"Being alone..... there is a certain dignity to it"

-----Brigitte Fonda, Singles (total 90's awesome movie)

This line sticks with me on those random happy nights where you wander out alone with no plan and just run into the thick of it all. The real thing, the sauce of the whole program, life in movement and you fitting like a glove into every one of its creases.
Adventures swell and the night flows with me happily goofing with new acquaintances and making it happen with existing partners in crime. I just go. I surrender and feel like I am traveling again, only because where I live is full of so many interesting characters ready to open their books to you.
I really enjoy the freedom to feel at ease in the midst of darkness, to make unassuming bonds with strangers or the ones you just never get time to know well enough. I enjoy random occurances and mine and other peoples abilities to dive into them. I have a person to experience these things with any time I need him. it is a wonderful thing to have someone with you whom it is so incrediblly easy to be with that it just all melts into a glass and you want to drink it everyday for breakfast. I am lucky enough to have that person always near, in some way or another, if I need that full on comprehension of every situation, relation of spirit, and most of all if I just need laughter. There is no one I love more then that man. He is a wonder of my world.

Yet those solo events, excursions, journies bring me back to who I always have been in a way. That crazy solo adventurous. The one who likes to get lost, but internally whose map always reads the coordinates. The curious sided one that creates a learning experience upon every human interaction, and who can drive with the windows open while manually tuning in that perfect built to spill song playing on the radio. I know this will always exist, boyfriend or not....it is nice to recollect my reality and to just feel light and happy about the stability I have, but the freedom that will always live inside of me.

Wherever you are, There you are

Wonderful days. Ice hockey under the mountain stars infused with laughter, goals, falls, and high fives. Hikes full of questions and answers about how to balance age and define our destiny. Yoga classes that take me away into those moments of silence that seem to be to far in between the next. Night out with mom and the ladies watching goofy gods and goddesses personify male and female definitions with their body movements while wearing colored tights. And here I lay on my colorful throne awaiting my sleepiness, which lately seems to come later then it probably should every night.

So I wander, wonder, escape into my mind. I think about how I analyze and map out my next adventure and how I creep into the little slots in my soul and curl up with myself asking where I will end up, what I will do, how I will get there.
Saturn returns and the consistent questions persist as we try to quiet the loud parts of our conscious.

Why must it be the human condition to always seek a new horizon? Why must we mystify
ourselves with what is around the corner or to seek these riper pastures?

I think it is beautiful. It allows us to move beyond the mundane, the constant and create new ideas, reflections. It allows us to walk on roads that seem to almost be paved in gold, only because they seem to never have been stepped upon before.
I know some people are more reluctant then others to move in these sly un predictable ways. I know some like to stay with the norm and live out the dream in a almost ascertainable manner. My dad always said "where ever you are, there you are" as we looked out the holes out the bottom of his baby blue 82 beat up ford truck and my best friend and I ducked when he dropped us off at school. Damn, that was good advice. Advice so simple that stays with you. At the time it went into my ear through one side and stuck, but just didn't make any god damn sense. Now it hits me like a fountain.

I have always been a runner. One that stays in one place only long enough to feel like I am slightly over it then I just say hey lets go somewhere else. I need diversity. In jobs, in locations, in friends, in hobbies. I say why not to this type of behavior. I like the fusion of lives and the loves of many things. I seek travel because it keeps my mind on its lil' bitty toes observing the differences and loving the outcomes. Whatever it is, when you can enjoy the outcome with no expectations, life is a beautiful thing. Even if that is settling down and giving in to the power of solid foundations and making your surroundings, your community into a more intriguing place. I am there now, settled, but my body knows it will always go again. My dads theory has many meanings. Most of all though I see it as a way of being present. With that human condition of exploration ingrained in us we must follow its roads. If we infuse that condition with our individual personality to pursue and keep the momentum of whatever it is we are currently immersed in, we all will be right wherever we are right when we are there. I love it.

Camp Re-generation!!

If anybody know any happy go lucky, go getter, enthusiastic about living types ages 10-16 then please tell them about our Summer Camp....
It starts June 14th for the whole summer and themes include:
Ecological Gardening, natural building, spinning and weaving, holistic cooking, wilderness awareness, natural handicrafts, herbal remedies, bread making, energy and resource efficiency, and much much more!
Organically local lunchs, yoga, hikes, and basically all the fun you could fit into a kids summer camp! We may even have a booth at the Basalt Farmers Market so that the kids can sell the produce that they grow and the creations they make.

It is held at Rock Bottom Ranch in Basalt in collaboration with ACES.

So excited to be a part of this. Can't wait to document the summer and be outside learning, teaching, living, moving, making and working with such great group of people.

More info email me at erintiff@gmail.com
and check out our website www.re-generation.us

Banana life

I don't know what the hell it is about cooking that makes me so damn pleased. It is a project that can be started and finished and then utilized all in one short time span. Thank god for things like cooking in a world where we start projects that seem to never get finished. You would be a damn lier if you said that you didn't have a half done project sitting somewhere within a 12 foot span of you right now that is not finished and may not be for a while. So cooking brings me home and into a place of meditation, purity, and originality. Above are some scrumptious muffs for your delectable pleasure..... here is the recipe... this is one of those recipes that is easy, cheap, fast as hell and will make you new friends. Just to illustrate to you how these happy shit like this makes me.....I leave the kitchen and non chalantly wave to the muffins from across the room, like we are casual acquaintances just loving on each other in a public meeting place without even thinking about it....till about halfway down the hall when I realize what I did was just partially psychotic.

* 3 ripe bananas, mashed with a fork
* 1/4 cup oil
* 1/2 cup honey *** note: use half maple syrup..so good
* 1 & 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.
* 1/2 cup wheat germ or oat bran or flaxseed meal
* I add 1 egg....just cause I hate following recipes to the tee . turns out perfect
*lil' vanilla
*lil' allspice and cinnimon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients first, then mix in bananas, oil and honey. (If you measure out the oil first, when you pour out the honey, it will all slide cleanly out of the cup.)

Pour into oiled bread pan and bake for 20 minutes. This recipe is also great for muffins. Muffins are more like 15 minutes until done. Use a toothpick or knife to check the middle. If it sticks, keep baking.

That is that. In life few things are definite or reliable. But food is all of that and so much more.

Blue blue blue

Oh Colorado...that blue sky you have regularly should be framed and painted on every wall in every town that has rainy winters just to remind them that, yes, it still exists in all its glory.

Immersion within

SWimMing- WaTEr
Everything forgets underwater. The body of water in the shape of a pool inside a little place called the rec center about 800 feet from my house is a sanctuary of sorts for me. Back and forth I flip and propel. The steam rises from its ripples into the mountain sky, the reflection of movement dances on the tiles below.
I lose myself in the patterns slipping and sliding over each other as I un fog my 5 dollar goggles and sweep in again watching each hand swipe in front of the other and move me forward. After about the 8th lap I lose myself, the ache in my arm goes away, the obsession of people watching and the comings and goings eludes me. Silk slips past my skin each time I move in it. My skin cells regenerate and free themselves from their constant clothed awkwardness. I am free.
It is not perfect I will admit. Granted, It is a salt water pool and it is outside so that the sun can reflect and cure me of those blues. Yet there is no swells to juxtopose me and twirl me in my own vulnerability. The water doesnt go on forever from my perspective. There are walls and it is a rectangle. I have to turn around more then I would like to. It is not an ocean. But it is a pool and one has to appreciate the security that it is there when i need it. It does always grant me the gift of flow right when it is needed most. You can not just tell yourself to flow, one has to feel it surrounding every inch of ones body. One has to dive in and let it swallow you to come out feeling new again. Refreshed, rejuvinated, remembering the continuation goes and goes and goes....

Their our days

And we don't have to live them alone. Connections fuel inspirations and inspirations ignite progress. So my new opinion is to share, because it seems what gets me through all of this proposed madness is those connections and the expression that creates them. So this year I write. I blog. I can not even believe I am saying it, but I won't say it, I will just do it. Saying is just a way of manifesting doing without using ANY of your power. Yes, so we do.

I propose to bring a regiment, if you will, into my life by expressing, documenting, photographing and bringing to you my stream of conciousness observational writing. Purpose? Mission? To seek out the small stuff that passes me by in this whirlwind and to bring it to you (and myself) fresh and ripe for mass distribution. Okay, okay, none of that mass distribution.....more of a sky high collaboration. Or a healthy documentation. A catalysimic collaboration station of beautiful daily moments and how to infuse them to really ensue them. How about ......??????? A twirly bird spiraling cannotation (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_cannotation) that sparks out of me or out of you and into all of us too? Ahh I love them all. They all tickle me right in between my left toes.

I want to look at the world with more love, health, and creativity, thus importing more of it into every one of our lives. So I set out to illustrate, scribe, and create a visual for our evolution together in living it.....to the max. Each day I want to pick one thing that brings a little flitter flatter pitter patter into my life. Each thing we may take for granted gives this universe a little tidbit more of that mystery and glory that fuels us, just in noticing its sheer existence.


Conciousness in these small routines and learning techniques from each other is our blessing. So lets use the tools we have to manifest what we talk and use that power take this walk. Together.