While in northeast Oregon we have found wonderment swimming in the Grande Ronde River and splashing in the cold mountain water of Catherine Creek, venturing to the top of Mt. Howard in the Wallowas and staring deep into the heart of the Eagle Cap Wilderness area, and appreciating trees and water at Wallowa Lake State Park. We have spent precious time with family and friends, worked on more tiny house diy projects, and designed and began early stages of launching our Rainbow Orca Designs jewelry line.
We have also been witnessing wonder inspiring weather phenomena in the form of thunderstorms and even a dust devil… appreciated stunning sunrises and sunsets, marveled at rainbows, and made up imaginative stories based on cloud shapes as they slowly flew by overhead. Celestial wonders of our moon and hundreds of twinkling stars in a dark sky inspire us to go outside at night and look up.
While going on nearly daily walks, we have also pondered and enjoyed answering the questions of what is it about nature that calls us outside? Why do we feel happier when we spend time in nature? What is it about going for daily walks that feels so rejuvenating?
Our answers...
We really enjoy going for walks with our two dogs. We love hearing the sounds of nature when we are on a walk. The sounds of crickets and birds, combining with the breeze flowing through the trees and rustling the leaves bring us delight and inspire us to feel awe. The sunlight on the hillside is so pretty and warm. Observing the flickering sunbeams shining down through the trees is so pretty. Going for a walk connects us with our world. It feels good to exercise and move our bodies. The fresh outdoor smells and feels good. It’s fun noticing changes that occur in plants over a multi-week period of time. It feels freeing to be outside in nature. Every-time we go outside we see something new. It feels like going outside and spending time in nature is really an experience of remembering, who we are, and that we are ALL deeply connected to this natural world.
You never know what you’ll see when you go outside and look up and look around...
Some inspiring practices for finding daily happiness in my life that may be helpful for you too...
It feels like opting to go outside, to be around nature, even if it’s only for a short while, makes it easier for me to find my joy, my internal peace, my capacity to feel hope and excitement for life. It’s like everything can be out of whack and feel like chaos in the mind, and then I go outside into nature and find something to appreciate, something to inspire a feeling of wonder, and I literally feel like everything in my brain and heart become more coherent and more aligned. I feel like suddenly whatever it was I was stressing out over, worrying about, or challenging by is not as big of a deal anymore, and that I have found a way of being that will help me navigate through my situation and actually thrive.
If you can’t find something to appreciate inside your home, in your workplace or wherever you are, go outside… it really does seem like there is always something to inspire you to feel wonder when you go outside into at least a bit of nature.
If you make the conscious decision to find at least five things to appreciate in the outdoors today, it’s amazing how you will feel a little happier. And if you do that again tomorrow and then again the next day and the next day after that, you really will begin to feel more gratitude, more joy, more wonder in your life… and you know what happens when you feel more and more gratitude, joy, and wonder in your every day life…? New possibilities and opportunities to feel more gratitude, joy, and abundance begin to show up in your life. The daily practice of finding wonders to appreciate really can change your life.
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Experiencing in our tiny house our 1st BIG thunderstorm with HAIL...
We have both experienced thunderstorms throughout our lives, and frequently hailstorms accompany the whole thunderstorm experience. We have never experienced a hailstorm with one inch hail before!!
After a stormy evening with a gorgeous sunset we went to bed. We were awoken by crashing thunder and bright lightening flashes. Amidst the claps of thunder, suddenly the hailstorm began. The sound of hail hitting our tiny house's metal roof was so loud. The volume of the hailstorm was deafeningly loud. We weren't scared for our personal safety, however we were really concerned about potential property damage to our tiny house and truck.
There is a feeling of powerlessness... While the hail pounded us, there was nothing we could do, to stop it or protect our truck. All we could do was watch...
We found wonderment in the power of a thunderstorm to create such an epic experience, even if it's the wonderment that is filled with more respect for a greater power than playful joy.
It was truly an unforgettable thunderstorm experience. While the mega sized hailstorm lasted about 10 minutes, the thunderstorm lasted for several hours. It was quite the night!
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BE AWARE when you're driving over mountains...
On our drive from northeast Oregon to northwest Washington, we had a unique, memorable and scary experience happen. We felt fortunate to be only an observer in something that could have been a very dangerous and life threatening event for many people.
We witnessed a large tanker truck burn through its brakes and the driver begin loosing control of the truck. Fortunately, the driver was able to maintain control of their truck long enough to make it to a runaway truck ramp (an emergency only loose gravel driveway that goes upwards again that has ability to slow down and stop a large semi-truck that cannot be stopped other-ways). In the situation we observed, no-one was injured because of the runaway truck ramps existence, the skills of the truck driver to hold on long enough to steer their truck into the runaway ramp, and other drivers that were aware of the situation and gave the trucker space.
It's ALWAYS important to be aware of what is happening on the road around you for your own safety and the safety of others.
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Starting a new tradition... 1,000 mile pies!
Upon completing our first 1,000 miles of traveling/towing our wooden tiny house on wheels, we decided to start a NEW tradition. For every 1,000 miles we travel/tow our tiny house we are going to share a delicious homemade pie.
This was our first 1,000 mile pie, made by a local baker with local ingredients and made to be sooooo beautiful and delicious!
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We are best friends, daughter/mother, adventure buddies, tiny house dwellers, and now traveling creative digital nomads. We are seeking and finding wonders around every bend and curve in our path and sharing the “wonderments” we find with you in regular video episodes. We are learning that if we consciously live our daily life with a “wonderment mindset” and “wonderment perspective” daily life is filled with a whole lot more joy, adventure, meaningful moments, and wonder! We hope you enjoy these inspiring videos about life as we share our finding wonder journey with you.
Be sure to subscribe to our channel on YouTube, give this video a thumbs up, and leave us a comment of one of your wonderments. We are building a community of people finding & sharing wonderments with each other on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and also on Patreon through the special Sea Tree Wonderist community.
Make life an adventure filled with wonderment and awe.
If you want to see our current and updated frequently tiny house travel miles & trips dashboard, then visit the "Our Tiny House" page at the top of our website or click this link.
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We are building a FINDING JOY ONLINE COMMUNITY and we look forward to sharing our joys and wonders with each other. Together, we can inspire & uplift each other through sharing gratitude, joy, inspiration, and wonder with each other.
The WONDERful MUSIC that goes into underscoring our videos
is ALL licensed through Artlist.
Musical Artists heard in THIS FILM:
~ Marco Martini, ANBR, Ian Post, Angel Salazar, Dan Pundak, Polaris Rose, Marc Robillard, Ardie Son and Anthony Lazaro
In this film, all video & photos were filmed by the two of us with the exception of some lightning video clips licensed through Unsplash & Pexels.
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and "Wonder DOGS" Uluru & Konane
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