Just the pictures

Recently uploaded Vedauwoo pictures. Enjoy! Double rainbow, Jyoti and Magpie as the pink and yellow rangers, me on belay at the crack on the rat brain, and the Ames Monument, which is an old railroad monument which was near the tracks till they got moved towards Laramie, and some intrepid climbers put some bolts on that thing (I hear people use it for bouldering horizontal routes). The stone is the local Sherman granite at Vedauwoo.

Home to humidity

Chilling out at an open mic (with ilyAIMY and company) in Owings Mills, MD, and in summary all I can say it is so good to be home. And I say this as a person who doesn't have a place to hang her hat and keep her dozen pair of shoes and her 300-thread-count sheets and arrange her pillows in a highly specific way. But, I've gotten back together with the old flame, and here in the humidity and my temporary residence in his domicile 'till I get keys to my own tomorrow...it feels like where we're meant to be, together, at this moment in time. And that is perfect right now. The predators are different back here in the city. Readers of this blog missed out on how one morning, while getting up at 5 am to shower before heading out to Wyoming, I laid in my Kelty 25* bag, it's worn-in nylon fabric and polyester batting, warm like toaster strudel filling. At around 5:12, I was just finishing disentangling my mind from my hazy mists of sleep, I hear, somewhere between Warm Toasty Magpie and Warm Fragrant Shower, the bear. And I kid not, it sounded like Chewbacca. And that cool Colorado morning shower became FAR less welcome than going back to bed. Here, I don't have to worry about bears (I read a whole book on Bear Attacks this summer). Instead I worry about muggers. But from the book I read, I learned that fighting back is what you do with bears, where with muggers you just give them what they want and leave. So, speaking of bears, the fuzzy one and I are going out again. Nobody's parents are pleased, and we, too, are feeling their apprehension, but the stakes are no greater than before. It's a risk we've elected worth taking. I think I've really grown over the summer, I think I keep becoming more and more of who I am destined to be (for a while). My path is becoming more clear cut, long term, and the little things that used to upset me don't really bug so much anymore. After all, I spent all summer climbing rocks, eating dirt and avoiding unpleasant bear encounters. Tomorrow is moving day. I've decided to hire movers, and I am thrilled. Senior year, here I come.

Another week of Vedawoo, WY

I spent this past week with my co from the past 10-day camp, Olga/Angie, and am really sad that we won't be spending any more camps together this summer. Olga is really opinionated, and I really like that because so many co's I've had are completely ambivalent about almost everything (other than when they'd like their 2 hours off, please). That being said, there's nobody I'd rather have spent an hour in a van with at 1:40 AM during a torrential lightning storm. So we did two different climbs in Vedawoo, WY, on two different days, and unlike the last time all of our girls had a ton of water with them, so it was pretty fantastic all around. I did a 5.7 crack climb and a 5.4 blindfolded, and to round out my week, yesterday, on my day off, Olga and I went to the local rock climbing gym. Why, yes, I am pretty much in love (with climbing, not Olga). The next three weeks, I have trips every week, and we will be rock climbing, kayaking, and whitewater rafting with each group of girls. If my parents' cannot make reservations for the dates they want to go camping at Big Sur (after camp), I'm going to get my Wilderness First Responder training, since not only is that a great idea in terms of summer camp tripping jobs, but it's also probably a Really Good Thing rock-climbing-wise. Do not pass SoCal, do not collect time with the fam-style (training is from 7th to the 15th of August, right before dorms open, so it'll be straight to Baltimore for me). This has been a really fantastic break from the ordinary for me this summer, and I'm really enjoying the outdoors, but I cannot help but say that I am worried for when the school year comes back around. After all, my art is about the domestic and the fraught nature of being a woman in the kitchen, not about rock climbing and whitewater rafting and all that. I guess what I'd really love from you all at this point is references to some artists to look at. Also, I'm reading the history of conceptual art. Yes, finally.

Another trip to Vedauwoo, WY

As expected, I got the Junior rock-climbing camp, so tomorrow, in the bright morning, we will be leaving for Vedauwoo, WY, that magical place, to get close to nature through becoming one with the rock. Also, I will be breaking in the new rock-climbing shoes. Weather's lovely here, hope it holds out in Wyoming, can't imagine a drive prettier than the one I did a couple weeks ago.

Sometimes I find G-d out-of-doors, when I'm not looking for Him at all.

Colorado is beautiful and wild. If I were a pioneer girl (a fantasy harbored as a child by reading loads of Mary Ingalls Wilder Little House books that I continue to have today), I don't think I'd have made it all the way to California or Oregon, because every state I passed through, I'd be sure nothing come upon further down the dusty trail could be better. In leaving the "big city" of Baltimore, I now find myself past Illinois and Kansas, venturing once in a while down to the plains of Colorado, but living in the Rockies where Henry David and his family once settled on the same property camp is on. Indeed, that homestead, where the David (Davis?) family spent more than a few rough years far from civilization, electricity, and indoor plumbing still stands, is used at camp. Sure, there's a chicken coop in the bathroom, and the kitchen's not much to look at, and nothing, nothing is flush or level, but sturdily it stands. That being said, one of the most beautiful experiences, aside from hiking and viewing Mount Meeker, Meadow Mountain, and Long's Peak from 8,000+ feet, was my drive to Vedawoo, Wyoming, where we spent time on the open range where free-range cattle graze on the rolling prarie. G-d's land, they call it, some people. And how can you not see where wind, water, erosion took place to shape and mold the stone in unfathomable ways? I guess I'm remembering it sort of romantically, but I do miss it. Hopefully I get to do a camp with rock climbing this week, keep your fingers and toes crossed!

Amazing are the little things.

So, this past week I had Cadettes, which is (I believe) 12-14 year old girls, and the first day we spent doing low ropes and initiatives (including the buzz-ring, which the girls were obsessed with by the end), archery, arts and crafts, and then we left for our trip to (surprise!) Vedavu, WY, which is open range AND climbing country. For the first time in my life, I slept out under the stars (G-d always seems closer when I'm out in nature), woke up to mooing, scrambled over boulders, ran out of water in a way that was scary, and went rafting on the Poutre in CO (all 3's and 4's). The friction climbing was amazing, the girls I worked with from Educo were lovely, and the drive from Allenspark, CO to Vedawoo, WY was goregous. Photos from the trip at some point.