As seen from the car. We didn’t get to hike today, but we saw some gorgeous vistas. It was chilly (32 degrees) and windy with crystalline light. Beautiful.
Golden Gate Canyon: Black Bear Horseshoe Loop
As we were driving down highway 93 on our way to Golden Gate Canyon for a day of hiking. It was around 9:30AM MT, when the radio announcer broke in with the best news of the year: Joe Biden is our President-Elect! There was honking on the highway and yelling out of car windows. What a glorious beginning to a beautiful day!! This hike was the most beautiful one so far. (Or perhaps it was colored by our overwhelming joy, it’s kinda hard to say, actually.) Here are some photos, so you can see for yourself:
Black Bear trail was rugged and a lot of verticality, clambering over and up rocks. The sky and the clouds were exquisite, the view of the Rockies in the distance was breathtaking. Horseshoe Loop was mainly downhill or flattish, with gorgeous aspen and birch trunks, as well as fields of golden grasses. Pearl was totally in her element.
Nightbird Gulch & Mt. Galbraith Loop
We drove through a suburban neighborhood in Golden and parked. The trail head was RIGHT THERE. This was different terrain than we’ve had thus far on other hikes. Rated moderate, it really was. Gained about 1250 feet, it was sunny and in the mid-50s, but the shady side of the mountain was WINDY. Seriously—could’ve knocked us over if we weren’t so tenacious. ;) There was still some snow and slippery icy parts in the shade. Lots of views of Golden and Denver in the distance, which looked like the Emerald City except it wasn’t green. Pearl was really in her element, as you can see.
Suburban Golden, trail head, Table Mountain (North & South)
Tiny succulents and lots of cacti!
That’s Denver way in the distance.
On Rte. 93 between Boulder and Golden, there are a bunch of dinosaurs!!
More art around Boulder!! Can you even believe it?!?
A few new pieces I’ve seen…
And the piece de resistance…..Sojourner Truth. Love.
Bear Mountain
Not wanting to be outdone by the sighting of a Big Horned Sheep, Pearl asserted herself when we hiked an expert trail from Slab Rock to the saddle of Bear Mountain. It has a long, rambling start and then was basically a staircase for about 1.5 miles. Icy rock was slippery and we determined that Milo is part mountain goat. He’s really been an amazing hiker—so bouncy!
Clear Creek Canyon
After our chilly hike up Eldorado Canyon we got some hot chocolate and drove through Clear Creek Canyon. Woody’s gone climbing there a few times and wanted to show me the beauty of this place outside Golden. Just after we’d turned on to Route 6, we saw a BIG HORNED SHEEP on the side of the road!! No kidding! It was just eating vegetation, totally nonplussed by the passing traffic.
Crazy! Clear Creek Canyon is beautiful too.
Eldorado Canyon
The fires are burning and almost all of the state and national parks within an easy driving distance of Boulder were closed this week. There was a lot of smoke and a cold front moved in as well, with snow in the forecast for late in the weekend. So once again, we didn’t go to Rocky Mountain National Park. Boo hoo. Instead we decided to traipse around Eldorado Canyon, which is just outside Boulder. When we started the hike it was in the 30s, definitely in the 20s at the top, and it felt like a warm breeze blowing when we descended. When we got in the car the temperature was 31, so it must’ve been colder than we thought up at the top!
At the top is a spectacular view of the continental divide (ha!):
Some art around Boulder
Wow, the murals here are amazing. What a treat to round a corner and see a beautiful and/or thought provoking piece. It’s made dog walking even more enjoyable.
One of my favorite pieces is right down the street from our house, and is gorgeous:
Where there's smoke...
The Cameron Peak fire, outside of Ft. Collins, CO finally blew in to Boulder this weekend. Friday around 5:15 pm Milo and I went for a walk with my dear friend Sophia. We walked along Boulder Creek. The sky was yellow and the sun was a glowing red ball. None of my photos show it very well, but this was the scene looking out towards the Flatirons with UC Boulder in the foreground:
It looked kinda like a volcano!
This is the view across the street from where we’re staying.
Took this while driving down the road. Today (Sunday) we' had planned to go to Rocky Mountain National Park and hike. But it seems Estes Park and the RMNP are both in the fire zone, and it seemed too dangerous to go be that close. So instead, we’re walking around Boulder. Here’s a few more sites around town:
Art is everywhere!!
And a funny pandemic sign just for giggles.
Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak
On Sunday we drove about an hour and a half south of Boulder, to the Garden of the Gods. Check it out:
Kissing Camels
They really were amazing. There were a lot of people at this park, many without masks. And so it was, everywhere this weekend. I guess people assume since they’re outdoors, they don’t need to wear masks.
About half an hour from Garden of the Gods was Pikes Peak. This photo is on the drive to the top. At the entrance the elevation is 7800’. It’s about a 4 mile drive up to the top. And it is a scary drive!
Pearl was the highest chick! Although we did see two large bluebirds here, at about 11,000’.
This is at the top, obviously above tree line. Very barren, boulder-y, and bleak. Oh, and windy! 85 mph winds! 41 degrees! (It was 74 degrees at the bottom.)
Touristy shot to prove our vigor. We all felt woozy and not very smart—altitude is nothing to mess with!
The aspens (close to the bottom) were so beautiful. They looked like trees full of golden coins shimmering in the breeze. The sound was lovely too.
Hiking!!
Saturday we went for a hike near town, and this is what we saw:
That’s the town of Boulder down at the bottom of the mountain. It was kinda hazy due to smoke from fires somewhere (not sure where).
Pearl enjoyed the view too.
Milo may have been a mountain goat in his last life! He jumped and leaped and walked and ran and had a thoroughly grand time.
The descent was autumnal in spirit. Beautiful colors mixed with all the pines.
So far, so convenient
Our home away from home is within walking distance of just about any kind of store we could possibly want, and many we wouldn’t. So far we’ve been to a grocery store, two drug stores and Target, a liquor store, a pet store, a hat store, and two climbing gyms—one twice. All within a 20 minute walk. So convenient.
Milo’s getting accustomed to walking beside traffic (there’s a lot) and is very good at sitting when we come to an intersection and have to wait to cross. Most everyone wears a mask, and everyone has one at the ready if not currently on their face. There are signs at the cross walks that ask you to please press the Walk button with your elbow or sleeve, so as to lessen the contagion factor of many people pressing the buttons.
And this afternoon Milo and I walked through Naropa’s campus and along Boulder Creek and beside UC Boulder. We’ll have to venture on to that larger campus another day. Did I mention it’s 80 degrees here every afternoon this week? Hot and dry, people, hot and dry.
Pearl goes to Boulder
She’s arrived. And she is very excited to see more of the area!!
In our back yard.
In the front garden. Look at those flowers!!
In front of our house.
Even if they're fat
Interesting blog on the National Eating Disorder Information Center's (NEDIC) website today: Even If They're Fat. The author, a registered dietician, talks about how telling fat people that they need to lose weight before doing anything else is detrimental. She gives lots of reasons why (including that most people who lose weight gain it back within 3-5 years). There are so many misconceptions about weight and size. And some of these misconceptions are VERY popular. Even with the vast quantity of information available these days, most people have at least an incomplete understanding of weight/size/nutrition, if not an erroneous understanding!
The author of Even If They're Fat, Glenys Oyston, talks about using a "weight neutral approach" in one's journey to health. Honestly, that's a new phrase for my personal vocabulary. But it's not a new idea. I'm not a dietician or a scientist and I don't read all the latest research and/or academic journals. I'm just someone who cares about my health and the health of my clients, and I do my best to maintain a balanced perspective about food and weight and health. To my mind, the word 'balanced' is the crucial word in that sentence. No matter what a person's size, their mind and their self-image will effect their health and wellbeing. Their mind and self-image will also impact any medical diagnosis they might be given. And of course, how a person is treated, categorized, and talked to all impact their mind, their self-image, and self-esteem.No matter who they are, how old they are, what they look like. Even if they're thin. Even if they're fat.
Original Image: peopleofsize.com
New evidence in the nature v nurture debate
Researchers at Emory University have found that smells, and possibly other experiences, change the DNA in mice and these changes are then passed on to their offspring. You can read the actual science here and here, and there is a video that explains it here.
Contemplating the possibility that human DNA changes could behave similarly has amazing ramifications for our mental and physical health--and our history. Perhaps this has something to do with why some battles become so entrenched for generations.
It certainly impacts how I think about working with clients who have suffered trauma. Is there a genetic component that makes certain people more vulnerable to trauma complications? If so, this may explain why somatic therapies benefit trauma patients in ways that pure psychotherapy doesn’t. We know that trauma changes the brain. The fact that it may also change our actual genetic structure isn’t a huge leap.
This may also help explain how and why some other pathologies seem to be more common among people who have suffered trauma. And it may very well stretch beyond just trauma. Who knows what our great, great, greats may have experienced and passed down to us? Fascinating.
Photo credit: SchrodingersCat19
The Guest House
This is one of my favorite poems. Emotions as guests, sent as guides to show us some thing or some way. Emotions that lead us down a path, enabling an encounter with an aspect of our selves that may be difficult to contact another way. Emotions offer the opportunity to recognize a pattern or perhaps merely to experience one. Each emotion valuable. This can be so hard to recognize when we're caught up in the emotions themselves. And that is the beauty of this poem: it teaches and inspires us to accept the good and the bad, the positive and the negative; to allow the possibility that everything is as it should be. And it reminds us each time we read it, because it is so easy to forget. Enjoy~~
The Guest House
by Jellaludin Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Thinking and Spores
I’ve been thinking about thinking and thought. Remembering back to a Major Moment of Insight I had while meditating, when, possibly for the first time, I truly saw a thought take shape, hold its own, and pass away. It was momentous because it was so very clear. Meditation teachers had told me this happens, and there it was, happening right before my own mind’s eye! Interestingly, this put some space between me and my thoughts. I really saw that the thoughts were separate from me, that in some way thoughts happened to me. Or at me. Or around me. Or with me. But they weren’t me. Interesting.
Some time later a meditation teacher invited me to see if I could catch the very beginning of the thought, to see where it came from. I watched with an eagle eye. I watched and paid attention and watched. And yet I could never quite see it when it happened. One moment nothing there, no thought. The next moment, the very beginning of the thought. It had already appeared, and I’d missed the generation. Somehow I’d missed the crux of nothing becoming something. Crazy maddening! The same teacher invited me to watch where the thought went. Same thing happened. One moment it’d be there, with me watching and focusing like white on rice, and the next it was gone. Where did it go? No idea. Just gone. How did I miss it?!?
In some weird way, it seems like thoughts are like mushrooms.
It’s rained a lot lately. This morning I walked into the back yard and there were mushrooms everywhere! Just like that. The spores must’ve been present yet invisible. And because of rain and light and temperature and whatever else, the mushrooms pop up. In the same way, when conditions are just so, the thought arises. And then it goes. So the conditions that give rise to thought are kind of like spores—easy not to see, but there nonetheless.
Part of what happens in meditation is that people begin to see the thought process, the coming and going, the patterns, the constant movement of the mind. They get to know how their minds work, how their mind reacts and processes its conditions. In therapy people get to really look at and examine their mind’s conditions. It’s possible to understand what the conditions are, why they are present, how they are connected to other ideas, stories, and conditions. It’s even possible to root out problematic or ineffective thoughts so that they aren’t fertile any more—to get to a point where it’s possible to have thoughts, to not believe them, to not be ruled by them, and to live with them in some sort of agreeable way.
This speaks to one way I like to use meditation as a therapeutic practice: to help people figure out the roots of their thinking, to explore it and understand it, so that they can then make effective choices about which thoughts to entertain and which to disregard. We really don’t have to believe all our thoughts. They’re just the mushrooms of our minds.
Photo credit: Elizabeth Paley mightoutashould.blogspot.com