Friday Thoughts Ep. 7

Hello and happy Saturday, Patrons! I’m posting a quick update today because I’ve spent the last three days in Moab, Utah with my sister! 

We tent camped in a Bureau of Land Management campsite beside the Colorado river for $15 a night. There were no showers and no water but we managed by filling up empty jugs we brought at the National Park and.... not showering for three days. It always hurts my heart to see people buying those 24 packs of individual plastic water bottles for something like this. Save money, re-use what you have, save plastic!

I was in awe the entire ride from Denver to Moab. The landscape here is so beautiful, and extremely sparsely populated. We drove down the longest stretch of US highway without services, over 100 miles between Salina and Green River. After growing up on the east coast it was lovely to see so much land with no humans.

We visited Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. Both enormous, stunning, varied in their rock formations. We hiked almost 20 miles in the three days, did some yoga, some reading (I’m obsessed with lonely planet travel guides and read them wherever I go), played Skip-Bo, and took a lot of pictures (I’ll edit and share them soon!)

Beyond visiting my first desert and seeing land devoted by Americans to just existing, my favorite part of the trip by far was hiking the Devil’s Garden Primitive loop trail. Normally deterred by a ‘difficult’ ranking and relatively long miles (8 miles!) Kenna and I decided on our last day to just go for it. We were rewarded for our ’bravery’ (there were a lot of people who turned back on this trail!) with a truly FUN hike. There was so much ’rock scrambling’, climbing up steep slick rocks with few footholds, wayfinding, some areas with steep drop offs (sorry mom). It was engaging, beautiful, strenuous, and we left tired, sore, and hot. I would hike that trail every day if I could.

So I learned some new things about myself. That I am capable of following a ‘difficult’ trail, that I am stronger than I thought. I learned that I need to start ROCK CLIMBING. I learned that I need to spend more time exploring and being a part of the natural world, that I need to prioritize this in my life. 

GET OUTSIDE FOLKS

This was much more personal than art related! Such is life!

Have a great week and I’ll talk to you guys again when I’m back in Seattle!

xoxo

Ragon

www.instagram.com/ragonia_