depending on the inversion.

Happy summer or winter to you, depending on the inversion. Summer hit us whole-heartedly yesterday, and our house smoldered like an oven. We don't have A/C, and up until yesterday, I didn't think we would need it. Today is back to cool 70s, so I guess we really don't need it. But after wearing shorts for a day or two, I'm wondering... when will I feel comfortable in my skin again?

{paso john gardner :: torres del paine}

Choosing summer clothes feels near impossible. For all intents and purposes, I've lost my pregnancy weight. There'd only be another 6-7 pounds to go, and this isn't the heaviest I've been in my non-pregnant life. Right now I need shirts with easy access for nursing Rowan. And preferably something that makes my soft belly somehow less wobbly. Nothing fits well. I know, I'm being shallow. (But while I'm at it, I have another confession: I don't like my lumpy scar--even though my sweet baby came out of it. Somehow it still feels numb or occasionally hurts dully, oddly.) Yeah, people who know me would say I am crazy.

So what? My clothes don't fit, or they're not right for the occasion. But clothes are just the surface. It's not only my wardrobe. Maybe I'm having culture shock. I recently moved back to the States, and we also moved to the oddest plot of city we could. After living here a couple of months I have to say it's not my cup of tea or coffee. I miss walking in pretty places. Honestly, give me a nice trail, and I'm a fairly happy camper. I wish we'd had the time and foresight to think of this back when we were moving. Our lease is up in September, so I guess that means an imminent something. 

{my trails don't even need to be well defined :: paso oggioni :: tdp}

I am finally starting to feel used to being a mom, and yet... I still wonder how others get used to this new role. Do they swim up into it at ease? How do you all manage to find balance in whatever you do? I have never been this inactive in my life. And I can't blame it on being a mom. There is time for me to start running again, to do yoga. Yet I don't.

{before I started working, I did manage to squeeze in
a couple of hikes with Rowan in the carrier :: coyote hills, fremont}

This keeps coming back to issues of physical health. It's not really that at all. Well, maybe a little. I think it's about balance and groping to get a grip on it again. In fact, after I started working, I struggle to even find time to blog, among other things. I'm not about to fall off the tightrope yet. But I don't think my pocketful of grace is quite ready for prime time yet either.

I would love to hear how you find balance in your life. 

This isn't only about motherhood, though I'm tagging it so... 

Cuz I'm also tagging the phantoms in my life, like running + yoga. 

Aladağlar Red Mountains

We escaped to the Red Mountains (Aladağlar) for a few days of backpacking from Ankara, the capital, busy yet efficient city. It's the first time I've been trekking since Chile, and it was so nice to be back to it! The mountains are exposed and not forested at all, so the morning sun would already start to bake us in the tent by 7 a.m. Even so, the nights were cool enough for me to wear a wool hat and hiking during the day still proved much cooler than in the city.

Our first night out, we watched the stars deepen and wondered which planets those brightest stars were. When suddenly: A faraway flash in the sky. No clouds.

Serkan: Lightning?
Me: but there's no thunder.
S: It might rain on us.
Me: Maybe somebody is taking pictures. There's a tent down in the valley.
S: Yeah, it's god. As a witness to our love because the moon's not out to see us. God says, What a beautiful couple, Let me snap some photos of them.
Me laughs herself into a ball.

No rain or thunder that night, just distant gray lightning.

Has it really been three months?

...so I'm being pressured to write something by my lovely soon to be hitched bff. It's been three months or something crazy like that. Gee time flies. Maybe I'll just do a bullet list of updates, though most of you know a lot of what's been going on with me. :)

• Dog bite healed and I finished up all five rabies shots. It's called a vacuna antirabia. Rabia also means anger/rage. So I like to think I'm safe and healthy on a range of levels.
  
• I've been traveling since the end of April, went to visit a Chilote in Castro on the main island of Chiloé. Fun, but realized that my tourist visa was about to expire, so I had to cut my trip there short and travel to Bariloche (in Argentina) to renew my 90-day entrance stamp.
  
• Vipassana Meditation, 10 days in silence, no communication of any kind, no music, no reading, no nada, in the middle of May. This was probably the most intense thing I've ever done in my life. It beats a marathon stamina-wise. You wouldn't expect it, but sitting 10 hrs a day or so hurts! And just sitting with yourself with zero distractions is serious business. I'd recommend it to anybody (http://www.dhamma.org/). There are all kinds of these retreats in the States. It's free, a donation at the end of the journey. Plus the food, wow, delicious, simple vegetarian and super healthy. (I've been veg ever since, apart from seafood, something I'd been thinking about doing for ages.) It was a cleanse in many ways, just about every character I've met in this life visited me. Been pretty good about keeping up the morning meditations, though it can be hard with overnight buses, dorms, etc.
  
• Hung out in Santiago, taking a travel writing workshop for the magazine. Here decided that my travels would take me to Ecuador, so I could be trained and help organize a bit the remodel of our web site. I've been doing this whole trip overland and visited quite a few little places on the way north in Chile.
• I turned 30.
  
• Traveling traveling north to San Pedro de Atacama (though I meant to go to Salta, Argentina, but either the pass to get there was closed or the buses weren't running on the days I was ready to go.) From Atacama met some folks and we traveled 4x4 style to Salar de Uyuni. World's largest salt flat (4,085 square miles according to Wikipedia) in the altiplano of Bolivia. The group of people on this trip were so fun and we did all the crazy Salar photos, one of the girls brought toy dinosaurs as props. Awesome. Here's one photo one of the guys sent to me... It's not the funny Salar posing type of foto, just me holding the sun at its dawn... basically the vast expanse of white makes it so that you can take zany pictures because you have no sense of depth out there.
  

• This was also part of the trip where I bribed the Bolivian officials at the border to let me in for only four days. I traveled pretty extensively in Bolivia last year before the new Visa regs they have for USA. Now, if you're from the States, you have to pay $100 buckaroos to enter the country. What? I guess it's fair if you consider how hard it is for them to get a tourist visa to the states. Anyway, supposedly Bolivia is the poorest country in South America and you can (and often must) bribe your way around. That means in my passport I have an exit stamp for Chile and then I'm nowhere for four days, before getting my re-entrance into Chile.
  
• Other trip highlights include Arequipa, Peru, which seriously has the most beautiful main plaza that I've seen in South America. It's a beautiful city, if a little foul smelling on account of all the diesel autos. There, I hiked around in Colca Canyon... the gulp... second deepest canyon in the world. Ha! I hiked it with a few other people and they had the fish-story way. You know, how the fish that you caught gets bigger with every telling. They swear when they tell of their trip, that they will have climbed down and out of the DEEPEST canyon in the world (which is Cotohausi and in the same neck of the woods). And I kept saying that they can't do that, it wasn't the deepest canyon, and we all laughed at me. But they're right, it sounds way better to day deepest canyon in the world, than SECOND deepest. I also climbed up Misti Volcano (totally unclimatized, not a good idea!). Highest I've ever been at 5,825 meters, more than 19,000 feet. I made it, cold and dizzy. About 7 hours to get up (from a high camp), starting at 3 a.m., and only 45 minutes to get back down to the high camp. Coming down was SO much fun, like skiing, all loose sand, down down down.
  
• For the last couple weeks I've been beach hopping on the Ecuadorian coast. It's so nice to be warm. I hear it's frozen solid in Puerto Natales (where I go back in August). Been going for lots of barefoot beach runs and refreshing myself in the equator-warm Pacific afterward. I love this part. Oh, and all the yummy fresh fruit juices. I don't know how I live without fresh squeezed juice every morning. I'm going to have to figure something out for that.
  
• Tomorrow, I'm headed to Quito, where I'll stay for a bit, do some hiking, hopefully climb Cotopaxi Volcano, and work on some web site stuff.
  

That's all for now...

We're all just ships...

Each one of us is the captain of our own ship. And on the journey we let on various passengers and crew. They get on and off, come and go. The influx of passengers is a daily activity. The trick is to not get stuck, don’t toss out the anchor. Keep on keeping on… Maybe the ship gets capsized or moves slowly through icebergs, where you end up only inching along for a while. But someone will get on to help fix the leaks and you’ll steer your way through the icebergs and keep moving forward, if your anchor’s not down.

We had this great little talk with a handsome young 21 year old we met during our trek. He works and basically lives completely in the campo and is saving up money to study art in France. When he was 15 he died for about 20 minutes and watched everything from above his own drown body (I already mentioned the lack of swimming knowledge in Magallanes, right?) His energy was pure and deep and calm and beautiful. Marijke and I were doing the big circuit, which takes you behind the Torres del Paine. In a complete circle. We met him on our first day out, and perfectly, again on our last day in the park.

There were so many people we met, and it just felt so good to be in constant motion… I had a lot of time to talk with myself. My anchor’s been down, but I’ve been reeling it up, especially the last week hiking. I think Marijke and I both finished the big O different people. And me, I’m more at peace than I’ve been in ages, maybe ever? I feel like it’s overflowing. I wish I could put it in a bottle for use when I’m not feeling so llena de paz. But I’m sure I’ve got a few extra bottles of it laying around somewhere among my vital organs. So here we are, back in Natales. I’m not sure yet what’s about to happen, but I know it will be right and that everything will be OK.

The Paine Circuit

December's paper just went to press yesterday morning, and I definitely feel like I need a bit of a rest after it. So tomorrow after a long time without visiting the park, I'm heading into Torres del Paine tomorrow morning. It'll just be me and my Dutch friend Marijke doing the big circuit, about 8-9 days. The first night we'll be staying in Ecocamp where Roberto works, and I think he'll be there that night, too. We'll see. I haven't really been doing any exercise since I've been in Natales, so I think I might be more out of breath than I'd like, but super looking forward to it. It's still closed because of snow on the biggest pass, etc., but mostly it's closed because the government park organization can't get its ish together to open the refugios and make repairs to the rope ladders and what not. Anyway, that just means that we have to be careful. Anyway, I'll take lots of pictures and hopefully upload all my end of the world pictures some time soon. I think I stopped uploading pictures somewhere in mid-Bolivia.

Nos vemos when I'm back from the park! xoxoxo