Frozen Kaaterskill Falls

I hope you guys are snuggled up under a blanket while you’re reading this, because these photos might make you feel a bit chilly. Kaaterskill Falls is a popular summertime hiking and swimming spot in the Catskills, a relatively short drive across the Hudson River from us. Rarely do we seek waterfalls in the winter, which is why I’m so drawn to Andy’s images of the falls here, completely frozen over. 

I look at these to remind myself that the winter landscape is not always bleak and depressing. Aren’t they beautiful?

And from behind the falls:

Speaking of winter, I’ve got some depression and anxiety related links to share. I hope these speak to some of you as they spoke to me.

• With social anxiety, we can become so caught up in our perceived fears and imagined disasters that we don’t have time to focus on anything else. An excerpt from this great article: Social Anxiety: We Worry About Faults, Ignore Our Strengths.
• Artist Perfectly Illustrates How the World Looks with Social Anxiety. I found this comic and immediately identified with it so much that I wish I could hand it to every person I encounter so they understand why I may be acting weird/standoffish/overly giggly.
• 9 Secrets I’ve Uncovered About Depression. Among them: depression is a liar, depression and sadness aren’t (always) the same thing, and depression responds to routine and structure.
• Natural Happiness: The Truth About Exercise and Depression. I vow to not be one of those ‘resolutionists’ who joins a gym in January and falls off the wagon a month or so later. I’m sticking with a fitness routine this time. Take that, depression.
• And you can always count on TED.com for useful & inspiring words: How Should We Talk About Mental Health?

It’s not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.    –Stephen Fry

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.   –Rainer Maria Rilke