Spring Strawberry

We just returned from four days of camping at the Strawberry Music Festival near Yosemite. As usual, all three of us had so much fun! It's tough not to have fun when you enter Strawberry -- a surreal world filled with tie dye and bubbles and hula hoops. Its very basis is fun. Where else can you drink cocktails and go hiking to a beautiful lookout point only to return to camp and listen to world-class music under the shining stars?

Some of our musical highlights included two sets by Michael Franti (one acoustic by the lake and the other a high-energy dance party) as well as a powerful performance at Sunday morning's revival by Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue. Ediza especially enjoyed Canadian fiddler Natalie MacMaster.

The music ended last night and we made our way back home to the llama farm today. It always takes us some time to transition from Strawberry land back to the "real world." My transition was accelerated today by shoveling llama manure for more than three hours in the hot afternoon sun:)

Walking the line

The other day I hiked Yosemite Falls -- now in its full springtime glory from the snowmelt runoff. When I made it to the top I was lucky enough to watch this world-renowned slackliner (similar to a tightrope walker) make his way across a rope above the falls. It was really incredible to witness the stillness and balance on the rope as the waterfall raged below.

About a week or so ago I saw a preview for a documentary, "Man on Wire," about a young Frenchman who in 1974 walked a wire illegally rigged between New York World Trade Center's twin towers. I had been thinking a lot about this movie and when I saw the guy walk over the waterfall I knew I had to watch it. Last night we saw the film and I must say I was enthralled from beginning to end. It was really creative as the documentary used the tightrope walking as a metaphor for how you should live your life.

Completely unrelated, we hope all the mothers out there enjoyed their Mother's Day. We went down to the big city to buy some paint. I love the names they come up with for paint. We are painting our bedroom Indian Sky with Sanctuary trim and our bathroom will be Bali Turquoise with Bitter Orange and Terracotta Pot. Of course, Ediza left the store with paint swatches featuring every shade of pink you could imagine.

'Around the World in 80 Days'

Other than a couples yoga class, Amber and I haven't been on a proper date in 2 1/2 years. That changed this past weekend when Amber's sister watched Ediza and Amber and I went out to dinner (Indian food) and a play ('Around the World in 80 Days'). We had a lot of fun. Amber wore a dress she got in Paris and I even wore cologne (also for the first time in years). Of course, we talked plenty about Ediza. Before the play we reminisced about our own around-the-world adventure, although ours took much longer than 80 days (more like double that).


While it's no far off distant land, the town of Mariposa (Amber's hometown) is the subject of my latest article for the L.A. Times travel section. Check out "Mariposa Butterfly Festival will take flight May 1 to 3" at travel.latimes.com. We'll be headed there this weekend.

Easter eggs

Ediza has finally fallen asleep! It seems like she's been up for the past two days straight with all this Easter excitement. She went on two egg hunts this weekend -- one Saturday morning with nearly 12,000 eggs and the other this afternoon at the llama farm. Amber prepared a beautiful feast for us today and she's now reading one of her Easter presents -- "Breaking Dawn," the fourth book in the "Twilight" series. Amber got me an iPod shuffle, which will come in handy when I go running. This past week I ran for the first time since the marathon in China and I'm still sore! Well, I better go hide the candy before Ediza wakes up (it was last Easter in New Zealand, after all, when she first discovered chocolate by biting right through the foil of a chocolate egg).

Vernal Equinox

On Friday, the first day of spring, Ediza received her first haircut. She got her bangs and some curls trimmed at the place where Amber gets her hair done.


The next day we all went to a wedding. Amber and I have been to a variety of weddings (including one overlooking the Pacific Ocean and another at a Christmas tree farm) and this one was right up there as far as originality goes. They were married at a lake and the reception followed in their yurt. In the past, we had researched getting a yurt. Being inside of this one, which had a kitchen and bathroom, made us again interested in making one our home someday.

Waking up the next morning we were surprised by some of the largest snowflakes I've ever seen (and later that day we were caught in a brief snow and hailstorm whiteout). What made it so surprising was that we had been enjoying such nice spring-like weather and just the day before we saw hillsides blazed with bright orange California poppies. Looking out the window now, seeing frost on the ground and on the llamas backs, it appears as if Old Man Winter hasn't called it quits yet.

Murphys

My new L.A. Times article -- "Murphys rings in St. Patrick's Day with green wine" -- is now online at travel.latimes.com (it will also be in Sunday's Travel section). Murphys is a cool little town that's a short drive from us in Sonora. We plan on making that drive Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in true Irish style!

Spiritual Well Being & cherry tomatoes

The other day I was cleaning off a book shelf when I found an old journal of mine from when I studied abroad in Australia back in 2001. Before these handy little blogs came about I used to write about my travels in a little notebook (and I guess I still do). Reading over what I wrote provided glimpses into that time of my life: scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, camping in the rainforest, dancing with friends until dawn, living overseas during 9/11.

I also used the book to take notes during some classes, which included an Aboriginal studies course and Spiritual Well Being. The latter class was unlike any other college course I've ever taken. We would spread out on the floor and the teacher would lead us through guided meditations. (Keep in mind, the university I was at was just outside of progressive Byron Bay). Notes from my final lecture of Spiritual Well Being on Oct. 24, 2001: "Radical forgiveness calls upon the highest human virtues. You can forgive anyone for anything because that person taught you a lesson and made you who you are today. Nothing is wrong so there's nothing to forgive."

I passed all my classes with high marks despite taking off a few weeks in the middle of the semester for a trip to southeast Asia. My journal entries from Asia include practicing yoga at the airport in Singapore, drinking beer out of teacups in Bangkok and trying to communicate with a Buddhist monk.

On my way back to the states I took a monthlong detour in New Zealand and spent a week in Fiji. I stayed with a Samoan family in Auckland for a week before heading to a rural area to work in a greenhouse picking cherry tomatoes. Each morning I would sit on a skateboard and make my way up and down rows of tomatoes, picking and trimming them to the tune of the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar." After working there a few weeks, I went almost two years before eating another cherry tomato!

What a different (and even more incredible) experience returning to New Zealand seven years later with my family. I guess I'm posting this because it reminds me how fun and important travel is. It also reminds me that you never truly know where life will lead you. That's the beauty of it.