Coming out of the holidays - I feel like a heavy sludge has bogged me down. Maybe it’s too much of the rich foods and “holiday cheer” though I left alcohol in the dust over 4 years ago.

This happens to me frequently as I come out of the season of high expectations that typically surrounds the holidays. This year, 2020, has been so different and so very strange that I have found a lot of tears and grief coming up to the surface, more than may be normal. Grief has a sneaky way of creeping up on me. I might be moving about my day to day and not even notice it lurking around the edges of my mind until, blamo, there she is. And interestingly, it doesn’t always feel like sadness. Sometimes it feels like fiery hot rage that I just want to exhale and burn everything down. Grief is a tricky force for sure. 

After this past few days out of our routine I feel a bit like I’m stuck in quick sand. Many of us know that expression well - but how many of you have any experience with quick sand? I do! As a guide in Alaska we used to visit the outwash plane of a melting glacier. Amongst the boulders were always the patches of smooth sparkling grey sand. It looked so tempting to walk through compared to the uneven surface of the boulder field. The first few people would travel through without a hitch, but if you were a few people back, the ground would quickly give way and if you kept wiggling your boots they would be quickly consumed under the sand and saturated with the milky white water coming from the glacier.

In this podcast I explore some old guide tricks that I learned from these experiences that I think equates to what I’m experiencing now and I hope they will be helpful for pulling you out of the mud as well.