Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Hi from Denver! After what’s felt like a month of endless travel, I’m reporting live from my at-home desk in the Highlands and couldn’t be happier about it.

Better yet, it was 54ºF when I woke up this morning, so naturally, I’m already dreaming about fall and leaf peeping.

PS: sorry we’re a day late. Post Labor Day Weekend brain is real.

Mini Musings

I took last week off because I was in the throes of the classic 20’s peril where your life feels like it’s starting and ending all at once.

In short: I’ve been feeling like I’m in a big growth period right now. It feels exactly like your first middle school growth spurt where all of a sudden your balance is off, clothes fit weird, and you’re taller than all the boys in your class (just me?). I had a long conversation with a friend Thursday night over some non-alcoholic beers and she summed it up perfectly when she said “Growth never feels good or comfortable”.

After that, I took a weekend to do a big hike (more on that shortly!), get good sleep, eat lots of vegetables, and have a good ole fashioned get-my-life-together weekend.

On Friday, I picked up a copy of Rising by Sharon Wood at the Twin Lakes General Store before settling in to camp for the night and the above intro quote smacked me in the face.

Life feels so circuitous sometimes — it’s up to our discretion whether that’s a blessing or a curse. I’ve been craving podcasts, videos, and all sorts of media that will tell me what to do when in actuality, like I’ve always known, all the answers are within me.

All that we can do is return to the habits that make us feel like ourselves and listen. Life gives the answers, and living gives the answers. All we can do is live to feel them.

Artiste In The Making

Something I’m constantly struggling with in art is how there’s truly no goalposts. It’s the true double-edged sword of creative work; sure, you can make goals to make $X by Y date, draw a certain number of pieces in a month, or set weekly/monthly goals to hit, but while something is strictly a creative side-hustle, it’s tough to create tangible goals.

That’s also the beauty of it. If there’s no tangible way I’m judging the success of my art business, then I’m simply asking myself “does this make me feel good?”.

One of my favorite creators, Hello Hayes, talked about this a few weeks ago. When defining success for her brand and herself, she believes creating content should be rooted in the vision you have for yourself. Does this ladder up to who I want to be in six months? A year? Three years?

Now that I’ll be consistently home for the next few months, I’m really looking forward to buckling down and crystallizing that vision of myself — and letting the habits fall after that.

The Wild, Wild West

I’m VERY excited to report that the hiking section of this newsletter is officially a hiking section again. Avalanche Fun Facts will return to see the light of day — never fear — but we’ve got a big hike rundown in the meantime.

On Saturday, my hiking partner (also one of my best friends; hiking partner just feels more official for what a bad ass she is) summited Mount Elbert. Elbert clocks in just at 14,440 ft., making it the highest peak in Colorado; this was my seventh ever 14er and hands-down my favorite so far.

Mt. Elbert is an out-and-back hike — 10 miles round trip with 4.2K ft of elevation gain. Frankly, I was a little nervous about those stats going into this hike. I keep myself in generally good shape, but I haven’t hiked anything serious since Mt. Sopris which was well over two months ago.

We made it to the trailhead Friday night just as the sun was setting and set up camp in our car with a plan to wake up at 5AM and be on the trail no later than 5:30AM. Every review on AllTrails said the parking lot would be full by 5AM and that place was a zoo come 4:30AM. We both woke up at 4AM from all the noise and movement in the parking lot and figured there was no point in sleeping for another hour amidst all the chaos, so we got up and got going. Our official start time ended up being 4:45AM

What made this hike one of my favorite ever was a mix of variables, but trekking the first hour and a half of this in the moonlight (one day after the Supermoon!) with our headlamps and making it above the treeline just in time for the sunrise was an experience I’ll never forget. I mean, look at that view.

We summited after ~3 hours, spent 15 minutes on the summit (I absolutely slammed a PB&J) and started heading down. Rule of thumb for 14ers, or any sort of high-elevation hike in Colorado is to be off the summit well before noon.

“Off the summit by noon” is for two reasons: afternoon storms are more common in summer (especially July-August), and to a lesser degree “half” your daylight is spent. Storms can roll in anytime of year, night hiking and navigation are doable, and there are plenty of good weather afternoons in July-August, but it’s a solid rule of thumb that we always abide by.

On the way down, we both couldn’t help but notice a ton of people with multiple hours of hiking to do who seemed pretty ill-prepared for the rest of the hike (no water, still heading uphill with some sketchy clouds lurking around the summit, and just looking utterly exhausted with multiple hours of hiking left to do). I’m sure they all made it off the trail fine, but it was a noticeable juxtaposition compared to the 4AM parking lot crew we started with.

My hiking partner, Emily, and I got into a long discussion on the descent about how our only prerequisite for attempting hard hikes is a reverence for Mother Nature. We’re always checking the forecast beforehand, diligently eyeing the clouds the entire time we’re on the mountain, and of course, summiting well before noon.

Emily put it perfect when she said “Nature has no obligation to keep you safe.”

The outdoors are an incredible, beautiful, life-changing place — just pretty please do your homework if you’re going big (that goes for avalanches, too!).

What I’m Noodling On

🎧 I was feeling pretty low-energy on Sunday and listened to this episode of the Move with Heart podcast featuring Ben Nemtin and my energy was subsequently skyrocketed. The thesis? It’s so, so imperative to carve out time to do the things that make you feel like you & listen to yourself in the process.

📺 I can’t even play coy, I’ve watched the Eras Tour Documentary trailer 17+ times. I’m (obviously) so excited about this and even more excited to see how it does in the Box Office. Bonus points: check out the demo for King of My Heart in the meantime

🍂 Did I mention I’m excited for fall? Catch me planning all my hikes to match up with this Colorado foliage guide

- McCall 🌻

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