My Adventures

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. -Leopold Stokowski   [caption id="attachment_2738" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Musical Mountaineers, Rose (piano) and Anastasia (violin)[/caption] I never imagined that I would be one half of The Musical Mountaineers. Even now, when I watch our videos or look at the photographs from our adventures, I have to pinch myself - "Is this real life?". When I decided to jump in and blaze my own trail, I knew it was going to be beautiful, but I never imagined...

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” - Rumi   One year ago today, I almost lost everything. My mom and my husband and I were driving home from the most incredibly wonderful day of snowshoeing, when our truck hit a patch of black ice and went spinning across the highway - directly into the path of an oncoming semi-truck. To this day, I cannot explain why I am still here. There is no feasible explanation for how we did not get struck...

One day, before I believed that everything was possible, I wrote, “You can’t force magic” on the back of my hand. I didn’t even know what it meant – I just knew that I needed to understand it. I had been living in a world of “can’t, shouldn’t, won’t, will not, don’t” for so long. I was trapped in place by fear of the unknown. I believed that every “what-if” scenario in the world was involved in a giant conspiracy to prevent me from being...

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.” — Louis L’Amour Author's note:  I had the incredible opportunity to travel to the country of Bhutan in 2012.  On that trip, I completed the Laya/Gasa trek - a 138 mile trek through some of the most pristine and remote areas of the Himalayas.  This story was originally written for my previous blog, but the adventure bears a re-sharing.   Speechless.  It's not a word that...

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” — Walt Whitman Our final stop on our 11 day French Polynesia trip was the island of Huahine (pronounced 'oooh-ah-hee-nay').  Huahine is actually two islands that are connected by a small sand bank at low tide.  Huahine Nui is the, "big Huahine", and Huahine...

“Time and silence are the most luxurious things today.” — Tom Ford This is my second installment in my series about our weddingmoon to French Polynesia.  If you haven't done so already, go back and read about our first stop in the Tahitian Islands - Moorea.  After spending an amazing four days (and getting married!) on Moorea, we headed to the airport for a 45 minute flight to Bora Bora.  Our travel agent made all of the arrangements for us, but essentially, you buy an inter-island plane...

When I met Aaron, I told him that I was never getting married.  After essentially being a complete failure (in my mind) in the realm of relationships for the majority of my life, I had decided that there was simply no way that marriage was a good idea for me, or anybody else.  Aaron is literally the best person on earth, and he never pushed me or pressured me into changing my mind.  As our relationship developed, and as soon I stopped being completely ridiculous,...

“Humor is the good natured side of a truth. ” — Mark Twain If you've been following my blog, you will know that over the past several months, I've written a serial adventure chronicling our 9 days on the Wind River High Route.  It was a major undertaking for me, because my typical adventure stories are relatively involved and emotionally charged - so it isn't something that I can sit down and spit out in an hour at the computer. Looking back on my Wind River High Route...