Skiing In The Shower

Large Scale Watercolors: Part 3, trimming the stretched paper

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Sep 2018 18:47:00 +0000

We finished building the substrates for the huge watercolors! Thanks to Aspen Ski Co for letting me build in the Pines Locker Room at Highlands, we could not have even contemplated this project without the gift of a clean, dry, large, open space.

Here are the final touches to finish stretching watercolor paper onto a 4' x 7' substrate, and a tally of cost, days and man hours. To see the entire process, scroll down for the previous two posts.

After pulling the plastic off of the top sheet, offset the top board by 2" at least on two sides so you can cut cleanly. When we pulled the plastic off, the paper was still damp in the center, but was dry around the edges, so it could be cut.

Press the paper down along the edges to make the crease into a guide that you will cut along.

Cut a notch out of one side so you have a clean edge to follow. Use a NEW blade every TWO cuts to get the best, cleanest cut possible.

With medium speed consistent movement, cut along the edge of the substrate following the crease you made in the paper. The trick to a clean cut is getting the knife to run in one long smooth movement.

The finished product! Clean, crisp, supported watercolor paper trimmed neatly to the edges.

We ended up with seven usable panels, only TWO of which were flawless, the rest have corners here and there which pulled up and which will need re-soaking, gluing and pressing. The trick to this one is to make sure that the paper is trimmed to within 2" once it is mounted and before it dries. Excess paper curling off the edge made the corners and edges peel away even in the press. The other problem we encountered was not making the paper wet enough. The two panels which were perfect were the last two we mounted paper to, and the paper was very wet.

Final Expenses:

$240 MDF
$256 Sheet Metal
$325 Paper
$200 Misc Supplies at ACE Hardware (drop cloths, painter's tape, exacto and blades, rollers, trays, bondo, sandpaper, shop towels etc)
$35 gesso
$29 PVA glue

Total expenses: $1085 (not including paint, brushes and stuff to make the actual art work)
Per panel: $136

Man Hours: about 46 hours of work spread over four sessions spanning two weeks. (Two 48 hour drying times for metal to wood and paper to gesso'd metal, plus life interrupting.)

I would like to say a HUGE thank you to Megan and Hags and Katie for putting their heads together to come up with a space for me to work, to Tom and Carlie for donating over 20 hours of work to this project, to Ethan and Bodhi for diligently helping lift, cary, sort, sand, spray and what have you. This project took five of us to do easily and was a lot of fun.

Pros: This is about 1/3 of the cost of doing this on large pre-fabbed aluminum substrate panels.
Cons: Time is double the investment at least, the panels are about twice as heavy as they would be if they were aluminum composite.

Did you give this a try in your own work? Let us know what you did and how it went!

It's SNOWING in BC! From Anchor to Feather, Powder 101 is on! January 9th - 14th 2019

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 22:58:00 +0000

I remember the first day I truly needed powder skiing skills. I was visiting Aspen (where I now work), and they were having one of the most epic seasons ever. The snow was so continuous that they had to close Temerity (our double black diamond side). They opened it for their level 3 instructors and above to ski, creating some skier compaction and adding to the stability. I remember standing at the top of Mushroom, which was covered in about three feet of snow, and watching this group of ripping skiers take off after their patroller with whoops and hollers of glee. I stood there, disappointed in myself, knowing what was about to happen. I could ski cut up crud, bumps and steeps, but I just had not had enough time in deep untracked snow to understand how to make the skis turn when it felt like there was no bottom. What was there to push against?

Squatty Schuller, a former freestyle champion, Examiner and trainer extraordinaire (who had over two million vertical feet in deep powder by this time), looked at me and said, "Don't worry, I'll pick all your stuff up for you. Let's go." And that's what he did. He patiently taught me how to ski virgin snow on top of massive bumps on a double black run. By the end of the day, I was starting to understand. We dug for my ski more than once that day.

That was a day of exhaustion and bliss, and I learned some valuable things... Skiing powder looked like it could be the most effortless, beautiful, blissful body and soul experience ever. I learned that by watching Squatty float effortlessly in front of me, and from the squeals of joy from more accomplished instructors as they laughed their way down steep, untracked, private powder in the resort, a once in a lifetime experience.

Powder101
I learned that falling and getting up in powder is hard, and there are techniques which make it MUCH easier. I learned that it helped EVERYTHING to have a patient, accomplished instructor and friend by my side to help me get through it, keep trying, keep reaching for the bliss. I learned that there is a technique to skiing powder, and once it clicks, life is gooooooood. And finally I learned that it doesn't hurt, generally, to fall down in powder. Patience and persistence along with good instruction turned what started as a stressful day where I didn't want to disappoint my friends into one of the days in my career that made me want to become a Squatty. He handed me bliss. I've never forgotten it, and I think of him every single time the helicopter takes me to untracked snow.

To learn more about Kate’s coaching philosophy, check out this article in MisAdventures Magazine.

Jennifer and I want to give this to you. Let us be your Squatty. Come, join us and learn how to bliss out in the pow. Fall down, get up, find stuff, get back on your feet and laugh while doing it. Learn how to bounce, to float, to turn, to stop to let speed be your friend. AND BONUS, you don't have to learn on a double black on moguls. We will take you to appropriate teaching terrain, and we will have your back....and you will have the time of your life! So, how do you go from novice "anchor" to competent pow skier?

Come with us to Powder 101 taught by myself, PSIA-RM Examiner, Kate Howe, and 3 term PSIA National Alpine Team member Jennifer Simpson, and you can plan to have a bast while leaving your worries behind.

WHERE: Big Red Cats, Rossland, BC is one of the biggest cat skiing operations on the planet with six cats, over 500 runs, eight mountains, and more than 20,000 acres! The Big Red team has been busy working on the runs and sculpting out new adventures for you. The 5 bedroom lodge is amazing and after a day of skiing POW you will be ready to get a massage, hit the hot tub, have a delicious dinner and do it all again the next day!

Ready to join us January 9th - 14th for a true powder adventure? You will find the details here: http://katehowe.com/big-red

Large Scale Water Colors Underway at Highlands Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 23:13:00 +0000

It's time for the last steps! This is the best and scariest part, stretching the paper to the substrate. For the building and prepping of substrate on which to stretch watercolor paper, see the post below. Why are we doing this?? Because when you paint on watercolor paper, it wrinkles both as it gets wet and more so when it dries. To avoid this, we soak and stretch the paper to something rigid and archival.

Day 4, step 22: One side of the paper probably has light sizing on it, and this is the side you want to paint on. Dribble a little water on each side. The side which bubbles up and absorbs slower is the side you want UP, the side with sizing that you will paint on. Mark that side with an x in pencil.

Day 4, step 23: spray the watercolor paper THOROUGHLY. Not damp, wet. Especially if you are working with large paper, as it will absorb and dry as you go.

Day 4, Step 24: flip the paper, keeping track of what side is UP, and soak the other side evenly as well.

Day 4, Step 25: check the prepared surface of your substrate: are there any lumps, bumps, dust, gloppy gesso? If so, lightly and carefully sand these areas with a sanding block. Then wipe the surface down to make sure it is free from all dust and debris.

Day 4, Step 26: Pour PVA size on the prepared, clean surface of your substrate. We got six paintings worth out of this 32 oz bottle. (The paintings are 4' x 7')

Day 4, Step 27: Roll out PVA evenly on surface, it should not be pooling once you roll it, but it should be as thick as it can be without pooling. Be generous along the edges.

Day 4, Step 28: Place wet but not dripping, pooling, or soaking paper onto PVA sizing on substrate. Pull paper FLAT not TIGHT.

Day 4, Step 29: roll paper out from center to edge in a star pattern, but in the same way you would tighten lug nuts on your car. This keeps the paper from twisting, which will create wrinkles. Use firm pressure. This presses the PVA into the paper from the back and also pulls excess water out of the paper.

If you don't use the X pattern first, you will get large bubbles. Removing the bubbles is possible by lifting the paper and re positioning it, or by rolling quickly toward the edge, but remember, the paper is drying fast. You want it to be damp, firm, secure, with no bubbles when you finish.

Day 4, Step 30: When you are finished with the star pattern, roll firmly from center to edge as you move around the paper, stretching the paper like a pie crust over the edge of the substrate and removing all the excess water you can.

Day 4: Step 31: Make sure you put drop cloths on the floor, and wipe them clean as you go (we had one person rolling and one person wiping down the drop cloth.) Why you ask? Because if PVA size gets on the front of the paper, it will dry clear, but your paper will have a resist to it in the areas where the PVA touched it. Neat and tidy is the name of the game in watercolors.

Day 4, Step 32: Turn off the lights and shine a flashlight sideways at the paper. Is it fully adhered? Are there any bubbles? Roll the bubbles out from center to edge so the air can escape. Water and PVA will pour out from under the paper, be prepared for this and DO NOT get it on your roller!

Day 4, Step 33: Paper is white, clean, stretched, smooth and overhanging on all edges. Awesome! Layer a thin drop cloth on top of the paper to slow the drying and protect the paper from the paper press. Make sure there are no wrinkles in the drop cloth or they will emboss the paper.

Day 4, Step 34: Put the next substrate on top of the paper and drop cloth. Line it up as best you can with corners so that the edges adhere well.

Day 4, Step 35: Repeat the process!

This is how wet the paper should be.

Day 4, Step 25: Add a piece of MDF on the top and place weights on the top of the whole shebang. Leave to dry for 36 - 48 hours.

Journaling and Journeying Retreat in Wallowa, OR Now Available at a Special Price

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 22:22:00 +0000

Exciting news!!! Journaling has been such an important part of my life and my healing, and I'm committed to spreading the message to ensure as many people as possible have access to this transformative practice.

After receiving so many compelling emails, I have decided to lower the Wallowa Oregon "Journaling and Journeying" trip to cost! Now you pay $775.00 and it includes a yoga mat, strap, block, all meals, and lodging...everything that is listed on the trip information page, here: http://katehowe.com/wallowa-or

We have limited spots available at this new price, so we hope you'll join us on our upcoming Journaling and Journeying trip Oct 24th - 28th.

-Kate

Large scale watercolors underway at the Highlands

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 05:39:00 +0000

Last summer, after not having a regular painting practice for more than 15 years, I went to Paris for the first time with my sons Ethan and Bodhi and our friend Richard. Since then, I can't stop painting and dreaming of making work.

Mural at Cloud 9 charcoal, shellac and oil on rough plywood at the restaurant atop Aspen Highlands. 2013

This summer, recovering from Breast Cancer, I took some painting classes at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, right near where I live. For the first time ever, I painted using something other than oils. We worked in Sumi-e ink, watercolor, dye, and acrylics.

I became fascinated (in spite of myself) with watercolors, and I started dreaming about making a large scale series using this amazing, versatile paint which, honestly, had intimidated me until now.

I had to do some research on how to work with large paper (although of course the first thing I did was save up $162 and bought a huge role of beautiful Arches hot press watercolor paper... nothing motivates me like having a blank canvas begging to be painted on.

"Otto is Sorry" 19" x 24" watercolor on paper 2018

It turns out that in order to work really well on large paper, you have to anchor it to a substrate which will not warp or bend as the water becomes saturated. Down the rabbit hole of construction and cost I went. Many people stretch paper over an aluminum composite board, which you can buy at Jerry's Art A Rama for $300 for 2 pieces, and spend an additional $300 getting it shipped to Aspen where I live. This puts my series of six paintings, and the beginnings of a second abstracted series out of reach for me. I want to make EIGHT monumental sized water colors.

We settled for EIGHT large sized water colors. Monumental will have to wait. (I'd have to cleat the substrate and collage the paper, it's a whole process, and would double the cost).

Here, for your pleasure, is the method we came up with, and how we are building them. I will update the blog as we go along to show you how it works out for us.

First, I texted my friend Kipp, who can build a house out of duct tape and chewing gum on the top of a hill and the moment you see it, you will want to live in it. I was looking for sheet metal, thinking we might build our own substrate. It won't be as light as aluminum, but it will be stable and much cheaper. For $600 (without box frames on the back yet), I can make all eight pieces at 4' x 7' (as opposed to the 5' x 8' I was shooting for, or the 8' x 10' I hope to move into).

Playing with technique in small studies. This is practice for the materials I'm using, not for the subject, although I kind of like this one and I am beginning to wonder what it would look like really large.
"Losing Track" Sept 2018 19" x 24" watercolor and pencil on paper.

He gave me a couple of suggestions, and we ended up finding what we needed at a reasonable price right here in at TE on the Frying Pan in Basalt. Chris at TE (who was amazing and helpful and not at all construction elitist, which I have encountered at building supplies where I'm like "I'm an artist, and I want to build...) suggested that we do not get sheet metal any thinner than 26 guage as it turns into a virtual razor blade for anyone handling it. Remembering that in a previous installation piece which Tom and I built into the side of a hill at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2003, I had cut rriiiiight up to the tendon of my thumb on just such a piece of sheet metal, I took Chris's advice and we went with thicker, safer, heavier.

My friend Carlie suggested that we adhere the sheet metal to MDF, as it is smooth, cheap and easy to work with, although it can also be heavy and it can break when you move it. Putting the sheet metal on top of it should cure the brittleness issue.

I started out with a small piece of sheet metal and a study sized piece of watercolor paper just to see if it would work. I cleaned the sheet metal of grease, forgot to sand it lightly, and applied two layers of gesso to it. Once the gesso had dried, I spread PVC glue onto the gesso, soaked my paper until it was damp through, laid the paper down onto the glue, rolled it out smooth and stacked books on it for 24 hours while it all dried.

When it was all said and done, I had a beautiful piece of paper which would take lots of water without wrinkling. I did a small study of the llamas on the ranch where we live because they are funny to paint and will stare at you for hours, and it all worked out okay.

Llamas, 9" x 19" watercolor on paper. The stripes on the right side of the paper are a result of me experimenting with collaging scraps of paper onto the sheetmetal substrate to see if the edges would adhere nicely. The black lines are from the edges of the watercolor block, and so I used them to put the goat behind it's own fence.

The next issue I had to tackle was building the pieces and then painting on them. My studio is a 7' x 8' box with a 7' ceiling, and it is completely full of books, paintings, supplies and an easel that we had to chop the top off of to make it fit into the space. These large watercolors need to be painted laying flat. I do not have a safe, clean space that is 4' x 7' in my life, and I set out on a quest to find one.

Here's the issue, I live in Aspen, Colorado. While it's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in the world, it is also one of the most expensive. For instance, I pay $400 a month plus utilities for my studio box with heat and electricity but no running water. This is on the ranch where I've lived since 2007, so I know the owners and they are cutting me a deal. I couldn't even find a place to lay out my paper so it could uncurl so I could mount it, let alone a place to build and paint.

Highlands to the rescue! I did three large murals for Highlands, two in the conference area downstairs and one at Cloud 9 when they wanted to extend their remodel timeline. I got paid expenses for one of them, I didn't charge anything at all for the other two, I was just so stoked to be able to paint again. They are oil on the wall, or on mahogany.

I contacted my friend Megan, who called her sister Katie, who suggested I talk to Hags, who I already had done a mural for. They ended up finding me some temporary space in the corner of a locker room which we don't think anyone is going to come into for the next two weeks or so, as it's September. (You never know, though... people might come to town and drop off their skis. So we have to keep it super duper neat.)

The space is perfect. I had the paper, a place to roll it out, and space to paint. Now we just had to pick up the materials and make a plan.

Here's the plan:

Kate Howe’s Giant Watercolor project 4’ x 7’
eight paintings total

The order of operations is (as far as we’ve worked it out)

Notes: watercolor paper must stay pristine and clean through process

1. Cut MDF
2. Clean the pre-cut metal
3. Lightly sand metal on both sides
3.5 clean metal again
4. Glue metal to MDF with contact cement
5. Let metal/MDF cure (# of hours?)
6. Meanwhile unroll paper for 24 hours in a clean space with weights to flatten
7. Measure and Cut paper
8. Gesso steel, let dry, 3-4 coats, one day total dry time (about 1 hour per coat and 3-4 hours for full dry)
9. Soak paper front and back
10. Pva glue on gesso
11. Place damp paper right side UP on wet glued surface
12. Roll paper with roller to remove air bubbles and smooth surface
13. Stack all boards and papers on top of each other with plastic drop cloths in between
14. Cover with drop cloth and one extra MDF board
15. Weight with cinder blocks
16. Let dry 24 hours
17. Cut excess paper flush to edges
18. Build floating box frame on back, in-set a few inches
19. Let dry overnight with clamps

Painting process: 10 days - 2 weeks max

And here we go:

Day One: Drop cloth and saw horses in place, 6 sheets of MDF and 8 pieces of Sheet metal. Yes, this means we have to go back and get three more pieces of MDF. 2 for painting substrate and one for pressure clamping.

Day 2: I finally got to unroll it! 10 meters of 52" Arches Hot Press water color paper, baybee. You can see it in the above image sandwiched between the MDF boards. Weighting the paper for 24 hours still didn't flatten it all the way.

Day 2, Step 2: Measuring the sheet metal to make sure the sizes are all consistent. Of course they aren't. They differ by about a 16th of an inch. Carlie suggests we cut the wood proud to the metal and use a belt sander to bring it back in to reduce the risk of getting cut while transporting or hanging these pieces.

Day 2, Step 3: Cutting the MDF to size, preferably just a hair larger than the sheet metal.

Day 2, Step 4: lightly sand sheet metal on one side

Day 2, Step 5 Clean one side of sheet metal with lacquer thinner

Day 2, Step 6: Apply contact cement to clean side of sheet metal

Day 2, Step 7: Flip sheet metal onto dusted off surface of MDF

Day 2, Step 8: Register edges of metal to wood as closely as possible

Day 2, Step 9: Clamp edge

Day 2, Step 10: Peel back the sheet metal

Day 2, Step 11: Pour contact cement onto the MDF, you'll need a lot and you need to work fast because it soaks in. We used about 1 1/2 gallons of contact cement for eight panels

Day 2, Step 12: roll out the excess contact cement and scrape it into the bucket for further use

Day 2, Step 13: (no photo): lay down sheet metal and smooth out with body weight, rubbing it down all over with force with a rag to help adhesion, especially along edges.

Day 3, Step 14: Grind the panels with a belt sander to knock back any overhangs on metal or wood

Day 3, Step 15: Steel wool lightly sand entire surface of sheet metal adhered to panel. Make sure to scratch up every part of the sheet metal or the Gesso won't stick well.

Day 3, Step 16: Clean entire surface of sheet metal with lacquer thinner really thoroughly. If it's not degreased well, the Gesso won't stick.

Day 3, Step 17: Add Bondo to any areas in the sheet metal which are dented or not perfectly smooth, any dimples and imperfections may show through the paper

Day 3, Step 18: Sand Down the set-up Bondo

Day 3, Step 19: Apply gesso to clean surface

Day 3, Step 20: Apply a second coat of Gesso

Day 3, Step 21: Stack and pack, we have to leave the space as tidy as possible just in case someone wants to put their skis in their locker in September! You never know... Today took about 2 and a half hours with four people working. (I don't count, I was supervising after having about a pint of blood drawn this afternoon. Ugh.)

katehowe.com launches!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 17:54:00 +0000

Hi there!

Thanks for being a reader at skiingintheshower.com! Things are evolving, and I'm excited to continue sharing the journey from a new platform.

At katehowe.com you will find this blog, as well as links to NEW and exciting materials as they become available! Videos, tips, tricks, stories, text books and more are at the new site, and everything is going to be updated from there moving forward. Please sign up at the new website to continue receiving posts directly to your inbox!

Once you sign up at katehowe.com, you'll get a monthly email updating you on trips you can take around the world and exciting adventures to help you along on your own journey!

Skiing and Yoga are the frameworks that I have found for my own evolution, through them I've found an excuse to travel, put strange food in my mouth, pray at strange temples, bathe in cold rivers, swim through muddy waters, and emerge still wondering who I am....

Head on over and see what's new, and thanks again for reading.

Here's to an interesting journey!

-Kate

Skiing in the Shower goes on Hiatus while I write a book!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 18:45:00 +0000

Hello amazing readers!

As you may have noticed, I have not been posting much lately. But I have been writing a lot! That's because I am working on several large projects, one of which is a book about my journey through the last ten years of training to tryout for the National Alpine Team.

The tryout is this April, it will be my second and final attempt to get hired for this amazing job. I won't talk too much about it, because I'm saving all that writing and exploration and self-evolution and discovery for the book.

I did have an incredible journey to South America, and I'm now in Aspen getting ready for the 2015/16 season.

To keep up to date with what's happening next, please visit my new website at

katehowe.com

I'm looking forward to the next step, and please, keep in touch!

xoxo
Kate

It's almost time to leave for South America!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 21:32:00 +0000

The 2015/16 season is officially upon me, and I couldn't be more stoked.

The 2016 PSIA National Alpine Teams Selections are in April of THIS year, they only happen once every four years, so here we go again!

There are several processes, applications and interviews to go through in order to make it to the final on-snow interview, but I'm training as though I'm going to get there.

To that end, last year I spent a huge amount of time working on my mental performance, first in India practicing yoga, and then when I came home with my mental performance coach Thomas Crum ( http://www.aikiworks.com/).

The final product at the end of the 2014/15 ski season, a jumping off point which came out of my work with the incredible Thomas Crum.

I also had the honor to work with Bill Fabrocini, an incredible and world renowned strength coach.

This year, it's all about FITNESS and FEET. Lucky me, I'm headed to South America for TWO MONTHS of training!

I'm honored to report that Strafe Outerwear, Leki, Blizzard, Tecnica, Marker Bindings, SportTube, and Wicked Chile (campervans for ridiculous adventure trips) are helping out by sponsoring me for this adventure, and I am amazed by the support! There's a chance we may even get photos and mini blog updates posted to Outside Online of this ridiculous South American Adventure ... stay tuned for updates on that front!

I plan to share lots of fun pictures and blog posts of this journey, I've never taken a trip like this before, and I'm excited to be living in a van in the snow while getting my feet schooled in the South American Andes. I'm looking forward to seeing my friends and colleagues who travel south every single winter, I can't wait to see their haunts and favorite places.

Ski Touring in Colorado with Kurt this spring.

It took more than gear sponsorship to get the this particular trip going, it also required the generous help of some clients and benefactors, and a slew of friends, family and coaches, to whom I am profoundly grateful.

I can't wait to get back on snow and apply all that I learned with Jonathan Ballou (my technical skiing coach), Josh Fogg (trainer at Aspen/Snowmass) and Kurt Fehrenbach (my intrepid training partner) at the end of the season last year.

This trip should be epic: The plan right now is: I'll be in Portillo with a client skiing in the Camp of the Superstars ( http://www.chrisdavenport.com/videos/#/ski-with-the-superstars-camp) for a week, and then we'll head off on our own on a fun Heli ski trip for a week. Then, my client heads back to the US, and I head to Santiago to pick up the camper van.

From there, I'll drive it down solo to Corralco, ski touring along the way. In Corralco, I'll meet up with Chris Fellows, who is running a NASTC skiing camp ( http://www.skinastc.com/corralco-chile-ski-adventure/). (Check it out there are still some spots open!)

Kurt will be coaching with Chris this SA Winter, so we will hang out in Corralco until the end of the camp, skiing and training.

Then, Kurt and I will hop in the van and head south all the way to Ushuia, at the southernmost tip of Chile!

We'll be ski touring along the way, living in the van and doing our best not to get lost or run out of gas!

We hope to arrive in Ushuia just in time for the International Skiing Congress, ( http://www.interski-2015.org/en/) where we will watch our very own PSIA National Alpine team present, along with teams from skiing nations all around the globe!

Just before the 2012 tryout in Snowbird, Utah. I can't wait to get after it again this year!

After Interski, we'll be in Ushuia for another couple of days, training, and then we head to Punta Arenas where we will drop off our camper van and say hi to some friends of friends.

From there, we'll hop a plane and head back up to Las Lenias where we will train for a few weeks before heading home in the beginning of October.

What a way to start the season! Thanks again to all the companies, friends and family who have generously donated gear, discounted prices, welcomed us with open arms onto their couches and spare bedrooms, sent encouraging emails, and basically just have been super duper supportive!

Adventure on, my friends!

Midlife Crisis, No Convertable

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 23:46:00 +0000

I remember being five years old and walking into my Auntie’s living room, the grown-ups in stylish flowered casuals, the oversized graduated tint on the sunglasses hiding my mother’s entire face, her hair cascading around her slender shoulders like Bridget Bardot. I had no idea that my Aunt lived a life of privilege, and that by proxy, so did I. I knew that her avocado-colored carpet was soft on my feet, that I could lay underneath her glass coffee table, that when the balcony door was open, I could hear the sound of the waves rolling endlessly like a relentless hammer.

I was too young to understand class or separations, all I knew was that this home was magic. It represented everything that formed me as a person, everything I learned about what kind of a person I wanted to be, and everything I knew about who I currently was. It was populated with writers, artists, scientists and military men with the skill of story telling that left you tasting the food in Saigon. What, I wondered, in the world, could Saigon be? Would I ever go there?

At five years old I had no inkling of the alcoholism, drug abuse and divorce, death and depression that was circling, closing in on this family just as it does all others.

It didn’t matter, I couldn’t see it. I could feel, I remember existing like a big living/feeling antenna, and in this house in this place with these people is where I felt my antenna was best and most acutely attuned to receive. In this house, in this place, I was surrounded by characters of ridiculous admiration, I saw them as giants, but not unapproachable ones. I couldn’t see their problems, only their beauty.

To me, it was a magical nest, I don’t remember ever being scolded, other than for forgetting to take the tar off my feet or for being too sandy. I remember running down onto the beach with my cousins, I remember the clink of ice in the grownup’s cocktail glasses, the smell of bourbon, the smell of scotch. I remember the smell of the low wooden gate that separated my aunt’s front lawn, full of succulents and sand, from the beach proper.

The low-slung gate, always latched, and always fighting the upheaval of the ever-shifting beach seemed like a pathetic and unnecessary marker, when the beach was hers, her home, her front yard, the shin-height crooked gate (which must always be closed) a one hundred million extra millisecond obstacle standing between myself and the ocean, the ocean, the ocean.

I remember the mysterious under-the-house storage of water and beach toys that we were allowed to pull out and play with, I remember the jug of turpentine that sat on the steps leading back up to the house. It sat on the step just outside a glassed-in three season room that my Auntie used as a painting studio. I remember pieces of amplifiers and cords tucked into every other small storage place that I probably wasn't supposed to be; my cousins sometimes played music but often built speakers and amplifiers.

I never saw them working, mostly because I never looked for it, I was too busy running down to help with the giant sand mermaid sea sculpture complete with real breasts and luxurious seaweed hair which my irreverent and ridiculously talented mother was casually, yet audaciously building at the water’s edge.

I remember laughter, and ease. I remember long afternoons of sunburns, I remember seeing my mother, beautiful, exotic, her legs impossibly long and tanned, her smile perfect, her laugh throaty and contagious. I remember feeling the security of being hers, of running away but feeling tethered in a way that let me know I was so free. I remember hearing my Aunties say how much they loved my mother, that they wanted to see more of her. I remember resting securely in our bond as a family, I remember feeling that bond wrap around me in a way that made me feel as though the wonder of becoming a person in this world was an unlimited palette for me to play with.

I remember sitting on the steps and rubbing the tar off of the bottoms of my feet with a rag before I went back into the cool of her tiled home, rubbing fast and not well enough, hoping no one would notice. I wanted to hear the sound of the evening, I wanted to sneak a Dr. Pepper, I wanted to shower the sand from the liner of my bathing suit where it had rubbed my bottom raw. I didn’t care about the tar, it was like a badge of honor. I had been on the beach, in the sand, I was marked by it, it loved me so much it came home with me. It would adhere to the soles of your feet like little black stickers.

I remember that I wasn’t supposed to be sandy or wet when I came back into her comfortably elegant home, which was filled with relics from exotic travels abroad, collected over a lifetime of adventuring, writing, and being married to a high-ranking marine who would bring home real things, things that were normal in the far-flung places he had traveled but were nothing but foreign amazements to my opening eyes.

I remember the softness of the layers of the nest of these people, each an intellectual force in their own right, some more scientifically bent, some more artistically bent, all of them incredible at writing, speaking, arguing, singing, thinking, and accepting me. I remember knowing that I would grow into my place among them, and that my own children would too, one day.

I remember hearing one of my cousins say to my mom as I walked out of the room to go play again, “Cathy (that’s what I was called back then) is like a ray of sunshine when she walks in the room. She can’t help it, she doesn’t even know it, but she is so very bright, so full of happiness, and everyone she smiles at feels it.” I remember hearing that and being surprised, I remember feeling my heart fill full, I remember floating down the steps back toward the beach, past doors whose secrets I would never have access to. I was somebody of worth! I had a purpose!

To me, Auntie Whiz’s house was a simple structure of Living Room, Piano, Tiled Hall, Stairs to beach, Scary Door of apartment of People I didn’t Know Well, (this, I think now, is where my Cousin Matt lived, but it was all very spotty to my very young self), the studio where yearnings for painting went on, hours and hours slaved away in the most perfect of creative spaces, giving birth to only the most mediocre work, according to those in the know, whispered.

Hours of willful voice and skillful technique and will and desire to the unyielding canvas. I loved the smell of the turps, of the linseed, I loved to peek through the window at the accouterment of desire. I loved that my mother admired her drive. "Painting," my mother would say, gravely, "Is the hardest thing you can ever do. She is very brave."

I liked the idea that my aunt had made her way as a writer, this was where her true talent lay. But more than that I loved that she insisted on painting, and painting in oil, regardless of her skill, perhaps out of love, or stubbornness, simply because she loved it.

I remember the scorching patio I had to run across, the oily railroad ties irregularly placed as steps to hold the sand back, and the black gate loosely indicating that the beach began… here.

There was a TV room, but I don’t remember spending much time in there, I preferred to sit next to my Auntie when I was indoors and listen to her tell stories, none of which I can remember. I do remember sitting next to her and hearing her scratchy, throaty indulgent laugh, and seeing the elegance of her son Chree walk through silently, one eyebrow skeptically raised as he observed our nonsense, a drink, expertly mixed, in his hand. He would go and talk to my sensible older sister, or whatever writer or painter was over for dinner that night. He was a playwright. He knew better than all of us, and yet was an essential part of the silliness, a character anchoring the sea of creativity in critical thought.

I loved my aunt’s long tapered cigarette holder and the way her sons scolded her for smoking. I loved her twinkling naughtiness as she snuck an early cocktail, to me it had all the sense of fun and intrigue and none of the fear or worry about what it meant to begin drinking so early in the day.

I remember skipping down the stairs, those words echoing in my mind, in my heart, “I am a ray of sunshine, when I smile, people feel it.”

Maybe it was like a superpower, but more subtle than that, like leaving tracers behind you that you didn’t know were there. I could be sunlight entering a room. I could lift spirits, I could magically erase sadness, I could bring joy. I remember distinctly feeling that this house, the house on the beach in Emerald Bay, Laguna was the source of this mysterious power, it was the wellspring. And it wasn’t really the house. Because after all, a house is just a house. It was this thick coalesced layering of excellence I was growing up in that was lighting me on fire and making me feel like if I wanted to, I could grow wings, I could be a writer, a painter, and actor, an athlete, a marine biologist, I could be a professional walker-into-a-room-and-smiler, it was my family that made it true.

I am thinking about this today, because while many things changed very dramatically in the next few years; my mom and dad got divorced and I didn’t return to Laguna for twenty years, my father died from a combination of alcoholism and drug abuse which had been invisible to me as a child (he died in the TV room in the house in Emerald Bay while I was away at boarding school in New York ), my mother remarried an aggressive, abusive narcissist who sexually, physically and emotionally tore down myself, my mother and both my sisters for the next twenty six years, alienating the other side of our german catholic family as a result, and so there was suddenly no one, just myself, my mother the slave to her husband, my angry older sister, and our newest edition, my baby half sister, born PL, post laguna, which evaporated as though it had been a myth, a movie shown by the gods as one possibility, and then agonizingly shown to be just a dream, just a drug, as heady as an 11 am cocktail. I fell into a pattern of cutting and smoking and getting arrested, developed an eating disorder, a drug habit, and learned instead of sunshine that I was a worthless whore who could not be trusted, all by the time I turned 14.

But here is the strange thing, the thing I’ve been thinking about all week: no matter the derision and abuse I suffered at the hands of my step father, the longing and loss I held for the utter destruction and loss of my father, my cousins, the woman who had been my sparkling, creative mother, the sudden absence of parents, of the ocean, of the jar of turps, all disappeared with one gesture of the new master of our existence.... no matter the number of times I allowed myself to be raped by
'friends' I didn’t know, boys in a line on a couch or a bench, or under a bush or in a tool shed or under the bleachers, numb and cold and dispatched and as disappeared as the ocean had become to me… because I knew my body did not belong to me, no matter how much I tried to find control by hurting myself with food or sharp instruments, no matter how many times I was told I was stupid, slow, unthinking, always had to learn the hard way, stubborn… no matter what, there was a piece of me that still always heard the faintest echo of my childhood: I am a ray of sunshine.

It kept me alive, that off handed comment, said not even to me but to my mother one normal afternoon on a normal day in a normal life. And it saved me. It stayed beating, the only piece of truth I knew, in the deepest part of me. The nest of my real family, the careful weaving of experience for my first six years had performed some sort of protective cage around the smallest part of me, the stubborn part, and I refused to be diluted.

 A lot of me was derailed, destroyed, made to feel worthless, confused and lost. But the most essential piece of me thought, knew, I am a ray of sunshine, that is my true self, I have a purpose, and that is to spread joy. You can’t take that away from me, and one day, one day, I will grow into my potential. It is coming. It is big. It is coming. They told me I was a story teller, they told me I could do it the way they had done it, strangely, not by the rules, but through my own uniqueness. I had believed them.

And as I heal and get on track, I will be who I am capable of being. I will burst out of the paper machee lie that my step father told about me, like sun focused through a magnifying glass, and I will become who I am capable of being. AND THEN, I can begin.

I’m thinking about this today because for the last two years, on and off and more today than other days, I wonder how I can be not there yet.

I’m 43. And a half. Today, again, it’s the middle of off-season, and I have about $426 in my pocket, $400 of which I’ve borrowed. Again. As I walked to my car, I feel the weight of the fact that I haven’t done it yet. That my computer is full to the brink of stories and plays and screen plays and novels, but I can’t put them out to the agent I have, who likes my work very much.

I hear my beautiful yoga teacher, Paul Dallaghan looking very intently into my eyes and saying to me, “you are who you think you are, you are right where you think you are, what you need now is single pointed focus.” I see the giant tattoo on my arm that says “FINISH”, a note that I wrote as I went through the National Alpine Team Tryouts three and a half years ago, the first thing I had publicly committed to finishing, the first time I had stood up and said, hey, SUNSHINE. Here I come, I’m going to do something that I think I can do, no matter how improbable.

And now, for the first time, maybe, I doubt. Just a very little, I doubt my little kernel of self. Its nice that I can be sunny. But I thought I’d be further along by now. I thought I’d have had one of them hit, that the blog would be books, bound and on the shelf, that I would have taken this thing and found my single pointed focus. Lately, I wonder if my creative rationalization, that my insistance on being a writer, artist, athlete, social anthropologist, serial romantic failure, intrepid adventurer will not turn into who I see myself as becoming, because I should have become it already… ten years ago or maybe more.

Should I stop? Should I get real? Does single pointed focus mean giving up questing for truth and buying in to a job that makes me $32k a year instead of $12?

I try to remember that timelines are manufactured, and that things come as they come. I try to remember that I have been working diligently on myself, and that is the true project, and there is no end in sight for that. I wonder if the cousins of yesterday still see the potential they believed in and wonder what the hell I did with it. I wonder if the time has past and I just don't know it. Was there a deadline? Am I tripping along, happily heading toward some evolution that only happens if you are under 40?

I wonder if this is a mid-life crisis. I wonder if this is actually the definition, getting to an age where you think you should be somewhere and realizing you are not there. I have a fairly spectacular life, which I love, the last two years have become more and more like I hoped they would, but I want to keep it up and for that I need to FINISH.  I need to apply SINGLE POINTED FOCUS to my life’s work, to writing about my life in order to make some sort of income that allows me to not scrabble and scramble to afford bindings for my skis and space camp for my kid.

In the space between my front door and my car, I vacillate between gratitude for what I have learned and been able to accomplish and shame that I don’t have a degree and a bank account like a normal person. I wonder if I was a man if this is the day that I would go out and buy a Lamborgini, even though I have an 11 and a 13 year old and a minivan is more appropriate for their muddy shoes, ski boots and baseball gloves. Our paddle board wouldn’t fit in a Lambo anyway.

I smile at myself as I reach my dented, cracked Subaru, and squeak the door open. What the fuck, if I sold everything, and I mean everything that I own, I couldn’t even buy THIS shitty car again. There’s no mid life-lamborghini for me. Which means, really that there’s no where to go but up. And I don't really want a Lamborghini, although I do miss having a motorcycle. Mostly because I love driving my kids around on it through the traffic in India, because finding our way up Chamundi hill in a pack of motorcycles driven by a Kiwi, a Sweede and a Thai means more to me than knowing I can pay my rent.

As I sit down and reach for the seatbelt I look out across the lawn of someone else’s ranch where I live, where my children run over the sloping lawns filled with dandelions and dip their feet in the frigid ice-melt pond and realize that it takes however long it takes. Maybe it is taking longer because it is. Maybe it doesn’t matter how long it takes as long as I keep learning, growing working toward it.

I know the book won’t finish itself. I know that teaching yoga and practicing, traveling to get my boots fit, trying to be a mom and a writer and a woman all at once leaves precious little time for writing.

But the reality is, I can’t stop writing, I’ve tried. So I breathe as I head out to the yoga studio to teach a class, make sixty bucks, give a massage, make sixty more, put forty of that in my car and head back home to clear my mind on the slack line. There are pockets of single pointed focus.

Someone once told me that my gift was entering a room. To me that turned into writing. I can regret and wonder and anger and rail at myself for my lack, my failure, my loss, I can listen for the ocean when I live in the middle of the mountains, or I can give myself a moment of grace.

I can not turn back the clock and even if I could, what in the world would I do differently? Here I am, now. The life I was handed and the one I made after gave me something to write about. I want to be more than I am, I want to be useful in a broader spectrum, I want my writing to go somewhere other than the black hole of the internet and the pages and pages and pages that litter the discarded hard drives of my life.

The midlife crisis, it appears, is a judgement vibrating off of a society that says if I was worth something, it would have been apparent earlier. Most people of worth have accomplished their import before they are 30, some in their 20s even, whispers the lie in my mind. But I don’t believe in dying young, I don’t believe in edicts that say I should be more, better, finished already. I don’t believe that just because I haven’t yet that I can’t ever. When I get to that point that says I should have by now, and I feel the collective disappointment that I haven't, and the logical progression is to give up, I feel my hackles rise, I feel the pride of my roots, the stubbornness of the creative gene that runs deep in my family and I just can't... I can't let go, give up, or stop. I also don't know if I can find the single pointed focus. I don't know if that means letting go, re-tooling, or just working in ever more focused spurts. But I know that regret gets me no closer.

That’s the one that does it. Just because I haven’t yet doesn’t mean I can’t ever. I can continue to write. I can ask for help. And when the help isn’t helpful, I can’t let that derail me or sink me or make me loose hope or heart. I can get to work, again, focus down again, and see if I can’t find that sunshine, walking around, unashamedly, in the body of 43 year old me.

Rollerblade sponsors Kate!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 12 May 2015 23:46:00 +0000

Man, when I was in my twenties and had just retired from figure skating, there was nothing I liked more than rollerblading around the strand in Venice Beach where I lived. I taught skating out of a little rental shop there and I spent the sunny afternoons jumping trashcans in the skate park and skinning my knees.

Bodhi and I are heading to Koh Samui, Thailand for about two months this summer, and I was a bit worried about my conditioning. But guess what? Rollerblade was at the trade show at the PSIA National Academy, and they have offered me a gear sponsorship! I'm super excited!

It's the 90's all over again. And while I loved jumping trash cans, this time I think I'll keep my feet on the ground and have fun ripping around the rolling pavement on Koh Samui. A bit sandy, a couple of scorpions walking up the road... just like Venice Beach, Baby!

Thanks so much, Rollerblade, I'm looking forward to the new kicks! Bodhi and I will post video from the island!

Finding a Round Line in the Bumps with Josh Fogg

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 06 May 2015 18:50:00 +0000

This season I was struggling with bumps. In the past, bumps and steeps have been my favorite thing to ski, and for some reason as I worked on a more aggressive zipper line in the bumps, I lost my reaching round turn.

Suddenly I had no speed control, I was afraid every time I rolled up to a bump line. My heart would start beating super fast, and I fell into a world of stories that said I lacked the skill set to ski what used to be my favorite terrain.

I searched all winter for some tip or help to change my timing, my tactics, to somehow re-access the ability to be playful and free in the bumps. On CLOSING DAY at Aspen Mountain, I had the pleasure of skiing with Josh Fogg, one of the trainers in our ski school at Aspen/Snowmass, and a recent selection to the 2015/16 Rocky Mountain Alpine Team.

In dispair, I stood at the top of Easy Chair, a bump run NOTORIOUS for spiky, cross troughed zipper line bumps. I have never ever skied this short run well from top to bottom, it is fast and difficult and the bumps are enormous. It's not very steep but people ski it with high intensity, so it begins to look like a series of tombstones on the way down. The holes are huge, and with each turn, I think, "I'm supposed to stuff my feet WHERE??"

I turned to Josh and asked him, "Can you show me a round line in here, in Easy Chair?" Josh said yes. He gave me one simple tip: Think of the line as a waterslide. Let the momentum of the finish of one turn exist for the purpose of sending you up the wall to begin the next turn."

I had been searching for the "outside line" all season, but for some reason, I was still losing the downhill ski, I was skiing out of the line after five bumps, I was pushing the tails up the wall rather than driving the smeary ski, or in my attempt to get round, I was getting edgy and accelerating. I was so frustrated, I felt like I would never every figure this out again, it was just gone and I would never give it back.

"Ski it like a waterslide." Josh said, and then proceeded to do just that, top to bottom. A lightbulb went off in my mind, and I followed, for the first time skiing Easy Chair top to bottom with ease and control. I was astonished. The fear went away. The enormous spiky bumps presented opportunity after opportunity to ski like a waterslide. We lapped the run, trying it in Blondie's, and on the back of Bell. Suddenly, I could ski again.

Josh gave to me his time, and energy, it was easy and fun for him to go out and ski, and in this one sort of throw away moment, he handed me hope again.

I was so stoked I asked Josh if I could record it as a ski tip so we could share this fantastic coaching cue with the world, and so I would never forget it again. Kindly, Josh agreed, and the result is the video below, shot on my iPhone that afternoon.

Thanks so much to Josh Fogg, Kurt Fehrenbach, Megan Harvey, and Jonathan Ballou for mentoring me and coaching me all season, I am incredibly grateful for your guidance!!

Finding a Round Line in Bumps with Josh Fogg from kate howe on Vimeo.

Girl at the Grinder: Meet Jackie the Boot-fitter. Part one of a series on Women in Skiing.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 23:37:00 +0000

Last month, I drove to Park City to ski with a client for a few days. While I was there, I had new boots fit by Master Bootfitter Brent Amsbury, a true magician at his craft. He has been in business for over a decade and his little shop has grown from his garage to a small one-room outfit, to a bustling business called Park City Ski Boot where he outfits much of the Park City ski team as well as instructors, competitors and recreational skiers from all over the world. He has also done something unusual in his industry, he has hired a female bootfitter. And she's fierce, talented, and dedicated.

Jackie Reis of Park City Ski Boot

Watching Jackie with the customers while I was being foamed myself by Brent, I knew I had to ask how she overcame the obstacles of being mistaken for the “girl that answers the phones” to being respected as a professional bootfitter. She was happy to sit down with me for an hour or two while the feeling came back into my toes.

Kate: Hi there. Why don't we start with you introducing yourself.

Jackie: Okay, so I am Jacqueline Reis. I go by Jackie.

Kate: How did you get involved in boot fitting? Tell me the story.

Jackie: When I was growing up, my dad fit my boots when I was ski racing. and then two years ago, I met bootfitter Matt Schiller at Mount Hood. I started working for Matt at Mountain Summer Ski Camps, and one of my friends was his intern, so I had already been hanging out at the Atomic house where they worked. Eventually, Matt moved to Park City and was doing a fit night for Park City ski team, and I had also moved to Park City where I was coaching the ski team. I ran into Matt at the fit night, and he asked me if I wanted a part-time job. Initially I came in to do every-day maintenance; computer cleanup, and then Matt told me that I was going to learn how to punch and grind and start learning the skills. I was kind of part-time on the computer, part-time learning, and then, this year I said, “I want to fit full-time.”

Kate: Did you have interest in boot fitting before you got the part-time job or it was being in the environment really spark your interest in becoming a fitter?

Jackie: It was not something that I actively pursued as a career before I got this job, but I had always had an interest in it. I had found it fascinating when my dad was doing my fitting.

Kate: So what aspect of what your dad did with you that you found most interesting?

Jackie: Both my parents coached skiers, and I grew up in a very skiing-oriented family. It was nice to have something else that I could connect with my dad, and I thought what he was doing was really cool at that time. I was 12 or 13, and he was measuring me, looking at my canting and doing all these other things to help me be a better skier.

Kate: Did you have that kind of moment of skiing insight ever with your dad’s fitting where you weren’t skiing as well or to your potential, and then a fit changed the way that you were skiing or matched your skiing, or have you experienced that yourself as a skier, with your dad or with Brent or anybody else?

Jackie: You know, for me, I don’t think that anything as far as canting really did that, but as far as comfort level, especially now with coaching, standing around a lot more, and even as a racer being comfortable, I mean, you are still looking for that high-performance fit, but there is going to be a comfort factor there. It’s a really fine line. You go too far one way or the other, you can make someone unhappy but perform well. I'd like to do both. Comfortable and performing their best.

Kate: When you said you wanted to fit full-time, and then you started to move towards that, what drew you to it? Why did you want to fit full-time?

Jackie: I became more interested in it last year as I was learning the little skills, and it was really fascinating to me that it is a combination of science and art. I got really into it. I did a clinic with Brent at Wintersteiger BD, Intro to Bootfitting, and a lot of skills were things that Brent and Matt had already taught me, but I learned a lot more at the clinic.

Kate: So, as you move forward in your career, are you interested in continuing boot fitting...

(Brent walks in)

Kate: I am sorry, your boss is here. Maybe I should wait to ask this question?

Jackie: Oh, no, that’s fine. Ha, ha, ha.

Kate: Are you interested in diving further into it?

Jackie: For sure.

Kate: What kind of classes or certifications do you have to take to further your career?

Jackie: [I learn a lot here as an apprentice.] I think that the skills are a little bit more traditional when they are taught in a clinic. When Brent taught the Winterstieger clinic, he was talking to us about the foot anatomy in pronation, supination, kind of technical terms, but then we do a lot of hands-on, made foot beds, and he showed us and then everybody did one… so I was making foot beds.

Kate: Was that scary?

Jackie at the grinder, shaping foot beds at Park City Ski Boot

Jackie: At first it was really scary. I was like, “Oh, my God. Let me out!” I feel like I am getting more comfortable with every fitting. I feel like I can talk more about the boots and about what the person needs and this is what I am seeing.

Kate: Are you seeing it faster?

Jackie: Yes for sure. Brent and I actually did a fit together on Friday, and it was cool to sit back and listen to him.

Kate: It’s like standing next to the head coach.

Jackie: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Kate: Did you have in your journey so far a real A-HA moment where you suddenly understood, you had a shift in your understanding of what you are doing and how it affects the client? And if so, what was that?

Jackie: Probably the second or third full fit that I did on my own where I went through the whole process from measurement through the foot bed and the final fitting and handed the client their boots and said, “Here you go, go and try them.” I think it was more of a confidence thing than anything else. Even getting feedback from people saying, “Here are your boots. Go try them.” They come back in. They go, “Yeah, this worked great and need a little bit more here…”

Kate: So let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

Jackie: Okay.

Kate: What is it like to be a chick in the boot-fitting world?

Jackie: Pretty much like being a chick in any other part of the ski industry. (Laughs.) A lot of guys have a lot of ego, I mean not so much here at Park City Ski Boot, but in the industry in general. I have noticed that with coaching and just dealing with, even male customers who come in look at me and go, “No, I don’t… Where is Brent? Where is Matt? I need a male to talk to.”

Kate: Have people said that to you?

Jackie: Not directly, but some are just looking at me and moving on…

Kate: How do you handle that? What do you do with it?

Jackie: I am not going to lie. It hurts personally. Any person is going to feel that when somebody looks at you and doesn’t know anything about you and just automatically rejects you because you are female. But I don’t really take it too seriously anymore…

Kate: Are you able to cope with it more easily as you go on?

Jackie: Yes, my confidence is growing, and I know what I know and just because they don’t take the time to understand that I know what I’m doing, it is not taking anything away from me.

Kate: I watched it this afternoon. Right? The guy was sitting there, and you were like, “Okay, let’s get you fit.” And he said, “Oh, it’s you!”

Jackie: Yeah. (Laughs.)

Kate: And there was this moment, he walked up and sat down, you said, “Right, put your foot here, blah, blah, blah…” and he kind of had to get over it, and then you could get on with the fitting. What does that feel like to you to step into it and sort of be, “I am the boot fitter.”?

Jackie: There is something empowering when you are just kind of like, “Look, I am ready to go…” I know I feel like I have gotten so used to it because I have been in the ski industry for a couple of years now, and that’s how I grew up, with some really strong female role models. My mom - clearly she is my biggest role model. It has been “it is what it is.” I know what I know. I love skiing, and I am here to promote the sport, so take it as you will.

Kate: It was cool to watch you do it because it seemed to me like rather than talking about it or apologizing or any of the other avenues that you could take, you really just walked across and did your job. And he really kind of had no choice.

Jackie: I think that’s something, if we don’t really give people the option to be like, “Oh, no…” And if you are putting out confidence, then they kind of don’t have a choice.

Kate: That sort of goes toward erasing the gender differences, right, in boot fitting?

Jackie: Yes for sure.

Kate: What might, if any, be an advantage to being a female boot fitter? Do you think that your gender brings any sort of bonuses?

Jackie: Hmm, I think as far as fitting female clients, that’s a huge thing as far as the comfort level, and you know, like we talked about, like, “Oh my feet, I am so self-conscious,” so there is that, and just… I think I just bringing another perspective to it. I think if you only have one perspective, then you are only going to get so far.

Kate: When you collaborate with one of the guys in the shop, do you feel like you are able to solve problems by coming from different perspectives?

Jackie working with a client at Park City Ski Boot

Jackie: Yeah, I think I am still green and I take away a lot more than I have to offer right now, but I learn a lot. And I want to help and if I see things, I will point them out, and I will say, you know, “This looks like a good shape for this punch” or something like that.

Kate: What do you think about the future of women in boot fitting? Do you want to promote other women to come in and joint it? What happens if you find yourself as eventually as an ambassador for ski boot fitting?

Jackie: It would be sweet.

Kate: Would you feel comfortable in that role, encouraging more women?

Jackie: Yeah for sure!

Kate: And what about if they run into issues with, you know, gender in the locker room as it were, what kind of advice would you give to somebody who feels really passionate about boot fitting or how important it is, but feels reticent because of that, what would you say to somebody?

Jackie: You know, I would say, “Stick to your guns and be true to who you are.”

Brent: You know, I have a few things to say. I wish there were more women boot-fitters. Even though it is a somewhat male dominated sport, men don’t have the empathy that women have from their emotional development…

Jackie: (laughs in agreement)

Brent: And we actually have probably less skiers today…. because we don’t have enough women boot fitters, because we don’t have as much empathy with the misery and the pain of getting equipment setup. And I think also guys would be happier if there were more women boot fitters because their wives would be happier skiers… They would get better boot fittings from someone whom they would trust more to listen to them, and therefore, we don’t have the guys because a lot of guys don’t get as much ski time because their wives…

Jackie: They are unhappy.

Brent: Because they are unhappy and pissed off. “This sport sucks, I am going to Florida.”

Kate and Jackie: (laugh in agreement)

Brent: I think that if there is a way we could promote more women into boot fitting as a legitimate career, it would be a huge boost to the skiing industry…

Kate: Ski industry in general. I would agree with that and I would have to say too, as we are talking, two things occur to me. The first thing is that it is interesting to me that Brent can say because women have empathy, but then it is difficult for Jackie as the female boot fitter who is coming up to say, because I can have empathy that a guy can’t have.

Jackie: That’s true.

Kate: And that’s maybe… I mean that’s pretty typical of women who are in male dominated industries because part of our job is to be tough enough to belong. Right?

Jackie: Right, that’s for sure.

Kate: But then when Brent was saying that, it makes me think too if you have someone who comes up and really understands what they are doing and also has that empathetic connection…

Brent: Yes.

Kate: How fantastic might she be fitting a high-end male skier because she can understand him that way. Right? Or how might that skill set transfer back and forth in your shop where she is welcome and mentored, you know.

Brent: Absolutely.

Kate: You can realize, “Oh, she is connected in a way that this other person isn’t.” You know, Jackie is learning one skill set and maybe your male boot fitters are learning her empathy.

Brent: I would like to know why women look at boot fitting as maybe something they are not interested in or they don’t think about it. Maybe they look at it as it’s too physical, yet it’s not. It’s maybe they are fearful of the emotional appearances of ski boot fitting. You know, that it is male dominated, and there is all this tradition that’s been handed down year after year in this industry, but you know it would be great to see those boundaries broken down and all those fears dispelled because we could use change in the ski industry all the way across the board.

Kate: Brent, you are revolutionary in your thinking. Jackie, it sounds like you are in good hands! Good luck to you and thanks for talking to me today!

Thanks to Brent and Jackie for allowing me to interview them. Photos by Brent Amsbury.

Follow Highland's Patrolman and Type 1 Diabetic Mark Yaeger as he solo thru hikes the Appalachian Trail this summer.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 19:44:00 +0000

Hello everyone! I wanted to update you that my friend Mark Yaeger left TODAY to begin what is sure to become an epic adventure. He will be thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, 2600 miles over 5 1/2 months.

This in and of itself is quite a feat. What makes is all the more exciting is that Mark is overcoming a significant obstacle along the way. Mark has Type 1 Diabetes, and he will be doing this thru-hike solo.

The Appalachian trail, stretching from Georgia to Maine, where Mark will finish at his own front door in Maine.

In Mark's words...

I’m a 36 year old professional ski patrolman at Aspen Highlands in Colorado. In 2005, I developed Type 1 diabetes. Along with the known physical complications and constant difficulty in properly managing the disease, it had another effect on me that proved to be even tougher: It diminished, on a fundamental level, my self-confidence and the belief I once had in my ability to persevere and overcome obstacles and challenges. Having grown into young-adulthood healthy and active, I felt as though I was resigned to living within parameters, as I was faced with the reality of daily medication and inconsistent health.

I've worked hard to improve my health in a demanding lifestyle, and have been slowly rebuilding the confidence to really challenge myself.

For years, I've had the dream of "thru-hiking" the Appalachian Trail. Having grown up in northern Maine, I wanted to complete the entire trail and finish, literally, at my front door. After 2005, I had all but given up on the idea, but have finally reached a point at which, I feel, I can make it a reality.

Mark with some of the generously donated Marmott gear.

Mark's story has been picked up by Outside Magazine, and he is being supported with generous donations of gear from Marmott, Black Diamond, Big Agnes, ULA Ultralight Packs, Frio Diabetic Coolers and hundreds of individual donations at his GoFundMe site. Mark is also associate with the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and all the funds that he raises off his GoFundMe site which are above and beyond his expenses will go to help find a cure for Type 1 Diabetes.

You can follow Mark's progress over the next six months right here at Skiing in the Shower, where his Tumblr feed is embedded in the sidebar of this blog. Feel free to leave Mark encouraging notes along the way, or share your own stories of overcoming or living with type 1 Diabetes.

You can also visit Mark's GoFundMe site here: http://www.gofundme.com/markyaegerAT and help donate to his walk and to funding a cure for Type 1 Diabetes.

Bon Voyage, Mark, here's to a lengthy and amazing adventure, we are excited to follow along with you!

Can you get Happier?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 19:19:00 +0000

There are memes everywhere that say it... "The hardest part is starting." "Just let go of what doesn't seem fair." "Haters gonna hate, we rise above."

While some of these are funny, and some are inspiring, many of them are just... frustrating. Because they lack one key element. HOW?

How do we follow this advice, how do we weave these old sayings and inspirations into our every day lives? How do I let go and still stay focused and diligent? How can we find our passion, in order to follow it? How can we escape the tyranny of what we "SHOULD" be doing, or even worse, who we "should" be?

I believe the first step in this process is letting go of needing to have a perfect end point. "When I cross my list off, then I will feel happy." "When I have 10,000 (or 10,000,000) in the bank, then I will know I have succeeded and I will be happy."

The problem is not in setting the goal of saving money or getting things done. Let's do that. Let's make a college fund, and send our kids to camp, and finish school and train to stand on the top of the podium at that next bike race. But let's also learn that it is the process of becoming Happier along the way that makes success so sweet, it is not the standing on the podium that makes us truly happy. That happiness is momentary, fleeting, and not grounded in the evolution of ourselves.

What if in keeping your goal, and dedicating yourself to it, you became a more compassionate, more connected person, who was just happier, along the way?

Keep your goal. We are a driven society, us humans. We like to compete, to succeed and to measure that success. Just make sure you don't lose yourself in the process by mistaking that Happiness is a destination that comes from your success in achieving your goal.

So, how to get happier? I could post a meme that says "Its about the journey, not the destination." Which doesn't really help, as there's no instructive quality that tells you that if you use the destination as a signpost so you know which way you are going, and you fall in love with all the steps along the way, you just might be on the path to feeling happier. Not happiest. Not happy. Just happiER.

Want to learn more about the nuances of a happier, more fulfilling daily existence? Come to Happier! A week long retreat on the beautiful island of Koh Samui, Thailand May 30-June 6 for an immersive experience that gives you the tools you need to grow in happiness.

Want to have Kate come speak at your place of work, or event? Kate delivers inspirational talks that leave the audience with real world tools to take back to the workplace, improving communication, conflict resolution, and performance under pressure, whether on the sporting pitch or in the office.

email katehowe@mac.com for more information.

The Road to 2016 National Alpine Team Tryouts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 23:56:00 +0000

Hello friends and family and ski buddies from around the world!

I have just returned from my last ski event of the year, the E1 Selection process. It was an incredible and intense couple of days on snow with some of the top instructors in our division, and I was really happy with my results. (Prepping for Day 2 of examiner selection for the RM Division on-snow. My best event yet, and even better because the team trying out was incredibly strong. )

I was not selected to work as an examiner, but I was happy to go to the tryout and give a strong showing. I'm very very proud of SIX good friends who were selected to the Ed Staff, they were inspirational to ski with and fun to train with. As usual, I'm blown away by the strong sense of community in this sport.

I'm happy to say that my feedback was that I was close to getting selected, and I received strong support from the selectors to continue on my quest for further selections next year. I have work to do in my skiing, and in order to accomplish that, I need to be stronger, more fit, and have more time on snow.

My training so far is paying off, and in order to continue on that path, my training will only increase in intensity from here!

If you would like to be a part of that quest, please leave an encouraging comment or help by contributing toward covering the overall training expenses from September 2015 to the tryouts in April 2016.

Follow this link to contribute: http://www.gofundme.com/katesteam2016

Please do not feel obligated to contribute, and know that encouraging words mean just as much to me as helping ease the burden on the major sponsors who have been helping me achieve my goals thus far!

If you have friends or family who would like to be a part of this adventure, please feel free to pass this link along. At this time, I am only sharing it directly by email and from my blog, skiingintheshower.com as opposed to openly on social media.

Thanks very much for your time, energy and for all the support over the last eight years!

Kate Howe

A little more about the journey:
(Candidates and Selectors during the 2012 PSIA National Alpine Team Selection)

As many of you know, since 2006 I have had the dream and trained toward becoming a member of our PSIA National Alpine Instructor Team.

The first six years of training included taking over a dozen pre requisite clinics, driving all over the West, sleeping in my truck and passing four levels of certification in both the Rocky Mountain and Northern Rocky Mountain division.

It was only through the generous sponsorship of the ski companies that support me and many other instructor athletes (Blizzard/Tecnica, POC Helmets and Armor, Leki Poles, Strafe Outerwear, Gibbon Slacklines), and the combination of contributions from individual donors (and one major donor without whose support I would not have been able to recover from major spine surgery and find myself on the snow at the 2012 tryout just six months post surgery.) that I have been able to come as far as I have.

And I'm not alone. This is a journey that hundreds of ski instructors embark on, a journey of at least a decade (that's on the short side.) This is an endeavor of training and dedication that is entirely funded by grass roots efforts, friends and family.

My feedback at the 2012 National Tryout was "We'd like to hire you. Please try out again next time, and please work on your skiing until then!"

This year, after I returning from India with my family in December of 2014, I had identified areas of weakness that I needed support in in order to overcome some obstacles on the journey. They were overall core strength, explosive strength in the hips and legs, mental performance during clutch situations, and depth of technical understanding.

(Ethan in Mysore, India, demonstrating Pascasana, a second series Ashtanga posture.)

I spent some serious soul searching time deciding if I was physically, mentally, and emotionally capable of training at the level that this kind of commitment demands, and I spent a lot of time talking with my kids and their dad about what this would take.

I am honored to know that my entire family has a deep faith in me, and is squarely behind me in this persuit. With that go-ahead, the fire was lit, and I committed again to trying out for the 2016 National Team.

(My amazing family, we support each other in all of our crazy adventures. They taught me to go for it, they stand behind me, and I behind them, every step of the way!)

In order to get my skiing up to par, I hired an elite team of trainers and coaches to work with me physically, mentally, and on my skiing. I am honored that these top coaches have agreed to partner with me on my road to 2016.

They include strength coach Bill Fabrocini PT, OCS, CSCS, and former physical therapist and strength coach of Olympic Snowboard champions Gretchen Bleiler and Chris Klug. Bill is currently the rehabilitation and conditioning advisor to the Chivas de Gaudalajara professional soccer team n Mexico, and strength coach to professional cyclist Tejay Van Garderen. (Bill Fabrocini at the Aspen Club)

Mental Performance Coach Thomas Crum is an author and presenter in the fields of conflict resolution, peak performance, and stress management. He is known throughout the world for his interactive live presentations and his three best-selling books. Recent clients include the NFL’s Miami Dolphins and the Navy SEALs. (Tom Crum delivering inspiration and strength)

Technical Skiing Coach Jonathan Ballou is a current member of the PSIA National Alpine team, and spends his northern hemisphere winters as the Training Manager for the Ski & Snowboard Schools of Aspen/Snowmass and as an Examiner and Alpine Committee Chair for PSIA-Rocky Mountain Division. In the other winter (deep south), Jonathan works as a trainer for the Rookie Academy and an examiner and education coordinator for the New Zealand Snowsports Instructors Alliance.(Jonathan Ballou doing what he does best.)

Training Partners and mentors Kurt Fehrenbach and Megan Harvey were both members of the PSIA National Alpine Team, examiners in the RM division, and current trainers for the ski schools of Aspen/Snowmass.(the unstopable Megan Harvey, my mentor, friend, and faith fuel cell.)
(Kate and Kurt atop Geissler Peak in 2010, training for the 2012 tryouts)

Master Bootfitter Brent Amsbury is the key link in the chain. I can be as strong, present and ready as possible, but without his incredible skill, I wouldn't be able to make a single turn. (Brent Amsbury, Master Bootfitter)

Each one of these outstanding coaches has agreed to put their name next to mine, standing by me in my persuit of my goal, while they are all striving to achieve their own goals in their own lives. I am incredibly honored to be associated with them, and am amazed at the depth of dedication they have to me. Many of them donate their time to my training and mentorship, and that is a gift that I could never ever repay.

I have worked this team since January of 2015, and the results in my presentation, preparation, and execution under pressure are incredible. In April of 2015 I went to the Examiner Selection in Vail and had my best showing to date in a high level selection mostly due to working with this incredible coaching staff.

I feel confident that if I can continue to work hard with this coaching staff for the next year, I will be a strong candidate for selection at the 2016 National Alpine Team Selection in Snowbird, Utah, as well as for the 2016 Examiner Hiring selection.

Unfortunately, training at this level for a year is incredibly expensive, not just for me, but for all athletes who aspire to this goal.

If you are able to contribute to my training fund, in gratitude, I will send you a Kate's Team 2016 T-Shirt or Mug of your choice.

(it's likely the shirt and mug will have this image on it, or one very similar. Because what could be more awesome than a unicorn that snorts flames, ridden by a bad-ass cat?)

(Details on minimum donation for gifts are at the go fund me site http://www.gofundme.com/katesteam2016)

Thank you for your time and energy, and all of the support I have recieved over the years!

If you would like to know more about supporting other instructor athletes and the PSIA National Team in general, please visit: https://www.thesnowpros.org/Interski2015.aspx

Kate Howe

Uncover Colorado features Kate Howe (Thanks, Lisa!)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 23:57:00 +0000

Kate Howe: Ski Instructor, Yoga Teacher, Massage Therapist, Woman of the World

JANUARY 22, 2015 By LISA MERCER

Aspen Colorado ski instructor Kate Howe has a blog called Skiing in the Shower. That alone should spark your interest. Adventurous, spiritual yet surprisingly down-to-earth, her blog name is just one of the things that makes her stand out among the red ski jackets. Need inspiration? For the full article Read on!

Happier. Not happiest. Just happier, every day.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 00:54:00 +0000

What holds you back? Is it you? Is it someone else? Is it you thinking what others might think? Is it an old idea, something that happened a long time ago?

Why do you think you can't, or shouldn't do that thing that you secretly wish you were capable of? We explore these concepts in Happier!

https://www.facebook.com/events/742385499167529/

A week-long retreat at Samahita Retreat from May 30 - June 6. Come explore where your limitations come from, and begin to reframe them for Happier living. Teachers: Tamara Gundrum and Kate Howe.

For more information, visit: http://www.samahitaretreat.com/guest-teacher-happier-unpacking.html

The Mosquito Knows my Secret.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 09 Dec 2014 15:56:00 +0000

It’s 3:45 in the morning, and it’s the mother f***ing mosquito that has woken me up, not my alarm. Fifteen minutes early. At 3:45 in the morning, after a couple of weeks, those fifteen minutes have become something that is precious. I am, needless to say, annoyed at this little bug, who seems to have developed a fondness for reckless flying close to sleeping ears.

Initially, when I decided to stay, I had thought it would be the getting up in the morning that I would come to regret. I thought about what it meant to stay in India, after being on the road again for eight months this year, both my children in tow, seeing birthdays and American Holidays pass in three different countries, our feet crusted with exploration, but ungrounded in permanence.

This is why you do it really. I mean. We think we know what's going on and then we look outside and this guy is walking by. "Good morning madame." Well, good morning to you, too.

Most of the time we stay somewhere just long enough to feel like we live there before the next thing moves us on. It is, as Bodhi has discovered, both a blessing and a curse. We aren’t tourists, we live in places too long. We aren’t residents, once we have routine, family and friends, we are unmooring and saying our goodbyes.

The rhythm of this strange life is stressful, but rewarding and beautiful for all of us. And at 3:45 in the morning, when the bug is in my ear and the wailing of morning prayers has started down the road and the sound of water offerings and kitchen noises has already begun, everything feels acutely unfamiliar. Sometimes in a traveler’s adventure kind of way, but this morning in particular I am feeling it in a deep, heart felt, longing to be home kind of a way.

Longing to be home led me here... and this time when we leave, all of what we found at the end of this path (which was just a beginning) comes with us.

We all go through it over the course of our journey. The boys feel is more often than I do, or they express it more acutely at least. But on the flip side, they’ve learned to surf, sung and danced and slept over at Essica and Neve’s house, saved and lost kittens, fed a baby tiger, learned to eat street food and know how to order dinner in four different languages.

I try to remember that as I take another swing at the mosquito, knowing it is futile, there has been one, just one, mosquito in our bedroom between the hours of 8pm and 5am every single night since we got here, and no amount of incense nor prostrations keeps this creature away. It is a test of patience and sleeping skills.

He is also a gift of sorts, I suppose. Not because I get an extra fifteen minutes to drink my coffee before heading to the Shala in the still-dark morning, but because he makes me voice the question that wants to come out so badly; “What am I DOING here?”

And it’s not HERE, in this location. It’s DOING. In general, what kind of choices am I making, how do I think this is going to turn out? Why in the world am I still here?

In the strange, because it is unlike ours, in the different, in the same. There is a mass of humanity everywhere trying to make sense of it all. And we are in it, watching the sense making, working on our own.

This morning, the mosquito revealed to me that I want to go home. The mosquito makes me want to run away. He is that powerful. He brings to the surface in those fragile hours when I haven’t got quite enough rest all the little stories that are sitting right under the surface. I am ready to disappoint, to cut and run. I want to wander into the next room and pour my heart out to someone, but we live alone. I wish for an emergency that would be a big enough excuse not to go to practice. I wish for a boss at Aspen who had said, “NO. Be home on this date or lose your job.” I wish the only affordable ticket home was tomorrow.

But none of that is the case. And the only reason I am feeling it is because the thing I want to run from is fear. Of myself and my worth and my capacity. I am in the middle, still and always but at the moment acutely, of transformation. As are most people who make the three month journey to Mysore. I didn’t know it would happen when I came here, and I didn’t come here for it to happen. I came here to pay my respects to my teacher’s teacher. I thought we’d make a pilgrimage. To pop in and out. I thought we’d come say hi.

Transformation seems to come so easily for them, even as they long for familiarity, their realties warp more easily than mine does. They adapt, they embrace.

About a week into our stay here, Bodhi began to practice. And then, Saraswathi, the 73 year old guru that Ethan, Bodhi and I are studying with walked by me, pointed at me and said, “You are doing full primary serial? You are going back by yourself tomorrow. Possible.” Two days after that, she asked me to stay and assist her in the shala.

This is an enormous honor. Something that people wait for years for. Other than Bodhi climbing on her lap and kissing her after every practice, we didn’t have a lot tying us together, other than her faith in my broken body.

After about two weeks of wondering if that is what she actually asked me, and getting some translation from her then current assistant, I realized it was real, she wanted me to assist, along with three other very competent long time practitioners. It would take four of us to replace David, who would be leaving December 1. David is 70 years old and had been a student of Saraswathi’s father, Sri. K. Pataabi Jois, for 36 years. I would begin tomorrow.

The shala at the end of practice. Only two remains. She has dismissed her assistants. She doesn't need to be here. She's 73. She has a nice house and she could go watch soap operas all day. But she doesn't. She is here to the end, assisting Marichasana C. Again.

As I was nodding yes, all kinds of wonderings about deserving came up. I questioned her sanity. I questioned my competence, I worried about other yoga students more deserving and more qualified than myself. I worried about my kids staying in India for another month, I worried about my job at home, which I love and miss, and my family and friends at home, and I worried about whether this choice would undo everything I’ve worked for or somehow help me along my path.

“Well, you don’t really have a choice, do you?” My friend, Kieran said. “You kind of have to stay, don’t you?” I knew he was right.

This morning, those wonderings are louder than usual. Being “trained up” by Saraswathi consists of showing up every morning and wondering if I’m actually helping. She has a fondness for shouting “No, no, NO!” across the room. “Hand is NOT correct.” She will say. She calls you by the name you are in, “Kormasana foot is not correct.” or the posture that your student is in.

Evenings are stretching for Dewi Pada, rolling of old stiff muscles and broken bones, daily prayers, practices, contemplations, tea, snuggles and early bed for all of us.

She calls her Senior assistant, Jessica, by her name. She calls my son, Bodhi, by his name. Everyone else is “Bujipidasana” or “You”. I imagine this must be what it was like to be trained up by Cal Cantrell on the ski field. I think of Squatty and Weems. I think of Michael Hickey. I think of my figure skating coach.

Every day I have been entering the shala wondering if she regrets asking me and really doesn’t want me to help or find me that helpful, every day I have to step over that and into my competency, trusting her choice and doing the job she has given me as well as I can do it. I am an empty vessel. I am an empty vessel. I am on receive, I am a beginner, I am listening.

At first it was hard to know if she was talking to me, or to the student I was adjusting. Eventually I realized that when she calls out “NO!” and comes over and takes the student from you, she is teaching you how she wants it done. She teaches the student what to do, and your job is to stand and watch her teach the student, thereby learning how the adjustment should be done.

There are instances which occur where I am told “No, you don’t do it like that.” And where she then uses the same technique I was told not to use on the next person.

I am useless, I want to think. I am amazed at how easily the ideas of incompetence come to the surface. I want to be good for her. I want to ease her burden and be helpful to the students. I want to deserve this. But all of that want fills up time and energy. My job is to move efficiently through the room. Yesterday, I put seventeen people into Supta Kormasana. Last night, I put a hundred of them into it in my dreams, as I was moving through my dream world. My dream was all over India, I was talking to the boys, we were eating and driving and climbing, and we would stop and keep talking and I would tie whoever was prone before me into Supta Kormasana as we continued the conversation. I think I even put a dead cockroach into Supta Kormasana in my dream.

I kind of want to feel like this for her, like I've got it. I'm a cat on a unicorn, I've got it harnessed. But that's not what she needs, and its probably not realistic anyway, as awesome as it would be...

When I feel this desire to attach to the thought that I am useless and be rescued from it by some clue from her that she is glad to have me, I realize that is my ego, this is a klesha, this is wrong thinking, this is in the way.

I am an empty vessel. I need to be open, I need to be listening. I literally open my eyes wider. I don’t look to her, I look around the room and try to find the thing that I know I can help. I am aware I’ve been standing still too long. I want to be useful, but my job is not to hurry, but to be accurate.

Maybe she shows me the same adjustment that she tells me not to give for a reason. Maybe there is a nuance I am missing. Like when Jonathan tells me I’m still twisting my ski before I tip it on my turn to the right, even though I can’t feel it. Maybe I need to let go of wanting to be good at this and just learn. Or maybe it will eventually be okay for me to use that adjustment technique on someone, but I need to use a different one first, or understand more first, or touch more bodies first.

Bodhi decides to go deep for a while, I came in while he was waiting for his chai. Who knows if he is flying space ships in his mind or visiting his own internal galaxy, he is pretty chill, and that's a good place to be.

Its hot in the room, there are maybe 30 people per batch, and there are four batches practicing. I practice in the second batch and assist the last two. The other assistants practice early and are already assisting when I crack the door open while its still dark outside.

Saraswathi has been playing with Asana since she was five years old. She has been assisting her father since she was 17, and teaching on her own since she was 35. She has laid her hands on over 800,000 bodies if she touched everyone in her room every day, and by extension of her assistants, who are hand picked and trained up by her, she has.

I reach in my mind for the ability to let go of attachment to needing this to be about me. What does Saraswathi want? She doesn’t need an ego. She needs an extra pair of hands. She needs me to be who she needs me to be. To be standing in front of the person when they stand up for Uttita Hasta. To know the names of the postures, the order they are in, to be able to speak in these terms instantly.

“You. How much you know? How many asanas you are doing?” This is Kanata for “How long have you been practicing yoga and how far in the series have you gone before coming here?”.

They get to sleep till 8. I'm not jealous. I chose this. (Just keep telling yourself that...)

All of this is coming again this morning, and today for the first time since I began, I don’t want to go through the exhausting exercise of stepping over my fear, doing the work on myself so I can be clean, open and present for her and her students.

I put the water on for coffee, and go get in the cold shower, which we are lucky to have as many folks just use a bucket and a pail. The shower head is thoughtfully aimed for the top of the average Indian person’s head, and so hits me squarely between the shoulders.

I’m waking up. The longing is still in there. I want to run away. I don’t want to have to show up. Oh, that’s what it is. When I’m not assisting, I can be sick, I can be sore, I can be only about me. Now, I’ve made a commitment. And because Saraswathi shows up every single day, so do I. She is teaching me.

I dry off, mad at myself that I took this on. Did I have it to give? Did I know what it would mean? I’ve had jobs before where you have to show up. I’ve been through ski exams with fevers and selections fresh out of surgery, but those were directly related to gain. My own personal gain.

This is a dark, sweaty, silent room. This is about giving. Giving myself to her so that she can have some small rest, and giving myself to the students so they can practice more. There is no prize, award, certificate. There were two days in a row where she didn’t correct me, and I couldn’t tell if it was because she found me hopeless or because I was doing it right. Those two days were useful for letting go of fear and doing the best I could do until I heard otherwise.

I think about what Ethan said as we drove up the road to the Shala in Bali about three weeks after he started this July. “Mom, when does yoga end?” Ah… well, never. It doesn’t end. And it won’t get any easier. It will change, and your relationship and purpose for Asana will change, but the yoga doesn’t end.

I pour the coffee into the french press and pull on my leggings. Apparently, we are going to yoga. I watch my body go through the preparations.

There is an origin to ritual, a discipline created by sincere repetition, a commitment by clarity of mind. This is true in all religions and practices. Somewhere it often becomes dogma. My duty is to stay connected. Here and on the mat.

I light the incense and look at the Buddha. I let my raging human mind run for a moment, watching what it wants to attach to: still wanting to run, still stirred so easily by wanting to be at home, where I don’t have a fever, wanting to be in a clean place with good sanitation, wanting to feel stable, wanting to feel held, wanting to be with the friends in my life who are loading the lift in Aspen and getting ready to celebrate Christmas… my god, what am I doing way over here in India?

I wait, watching, and then I enter the ritual. This is new, also. I have taken refuge in the teachings of the Buddha, I have committed to a teacher, and I have promised to cary out daily prayers and practices. I have been waiting for this for a long, long time. The ritual is new. The practice is not. I say my prayers, a strange thing to do after so many years of resisting the idea of praying. I focus on the words of my teacher, on the words of the prayer as I stumble over another new language, my tongue trips on the Tibetan words, but they don’t sound strange to me. The bells are ringing in the hindu temple outside.

I prostrate myself, strange after so many years of worrying about idolatry. I feel my teacher in my heart again, guiding me through the minefield of the past and into the quiet, I embrace my new understanding. I say thank you to Geshele, to Lekden for helping me understand. I feel better, connected. The fear and longing are right there, but from an observable distance. I smile at myself, I asked for this. I went to teacher training. I asked Paul how to navigate my future, I asked Dylan how to find a teacher. I did what they said. And here we are, and these can either be thumb screws of intensity or they can be what happens when you put yourself in the fire of change. You feel the tapas, the work. And you let it mould you. You do not douse the fire, you do not run away.

The coffee is ready. I feel better about drinking it since Saraswathi told me to feed it to Ethan in the morning. Apparently Guruji used to feed it to Sharath, her son, when he was thirteen and lazy.

But also curious, willing, open, connected...

I roll out my hamstrings, which feel just as tight as they did five years ago even though I can put my leg behind my head now, so they must be much looser. I sit in the cold, institutional green of our Indian apartment, surrounded by instructions taped to the discolored cement telling us to turn off the lights and the fans, and begin to breathe. The pressure of want, the attachment to my desire to go home eases.

Pranayama is a practice that my teacher Paul gifted us with. My experience with it is interesting, my world dissolves when I begin, I feel like I go very far inward to a calm, expansive place where fear is observable differently than it is from a contemplative place. It looks like a blip on the vata read out of my breath, and then it smooths, and disappears because the breath, the connection, is more powerful than my mind is.

I stand up, my knees are achy, an hour and a half on the cold floor. I’ve made it through my preparations, and every morning when I stand up I realize they are truly cleansing. I feel like I have washed my body, my mind, from fear. I haven’t even left the apartment yet. I kiss the boys, my Indian friend Pradeep will show up on his tricked out super bike later and wake them, feed them chai and bring them to the shala. It’s only 5:45, they don’t leave till 8:15.

And then I go to practice, coasting down the hill in the dark on my bike, the street dogs are out, the women are making water offerings and salt drawings on the driveways, the streetlights are still on, the sky is just turning pink.

This is Lekden's favorite street dog. He survives and shows up even when Lekden is sure he has had it this time. I haven't got mange, I've got all my hair, and food to eat. I can show up. For her, for them and for me.

The coconut man is sitting with a knit cap on, only one person has finished and is drinking. She looks like she just came out of a swimming pool. I walkup the stairs and wade through a field of flip flops left outside her door. I can hear the breathing from here. Most days I reach for the handle of the door with gratitude, once I’m through the gate and mounting the stairs, I’m already in it.

The mosquito was powerful today, I wonder what my practice will be like. I wonder if she will judge my worth for assisting by the power of my practice. Since I have spent the last three and a half weeks recovering from Dengue fever, my practice has come and gone in strength as the fever waxes and wanes. I’m foolish to worry, it’s been three weeks, and she hasn’t fired me yet. I love this woman, I realize, as I pull open the door.

The dim lights are on, the oil lamps are burning on the altar, the bodies are drenched in sweat and twisted into the advanced postures of the intermediate series, or folded deeply into the most athletic portion of the primary series. I squeeze through the bodies, like a Rube Goldberg machine that’s already in motion, kicked off by sitting up in bed this morning, there is no stopping now.

I roll out my mat and glance at the clock, still wondering how my body will feel once it is truly moving. Will it be a strong practice? A tough practice? Ritual takes its place again and hands come to heart. I close my eyes. “Vande gurunam…”

And then the first sun salutation, and again everything stops. There is the breath and the immediate relief of movement. My body begins to feel alive in a very essential, elemental way. I don’t care what anyone thinks of my practice, each breath wraps around each movement and each movement is for healing my body. I’m grateful when the anonymous hands appear and help, but I don’t expect them. I am inside. A piece of me files that away for when I step into the role of assisting later. I don’t even know they are there. I’m not wishing for them. They are forces like gravity breath and bhanda, they are grace in the midst of practice.

It turns out to be a “good” one. Why did I want to run away again? I roll up my mat and go into the spare bedroom to do the finishing postures. People are practicing in her office. I sit up for breathing, I wonder momentarily as I fall inside, deep into my sacrum and my spinal column, as I disappear down the rabbit hole and dissolve just for ten breaths, what I was running from? Was it the power of change? The quiet fly wheel spinning for everyone in this room?

I change my clothes and step back into the room and watch for a moment. It is silent from this perspective, but I have compassion for the noise and story going on inside each head in that room, punctuated by moments that can feel eternal of blissful silence.

What is needed? How can I be helpful? All I hear is breathing, because the sound of my own instruction to myself, the voices of my teachers in my practice, the voice of judgement and the teacher removing that judgement are sleeping now. There is the sound of breath, and the gentle plop of feet as they jump back and through back and through 120 times in their two hours.

I let go again and wrap my arms around a body in the shape of a triangle where someone is peeking around the corner rather than rolling up and open. I fall into assisting, aware that she is watching, aware that I am being “trained up”, and I straddle the line between doing what I know and knowing that I don’t know anything.

I am a beginner in Saraswathis world, I am a beginner as a human. I am a beginner as a Buddhist, I am a beginner. And that’s what the mosquito was trying to whisper in my ear. It’s hard to be a beginner, there’s lots to learn, it takes a lot of effort. It’s easy to rest on the security that you are valued and know what you are doing.

Today, I am grateful to the mosquito. He was right all along.

YogicPhotos.com Gave us a little love...

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Nov 2014 05:52:00 +0000

We had the good fortune to spend the day in Mysore, India with Christine Love Hewitt, and she posted some of the gems to her Tumblr, here.

Backbending in Mysore, India. Unattached but not complacent, slowly growing, slowly healing, standing on my own.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 07:11:00 +0000

Today, I waited at the end of my mat with my hands crossed over my heart. This is the second day since Saraswathi walked by and said “Tomorrow you are dropping back,” taking me completely by surprise.

Me? With the notoriously weak back bend?

I have the back bend that every teacher looks at and says, “Oh.” Over the years, I’ve let a story grow in my mind about how my back bending practice exposes me as a fraud, shows my age, about the fact that my degenerating disc in my low back will never allow me to go anywhere, really in my practice.

I have a story that says that when a teacher looks at my back bend, they walk away mentally, I have a story that says I need help with every back bend, and that really pushing up, really opening, really being a backbend will be an arduous ten year process of proving them wrong. And during that time, I will likely either hurt myself proving them right, or never get there. I wonder if the lesson isn’t letting go of wanting to back bend, accepting my age. I think about all that yoga has given me and wonder if I’m not greedy.

Which is, of course, an awful lot of story. And anyone who studies yoga will tell you that “proving them wrong” is not a very yogic path through any asana. And that rumination won’t help anything. And that kria yoga, just doing it, will teach my body some things. And that I also need to let go of wanting it. But not let go of practicing with sincere effort. It is sometimes a tricky place to live, between desire and acceptance.

Before coming to Mysore, India to study at the feet of the daughter of the founder of Ashtanga Yoga on a sweaty rug thrown over a hard marble floor at an ungodly hour in the morning with a hundred other people right next to me, I did about fifteen minutes of back bending prep before I ever dared to push up into Urdva Danurasana. And then another half an hour or so of prop and teacher assisted practice.

My shoulders are still weak from the paralysis that followed breaking my neck in 2008. My arm muscles don’t fire properly, they don’t recruit all the way, there are tears that never repaired, there’s pain, there’s sporadic and unpredictable weakness as I try to haul my body, which has suddenly fallen into a gravity well and weighs a hundred times more than it did a minute ago, off the floor and onto the palms of my hands. I don’t really believe that I can do it. And then I do it, and then I don’t believe I can stay there, and then I do it and then I don’t believe I can straighten my arms, and then I do it and then I give in to the story and lower back down and lay there dreading the next two back bends to come.

After all the prep, I’d move to the wall and begin to slowly press up against the it, trying to make my sternum kiss the wall like those very bendy people. I want to move my body this way, I want to feel the sensation of open and upside down.

In my desire to teach my back to bend, I’d gasp and catch my breath and hold it as I attempted to relax my butt and use my useless arms. (more story, more story… but the story is true, but the story is just a story…). I’d be gripped with fear that my arms would fail and I’d land on my head, hurting my neck, I’d worry that someone would come over and take away my practice and tell me I was too old, too stiff, too injured to try this. I’d hope they would come over and say it. I’d struggle on the floor, trapped between desire and complacency, looking for the heart of purpose in the asana, and stuck in my physical body and the need to motivate it without attaching to outcome, but still needing to know where I was going. It was exhausting.

I’d look frantically for Arielle, who would come over and speak to me in the reassuring language of anatomy, and tell me muscle by muscle, over riding story, my fear suspended and held in her depth of knowledge, it wont hurt this time because Arielle knows… she knows how to do it and how to tell me piece by piece, exhale, bandah, tail bone, feet, breathe, space… and the pain would go and suddenly one day I was up, I was open, and I was crying realizing I could, I could do it, I could bend without pain. And then I tried the next day and was crushed with the realization that I could do it… but only if she was there.

I’d look frantically for Amy, who would come over and tell me in her most nurturing voice, to calm down, to lay down, not to try so hard. She’d hold me and ask me where my bandah was and why I was trying so hard and why it was important. I’d look at her and think, I only know how to do this the hard way. I’d wonder if I should let go of wanting it, if it mattered at all. And through this the story would quiet and I’d feel shame for having attached, and I’d watch the other story go marching through, my practice is just vehicle maintenance, it doesn’t matter where I am on the continuum as long as I’m healing and opening and practicing with sincerity.

And I hear that I’m 43 years old now, and that this is a practice that was designed for young boys, and that I don’t need to get anywhere, and I know all of this… and I fight against it wanting to say, yes, I know, but allowing this lets me teeter on the edge of complacency… and I want my body to grow like my heart grows, i want to encourage it because when I do it feels better, and I feel better, I don’t want to acquiesce, I want to unlatch but there is a difference between unattached observance of my physical practice, which is full of effort and sincerity and casual apathy, the equivalent of a physical spiritual bypass. Eventually we don’t need asana. But I am an infant in an ancient and broken body, and I need it. I need to keep opening now.

And after that necessary journey and a bit of compassion has crept into my practice and the fear is down and the rest is allowed, I look for Summer, who says, “Kate stop all the stories and just do it. Again.” She holds my feet to the fire, like a person who doesn’t know pain, who doesn’t know what its like to be in a broken, old, healing body, who was born with the ability to put her feet behind her head. I look at her and she doesn’t know that I can’t do it, and so I do.

I walk down the wall, I walk up the wall, I walk down the wall, I walk up the wall. I don’t think I can, but she thinks I can, or rather, she doesn’t know that I can’t and so I do. And around the circle I go again, I can only if they are there.

And then I go to Laos and spend two weeks practicing with my friend in the hotel room, laughing through a sincere practice, just easy, the door is open, the bell is ringing, the monks are collecting food on the way to the monastery and we are sweaty and upside down and twisting and binding. The curiosity goes up, the need to accomplish goes down. Doron tells me to move my feet further away, to make it easier, and sudenly, I'm up, on my own, and its good, its blissful. “Now that looks like a backbend. That is beautiful.” he says.

And the story of fraud is exploded into a million pieces. I can make a backbend. A beautiful backbend. One that looks like a backbend. I savor these early mornings, just the two of us, drinking coffee on the balcony wrung out and happy, each of us having improved. We make a very good team. I never want it to end. This has been my favorite practice, in any place, ever.

And it ends. And I miss it, but I’m changed by it. There is a quiet ness that is some sort of a combination of what Amy was trying to tell me and what Summer can make me do. And in my body is the wisdom of Arielle. And Doron mixed them all together and made everything quiet.

And then I came to Mysore. And here, you can not do anything that is not in the series. So there is no prep. And there are no ropes, or blocks, or wall walking. Or Arielle or Amy or Summer. There is just the rug and the Indian lady walking around and yelling, “How much you know? What you did?”.

For the first week, I really wasn’t sure why I was here, why I had wanted to come to Mysore for so long, what it meant to be here, and what I had done to my practice by being here. Had I doomed myself to a slowly unraveling discipline? Would my backbends, built so slowly and carefully on the scaffolding of my support system, go away completely?

I knew before I came that it was a possibility. And Amy and Arielle helped me with that, suggesting that I go back to doing just half of the series, resting my body, removing expectation, and just finding work in seeking the bandah and the river of breath.

Over the first week, I began to get to know Saraswathi through my boys, who both started practicing. We chatted about her life as a girl, her journey as a mother and a teacher, and and female Indian teacher. I admire this beauty, this fierce independent woman, and I’m often overwhelmed with the huge desire to hug her. And I can’t, so instead I touch her feet. But Bodhi does, he leaps without fear into her arms, and gets kissed on the head as she calls him a good boy. Ethan is somewhere in between, touching her feet and then staining up and taking her into his long arms, he’s taller than she is already.

And we speak, briefly, about my neck, and the big metal plate on my spine, and that its okay to do headstand, but not to do chakrassana, and about why I don’t always do all the chataranga as my shoulders fail occasionally, but I’m working on it.

I get this amazing feeling from her, she has no expectation other than that the practice will heal my body over time. She seems to understand paralysis well, she has grace and patience for the weakness that develops and tells me to take it easy on days when the muscle isn’t working well, and to do all on days that it is.

I spend the first week finding my way, mostly on my own, somewhere in between alone with my breath and pulled on by my kid’s sudden presence in the shala.

One day, Bodhi is next to me and Ethan is in front of me and on the other side is the wall. Ethan is sleeping in Chataranga and Bodhi is standing at the front of his mat, confused. I am confused myself with my need to be supportive of the boys new and growing practice and my own need to dive back into my own practice. I miss Doron. I miss my growth. I miss Laos, and I don’t know why I’m here.

I spend the second week surprised as Saraswati tells me to do the next posture, and then the next. And on Friday she says, “Next week, Monday, do all.”

And I do, and it feels good, and I’m strong enough. But I miss my back bending practice and I worry that it is gone forever and the rest of me is opening and changing but that isn’t. I’m clinging to what was, and wondering what could have been. People from Aspen are calling me and asking me if I’m ever coming home, and I’m quiet in the middle of not knowing much about anything.

Ethan and Bodhi and I sit on the porch one morning and talk about the fact that practice is meditation and that “Hey mom?” isn’t working for me in the shala. Ethan suggests that I don’t practice near them. Bodhi has a tough day the next day. And the day after, they set up together, and I set up in front of Ganesh and go deep inside, letting go of what might have been, taking the gifts from Samahita and Laos with gratitude, and, like a paper lantern into the sky, I let my heart breathe and all things other than the gifts float away and there is only the breath, and there is my bandah.

And my arms wrap around my body suddenly in ways they haven’t before, catching in postures, binding, holding, balancing. And today, I find myself standing at the end of my mat, waiting to drop back.

David comes, and takes my hips and tells me to go back. The stories flashes through my head in fast motion, each piece of it having a hook I could grab, like a rope full of barbs, each barb a viable excuse. But I know I’m not going to touch the floor today, so its okay, I don’t have to worry. And then he says, “Okay, next one, hands on the ground.”

And I don’t have time to worry about it or think about it, I breathe, I rise, I go back, I see the ground, and there is Arielle in my practice and my back relaxes and I remember releasing and crying from joy that I didn’t have to have fear and crying from the sudden feeling of letting go of all my fear, and there is Amy telling me it doesn’t really matter anyway, its all okay, and then there’s Summer when my hands hit the mat and she tells me to stay there, she pins my hands to the ground, and then there’s my friend Doron telling me it’s beautiful, its a beautiful back bend. And I stand back up and smile at David, holding me in this very gentle space.

I can do it. Everything else is just a story. And as I stand, I think about asana and I go through it’s purpose. And I realize, again, that the reason we want the next posture can be because we are curious about the gifts the practice is giving to our bodies, and we wonder, from an observational place, what is possible. And when the mind wraps around the staff of the practice, all else is still.

And then the only reason we couldn’t is because we didn’t know we could. And its neither good nor bad, nor important, or unimportant, it is only the work, and within the work there is freedom.

Swimming the raging river in Cambodia

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 02:17:00 +0000

As we step out of the car at the end of the red dirt road at the top of the mountain, I hear Ethan say, “Oh, my God!” I follow his pointing finger across muddy puddles to a river running fast and thick. Seven local children, four of them naked, one in ragged blue shorts, and two in underwear play at swimming across this flooded menace.

Their smiles are at odds with the danger of the river, this is a game. The boy in the blue shorts, no more than six years old, is halfway up the branchless tree trunk, the slick bark gripped by his muscular feet. He has tied a vine to the split branch above him, and in his sucess, pumps the air with his fist and grins over at me. Ethan and Bodhi run to the river to watch. It is September outside Siem Reap, Cambodia, height of the monsoon season, where the floodwaters rise and fall over ten meters as the earth strains to contain the deluge.

My boys walk toward the bank, unsure if they are allowed to join, Ethan’s eyes shining with curiosity. “Ethan, Ethan, Don’t go in. Don’t get near the water. It’s dangerous.” I say, with as much authority as I can muster. The glee of the kids shouting for their friend, emerging dripping from a short float down the rapid which pounds in the center of the river does not do much to support my statement. The water can kill you.The first rule is, Don’t make another victim.

“But go ahead and make friends,” I call after them, walking slower, wondering if I should stand down water of the group, knowing I am being silly, obviously these children can swim, this is their daily play, this monster of a flood their friend.

The oldest boy, maybe 13, takes the end of the vine and throws himself into the raging brown churning water. My heart leaps as the boy jumps in, the Swift Water Rescue Certified American Wilderness First Responder and medical insurance carrier is appalled and scared. Don’t they know what flood waters can do? That this water is to be feared and avoided? Don’t they know that water, only six inches deep, moving at this speed, can sweep a strong man off his feet and cary him faster down stream than we could ever run on the banks? What would it do to this young boy?

Ethan hoots on the bank at the boy, Bodhi stands shyly behind his brother, unsure. The boy floats at a ferry angle to the opposite bank, letting the vine become taught. He shouts to his friends, and they shout back, laughing. The youngest ones, naked and tanned dark brown laugh back at him, leaping around in their excitement, anxious to take their turn.

The boy across the river faces upstream, holding the vine tight and lets the current swing him into the middle of the river, waves big enough to surf in a kayak slap him in the face. He swings his feet underneath him, propelling himself against something on the river’s bottom, and begins to swing toward the safety of our bank. I can not reconcile the laughing friends playing in the sunshine with what should look like a dramatic and dangerous rescue scenario of someone’s beloved son.

The boy releases the vine and floats perfectly into the deep eddy below the tree, grinning in victory. Cheers raise from the bank, and the next child, squirming with excitement, dances with impatience for the vine to be hauled out of the river by the tree climber, and handed to him. The older boy climbs the bank, satisfied, and tired. The rest of the children run up and down, looking over the situation, deciding where to jump in, what line to take. They are waving and smiling and gesturing to Ethan, who looks over his shoulder at me. I look at the water. Ethan is a strong swimmer. But only 50 feet away the water turns white from bank to bank and goes sharply around a corner. In my mind’s eye, I can see his small feet, his brown knees flung into the air as my boy disappears from sight. I shake my head gently at him, but gesture for him to play on the bank. “We will swim at the waterfall, baby.” I say. He smiles, accepting. My heart relaxes a little in my chest.

We spend the rest of the morning tromping around the river and the local shrines, our new friends in tow. Eventually, the girls join the boys, now that the boys are finished playing in the river, and produce two Lemurs out of a purple Dora the Explorer backpack. One thing ubiquitous in our journeys around South East Asia: all merchandise for children is branded, plastic, cheap and bright, everything from the non DOT approved motorcycle helmets to slippers, shirts, journals for drawing, shorts, everything. Angry Birds glare at us from the seas of incredibly cheap, bright clothing when we go to the supermarket to try to replace the boy’s underwear. Ethan shrugs and takes what’s available. Bodhi is offended. “It’s all for babies.” he says.

The girl holds her hands out to Bodhi and he, afraid of the girl, because he is afraid of people he does not know in general, is charmed by the creature. Half monkey half ferret, its long nose snuffles him while its round eyes gaze up at his. He holds his hands out and the lemur scampers across and climbs up his shoulder, burrowing in his hair. The girl laughs and Bodhi laughs with her, feeling the tiny feet of the exotic creature and the silky fur.

I look at the scene for a moment. None of the children have asked us for anything. They don’t have much, they are dirty and barefoot, and the clothes they’ve pulled on are dirty and torn. Why they aren’t begging is confusing me. We arrived by car, we are tourists, we have what they lack.

After playing all morning with the kids, we climb in the car to go to Beng Malea, a temple falling down, unrestored, and being swallowed by the jungle. I ask our guide, Thom, if we can give our donuts to the kids. He looks at me. “Yes, but Kate, how do we give one donut to eight kids?” I look at him, unsure if he is trying to tell me politely not to encourage begging, if what I’ve asked is wrong or offensive.

“You want to give?” he asks. I nod. The boys are in the car, their noses stuck in their kindles already, ready for the next drive. I am ashamed for a moment, but also glad we had this encounter. They boys are unaware of the level of poverty, they played with the kids like kids, walking, exploring, sharing. I’m caught again. How do I explain the disparity in lifestyle without making my boys feel nothing but guilt? How do I nurture gratitude and appreciation for what they have, and a desire to share their bounty? Bodhi is prone to paralyzing guilt, which helps no one, making him only retreat further into himself.

He also appears not to see the difference between himself and other children, dirty or clean. He notices rich kids, in Aspen, where we live in the winter, and feels disparity between himself and them, but not kids of his own socio economic rank (which fluctuates with the seasons) and below. I want him to know that not everyone has the bounty he has, the same way the boys above him in privilege should not take their bounty for granted. Im stuck in my own predicament.

Thom comes to my rescue. “Okay, Kate. I do it for you. When you share, share, but make sure you give some for all.” Thom, having become my teacher, takes the donuts and walks to the back of the car. He begins to tear pieces off of the donut, and each child reaches patiently for a piece. They do not fight, or argue, but receive the delicate treat with stoicism, laughing as the sugar hits their tongue. Thom saves a piece for himself and eats it, making the kids exclaim.

“Thom!” I say, appalled.

He grins at me. “What? No breakfast for me!” he laughs. We get back in the car. “When I eat with them they feel part of the group with me.” he says, more serious.

At this point in our journey, I still don’t know that Thom grew up as the reign of the Khmer Ruge was fading, that food in his nine-person family was not always available, that he has walked to school every day, that his family sacrificed for a year to buy a bicycle so he could go to University where he studied history. At this point in our journey, I still think Khmer is a bad word, rather than a word that means “Cambodian” and that all Cambodian people are Khmer people. At this point in our journey, I know that I am ignorant, but I do not know just how incredibly ignorant I am.

Holding on While Letting Go: Watching 12 years old become 13

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Jul 2014 04:55:00 +0000

I'm watching it happen right in front of me. There is a boy, lanky and lean, like a set of sinews pinned together at key points, and he is moving through a shaft of early morning light, breathing in and raising his arms, stretching his long back, tipping his head back and looking up at the bamboo and grass roof far above his head.

The bugs and birds are singing, the jungle is waking up. The roosters are incessant, but the heat hasn't started yet. The wide teak floor is smooth and cool all around him, as bodies, at least twice his age, move silently all around him.

Oh holy hamstrings, its a good thing he's starting young. Dylan takes Ethan into the next three postures.

When he exhales and moves back, his pointy elbows jut up toward the ceiling like shark teeth and his body, too long for how much strength he has, flops in sections to the mat.

There is an awkward grace to his entire Surya Namaskar A, but when he jumps forward, he is suddenly light, and free. He looks up as he lands and his bright, clear blue eyes are not twelve but sixteen. He looks like he is watching the horizon from the water, the intensity of those sea colored eyes matching only the happiness that he has discovered while being pushed forward on the wave.

I knew it was coming. And it's not all the way here, but its creeping in. There are glimmers and glimpses of this big hearted man living in the skin of my giraffe like son. And there are glimmers of the cat that lives inside of him slowly edging out the giraffe.

It used to be that we would play balance games, but the fun of the game was pretending you were falling down. Yesterday, Ethan took a surfing lesson on the beach in Kuta, Bali. And his instructors, who struggled so valiantly to help Bodhi find himself last summer, looked at me with big eyes and said, "He's really good at this. Ethan should come back. He can take this seriously if he wants to."

And I thought to myself, okay, reign it in, Kate. As excited as I am about that thought, it only matters if Ethan loves it. And one lesson does not show the whole experience. So I walked away and pretended not to care, and thought, Ethan will tell me if he likes it. And Ethan came out of the water smiling and ecstatic and said, "Hey mom, I know what the Gecko meant."

In Bali, everything is an omen. Bugs that fly near you are spirits, devas, that bring what you need and take what you don't. Geckos are protectors and bearers of good luck, they rarely climb onto a person, but when they do, their thin golden shield spreads around you, blessing you.

That morning, on the motorbike on the way to breakfast, a young gecko, probably about Ethan's age in gecko years, had appeared, resting on his ankle. He stayed there for the entire ride, Ethan glancing down in wonder at this creature, happily suckered onto his leg.

Ethan finding his bliss in Bali

"I think I know what the gecko meant, mom. It was about surfing. I'm not sure how, if it meant I would get to go surfing, or find my sport, or realize I was good at surfing or what, but the Gecko was my blessing for surfing."

"So, us, do you want to come tomorrow?" I toss it out there, casually, like whatever. My heart is hoping for him that he has found this. To love a sport like surfing from such a young age... that would mean freedom when he was a big kid.

He turned, tired and sunburnt and looked at me, surprised. "Could I?"

"Yes, it would mean that you have to get a ride from one of the instructors that lives here and go by yourself to Kuta with him. You'd be by yourself most of the day, because I have to work this week. Would you want to do that?"

He was nodding before I finished talking.

Now I'm sitting in the back of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Center in Bali, which is my very favorite place to practice yoga in the world, because it is my birthplace at the strict hands of Rhada and the gentle smile of Prem, watching Ethan move into Sun Salutation B. My great friend Dylan has become Ethan's first teacher, and it is my job to let that practice be his own.

I can feel myself hoping he is working hard for his teacher, I can feel myself wanting to want him to take it seriously, because I know what a gift it can become for him, a through line of gentle strength. A community. A base for his physical self and a respite for his mind when he's working a problem in the robotics lab. A haven from his girlfriend and a place to meet one. Because I am not practicing today, I am trying not to watch Ethan as he does or does not do what Dylan is telling him to do. This is his second class. I am looking down the line too far. Let him be, let him be, let him be.

Suddenly, Ethan is my young boy again. Does he know what it means to take something seriously? To pay attention? He did this one on his own as well. He came to the shala with me and watched one day, and he thought about it, and then he asked Dylan if he would teach him.

And he's doing it. I can see his hamstrings, like tight, angry chords, keeping him from reaching the floor, and I can see him not giving up, trying again, and not being that attached at the same time. He's just in there doing yoga, and that's the right way. Whatever way it is, its between Ethan and Dylan, and I have nothing to do with it. They made a pact, and the agreement was a serious one.

Half Giraffe, Half Cat, all Ethan.

Ethan is taking up the practice of becoming a man. And taking up the Ashtanga practice, well, that is something that many grownups struggle with. When you take up this practice, you take up a daily commitment to this, it becomes a part of your becoming, it becomes as obvious as eating, sleeping, and brushing your teeth. But it never ever becomes easy.

So Ethan and Dylan had a chat after lunch, and Ethan took up the practice. He took up the practice of doing his homework, of brushing his teeth, of going to sleep when it is sleeping time, of putting down his book, he took up the practice of being responsible for his own things, he took up the practice of being on time, he took up the practice of becoming his own man, he took up the practice of Ashtanga. He signed the contract with Dylan and he is in there working hard and wondering, I am sure, why he signed up.

And today after class he will realize again just why. After his first day he said, "I don't know why but I feel so good after class! I feel light and free and happy. It was hard, it made the skin on my hands hurt, but I love it."

And after surfing for the first time, "You know I think yoga and surfing go really well together. You press up into up dog, and then you jump up into something from a sun salutation on your board, it feels just like yoga. I think the yoga helps, you know?" I do know.

And with all of this becoming of a man, at the end of the day, we go to the Ombak Bali film festival to watch the surf movies free on the beach with cold Bintang in our hands (teh botol for the boys), and glinting around Ethan's neck is a heavy silver curl from Drifter Surf Shop in Seminyak, the sign of safe passage over water. We celebrated after our long day with apple pie and coffee.

I'm sitting there on my hard plastic chair, looking at him, lanky and sun bronzed and confident, a little gnarly sand rash on his bony hip, and wondering, did I miss my chance? Is all the cuddling over? Is he suddenly and irrevocably past a certain point? Did I just watch it happen?

And then he goes running down the beach and throws a toy into the air, and I hear his old silly laugh and I see him trip over a dog, gangly still... I may have a few more months. I don't think I missed it. But I love meeting him as he begins to see who he can be.

I haven't done enough. But I have done the hardest part. I started.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Apr 2014 16:26:00 +0000

What was healed is hurt, what was light was heavy, what was deep flowing breath is shallow, breathy and undisciplined. Welcome back to Ashtanga... It is always fascinating to me to watch my mind want to walk around in that same circle of judgement.

I've been injured enough and healed enough injuries in the yoga studio to know that this, really, for me, is what yoga is. It's not the "getting good" or "getting strong" or the healing, or the fixing, but it is a powerful medicine that brings what is out of balance into balance.

Today, I felt like this. Again. I'm a bit body dismorphic, I know rationally that it's not actually how I look. But the power of judgement makes it almost real. The reality is that I'm ten pounds heavier than I was last summer. That's all. Just ten. And that's normal when you don't train and you drink wine with dinner. And its fixable, at that. By training, just a little. And smiling. And knowing that if I practice, all is coming.

I step onto my mat and feel the thoughts... why did I let my stomach get like this? How did I let myself get so heavy? Why would I do that to my practice? I feel the pressing inertia of those thoughts, like an evil other, it wants me to fail. It is so powerful, the judgement that we all have. I hate the way I look in my yoga pants, the fact that I have to wear a flowy top not to feel self conscious about my belly, and the flowy top brings to mind the fact that I'm thinking of, and judging my body.

My strong, beautiful body.

Which can be stronger, and more in balance than it currently is. Which becomes strong and in balance by doing exactly what I am doing. Standing still at the front of my mat, I am already winning the battle. Just standing still.

My mind begins to relax, and it begins to come into balance way before the body does. It will take a month for me to recognize myself again. But I'm on the path, just breathing on my mat. From a bit of a distance, without attachment, I see the spiral of judgement, I watch myself try to point out all of my flaws. And then I breathe in, and raise my arms over my head, in my own living room, just my cat sitting there, staring at me, and the sound of my roommate clicking away at his computer at the kitchen table.

There is dirty laundry in the basket in front of me. My kids ski boots are laying on the floor behind me. A pile of clothes to wash and fold and prepare for Replay for next season is on the boy's dresser (which they've drug out of their room) next to me.

As I fold in half and exhale, all of the noise fades into the back ground. The noise about me looking at my middle, the judgement about the cleanliness of my house or my ability to practice regularly for the last five months.

None of it matters. Not really. Because the antidote to all of that noise? Its right here. Exhale. Flat back, in hale, exhale, fold. Gratitude, letting go.

My tyrannical diligence in pointing out my flaws flows out with my breath and suddenly there is only the practice.

Chattaranga (the push up position posture where you lower slowly) is challenging, I've injured my left shoulder and I don't know how it is going to heal. The only thing that healed it last time was months and months of daily Ashtanga practice.

My worried mind, my monkey mind turns back on. "You should have been practicing. Then you'd be more healed and more ready for Teacher Training in 22 days."

I answer calmly, like I'm talking to Bodhi when he's losing his shit and thinking life isn't fair. "But I wasn't practicing. And I can't undo that. And here we are now. And the fact that this hurts is a good indication that we are doing the right thing."

"But, But, But..." my mind tries to argue back, begins to want to tell me that I'm heavier than I should be and that's why its too hard on my shoulder. It's my fault, its your fault, you are to blame! Shouts my cruel mind.

I remember feeling like this, just this fall. I like it when my body is strong and lean and light. It makes it easier to float, to run, to laugh, to sleep, to take my clothes off. A truth about me is that I flux through this. I don't always feel like this. I feel like this about a third of the time. And when I make the compassionate choice, that goes up. The result of being in balance is a healthier body. Which also looks good naked. I know I can't chase the physical form for its beauty. I have to chase it for its function, and let the byproduct be beauty.

I remember telling my Cert 2 candidates this year, "Its really hard to concentrate when someone is yelling at you. And if you hang out with someone who yells at you all day, eventually you either become numb, or you begin to believe them. If the person who is yelling at you all day is you, tell yourself that you'll get back to them when you are finished working hard to get better."

I exhale. I don't answer, I just modify as much as I can, reminding myself that appropriate modifications are a sign of a good, evolved practice, it means I'm capable of listening to my body and finding my place of benefit. My cat winds around my legs and nuzzles my face, tickles me with her whiskers. She's happy I'm playing on the floor. And suddenly, I am. And I'm so glad.

I'm glad because now I feel like this. Beginner's mind lacks judgement, and a child's beginner's mind is full of play, gratitude and fun. I identify more with this image than either of the two above. This feels like a picture of purpose, and the result of purpose leans in either direction on the scale of lean and strong to fat and heavy. But the physical result is a continuum. I have choice about the inner story, the inner drive. I chose this.

I don't make it to Navassana (boat) today, because eventually the chatarangas are too painful. I sit on my mat, wondering how I will find Mula Bundah (the root lock) or Udiana Bundah (the fly-up or abdominal lock) again if I can't work on my vinyassa (flow portion between assana or posture).

I remember my teacher Dylan helping me with just this issue last summer, and I am rueful because I've been here before, I worked through this problem once before. I have two emotional choices in this moment, I can be angry at being back at the beginning, or I can remember how it was I solved the problem in the past and get back to work.

I break out of the regular practice and spend ten minutes struggling through an abdominal sequence. I still haven't done enough. I get up smiling. I practiced on my own. For an hour. Plus abs. I know where my shoulder is now, and what I need to do. I resolve to go to Bikram this afternoon for the work out (Bikram has no upper body supporting postures, so it won't bother my shoulder), and for the yoga buzz, and for the community.

I haven't done enough, but what I have done was the hardest part. I started.

The Empty Space on the Mountain

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 20:38:00 +0000

Today I drove by the Highlands, and I watched the little dots of people coming down. I have friends up on that mountain today, skiing in the sunshine, some are struggling, some are training, some are playing, some are teaching, some are dragging pads and people all over the mountain. There's Barry, working hard to keep the MGR running, and Meesh cracking the whip at line up.

I haven't been on skis in a couple of days, because there is someone missing from that mountain today. His name was Jordan, and he was a bright light.

I feel fortunate to be invested in my clients, to make deep relationships with them, to be invited into their lives, to share their triumphs and their failures. I have been fortunate enough to work not only for SkiCo in this capacity, but also at the Jaywalker Lodge in Carbondale for recovering addicts, and in hospice doing massage therapy and providing compassionate touch and care for those who are at the end of their lives.

I am used to losing people, as used to it as a person gets, I suppose, because in all these lines of work, and in life in general, people die. They die of old age, of accident, of trauma, of avalanche, of mechanical failure of impact and of drugs.

Sometimes they die inside but they are still right there in front of you.

I got word a few days ago that Jordan had died. This was a kid who I worked with, who I wasn't particularly close to, no closer than any other individual I've worked with. He was a good kid, from a good family. He had a heroin addiction.

When we skied together, Jordan's smile was bright, his enthusiasm for the mountain was huge, and his affection for his sister was beautiful. His parents lost him to his addiction in the end of January.

I didn't ski with Jordan this year, I was busy and our schedules didn't mesh. I had a pending reminder to shoot him an email and see how he was doing.

For the last two weeks, I've been looking forward to getting out and skiing with my friends on Tuesday. We've all been working, and Tuesday was going to be the day. We had some national team members in town who I haven't seen in years, Kurt had the day off, so did Cindy, and we were going to make a rippin' posse of it.

Tuesday morning, almost as I walked out the door of the locker room, I learned about Jordan's death. Everything slowed down. I felt prickly all over my skin, I felt nauseous, I felt like I was floating. And then I felt normal. After all, this happens.

We headed over to the Highlands, and there was Cindy, smiling and ready to go. Hafer and Jeb Boyd were there, stoked to ski in Aspen, excited to catch up. We loaded up the lift, and Jonathan, our training manager, looked at me and said, "What's up, Kate?'

I blinked. "I had a rough morning." I answered. Even though I wasn't sure that was true, I had a surprising morning. But I felt decidedly unlike myself, a bit detached, floating. I couldn't hear what people were saying. I was happy to be with my friends, but there was this time-delay, I felt like I was about 45 seconds behind everyone.

We loaded the lift and took off, a group of happy, reunited friends freeskiing together. All I could think was that I wanted to go home and go to bed, I wanted to be under the covers, wrapped up in warmth, wrapped in arms. I wanted desperately to hug my kids. We poured down Mushroom in 9" of fresh snow and I couldn't muster the energy to make my legs bend.

I was skiing in a detached state, my feet lagging, the trees coming closer than I wanted them. I looked at each as I passed it and thought, I hope this one doesn't take my life. Suddenly, my goggles were fogging, I wasn't weeping, but I couldn't stop crying. I looked at Cindy. "I"m going to take a coffee break." I said.

She smiled at me, told me it was a good idea. I loaded the lift, and was shocked to feel a tidal wave of grief break over me, stealing all of my hope, making me feel hollow, lost, unsure and so very sad.

I don't know why it was that the loss of Jordan had such a huge impact on me. Maybe that will be some of the gift of his loss. His beautiful smile, his exuberance, his irreverence, his transparency his beautiful heart and his heroin addiction.

I spent yesterday trying to come back into balance, I stayed out of bed, walked around in the sunshine, found a way to laugh and to smile, and missed him still, tried to make sense of my feeling that I had let him and his family down.

I felt my sister in my heart, I went and looked at Sopris in the sun.

Today I feel more in my body, still shocked from the loss, but ready to move again. No one should ever outlive their child. I have far too many friends who have done just that. I do not know how they survive and thrive, but they do.

Today my project is to connect to those who I come across, hug my kids, and feel the breath going into and out of me. To send love and compassion to the parents and sister of this beautiful boy who we lost, and to thank the mountain for all that it gave us. Thank you to Ben for teaching me to be gentle with myself with loss like this.

Skiing the Failed Mountain

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 03:11:00 +0000

The team trying out for the team. 2012 Snowbird.

(note: Several people have commented that they don't like the name of this post... and I have to agree. But every time I try to title it, I can't really come up with something better. I think of failure not as a bad thing, but as a diagnostic tool. I did fail here in the overall picture, I didn't make the team. But along the way, there were so many successes... not the least of which was coming back and loving this place even more now. So I suppose "failed" in this instance would be with a wink and a nod.)

I'm in Utah right now, skiing in Snowbird. It wasn't until I stood in the tram and watched the terrain rolling away below me that I realized I haven't been here since tryouts two years ago. As the tram rocked and swayed, I couldn't help but think of all of the memories I have made at this place, and all of the wonderful people I have skied with on this mountain. All the times I've tried really hard, booted out, crashed, got stuck...

I remember Bobby teaching me how to retract in the monkey snot one year, and Nick throwing us down the rasta chutes... I remember meeting Megan here and Andy as well, and getting hounded to move to Aspen.

The tram, of course, brought up all of the Academies I've been lucky enough to attend, all those times of barely scraping enough cash together to get my ass to Snowbird, pulling up at the Cliff Lodge with my shitty beat up Bronco, telling the Valet he'll have to climb in from the passenger side and slide across...

All the late nights, the early mornings, the incredible coaching, sitting on the floor eating sandwiches at lunch... the deep friendships, the trust, how happy it was for all of us to be together, sharing our singular psychosis for ski teaching.

Today, we dropped off the cat track onto Regulator Johnson. This was one of the first places I skied in the tryout. I looked at the pitch on my right as I skied down, and I could see the line of people waiting on the knuckle at the bottom, Robin Barnes and Mike Rogan in a huge group of people. I remember seeing Ballou mess up on his run, and know he had skied balls to the wall anyway, before and after the mistake. I also knew, as I pulled up to the group after my turn, that I had just cut myself from the team. And that my job right then was to just keep bringing my skiing up if I could, so that I knew I had shown my best.

I remember standing there in that group thinking, shit. Its over. Its over and I just started. I remember Michael being so incredibly encouraging, and Hafer smiling at me, and Kurt reserving judgement. And I remember rolling, bitterly disappointed, back down to the chair, and Megan skating up to me and riding up with me and saying, "Kate. Well, at least you showed up. It's good just to be here." Nail in the coffin. And I remember feeling strangely fueled by that.

Not "I'll show them" but "I have more to show." I wanted Megan to know that even with the weight of the terrible run I had just had, I could find my skiing in there somewhere and bring it to the surface. It might take me all three days. But since there was no ski cut anymore before the last day, I had an opportunity. I was part of the group, part of something important and special.

I stood on the hill today, and looked around at the place I had failed, and I was filled with so much gratitude. I felt Weems and Squatty teasing me and helping me when I was on the road to my full cert, I felt acutely that we can not do this alone. I looked down the line at all the people who were trying out, all the "competition", and I all I could see was our community. Each person trying to bring their best, each person being willing to show up with kindness for those they were skiing against.

I have never been so privileged to stand in a group of my peers, and I realized that the journey to the tryout was as much or more about learning acutely that it can not be about making the team. It has always been about the journey, and it is the people of this sport who help to make that journey incredible.

Today as I skied down, I found all the places where I had made decisions during the tryouts, the places where I failed, the places where I succeeded, the places where I was scared, the places where I was thrilled. The mountain today was a memory chamber of what it is to be alive, spanning the full spectrum, and I was privileged to ski through it, feeling my whole life broken down in to stations, feeling my connections to the people I had trained so hard with and dreamed so fiercely with at each way point on the mountain.

Its odd to be at Snowbird by myself, just me and a client, no one around who I know, but its wonderful to realize that those hundreds of people I've always shared this mountain with are right here with me, every turn I make.

Andy, Schanzy, Kurt, Megan, Cindy, Michael and Robin, I am so grateful for you.