Yogini

Wikipedia definition: A Yogini is the sacred feminine force made incarnate

Wikipedia also says that a yogini is a female master practitioner of yoga. In truth, I don't know that I'll ever qualify as a "master practitioner", but I've found that yoga is a really good practice for me. I make it to a class at least weekly. I'd love to go more often, but it's hard to fit it in with everything else.

This photo displays some incredibly poor form, but you try doing yoga in jeans and heeled boots in the middle of a meadow. Dare you. The photo idea was cute anyway...

I have a few favorite teachers. These are women I really enjoy. I get something out of their classes every time I go. One of my favorites is Rebecca.

Rebecca does a "yoga retreat" on the coast every year. I missed it last year. I just didn't sign up in time. But since then, she's changed her weekly class schedule such that I can't go...and that made me extra motivated to get to her retreat at Costanoa Lodge this year.

I booked myself a little tent cabin. By tent cabin standards, this one was very nice. Electricity, queen bed, a couple chairs and, importantly, an electric blanket. Didn't manage to think about the fact that it might be COLD in November, especially in a canvas-sided cabin!

It was. It was very cold, but it looks cozy enough, doesn't it?

I arrived at Costanoa around 11:30 in the morning. Yoga didn't start until noon, so I checked in super early and wandered around a bit. We had two hours of yoga, then took a group walk to the beach, then another two hours of yoga before dinner.

Too bad I didn't take pictures of the yoga itself, but that would have been weird.

I dined with a couple of women I had seen before. I'd met one of them briefly, at a baseball meeting. The other, I'd seen at yoga classes before. It was a nice time. The restaurant was warm and the food was good. The local cats wandered in and out at will, which was kinda entertaining.

I slept with my electric blanket on all night long, but after all that yoga and walking, I slept really well. In the morning, I had a nice, quiet breakfast, packed the mommymobile and headed out to do some real exploring.

Turns out, Costanoa is really close to a state park I'd been wanting to check out, so I took a short drive to Butano State Park and set out on its "grand loop".

It was a beautiful day and this is a really beautiful park on a day like that.

I have a hiking book that highly recommended this loop, but it also said it would take me six hours to complete. It was 11 miles. I scoffed. Six hours seemed like an awfully long time for a solo hiker in pretty good shape who isn't planning to stop for a picnic. The trail I set out on was steep and it was steep for a good, long ways. I figured it was a loop and I'd have to get to the top and start going down at some point, but I kept looking at the map, in case I wimped out and needed a shortcut back. There were plenty.

Something about knowing there are plenty of options for ditching your plans makes it easier to stay on track, at least for me. The weather was sunny, but cool. There were banana slugs everywhere. I couldn't help thinking how much Mam would have enjoyed trying to count every one of them. I even saw a newt making its way across the trail. Apparently, it's the season for that.

There were surprisingly few people out on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I think I ran into five...and one of them was a toddler, so make that 4.5. They were all friendly and happy. I chatted with several of them as we passed each other.

It's easy for me to pass the time thinking and walking. It was amazing that the fern-filled canyons were so deep and the autumn sun so low that hiking through them made me worry I was running out of daylight.

I wasn't. It was only mid-afternoon.

It was a great hike. There were tall stands of redwoods, sycamores dropping their leaves and spanish moss that glowed in the sunlight.

I made the entire loop in almost exactly four hours. Those people who write books? They walk awfully slowly, apparently! I was pretty disappointed to learn that my ankle still isn't 100 percent since being sprained on that trip to Alamere Falls. It was stiff and sore by the time I got back to the van.

But it was just 3 o'clock, giving me just enough time to visit a beach before heading back home. The coast itself was breezy and chilly, but I was reminded that I don't spend nearly enough time at the beach in the fall, even though I know it's one of the most beautiful times of the year along the Northern California coastline.

The beach was nearly deserted as well, so I hung out for a while, taking pictures, getting perfectly windblown and appreciating my time away, before making tracks towards home.

Outta Here

I was impatient about booking a camping trip this year. In the end, that meant our reservations were for the week right after the end of school. We were supposed to leave Monday, right after the weekend baseball tournament. Fortunately, sorta, I got a phone call a couple of weeks earlier, informing me that our campsite at Sequoia National Park was still under SNOW.

The message indicated that they should be able to relocate us to a different campground, but in reality, they'd displaced about 1,000 campers and the chances were slim. So...I whipped out my trusty camping book and found a completely different campground in a completely different direction, which was available for the same number of nights, although not until Tuesday. Fine. Another day to pack and get our butts out the door.

We didn't leave particularly early on Tuesday, so we didn't arrive at Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park until about 5:30 that evening. There was a large, rather magnificent herd of elk near the entrance. Awesome, I thought, we'd get to see plenty of them in the next few days. We'd have to, right? We were camping at Elk Meadow campground after all. But, yeah. Not so much!At least the foxgloves were pretty.

Daddy and the kids quickly got the campsite set up while I fixed spaghetti, garlic bread and green beans for dinner. S'mores for dessert (of course) and then a bedtime. Mam awoke the next morning, excited about our first campsite visitor:She kept track of this guy all the way through breakfast. Of course, he was far from the only banana slug we saw.

For our first day at the park, we decided to visit Fern Canyon. You can drive down the highway and up the unpaved road along the coast to get there, but we opted (out of sheer foolishness, probably) to hike there from the campground. It was a lovely hike through the redwoods, but it was also about 12 miles round trip...with two small children.Not surprisingly, there was a lot of whining, particularly from Mam. Daddy insisted she try some beef jerky, since she'd done a poor job of eating breakfast. That didn't go over well.

About five miles into our hike, we finally reached the signpost for Fern Canyon and stairs down toward the creek.Of course, we got to the bottom of the stairs and there was no sign of a trail. Fortunately, there was a ranger. Daddy had asked back at the visitors center if we'd need to walk through water. They said, no, just maybe some mud. They were wrong.

The trail criss-crossed the creek several times, requiring Daddy and me to take off our shoes and wade through the water. It would've been a whole lot easier if we'd brought our water shoes. Daddy carried the kids across the creek more than once too.

We barely saw anyone on our hike, but Fern Canyon was pretty busy. Obviously, most people opt to drive there and take the short walk to the canyon rather than hiking overland.It was certainly worth the trip. Even the kids seemed happy to be there and appreciated the steep walls covered in ferns. At that point, we were out by the coast and we took a short walk to the parking lot, primarily to use the restrooms, before heading back. Mam was adamant that she wanted to walk out to the beach, but it was windy and chilly. We promised to go another day.The hike back still involved quite a bit of whining and Mam eventually ended up on Daddy's shoulders. But we all made it and I think I was the only one with a blister. So much for my nice comfy hiking boots! At least Smunch was pretty happy and cooperative all day.It was another relatively late arrival at our campsite, so it was straight to making a campfire and dinner yet again. The kids were grateful for the break.