Adventure and Exploration

"Are you ready for adventure?"
     -"Yes."
"Are you ready for exploration?"
     -"YES!"

And so we began our Saturday high on the rim of a long and winding canyon in Cedar Mesa:

Scrapping our plan of squeezing in a few more 14ers because of the forecast of snow and rain and cold temps in the mountains, we packed up the car with backpacking and car camping gear, and started driving Thursday after work with a thermos of Black Magic coffee, southwest of rainy old Telluride, trying to come up with a plan that did not involve flash floods, slick as snot red dirt roads to trailheads and muddy slogs through canyon bottoms.

By the time we had finished our coffee late Friday morning and the sun had burst forth, we were leaving the car at our overnight spot and heading out to explore the edge of that beauty above.  We hiked all day in the growing warmth, finally finding an unbelievable campsite at the end of a promenade with a huge rock to hunker under and make hot chocolate when the lightning rolled through, enough potholes to collect rainwater from, and a soft bed of juniper fronds to sleep on.  There's our little tent under the tree!

And our Saturday was chock full of adventure and exploration, as we strolled and hopped from one slick rock park to the next, stopping for snacks and gapings and water in the land of lakes 800 feet above the muddy canyon.  

And with all that beauty and sun and warmth and freedom and discovery my favorite moment came when we stopped by a trickling stream that sprang forth during a brief cloudburst and was spilling over the rim of the canyon into a massive amphitheater yawning down below us.

We were rinsing our faces and finishing the last of our "meager rations" we ended up calling them (I was already having noodle fantasies about our imminent dinner), when we started talking about our time with the kids when they are at our house.

When I first started dating Johnny and the kids had just turned 5 and 7, I was coming out of a period of time, almost a decade, where I kind of did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.  You all know the dealio, me living in Hawaii, lolling around doing tons of yoga and island-hopping willy-nilly, right?  It took me about 6 months to really come to grips with the fact that when the kids are with us, I can't do whatever I want or say whatever I want, how I want, or any of that.  It was over.  I was choosing for it to end, but end it did.  

Over the past 4 1/2 years that I have been here in this new Insta-Family, we have made a conscious decision to pretty much stick together as a family when the kids are with us (Thursday-Tuesday every other week).  We have kept them close with not many sleepovers, we have done camping trips, and breakfasts and dinner together, and skiing together (amid protests by Anthony).  We knew that in order for us to succeed as a family unit we had to lay down a cohesive foundation from the get-go, and stick with it for a while.

There were times when I would really really want to go off and do my own thing on Kids Weekends, but it just didn't feel right.  There were times when Johnny wanted to do the same, to a lesser degree, but again it just didn't feel right.

As we lounged by that stream in the desert we realized that it finally felt right.  The kids are 9 and 11 now, and they have become trustworthy and reliable and independent.  Our time together is naturally shifting towards interdependence, each of us having our own agenda, and each of us accomplishing it with out compromising the foundation we built over the past several years.

It was thrilling for me to listen to us talk and know where we had arrived.  Those days of aimless freedom were great in some ways but the truth of the matter is, I was bored and unfulfilled.  Now that I have had a period of time where I have felt limited, I can now branch back out because my foundation is so much more steadfast than it ever was when I was on Maui.  I was just drifting when I was there.  Here, I have both stability and freedom.  Turns out they are a nice complement to each other.

That night I dreamed there was an owl on top of a white shed near us, hooting so loud and just staring at us with its unblinking eyes.  As soon as I woke up I told Johnny about it.  Turns out there was an owl on the big white rock beside our tent, hooting for quite some time during the night, calling across the canyon to its mate.  All I could think of was how big that rock is and immense the space in the canyon is right in front of it.