Hapy Clam Sesh

Breaking tonight after a particularly draining day from Little Easy up to Shangri La, where Cleopatra is again pioneering, the first Open Sky kids to every grace this patch of crypto. It was a head draining experience to be walking sweep all day behind Andi and Trace bitching incessantly about damn near everything. They started to really drag me down after a while, then all of a sudden I'm like hey wait a minute--I've got centering skills too.

The crazy thing was where my head then went. I tried just blocking them out for awhile. Then I tried imagining calming things, like the ebb and flow of the ocean. Then I just started imagining things that made me giggle, that's when things really got interesting.I think the first thing that flashed through my mind was Dad dancing like an elephant. The next thing unfortunately was Jack, just pissed me off more for awhile. Then I settled on Charlie doing his happy clam thing for a while, which got me up most of the last side canyon (there were several). Then we hit the road for a couple more burly uphills, and thankfully I got some of the ladies singing ridiculously, and we were almost good.

Then we actually made camp on top at Shangri La, and the simmering tension finally came to boil in an actually awesome and fairly appropriate kind of way. Christy laid it all out there straight up and just asked to the group why they're all negative towards Alex. We finally had an open and relatively honest conversation and I was stoked. I couldn't have staged it better if I tried, and I've been plotting for days how to facilitate the discussion. I love it and rarely trust wilderness to work, and when it does in such a vivid and straight forward way its really exiciting for me.

The one thing I said today that I'd really like to take back was from our discussion actually. I said that if you can't say whats on your mind in this safe space here where we are paid to listen to you, how on earth are you ever going to do so in the real world. I wish I hadn't said the part about being paid to listen, true or not. It came of I think as excessively callous, and was pretty unnecessary. I wish I hadn't got into it at all today with Trace either. I hadn't realized how basically oppositional she can be, and that she was in a foul mood to begin with. Every little thing I asked of her was than a huge struggle, and I got wrapped up in wanting the last world before I realized what was going on.

I'm really proud of myself today for not getting bogged down in a bad mood, still feeling sick-ish, and generally low energy. It was really cool to see Olivia get excited about leading a hike and to actually hear her voice for really the first time. And to see Christy stick her neck out and start calling people out on their shit. Even Nadine I sense is getting down near scraping bottom, and to see her have to draw on reserves she didn't know she had was sort of the perfect end to a rough afternoon. I'm proud that I didn't let the negative energy totally take control, and managed to rise above.

My body is cold, my upper back is sore, and my stomach feels a little queasy. My big toes hurt from the cold and not yet fresh dry socks. All the scrapes on my hands and fingers sting a little, and my chest is heavy from coughing. My mind is calm. My heart feels excited and tired and a bit giddy. My soul feels a bit distant. Not quite absent, just far from grounded in my body.