June 28th, 2010
Whirlwind Summer Solstice Weekend....Scantily Clad Drumming, Dancing, and Celebrations!

Wow...so I've survived another Summer Solstice Celebration in Santa Barbara! I've just finished a whirlwind weekend...a Friday Night Pre-Solstice performance of drumming/dancing/singing with the Djun Djun Mamas, dancing with Panzumo's Summer Solstice Ensemble on Saturday in the Parade, threw a bridal shower on Sunday, more celebrations on the beach, then watching another awesome episode of "True Blood" with good friends on Sunday night.

Dang! Now that's a great weekend!

I'm so happy to be on this creative path and to have a life that is so abundant in music, dance, drumming and creative fulfillment with amazing people. Here are a couple of videos of the weekend. The first is a clip of the Djun Djun Mamas...a group that I've been with the past two years. We worked on this piece for about six weeks and are really proud of it!

The second clip is one of our Panzumo Summer Solstice Parade Ensemble dancing several West African Rhythms in the Parade.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k3B2O_Xmmg

June 7, 2010
Ahhhhh...The Joys, Trials, and Tribulations of Camping~
Absolute Spot-On Treatise About Camping by The Stuff White People Like~

Okay, I rarely put up links to other websites here unless they absolutely stun me with their wit or manage to provide sufficient entertainment to distract me from my actual work....and this one succeeds in both!
If you haven't yet discovered "The Stuff White People Like" then you've got to take some time and check it out. It's truly brilliant and super flippin' funny~

Their latest post on "Camping" especially struck a chord after a recent camping trip with friends and family down the Kern River. I've grown up camping, lived in and out of a tent for several seasons of my life as a river guide/outdoor instructor, and will continue to camp as often as I can...but still...has anyone ever noticed how much work it is to pack/unpack/organize?

The masochist in me enjoys it. And apparently, a bunch of other White People feel the same way!

Check it out~ Spot on!
And as they say at the bottom of this post:
Note: This works for all races!

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2009/08/14/128-camping/

Weekly Teaser....
Here's the first shot I've edited from my recent Goddess Photo Shoot with Lisa Beck~
LOVE IT! More to come....

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir

Kern River Trip With Family And Friends~

The first river you paddle runs through the rest of your life. It bubbles up in pools and eddies to remind you who you are.
~Lynn Noel

For those of you who have known me in my pre-Santa Barbara Days...I spent many blissful years living and working on rivers. For nearly five years I worked as a park ranger, a commercial river guide, and as an Outward Bound Instructor (yes, I made many young teenagers occasionally cry but was compassionate all around!) throughout the American West (California, New Mexico, Utah/Colorado, the border of Texas and Mexico, and along the border of Minnesota and Canada.

Those were some of the best years of my early adulthood...seasons spent running rivers, living out of tents and tupperware, living into the strength of my body, pushing my physical and psychological comfort zones, basking in the intense desert heat, and living as a nomad through the winters when I traveled throughout Latin America and Australia.

It is true that you can never step into the same river...twice. The same goes with revisiting those years lived on and along the river. But like any river rat, the river continues to have a sweet spot in my heart with deep roots. I still have occasional midsummer night dreams of navigating whitewater in some foreign wilderness. And every time I visit the river I am a different person living out a whole new chapter of my life...but yet the river remains some constant unchangeable force.




I was fortunate to recently return to the river on an incredible trip with family and friends. Although it has been years since I went down the river and even longer since I gave an impromptu "safety talk" or lesson on reading whitewater, it felt so encouraging to know I still had the chops! All those skills came immediately back. I was in absolute heaven being on the water again. My heart sings on the water and I feel like I am home again...all the rivers seem to be one and to contain the same fluid energy.

I'm so grateful to the Abbeys for putting together another Amazing Trip and to the rest of the Rousseau Clan and to my friends Richard and Michele for making the weekend into such an amazing trip! I can't wait to go back to the river and the Sierras with good friends and family~

Life continues to move quickly along...at sometimes speeding up...but when I'm on the river, something seems to have stayed the same if only for a brief moment in time.