gravithé

impromptu hike to the Plain of Six Glaciers Tea House. the owner let me take pictures of the kitchen. I was so surprised! nobody ever wants anybody to see what their busy kitchen looks like (for obvious reasons)... there is no electricity here and the supplies are dropped in via helicopter, transported by horses, or hiked in and out by the staff who live on-site. it was well worth the 6+ mile hike, especially when you don't bother to bring food and water because you didn't think you could be seduced by all the trail signs around you.

mon derrière et un cheval

I went horseback riding and it hurt. I am of the asian persuasion lacking in the tubbiness of the posterior, so I can safely say that the absence of the badonkadonk gene, did not help when my horse Dickson... Dixon... whatever, galloped through the rough terrain. it was like I was taken on a most turbulent boney-butt-ride-crashing-against-the-rock-hard-saddle-from-hell on a horse that was sweet and chill and lovely. I was going back and forth from wanting to curse the universe to feeling adoration for a horse. It was exhausting! My inner thighs were sore the next day from having to brace every step. It didn't stop me from having fun, though. It was a really, really great experience and I am now in love with horses. I would risk my butt bones and do it again in a heartbeat.

(that horse is not Dickson/Dixon) 

breath + edge + intention

currently: just passed day 10 of my 30-day yoga immersion.

holy shit, why didn't I do this sooner?!  I thought I was strong going into this, but I'm all kinds of sore everyday. it's been a challenge, both physically and mentally and I welcome all of it! I never went into it thinking I was going to feel "cleansed," but slowly I'm feeling the difference. my body feels less tense. I'm learning to be more patient, to take my time and mostly, to just breathe. every inhalation is like the universe telling me everything is ok. and every exhalation is like expelling physical/mental/emotional toxins my body, mind, and heart have stored. it's like i smoked some happy weed! whoa. I've also been getting some of the best sleep in what seems like forever! I just wanna yoga all day, everyday!

can someone tell me, though, why I constantly have the urge to open up my hips? that's all I want to do when I feel stressed, pressured or even just for the hell of it. what's up with that?!

oracle

horoscopes are fun to read sometimes. this is an astrologer's forecast for aries this week. this shit just sounds out-of-this-world exciting, especially "...a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans."

-May you eat an unfamiliar dessert in a strange land at least once every three years.

-May you wake up to salsa music one summer morning and start dancing while you're still half-­asleep.

-May you spray-paint Rilke poems as graffiti on highway overpasses.

-May you mix stripes with plaids, floral patterns with checks, and yellowish-green with brownish-purple.

-May you learn to identify by name 20 flowers, 15 trees, 10 clouds and one extrasolar planet.

-If you bury your face in your tear-stained pillow and beg God to please send you your soul mate, may you not slur your words in such a way that they sound like "cell mate."

-May you dream of taking a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans.

-May you actually kiss the earth now and then.

-May you find many good excuses to say, as physicist Niels Bohr once did, "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."

 

flounder-er

I'd say the majority of my vacation involved seeing a lot of water, floating on water, paddling on water, and getting drenched on by water. I also went canoeing for the first time in my life. Word of advice: if you weigh 110-115 lbs, don't go canoeing by yourself when the winds-are-a-blowin' and the rain-is-a-comin'! The wind swept me and my canoe towards a bridge heading out to a river that started somewhere in Canada and probably ended somewhere in Montana. It was pretty embarrassing when the lady in charge of the canoes had to yell to me to paddle away from the bridge in front of a bunch of people standing on the bridge. Whatever, it was still so much fun.

These were taken in San Francisco though, not Canada.
Boats are pretty little big things, even the ones that have been through rough waters.