Lands of Enchantment

If you're a person who thinks ticket prices make it too costly to travel, try buying this $60 tent, packing up your car, and driving over to the next state. You just might find yourself in another world.

Sometimes you can camp for $10. Sometimes you can camp for free. Sometimes it will be too windy to camp and you'll get to sleep in your car, which could have been free, if you hadn't already reserved a campsite.

However you choose to sleep in the great outdoors, get out there! There's a lot to see. 

The Good & the Green

Just when I think I have swum in all of the majestic swimming holes around here, I find myself stumbling upon another majestic swimming hole. 

People are coming to Austin for the brunch and the jobs, and they are staying for the good and the green things that are very nearby. McKinney Falls State Park is one of those good, green things, which also happens to not be very crowded on an overcast spring day. You had better get here before summer when all the water might go away, but for now I'm giving it all the thumbs up.

Hidden Gems

In my yoga classes this week, I offered up the intention of looking at various aspects of our lives through the lens of a “Beginner’s Mind”.  This Zen Buddhist concept means shifting our attitude about familiar things: poses, hobbies, work, studies, relationships, etc. to view them from a new angle, by imagining that we are taking part in them for the very first time. The practice opens up space for different possibilities and perspectives as our habits and preconceptions are broken down. 

This got me thinking about applying a beginner’s mind to the places in which we live. When I first moved to Austin, my newcomer’s senses wanted to see and do everything. And taste everything, too, since I gained about 10 pounds upon moving here. I was a constant consumer of novelty. No adventure was too time-intensive, no distance too far. Heck, I’d sometimes even drive to San Antonio if the day felt right.

Now, as much as I love Austin, my endless explorations have settled into a routine list of favorite activities, restaurants, bars, and spots to spend my time. I guard my non-working hours closely, and if I’m going to drive south of the river or get on Mopac at all ever, there better be a darn good reason. I see the hot new places and excited out-of-towners moving in every day, but I feel happier (and lazier) to exist inside my usual bubble. My 2016 To-Try list doesn’t have nearly as many items crossed off as I was planning by this time in the year.

So I was excited last week when my friend Karina invited me to visit the River Place Nature Trail, a hike that was on my list, but off the beaten-path of nearby Austin trails. The 5-6 mile hike* overlooking the West Austin hills and eventually running alongside a river, helped me feel the same zest I felt when I first moved here, like there was something magical hiding under every rock I turned. 

While we accept more comfort in our cities, we give up some of the novelty and the zest for exploring. We settle into routines and responsibilities, and back out of more events if they’re further from our zone of normalcy. Our bodies and minds know this and start to become numb. We get tired more easily and aren’t as ignited by the idea of seeing something new or making a connection with a stranger. When we become experts on a subject, another person, or a city, the only way to counteract closed-mindedness or stagnation is to observe what we know from another side.

For the rest of this year, and hopefully thereafter, I’m trying to embrace the shiny, new or yet unseen parts of this city where I’ve lived for almost 4 years. I promise to say “yes” more times to something that sounds fun, before looking at Google Maps’ distance from my current location.  And to my fellow Austin dwellers, I promise that whatever I find, I’ll be sure to share with you.

*The trail is out and back, so you can make it as short or as long as you’d like.

How-to: Labor Day, Austin style

1. Find a lake house

Long, end of summer weekends beg for water. Rent a lake house, make a lake-residing friend, start a relationship with someone who lives on a lake, take over an abandoned dock, etc. Do whatever it takes! It's an investment in your future and you (probably) won't regret it. 

2. Let there be music

Concrete Robot @ Hole in the Wall

Few things could be called "Austin style" without live music. I followed in the footsteps of Spoon/St. Vincent/Doug Sahm/Natalie Portman/a bunch of other famous people when I was treated to my first show at Hole in the Wall on Saturday night. Then, on Sunday after the lake, our smelly, lakey selves wound up at a house show to hear our friend, Jimmy Dee's, angelic vocals. It was all super cool and musical and Austin-y. Plus, there were Oreos. Yay!

3. End it with a free day of yoga

I am only half sure that it falls on the same day each year, but this Labor Day happened to coincide with Austin's Free Day of Yoga which brings us tons of different style yoga and meditation classes all over the city. I was happy to help out with my friend David's yoga and meditation in the morning and to enjoy another yoga class in the afternoon. What better way to wrap up your non-laboring weekend than with your choice of stretching, kirtan chants, gong meditations, and/or reiki energy circles?

Bittersweet September

Like a great many good things in this cruel and mysterious world, my summer of complete and total freedom must now come to an end. The past week back at home has shown me that, as eye-opening and horizon-expanding as jumping around can be, life can sometimes be just as rewarding when you stay in one place, especially if that place happens to be Austin, Texas.

Bobal @ Empire Control Room

It's also taught me that real barbecue is worth waiting for and that unemployment is not without its drawbacks, since it is possible to max out your ClassPass 3 class allowance at 5 different studios. Time to get back to the working world.

I am taking a long, glorious moment of disbelief tonight to let my heart expand with gratitude for these past two or three irreplaceable months. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Grassy shoes at Deep Eddy Pool

Utah, Part III

Summertime camping at popular national parks means the excitement waking up well before you want to, sometimes driving to multiple campgrounds, circling loops of tents, and asking around to find out who is leaving and when. Arriving at the right place at the right time means you'll be able to secure your spot for the night. Luckily most campers are friendly and they'll let you stake your claim to their site while they pack up, or they are park rangers and will let you know which sites have already opened or are about to. We felt very fortunate to be able to camp where we wanted every night without having to wait in huge lines or battle anyone for a section.

We followed B's family's recommendation to enter Zion from the East, which turned out to be excellent advice since you drive from not-Zion into a tunnel, and when you pop out, you're in Zion. It looks a lot like this:

We seemed to be having even more "right place, right time" success because we soon saw a man pulled over taking pictures of bighorn sheep. B had recovered from my moose/branch and bear/deer confusion in Yellowstone, so he agreed to pull over too. I'd finally found the animal that I'd waited the whole trip to see:

We saw another one about 2 minutes later, but it was so still and so close to the road that I thought it was a statue and didn't take any pictures. Note that if you see a very life-like animal in a national park, it's probably not a statue!

Zion was also the first place that I've ever been afraid of heights. Like paralyzed with fear, turn around, I'm not going levels of afraid. We had decided on a hike to Angel's Landing since we found it in a book of the most beautiful hikes in the world. On the way, there were signs reminding us to bring a lot of water and telling people who are afraid of heights that they should reconsider. It was 102 degrees and we are not afraid of heights, so we were more worried about death from dehydration than any height-related nervousness.

No problem. The majority of the hike was like this:

And B was wearing his "Vacation Dad" outfit so I felt very secure.

We got to what we thought was the last segment and it seemed a little scary, mostly because there were a lot of people on the trail headed in opposite directions, but we didn't think at all of turning around or not going to the top. We even took this photo saying, "Ha! Too bad for all those people who are afraid of heights. They don't know what they're missing."

Thennn we got over that hump and saw the real Angel's Landing summit, which features a 2-foot wide ridge trail with 1,000+ foot drop offs on both sides and looks like this:

So I made us turn around and go back down! (Sorry B!) I don't regret it now since we later read that Angel's Landing is one of the deadliest hikes in the world and fit, reasonable people die there just from stumbling or missing a step. Maybe I'm getting old, but when we hiked another of the deadliest hikes (Huayna Picchu), it did not give me the same feelings of terror that this one did. I only took this one photo of the view in my frenzied fearful state:

We descended, avoiding the feisty rock squirrels, to do some more tourism, and I felt ok about it. But if you are a normal, athletic, confident person who wants to do it, Angel's Landing does look pretty cool and you should do it! Otherwise, Zion is a breathtaking place where you can find many other ways to entertain yourself.