[click "Play" to hear Ted Hoff's training tips for your 6-8 month old puppy] Ted Hoff of Cottonwood Ranch & Kennel in Crawford, Colorado, appears every Saturday on Telluride Inside...
July 2 to 9, 2009
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter Evening: Saturn
Once again, this week’s “eclipse window” opens to some rather stunning world news as the Sun and Moon move into the exact opposition aspect of a lunar eclipse on July 7th. Taking place at 3:21 a.m. MDT @ 15º 24’ Cancer/Capricorn, this particular eclipse illuminates themes of home and family, mother and father, parent and child. Also highlighted are the dichotomies and polarities of traditional parental roles and relationships, themes of nurturing and caretaking, family of origin issues and issues related to professional status, achievement and/or failure.
The most outstanding collectively experienced media event – and one that perfectly constellates the Cancer/Capricorn archetype – is the death of pop-icon Michael Jackson, his multi-dimensional life story and the multi-faceted jeweled legacy he leaves behind. His unique and eccentric lifestyle, whether a direct or indirect result of his aborted childhood and unusual family conditioning, serves as a rich tapestry for all to examine and reflect upon. The love, nurturing and emotional security characteristically found in childhood at home (Cancer) appears to have been sacrificed for the financial gain, professional achievement and economic success of world-wide recognition, wealth and fame (Capricorn).
[click "Play" for Ted Hoff's comments on continuing puppy training] Young Telluride families are like families all over the world: parents anticipate terrible twos with the same dread accorded to a trip to the dentist. The terrible twos is the age when their adorable babies...
June 25 to July 2, 2009
Visible Planets: Morning: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter Evening: Saturn
Down here in the West End, the baby bluebirds have left their nests and are learning to fly. They are being fed fresh bugs by their attentive parents as they huddle together on the lower branches of a small ponderosa pine tree in our front yard. Across the mesa, on the Full Circle Ranch, baby raccoons huddle together in the top of an aspen tree and a spotted fawn curls up in the tall, green grass below. Baby colts and fillies nurse in the field next door and tiny baby rabbits run in the forest. The Canadian geese are tending to their goslings and my husband even saw a mother bear and her cub frolicking in a meadow next to Naturita Creek from our canyon rim above it. The roses are starting to bloom and the desert cacti are covered with blossoms. Everywhere I see fresh life being sustained by nature.
The Sun has moved in to the tropical zodiac sign of Cancer, and the sizzling season of summer has begun. In the Northern Hemisphere, this is the season of nurturing and growth, when plants and animals depend upon the nourishing rains and nutritious foods of the Mother Earth for their survival and development. And, it’s a time for us humans to nurture and care-take, to water and weed actual and metaphorical gardens, to take care of our children, our families and ourselves.
[click "Play" to hear Ted talk about puppy training] Telluride Inside and Out is pleased to continue its weekly column about dog training with expert Ted Hoff of Cottonwood Ranch and Kennel in Crawford, Colorado, where we and so many other Telluride families board their...
[click "Play" to hear Ted's training tips] When Telluride dog owners leave town, their first stop after a gas station is Ted Hoff's place, Cottonwood Ranch and Kennel in Crawford, Colorado. No doubt about it, Ted is a dog whisperer: after 20 years training our...
June 11 to 18, 2009
Visible Planets: Morning: Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Mercury Evening: Saturn
Collective Evolution, Planetary Healing, Inner and Outer Peace...
Planet Jupiter goes retrograde in the early morning hours of June 15th, joining asteroid Chiron and Neptune in their apparent backward motion through the late degrees of revolutionary Aquarius. This ongoing planetary convergence constellates an evolutionary shift of individual and collective consciousness, opening doors of heightened awareness and changing perception. For all of us, this is a time to see the forest for the trees, look at the bigger picture and open our hearts to the multi-faceted possibilities of our ever-expanding Universe. Forgiveness, compassion and spiritual generosity are tools for crafting a new global reality, based on the principles of equanimity, equality and acceptance. We are all together on this planet as one family, one evolving force. We are interconnected, inter-related natural creations, affecting each other via our thoughts, words and deeds. We must detach from petty thinking, racial bias and economic or cultural exclusion, and instead recognize the common denominators of our existence, share common visions and take a leap of faith that we can heal each other and ourselves with acceptance and loving-kindness.
May 28 to June 4, 2009
As the Moon waxes toward full – growing larger each evening – tap in to your inner goddess, feel Mother Nature’s rhythm and intuit your path. Connecting with natural cycles and “going with the flow” is not just an airy-fairy, New Age idea or adage - it’s a genuine, time-honored process of self-discipline and awareness practiced by sages, gurus and avatars for millennia.
The Gemini lunar and solar cycles encourage curiosity, communication and thought. It is the celestial zodiac’s first air sign and therefore deals with primal thinking and skills of cognition – using the mind to perceive, identify, reason, deduce, categorize and prioritize. This sounds simple and basic, and it is. But, in today’s world, we have a tendency to be over-amped when it comes to mental and sensory stimuli and activity, therefore reducing the quality of transmission and turning mega-bytes of data into static. Our brains can feel like over-saturated sponges with no more room for water.
May 21 to 28, 2009
Visible Planets: Morning: Jupiter, Mars and Venus Evening: Saturn
The Gemini New Moon and a Rare 3-Way Planetary Rendezvous in Evolutionary Aquarius
The Mother Earth and all life upon it experience an unusual and verifiable “new age” planetary event this week. As the Sun and Moon conjoin at 03º 27’ Gemini on May 24th in the aspect of a New Moon, a rare three-way rendezvous between Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune is taking place in the cosmos at 26º Aquarius.
Jupiter represents expansion, opportunity, exploration, discovery, foreign affairs and all types of growth. Neptune is the planet of mystical, spiritual and out-of-body experience. Chiron is an asteroid/planetoid – discovered in 1977 – that rules alternative medicine, holistic healing, wounds of all kinds and anything with the root-word “chiro.”
May 14 to 21, 2009
Visible Planets: Morning: Venus, Mars and Jupiter Evening: Saturn
Edward Abbey, Sky Islands and Magnificent Western Sunsets
The Sun is now setting directly behind the Upper La Sal Mountains to our west in Utah – the “sky island” so revered and ultimately made famous by the great American naturalist, Edward Abbey, when he was just starting out as a park ranger for the USFS in Arches National Monument in Moab.
The perfectly shaped, relatively small mountains are so familiar to me now that I rarely sit in awe of their grandeur. But when we first started looking for property on Wrights Mesa in the early ‘90’s, I was adamant about finding a piece from which we could see them. As the Universe would have it, we ended up buying acreage with amazing 360º views – we can see all the way to the Cimarrons above Ridgway in the east and to the Blues and Henrys above Cataract Canyon to the west.
