Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Happy July! Last week was one of those weeks where every day felt like the longest day in the best way possible. I decided to take a mini break and let that sink in. Pinky promise I’ll be right on time next Wednesday morning!

Mini Musings

Coming off the long weekend, I’m taking a step back this week to slow down and (re)count my blessings. My 28th birthday was Thursday, June 29 which was immediately followed by a long weekend including 1. Dead & Company at Folsom Field and 2. A camping trip in Crested Butte with five other amazing girls.

I went to Red Rocks on the 29th where my favorite singer ever, Rayland Baxter (I promise you know more of his music than you think you do), was coincidentally opening for Head and the Heart. I thought a lot that night about how glad I am that I never went to Red Rocks before I moved to Denver because I know I would’ve spent the entire concert wondering what my life would be like if I lived in Denver. Now I get to spend the shows thinking about how perfectly it feels like everything has fallen into place since I moved here.

It was exactly one year ago on my birthday, at Red Rocks, that a guy friend of mine who I had a huge crush on and I decided to give things a shot. For our 4th date, we went back to Red Rocks for a My Morning Jacket concert and had the classic 4th date experience of realizing “I think I want this person to be in my life for a long time”. And guess what Rayland Baxter covered for his second to last song of the night, a year later with that same boy next to me? A My Morning Jacket song.

There are few things that make me happier than those little moments of synchronicity.

I’m normally so against talking about yourself too much, especially in a positive light. Chalk it up to, at best, being raised by Texans who lived by the rule of let other people talk about you, or at worst, internalized misogyny — but I have a story I want to tell.

We showed up at Red Rocks around 7PM to make sure we had plenty of time before Rayland came out, and on a whim, decided to stay for the headliner. About halfway through the show, a girl behind me tapped my shoulder and said “can I say something weird? The whole time I’ve been here, you have just been the happiest person in the world. I can’t get over it.”

And you know what? I was.

Artiste In The Making

Let’s talk about a different kind of art than usual: poetry. I picked up a copy of a poetry book about heartbreak and life for a close friend who’s currently in the throes of heartbreak. I decided to go through it and highlight certain lines and leave notes for her, just as a little “hi, I’m here. Always. Love you.” during what I’m certain will be an emotional read.

I stumbled upon a poem in it that made me realize the book was actually written by a girl I follow on TikTok. She started posting poetry in 2020 and I found her account when I was going through my own heartbreak.

The first thing I thought after realizing that? What a beautiful full circle moment.

Two years ago, I found that poem when I was living in New York, unhappy as ever, heartbroken and fragile, and having no idea what was next for my life. And there I was, two years later sitting in front of a lake in Crested Butte, reading the poem and only thinking about the joy of being able to experience life so fully.

When I was going through a time where I really felt like I was seeing the underbelly of life for the first time, I always told myself it was worth it because of the ways I could empathize with friends instead of just sympathizing. I was able to connect with people in a deeper way than ever before, and this poem felt like the fullest expression of that.

Something that gutted me at one point in time, made me smile at another. Now I can give that same gift to a friend — and hope one day the memory makes them smile, too.

The Wild, Wild West

In Crested Butte this weekend, I spent a lot of time thinking about hedonic adaptation; really just the fancy way of saying that after positive or negative events, and a subsequent increase in positive or negative feelings, people return to a stable, baseline level of affect.

My jaw used to drop at the sight of so many of the things in Colorado that I see regularly now. Take, for example the drive from Denver to Crested Butte. I did the drive over Cottonwood Pass for the first time last summer and I remember my friend and I audibly saying “holy shit” multiple times throughout the drive. This past weekend as I drove through, I could consciously acknowledge it was beautiful, though I didn’t feel that immediate sense of bewilderment in my chest like I did last time. I worry a lot about the fact that I can’t conjure up the same feelings of awe that I could a year ago.

Until this weekend when I gave myself some time to think and realized how much of a blessing the stillness is. During my time in New York, I don’t even know if I could find words to describe how miserable I felt at the end of it — my life felt like a sort of constant friction. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I had no idea where I was supposed to be. I just remember waking up every day and feeling like I needed to get out.

That stillness, even if it includes a lack of awe, is probably our healthiest state of being. If we’re still, we may not feel over-the-moon happy like we did when everything was novel and shiny, but we’re certainly not unhappy.

What I’m Noodling On

• The lovely poetry book mentioned above. I couldn’t put this book down once I started it

• We talk a lot at my job about the implications of social media on the outdoors. This CO destination just shut down for the same reasons

• Feels like a good time to plug the 7 Principles of Leave No Trace

Catch you next Wednesday!

- McCall 🌻

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