A week of travel = a week of reflection

When I was finishing up my music degree back in 2011, my tuba teacher, Don Harry, helped me plan and execute a summer road trip that would change me forever. The idea started with an honest look at what I wanted to do be doing with my time and music: I loved playing the tuba at Eastman and studying with Don, but my greatest musical passion had always secretly been songwriting, something academic music had pushed me away from. I wanted to get back into writing and back into the Rocky Mountains. I spent the summer before with my brass quintet, playing a classical music festival in Colorado, and I absolutely fell in love with the place. When Don needed someone to deliver a few tubas to a friend in Colorado Springs, we devised a plan where I would deliver the instruments, then car camp and explore Colorado for the rest of the summer, writing songs and busking for meals. The idea was to find out:

If I had to write songs to survive, what kind of songs would I write?

I wrote a lot of songs that summer, and I learned a lot about myself. Once I finished my degree and moved out to Arizona to start my teaching career, these car-camping/songwriting trips became a yearly summer tradition. I think often now about a lucky conversation I had with the late David Grover speaking on Bob Dylan. He told me:

"You don't sit down to write Tangled Up In Blue..."

So you get up and move around once in a while. I've been super fortunate to see as much of this country as I have, the way that I have, and I'm super grateful what that's done for my creativity.

Today, my insight timer app tells me I've been meditating every morning for the past 84 days. That's a personal record for sure, and I'm quite proud of it. When I get to the Monastery in a few hours, I'm going turn off my phone, end that streak, and start fresh on a new one just to see:

If I had nothing to do but meditate, practice mindfulness, and be of service to my community for 90 days, what kind of skills and habits might I learn along the way to bring back to daily life?

Contrary to some well-wishes I've received lately, I'm not really "searching" for anything on this retreat; I'm not on some mystical quest for inner peace or understanding. I came to this place the same way I've arrived at many others: to dig a little deeper into something I'm passionate about, to challenge myself in a new and interesting way, and to see what I can learn from the experience.

Rains Retreat starts this afternoon.