Its all of 5:20 am and I'm way too wide awake for this hour. I've been doing a lot of 5:45 classes and teaching at 5:15 am (which means a 4 am wake up for me).......and its skewing my already early bird ways even earlier. All well and good when you are up for a purpose, but not quite so much when your dog and husband are up in bed with the fire lit, and you are unjustifiably awake. This week was a great one. The Christmas cards are mailed, the house is all together, and I arrive home to Amazon packages sitting on the porch daily. I've always been one to keep the Christmas gifts to a minimum (The kids usually get three each), and this year we have added in the "no electronics" bit. As my oldest gets closer to middle school the pressure to have phones is mounting. I'd say that about 50% of his 5th grade class has smartphones. That is insanity to me, but thats another topic. We had thought that we would jump on the phone bandwagon the summer before middle school, and as it gets closer, I find that we get farther away from actually considering a phone.
I feel like if I were given the option to not ever have a cell phone (me, personally), I would take it. I don't like being reachable all of the time. I don't like being able to instantly find out information at any moment, I don't like constantly knowing about every tragedy and scandal and I don't like pretending that I find long detailed text "conversations" in the middle of the day anything but annoying. I don't want to always be reachable by work, or even by friends. Because once the expectation starts that we are all reachable all the time, we have no actual down time.
Like my friendships have become more intentional, so has my time. I've been spending more time in nature since I moved to Colorado, and it is changing my life. I've always been an outdoorsy kind of girl. I grew up with a Mom who has a huge appreciation for anything natural and beautiful, and a father who loved sports and travel. Growing up seeing beautiful natural places impacted me greatly. My greatest dream when I was in high school was to graduate from college and move to Crested Butte, Colorado, where I would be a ski instructor and ski bum for a year, or forever, whichever was best. That didn't happen, I dropped out of college and moved to Seattle, instead. I fell in love with the PAcNW, hiking much of the North Cascades and Olympic Peninsula. I got into surfing and snowshoeing and yoga at 19/20/21, and my love for the outdoors has never died. In PA you could find great hiking, but in CO I LIVE in great hiking. I can be on trails yards from my home. For the first year that was enough, just walking for an hour a day in nature near me. This year, though, I set a goal to explore more places in the in between.....not as far as the heart of the rockies, but great hikes in the foothills, which I'm in and hiking in 30 minutes. The idea "I love to hike!" is great, but it does take some planning. If I had an hour, I didn't want to "waste" it by driving somewhere to walk, when I could have views like this just walking out my door.
Being outside is never a waste. This year I blocked off Friday afternoons as my hiking time. Most weeks I meet up with a friend/s, but sometimes I go alone (with the dog, who is a fabulous trail companion). This week I hiked the Turkey Trot Trail near Morrison, Co. It was about a 35 minute drive, I left around noon. By 1 I was up hiking in snowpack (it was 63 degrees) in my shorts and tee, dog at my side. The sun was shining, the birds singing, elk were everywhere and I felt 20 years old again. I remember being 19 and hiking through misty rainforest in the Olympic peninsula. I remember being 20 and smelling pine as we hiked the Pacific Crest Trail in July naked in the snow. And when I stood there, in the snow, in the sun, and just drank in the small of the pines, I felt almost timeless. Time didn't matter, I didn't matter, just being alive enough to get myself there and experience the sensation of being alone, being still, being quiet......it was powerful.
I'm going through a bit of an internal rebellion. I have a fantasy of buying land and moving off to the mountains. I have days where I dream of selling my home and buying a small place in the middle of nowhere. I would love to have less things, less upkeep, less less less. I look at my kids growing up and part of me just wants to scream FUCK THIS and not get into the bullshit of 3 million activities and AP classes and the rat race of college admissions and middle school and and and.......and just saying no. Just saying, we are taking a different path. I've never wanted to do what everyone else did. I was fine living by the seat of my pants. Suddenly, life is feeling constrictive.
I'm going to do a bit of biding my time. I can't make some extreme change right away. I can continue to use my cell phone less and less. I can continue to encourage my kids towards books and away from technology (this works, I can tell you).. I can continue to try to focus on what is important, and what simply is not. And if you see us living on 40 acres in the mountains, you know who to blame.
The yoga mala last night was powerful. The studio was entirely dark, lit only by Christmas lights around the floors by the mirrors. The teacher, Ruby, did it in a way I have not done before, breaking the 108 salutations into 3 36's and using a interesting step back lunge salutation series . Past, present, future. The music may have been the best part, building powerfully towards the last 1/3. I moved through most of the practice with my eyes closed and my heart full. This coming year brings a lot. Moving in tandem with other likeminded individuals as the sun set was incredibly moving. If you ever have the time to experience the practice of a yoga mala, I encourage you to take it. If I can't run off to the woods and embrace my inner hippy just quite yet, I can at least embrace the woods and the stars and the magic of this world while living in civilization.
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