“Staycation in Big Sur”

It’s funny how you can live with someone and be together for most hours of the day but not necessarily get quality time together. I think I’ve learned that Steve and I both need little mini getaways every month or so to refresh our connection with each other and get out of our heads and our work.

We both work from home so you’d think we’d have more opportunities for quality time together (which we do at different meals and impromptu parts of the day) but when you work at home, I think there are more challenges to unwinding at home and not having the details of your work invade your brain. We’ve learned how important the value of a little getaway can be, whether it’s a short camping trip or an overnight at a Bed & Breakfast. This past weekend, we met up with some friends for part of the weekend in Big Sus.

I think it was my third trip through there but we had more of a chance to explore a little more deeply. I’m still surprised by how expensive it can be staying there but it is possible to be frugal and camp in the state parks or book far in advance at some of the campgrounds (Fernwood, Big Sur Campground). Check out the Chamber of Commerce's sight on accomodation options.

A Few Cool Things About Big Sur:

~There’s a full moon ghost tour around the lighthouse every month during the peak season. Check out their tour schedules....


~Famed American novelist, eccentric, and Big Sur local Henry Miller once quipped that “Big Sur is as God intended the face of the earth to look.” In danger of sounding overly cliché, I have to say that Big Sur truly is gorgeous during all types of weather. From the dramatic, mystical quality of fog rolling up the cliff faces from the sea to the expansive blue skies and jaw-dropping sunsets on clear days….it’s difficult to go wrong. Pack for all kinds of weather.

~Continuing their tradition of fostering a thriving artistic community, The Henry Miller Library offers Wednesday night open mic nights, outdoor movie nights, and regular music concerts throughout the summer. Check out: www.henrymiller.org

The view at Nementhe is one of my favorites....the food, like most places in Big Sur, is fairly expensive so we opted for a light dinner and ordered some wine and paired it with smoked salmon and bruscetta topped with warm goat cheese and candied pecans. You just can't beat sitting at that overlook watching the moon rise from behind the mountains and passing slowly overhead...



~Big Sur is close to the elephant seals, awesome shopping in Cambria, and the Hearst Castle in the South and Carmel and the Monterrey Aquarium (check out the fiery jellyfish in the sapphire tank and the mating sea otters!).

~Electricity didn’t come to this largely rugged and isolated area until the early 1950s....

~Loads of artists, musicians, and outdoor lovers. Besides Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson have both called Big Sur home at one time.



I'm still getting to know the area bit by bit with every trip and feel that I've only scratched the surface. I was so thrilled with this past trip that I've already booked another trip for later this summer with Mama Chihuahua. Stay tuned....

May 20th, 2009

Women's Adventure Magazine

Rachel En Fuego!
Article in a national magazine dream comes true….

At last, my goal of writing for a national adventure magazine has come true! Just in time for Mother’s Day, I’ve recently had a story about Mama Chihuahua’s and my notoriously soggy, humbling trek on the Routeburn in New Zealand published in Women’s Adventure Magazine. I’ve just received advance copies from the arts editor (Krisan Christensen…thanks, Krisan!). If you’ve never checked the magazine out before, you’re in for a treat! It’s hip, fun, and edgy covering all types of adventures from house-swapping around the world (hopefully involving a house you actually own) to crushes and camping to a Green Action Superhero Comic Strip and interviews of incredible adventure divas. It’s the only travel, sports, and outdoor-related magazine dedicated solely to women. I was also tickled to death that I made the contributors’ page alongside the letter from the editor.

My boyfriend often asks me why I go to the trouble of spending countless hours during and after trips to write my travel blogs and sometimes I ask myself the same question. The first answer that comes to mind is that I just have to! Some unknown and obsessive force drives me to do it. It doesn’t feel like an adventure or a real journey unless I’m able to share it with friends. The second reason is that I love the feedback and dialogue I have with my friends, family, and fellow kindred spirits that is inspired by these blogs.

Lastly, every now and then, I actually get a really cool cosmic return from them like from this one. Just a little after I sent out my trekking blog from the South Island of New Zealand, I received an email from the editor (Michelle Theall, a cool, adventurous woman in her own right who I’ve come to know through the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference over the years) at Women’s Adventure telling me she thought I should write a cool short story for the mag based on the blog.

So there it is, blogging does pay-off. Not a lot, but every now and then you never know how it may come back to you.

You can pick the June Issue of the magazine up at Border’s, REI, Whole Foods, and Barnes and Noble. You can also order subscriptions directly through the magazine’s website at www.womensadventuremagazine.com
I’ll give you a quick glimpse of the article, “The Amnesia of Adventure: Lest we forget we're in this together:”
Since the mag has first dibs by contract on the story for the next six months, I can’t print the whole thing here quite yet. You’ll have to grab a copy at your local bookstore to read the whole story. Here's an excerpt:

“The Amnesia Of Adventure”

By Rachel S. Thurston
For Women’s Adventure Magazine
Appearing in the June 2009 Issue on pages 46-47.

Why my sixty-two year old Mum and I choose to shoulder forty pound backpacks across mountains in bad weather, lather ourselves in bug spray, subsist for days on dehydrated pasta, and sleep in bunkhouses with snoring, equally smelly strangers baffles me. It’s rare in our many years of travels to come across other mother and daughters, let alone women my mother’s age attempting to trek where we do. There’s probably good reason for this. We suffer from what I refer to as "Trekking Amnesia," in which a year usually passes by and memories of our agony are replaced with blissful nostalgia.

We’ve crossed the world’s highest pass in mid-winter only to have our lunch frozen solid in our chest pockets by noon, battled hypoxia and AMS with copious loads of garlic and diamox, and trekked the rice fields of Vietnam during the beginning of monsoon, yet it’s these experiences which keep us booking our tickets again and again.

This past year we’ve chosen to do the Routeburn Track, one of the Great Walks of New Zealand, an area which we’ve recently learned receives over two-hundred inches of rain a year. As we stop in for our permits, a park ranger informs us that a late spring storm is coming through for the length of our trek. I look over at my mother hoping that she’ll be the one to say, “Let’s just scrap this whole trekking thing and stay in town and eat chocolate.” But she doesn’t and my competitive spirit maintains its silence. ....

To read more, you can check out the Women's Adventure Magazine website (they'll post it when the next issue comes out) in a few months for a digital download or you can buy a copy at your local Borders.

May 19th, 2009
Destination Wine Country Article
"Free-Wheelin: A Romantic Bike Trip Through Santa Ynez Valley"






For the past year or so, I've had the opportunity to write for the Santa Barbara-based Destination Wine Country Magazine. It's been a joy working with the editor, Laura Sanchez, whom I also have known as a friend through my band King Bee, for many years now. I can't tell you what it means as a writer to be able to write stories I'm passionate about and to have such incredible communication with the editor. We've started a tradition of having coffee a few times a year to talk about new story ideas and our own love of travel, Spanish, and literature.

The most recent summer issue (the most gorgeous cover I've seen them have yet!) features an article I wrote about a romantic bike trip through Santa Ynez Valley with my Baby Love. The only downer is that they replaced every reference I made to my "Baby Love" with either "boyfriend" or "Steve." Can you imagine?! ;)

"Steve" and I had great fun doing "research" for this article...research which included several glasses of wine, a very leisurely downhill bike ride, strolling through a lavendar farm, and stuffing ourselves with deli sandwiches and strawberries. After finishing the book The Beautiful Santa Ynez Valley with photographer Chuck Place in 2007, it was pure joy to go up to the Valley just for fun and to write a short piece. By design, Chuck was hired to do the photography for the piece so the four of us (including his wife Ger) made a fun day of it....a lot of it involving Chuck getting in our faces with a big lens telling us to look at each other longingly and to stop drinking all our wine before he had taken his fill of photos.

I'm stoked with how the article came out and pleased once again to have the opportunity to work with a good friend (Chuck), go biking with my Baby Love (Steve), and continue working with a wonderful editor (Laura).

You can check out issues of Destination Wine Country at wineries throughout the Valley and at various bookstores in Santa Barbara.

Just for fun, I'm going to include some of Chuck's photos from the shoot that weren't included in the article. You can check out his gorgeous website at www.placephotography.com

High School Graduation and Mother's Day
Photo Shoot with Ian Miller and his beloved Mama, Brenda Miller

"The best conversations with mothers always take place in silence, when only the heart speaks."
~Carrie Latet

I recently had the honor of photographing a friend's son for his graduation photos, Ventura-based Brenda Miller. Brenda and I envisioned images of Ian which would be classy, timeless, and hip but not traditional, cliche, or cheezy (i.e. those prepackaged backgrounds with the fake swirls in photography studios).

Although I've spent time with Brenda over this past winter and spring, I didn't get the chance to meet Ian until the day of the shoot. He turned out to be a warm, kind, and genuinely mellow lad who slowly opened up about his love of Borat, Zoolander, and Hip Hop. He was shy at first but after the first hour I could see that he began relaxing and trusting me...it was a joy to see multiple sides of him surfacing...from the initial uncomfortable smile to the caught-off-guard laughter to a very relaxed and confident-looking James Dean sultry brood.





It warmed my heart to see Brenda and Ian's interactions throughout the shoot. While I'm close with my own mother, the bond between a mother and son is uniquely different and shooting them both on their own and together really made me excited to do more creative work with mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons. My mother and I were photographed years ago and I still remember it as a magical and euphoric experience during which we celebrated ourselves and our friendship. I would love to do one together with her every five years or so to mark the arch of our lives and our relationship.







After the James Dean/Poetry Man brooding looks (he wasn't posing, it came out completely naturally!) we took a few more before the sun finally fell behind the pepper trees. I hope to shoot them again sometime in the future and am manifesting more work with men and women and their beloved sons and daughers!



In a special ode to my own mother and to Brenda, here is one last parting quote I recently came across about the beauty of motherhood:

"The sweetest sounds to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven."
~William Goldsmith Brown


Here is the slideshow I created for them both. Once you start playing the slideshow, an "HQ" symbol will appear directly beneath the Youtube icon, make sure to click on it so you can watch the video and photos in High Definition. It will only appear once you've begun watching the video.

April 10, 2009
Photo Shoot with Lisa Beck and Budhi Harlow, West African Dancers and Drummers

At the beginning of 2009, I wanted to manifest “working with radiant people and producing beautiful work that is appreciated and that I am proud of.” Since January, I have been so blessed already to have done photo shoots with two women whom I look up to and admire so much—my mother, Karen Custer Thurston (check out my last blog), and my mentor and good friend, Lisa Beck. Both are dancers, artists, and goddesses in every sense of the word.



In the past nine years that I’ve known her, Lisa has grown into this incredibly gifted singer, graceful dancer, powerful percussionist and instructor of West African Dance and Drumming. It has been a joy to not only be a friend and sister of hers but to have the honor of studying dance and drumming with her. She and her partner, Budhi Harlow, are the founders of the groups Panzumo and Konkoba and together they are a mighty musical force! Over the years they have produced several music Cds, taughts hundreds of students, and performed throughout Santa Barbara and Ventura County.







I first shot them about six years ago and recently did another shoot with them on the beach showcasing Lisa’s dancing and drumming for their website, blog, performances, and classes.

What amazes me about Lisa is not only her inner radiance but how much she shines in front of the camera. Her skin is a creamy white and she has an elegance and grace you don’t often see in West African Dance. Budhi is equally powerful in a very rugged, visceral way. Watching him drum and howl and create rhythm is an amazing experience, bringing out his inner warrior.

It was an absolute treat to spend a couple of hours with them on the beach at sunset….we got a little playful at the end of the shoot, moving beyond West African into more of a Men’s Journal/Vogue style swimsuit shoot…laughing in the saltspray as the tangerine sun disappeared over the Pacific.



Another one of Lisa and Budhi’s gifts is their ability to bring people together. Over the years and with the help of other local musical dynamos (Vanessa Isaac, Kim at Pulse Drumming, Steve Campbell, Lindsay Rust, Hunter, Sharin) they have created a very magical community of musicians and dancers among their students. Many of us their students look to each other as family. I often joke that we come to Lisa and Budhi’s classes for the music and we stay for the friendship!

Here's the slideshow that I created for them that is also available on Youtube for viewing:



Lisa's West African Dance Class

High on the euphoria from our shoot and amping up for a West African Dance and Drumming Camp several of us will be attending this summer, I decided to try to capture some of the electric energy that Lisa (with the help of Budhi and his students’ live drumming) imparts to her class. I put together a slideshow of her West African Dance Class. As a photographer, I was able to experience the joy of the class outside the eyes of being a dancer or a drummer. Alas, the only drawback is that I couldn’t be in the photos with my friends during class!

I hope you enjoy these photos as much as we did taking them. Work really shouldn’t be this fun! You can keep tabs on their projects by checking out their website and Lisa’s blog:

www.panzumo.com
www.lisabeckdrumdance.blogspot.com

Photo Shoot with Karen Custer Thurston
Turkish-Egyptian Dancer, Choreographer, and Instructor
Flagstaff, Arizona

"Dancing is like dreaming with your feet! "
~Constanze

After a year in the planning, I finally had the amazing opportunity to photograph my Mamacita in her dance costumes for her new Middle Eastern Dance website that I'll be working on this spring. I had earlier photographed her over several shoots for her fitness website which I completed a year ago.

We had such an incredible time doing the fitness shoot two years ago together in Santa Barbara (she called me her favorite "slave driver"...it might have been the countless push-ups I made her do at the shoot) that she re-hired me to do her updated dance photos during my visit to Flagstaff this past month.

The following is a slideshow which I put together for her to share with her students and clients. The photos have been compressed by youtube so keep in mind that the slideshow on television is a higher quality than watching on the computer.
Enjoy!






It's such an honor to work with her and to photograph her. She is a powerful, radiant woman who is at the top of her game and she continues to be a role model for her dance and fitness students through Flagstaff. She leads a MIddle Eastern dancing and drumming troupe, "Al Rakasaat," which performs throughout the region. I've only known her as a dancer and grew up on the stage with her. To see her more radiant and beautiful than ever from behind the camera is an incredible treat and privilege. I took over 700 photos over two hours...we were exhausted afterwards but I think it was well worth it!



In an effort to set myself apart from other photographer's and to make the photo shoots even more impactful, I've been continuing the tradition of making slideshows for my clients which highlight the best photographs from the shoot and are created on DVDs which can be shown to their friends, family, and clientele. I'm stoked that she's super excited about the photos and is going to be showing the slideshow to several of her students this coming week!




I'll be photographing Lisa Beck, African Drummer and Dancer, this coming weekend as well as beginning work on my Mamacita's new dance website. I feel so incredibly blessed to be able to work with such distinguished dancers, choreographers, artists, and musicians! It's an absolute joy to be creating beautiful work with women whom I admire so much!

Check out Karen's Websites:
Fitness Website: www.karencusterthurston.com (I designed and did all the photography on this site)
Middle Eastern Dance: www.turkishegyptiandance.com (This is her old site that I'll be redesigning this year)

"Learning to Take Nothin' For Granted!" or "You're Sitting In A Chair In The Sky!"

I rarely post videos on here that aren't directly travel related but this really hit all the right buttons for me. This comedian really gets it right about how far beyond a natural state of awe that we've moved these days with all the new technologies around us....how easy it is to take the internet, cell phones, and jet travel for granted.

So the next time I'm complaining about the cramped seating during a torturously long flight across the Pacific, I'll just remember the miracle that I'm "SITTING IN A CHAIR IN THE SKY!"

Enjoy!