Please don’t do “couples’ yoga”

Today is Valentine’s Day, which means I am taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming to bring you my annual Valentine’s Day post from the archives, in which I am abruptly dumped by a college boyfriend and left to be humiliated in a poorly-thought-out yoga class. Also, I’m proud to say there are no photographs of me doing yoga in existence, which is why you’re being treated to a nice shot of some bighorn sheep instead. That’s actually kind of what I look like doing yoga, actually. Anyway! Here it is. 

Several Valentine’s Days ago, I showed up to my usual Monday night yoga class because I had nothing better to do. I had recently been unceremoniously dumped, all my roommates had dates, and the scheduling gods at my place of employment had seen fit to grant me the night off on the one holiday I’d rather have worked. Continue reading “Please don’t do “couples’ yoga””

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House of Hygge

I’ve never been anywhere that epitomizes the word “bucolic” like the landscape of rural southwest Wisconsin. I don’t really need to describe it for you. You’ve seen it. Picture every pastoral painting, every wide-angle shot of Middle America: the rolling hills of green grass and amber waves of grain, the fat, doe-eyed cows, red barn complete with silo. Continue reading “House of Hygge”

No news is good news

It’s 9:30 on a Friday night, and I’m dozing into the sweeping panorama of some David Attenborough Planet Earth documentary when my phone sputters to life, vibrating amidst a chorus of chirping by both the device and the leopard seals of Antarctica. Continue reading “No news is good news”

The conversation we have to start having

I’ve never felt qualified to speak publicly for a whole group of people before. Now, though, I have something to say. I fell into the outdoor community because I felt like an outsider, pun not intended. (Okay, maybe intended.) I didn’t feel like I fit in until I found the world I’m part of now. That’s lucky for me, but it’s also possible because of a really ugly thing that’s part everything I do every day: White Privilege.

Each week, I sit down to write a blog post. Sometimes they detail the intensely personal struggles and failures of my life; sometimes it’s just a lighthearted anecdote about kids or dogs or things I like to do. I mostly know how to write about one thing: playing outside. Continue reading “The conversation we have to start having”