High Sierras again!

Every year for the past 25 years I have taken time off in the summer to rest my ears and rejeuvenate my spirit. It helps me to stay fresh and sustains me so I am able to do the work I do all year long: leading, coaching, inspiring, directing, teaching, organizing, envisioning, composing, arranging, promoting, selling...and finally performing!

This year I went up in to the Minarettes from the Devil's Postpile trailhead near Mammouth, CA.

My idea of a vacation is to drive 6 hours to a trailhead, put 40 pounds on my back and hike in about 8 miles to the Sierra high country above 9,000 feet and spend 8 days in the awesome quiet majesty of the mountains. I am blessed to have a dear crazy friend who has also been willing to rearrange her entire life for the past nine years so she and I can take off for 10 days and totally get away. Mind you, not all of it is very glamorous: it's exhausting hauling the pack on the first day when it is at it's heaviest and climbing up what is inevitably some steep pass and all the while getting acclimated to the change in altitude. And by the end of 8 days I'm mighty dirty. "Ripe" we call it. Sleeping on the ground is not actually sleeping at all, but more like a fish flopping back and forth on dry land trying to get comfortable all night long. (Is it morning yet?) Basically, we don't really sleep at all. But my brain...ah, it is calm at last and my heart opens wide. My spirit is very turned on, my senses are very awake and I feel fully alive. So, I keep going back. I plan to continue to do so until my legs will no longer carry me. My friend and I talk every year about what we'll do when we can no longer carry our own packs: using mules to take in our belongings or get air lifted in by helicopter or other alternatives. But for now, I am blessedly healthy at 58 and glad of it!

What is so magical that I must return every year dispite the effort? Maybe it's because it is SO different from the rest of how I spend my year: I don't have to care about how I look or sell anything to anyone, there is no one telling me what to buy or trying to impress upon me their point of view---in fact, there is nothing but wide open space and beauty in every single thing I see. Not a billlboard or sign. Not the sound of one car. Not a cell phone or computer. No machinery at all.
The experience cleans out my head of all the noise, and I remember what is most important to me once again.

I take lots of gorgeous yummy pictures with my Contax point & shoot film camera. It's really the only time I take pictures at all. Still no need for digital since my camera takes killer pix and weighs hardly anything (besides I spent alot of money on it). I make a slide show on my computer in iPhoto and add wonderful music and watch it over and over and over...then I get to watch it over and over again as I share it with each of my friends.

I write music when I'm in the mountains and when I come home, I arrange the songs for my choral groups. This music is very different from the kind of songs I sing when I perform or the tunes I write for my jazz trio. It's written from a perspective I can only get in touch with when I am so very close to the clouds. When I go back to work with my six choral groups, I teach the songs to them and I get to hear the music sung back to me in four parts and it is glorious. What a kick!

And for a few months (if I'm lucky) after I return from the mountians, I can hang on to some of that feeling of openness and connection till the rhythm of the city pounds in my ears and I am filled with details and deadlines, once again.