Not Another Mom Blog!

 

  That's right, folks. In the year + since I last posted, I became a mother. Our daughter, Adelaide (Addy) graced us with her presence 12/9/13, smack in the middle months of Colorado winter (our winters run October-April). This meant my maternity leave ran for most of those snowy, cold months. While I had dreams of being the first mother in the world (not) to acquaint her child with the outdoors immediately, I was quickly humbled by sleep deprivation, continuous feedings, and overwhelming fear of flu season. We spent almost all twelve weeks huddled and snuggling indoors, save for the occasional walk when the weather allowed. While disappointed that I wasn't more active, we had a great first few months together.
  As Addy got a little older, my husband and I started dreaming up adventures for our family. We were finally rested and reasonable enough to start planning, recognizing that the mountaineering and multi-day back-country trips were behind us for a while. The more I planned, the more I recognized that there were few resources out there for a mom looking to take a breastfeeding, crib-sleeping little one into the great outdoors. There are plenty of articles and blogs about taking kids outside but I kept finding myself asking, "what about the babies?!"
 So, moving forward, I'm going to try to be that resource. As we try new gear and plan adventures, I am going to try and post how they worked for our family. We will fail miserably for your amusement and try again. I will try to intersperse some adult posts to keep it interesting for the childless in the blogosphere. This real chick now has a real chicklet and I hope she grows to be a passionate outdoors-woman. By blogging about our misadventures, I hope others will be inspired to take their kids outside too.

Reality Check

 

  To some, it may not be a surprise that my move to Colorado 3 1/2 year ago has been much different that I had imagined. You've been warned, I have vented about this before. I remember being a kid, traveling to new and exciting locations around the US on family road trips. Standing on beaches or in an amazing National Park, I would wonder about those people who were lucky enough to live in such cool places. As a tourist, it's easy to romanticize a destination. I have friends that currently live or have lived all over the world and, occasionally I catch myself immersed in feelings of jealousy. Then, I remember that I live in one of those locations, a tourist destination. I work and live full-time, year-round at a resort. And here's the thing...I have come to recognize that my glamorous visions of what life in Winter Park would be like, were a fantasy.
 
As I have gradually become more frustrated that the reality of my resort-town life was/is not living up to the fantasy, I am realizing that what makes or breaks the destination, is the people. It takes time to build a community, make friends that know and understand you. Finding these people can define a lifestyle, no matter where you live. And lacking those people is what has been the most disheartening part of my move.

I miss people. New people, familiar people, exciting people, people that live lives completely different from my own. People that challenge me and call me out. People that push and support me and are not afraid to put me in check. In this resort town, we all work in the same industry in one way or another so I have not found a lot of diversity in thought as it pertains to work, environment or economics. Small town chatter does not allow for one to "cut loose" publicly (whatever that means), for fear of getting caught up in a rumor mill. The people I know the best, I also work with, which isn't always conducive to being your true self. It's better to be a little guarded with your co-workers here. In a rural area, we're all so spread out that it's often easier to keep to yourself. Save for occasionally bumping into a friend at the grocery store, I do not feel as if I am part of a community.

 Over this past weekend, I was lucky to have my best friend and her family visit. As we spent time reconnecting, I found myself wondering if my lack of consistent exposure to honest relationships was actually causing me to forget how to function in the friendships I do have. I caught myself considering how much work goes into friendships and saw a hint of laziness rearing its ugly head. This scares me. I want to work hard at community. I want to be challenged to be a better, more interesting person. I want to be someone that lovingly pushes people in return.

 I know that the responsibility to build relationships is my own. I don't sit here and make excuses for myself, I'm simply sharing a part of my journey. I am trying and we do spend time with people we love and who love us back. A few of these people live locally, most live elsewhere in the state or are scattered across the country. I don't know how much longer I will live in WP but I know that finding community is not something to be put off for another day or I'll wake up in the same place 10 years from now. But the next time you catch yourself dreaming of a life in Morocco, stop and consider the most important asset to be had, your friends and family. A destination, no matter how beautiful or exotic, cannot replace the desire to know and be known. You can be active, enjoy the seasons, and find adventure anywhere (if you look for it). While great people live in every place, it will not necessarily be easy to create a life-giving community in the Galapagos Islands.

"Uncle Bob"

L-R: "Uncle Bob" with brothers George (my great gpa), Francis and Joe circa 1924

 When my dad died in January 2011, I inherited several boxes of family history. My grandpa worked for years to assemble our family genealogy going back to our family's arrival in the New World. My family is listed as one of the 13 pioneering families of Missouri. I am thankful that my grandpa never lived to see the years of ancestry.com after all of the work he put into assembling this information. That said, I am very happy that I can use these web resources to connect the dots. It's amazing how easy it it to gather information about your family members these days, be it current or past.

 A few weeks back, I uncovered on of these heritage boxes and started to thumb through it. I've always been interested in genealogy and it was incredible to see yearbooks from 1925, original tin types, themes written by my grandpa in college and even songs he copyrighted (he was a bit of a lounge singer). I discovered some things I had never known about my family. My great grandmother was a corsetier (lingerie sales). My great grandfather sold arcade games and vending machines. We were (and are) a working class folk. Among these items and historical documents, was an envelope of photos labeled "unknown" by my father. They looked just like the images we all run across in antique stores and thrift shops. By being unknown, the photos lose their meaning to a person, a family, and so children or grandchildren discard them. Not wanting this to become the fate of this envelope of photos, I decided to reach out to some long lost family members to help.

 "Uncle Bob" is really my great, great uncle Bob. He is my great grandfather's brother and was only 6 years older than my grandpa, which is how it's possible that I found him still living in Illinois. I have never met "Uncle Bob" but he has a lot of our family heirlooms going back further than I have. After reaching out, Bob graciously offered to host me if I came out to Elgin. He has 3 children who also live in the area that I will get to meet. Their hospitality combined with a fare sale from Southwest airlines...and I have a ticket to Illinois for early March. I am hopeful that he can help me name the unknown people in my collection of photos and pass on knowledge that no website can give me. I've heard he has a laugh a lot like my dad's.

Reinvention

Over the last few weeks, I have caught myself wandering back over to this blog. I haven't written here in 6 months and was not posting frequently then. I'm not sure why I keep typing in this web address except that all of a sudden, I'm wondering if I have something to say again. Here's the thing...it's not about hiking. At least, not in the literal sense.
 Life's been tumultuous in the last year.
* M lost his infant nephew in September
* I went to Colombia in October
* M gained a niece and nephew in November
* M turned 40 in November
* M and I got engaged in November
                          (November was particularly busy)
* I turned 30 in May
* We FINALLY closed out my dad's estate in June (it took 1 1/2 years)
* I went to France in July
* We lost our dear friend to leukemia in  July  (she was 45)
* We lost our dear friend to a brain tumor in August (he was 5)
* We get married next month
* I move to our new home next month

We have people in our lives going through new babies, adoptions, infertility, travel, cancer cancer cancer, new jobs, lost jobs, weddings, separations and so much more. So much joy, so much sadness. More than I ever remember having in any year. Is it just that I'm getting older? Are there MORE problems in the world or am I just old enough that they now happen to my peers, not my elders? Are things more extreme or does it just appear that they are?

All of this is making my head spin. I can't keep up and it's causing me to look for a center. A focal point. Life is generally wonderful but just as I count on the joy it brings,  I don't anticipate "life" slowing down or getting easier, I think it may be time to do a little self-rediscovery. As the saying goes, you don't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. I have a few ideas on how to pursue this, which I'll post as I go. Maybe my first step was to find my way back to this blog and take a walk down real chick memory lane. For now, this blog isn't going to be about outdoor adventuring or best places to hike with your dog. IT will be about a real chick, hiking her way through life.

The Resource

 I've all but disappeared from this little blog for a while. I just started feeling like I had lost my blogging voice and although I don't know that I've rediscovered it at this point, I did feel like I wanted to share something.
  A few weeks ago, I was approached by an intern with the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics. You may recall that I completed their Master Educator course this past summer and proceeded to write a few blog posts about the key Leave No Trace principles and practices, including the topic I taught while on the course- Women Specific Leave No Trace. Jasmine, from LNT, asked if she could interview me for an article on this subject after having stumbled across this blog in her research. Of course, I jumped at the chance to stand on my soapbox and spread the word. Today, the article was released and I thought I'd share it here. So, without further adieu:

Leave No Trace- Women Specific Issues

There's a lot more to say than what's discussed in the article so if you want to know more, go to the Leave No Trace website or check out what I said about it here. Have feedback? Let me know. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the subject.