Shambha-dust-ala
Wow, what a busy couple of weeks! Since the end of July we've either had houseguests or been away, and now it's starting to feel like the summer is fading away and plans for the fall are beginning to form. It's been a great summer though. Busy and fun. What did we get up to in the last 19 days, you ask?
- Climbed the Chief in Squamish. As we were preparing to leave Tom said, "it's a short but steep hike, maybe a couple of hours". When we got there I saw a sign that said, "This hike is not a walk in the park," and there was a massive boulder at the trailhead that you had to climb over in order to start the hike. I wondered why they would leave a big rock blocking the trail like that, but as we neared the summit I realized that rock was left there as a filter. If you couldn't make it over that first boulder you wouldn't make it on the hike and you'd be better off to just turn back before you started. We hiked to the second peak, which involved using chains that had been bolted into a rock face to creep up a crevasse and then climb up a steel ladder to the top. Pretty crazy stuff, and Tom was wearing Beatrice on his back the whole time!
Of course, we realized that it is just as hard (or harder) on the way down. We avoided the chains and decided to take another route down, which was slightly less intimidating but still involved an hour or more of slowly and carefully picking our way down a very steep valley. It was the most challenging hike I think I've ever done, but very rewarding.
- The Shambhala Experience. Preparing, packing, driving, waiting, waiting, waiting, cleaning dust out of your nostrils, hauling the (waaay too much) crap we brought with us because we had a u-haul trailer and got carried away packing, setting up, carrying water, trying to keep the dust out of your bed and failing miserably, dancing, eating, hula hooping in the sun, listening to the beats pulsating through the night and fading away each morning, staying up late chatting to people who wandered through your camp, prancing around and playing dressup, ogling everyone else who is prancing around and playing dressup, watching the general state of the attendees go from excited and together to burnt out and zombified, beats stop, pack up, haul stuff, wait, haul stuff, driving driving driving. Phew. Like the Squamish hike, it was exhausting and much more work than I was expecting, but there were some rewarding parts too.
It would have been a far, far better experience if we didn't have to start it all off with an eight hour wait in 30C temperatures in order to get into the festival. I don't know what it is about Shambhala, but the lineups are notoriously bad and this year was no exception. We thought we could beat the rush by arriving at 8am on Wednesday, but it seems everyone else had the same idea. It took us all pretty much a full day to recover from the lineup.
Highlights included:
- dancing at the fractal forest stage on Thursday, as the music was beginning to get going and everyone was still excited and fresh.
- being in the fashion show on Sunday, even though I felt incredibly self conscious and knew I didn't do as good a job as I could have.
- lending my hula hoop to someone who asked to play with it and watching as she pulled out every trick in the book, using MY HOOP. It was pretty cool, and encouraging to know that with some practice my hoop can look that good.
- dancing to the guy from Juno Reactor at the portal on Saturday night. Woop! I love me some good psy.
- receiving compliments from strangers on the clothes I designed and made for myself.
- waking up Monday morning without a hangover. :)
Despite all these fun things, I don't know if I'll ever go to Shambhala again. I certainly wouldn't bring Beatrice again, although I don't think it was a bad or harmful experience for her this year. It's just that camping for five days is hard enough with a baby, and if it's the camping you are going for there are certainly cheaper campsites with better facilities to be had. If you're going for the music and dancing and carefree atmosphere, that experience is curtailed so much by having a child there that it's not really worth the price of the ticket. Maybe it would be easier if we had a babysitter there. But maybe not. And besides, I feel that I'm moving further and further away from that phase of my life, and it doesn't seem like such a high priority to get there just to dance in the sun with lots of other people, you know? I guess I'm just growing up and moving on.
So, this week we unpacked and have been trying to get all the dust out of the stuff we brought. By the time we left, the parking lot was covered in three or four inches of dust that crusted our feet and noses as we walked. SO MUCH DUST. *cough* Another unfortunate outcome of this year's Shambhala is that we lost three pairs of shoes there somehow. Nobody can tell exactly where they went missing, but Tom's good new shoes, his Teva sandals and one of my favourite grey hiking boots are gone. :( How did we lose ONE hiking boot? I didn't even wear them there. I'm really choked about this, and it's going to be at least $350 to replace all those shoes. That makes Shambhala one expensive party.
I'm actually looking forward to a little regular routine now - a short jaunt to the playground in the morning, writing during Bea's nap, playing in the afternoon and watching some Battlestar Galactica after dinner. You have no idea how excited I was to use our running water and pillowtop mattress when we first got back from Shambhala. Oh, the luxury! My regular daily life really isn't so bad.
