Tag Archive for: backpacking

Friday Waypoints- 02/01/19

My Choice of Music this Morning- Sometimes I need music to comfort me. Most therapists experience a lot of chaos in their work from week to week. I’m sure you can imagine. With new therapists that I train, I preach a lot about “self-care.” I encourage them to do the things that help them decompress…

Friday Waypoints- 1/25/19

What Your Children Remember I’m spending time with my son this week. He lives in Colorado and is one of the kindest, most genuine person I know. And he is a hard worker. When he was living in Louisville, employers loved him. It’s no different now. He’s working lots of extra hours to support his…

Escape. Explore. Connect.

I do a lot of walking in parks. This past week I noticed the signs at Joe Creason Park had the following tag at the end: Escape. Explore. Connect. What good advice. People seem more stressed today than ever before. Relationships seem more complicated. We’re connected to social media, the news networks, podcasts, and our…

The Hurried Child –Are We Creating a Generation of Anxious Children?

I first read David Elkind’s book, “The Hurried Child,” while in graduate school almost 25 years ago. It provided a course of treatment for me to use with families and their children. I encouraged families to relax and limit the stress that they imposed upon their kids. This stress usually took the form of over-involvement…

Desert Therapy

7:00 AM, November 13, 2018, EC-1 (Elephant Canyon –Campsite 1), Canyonlands National Park, Utah There is nothing like the silence of the desert. This very cold morning (20 degrees) is only interrupted by the quiet hiss of the Whisperlite-butane stove heating my morning coffee. It was cold last night. I had almost all of my…

Family Hiking Tips

Why You Should Still Hike in the Fall & Winter Don’t shy away from hiking with your family during the Fall and Winter months as the positives clearly outweigh the negatives: NO BUGS! NO SPIDER WEBS! Those of you that have hiked in the summer months, know the experience of having those yucky spider webs…

Friday Waypoints- 11/16/18

Meaningful Moment: Watching the Sun set on the second night of backpacking in Canyonlands National Park, Utah. I had hiked into the Chessler Park area of the Needles District with 60+ lbs. on my back, through some beautiful and rugged terrain. Except for a few jet streams, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I…

Friday Waypoints- 11/2/18

Meaningful Moment- Switchbacks I took three adolescent boys into the woods to train with backpacks this past weekend. It was therapeutic!!! We stopped on the trail in the Jefferson Memorial Forest and walked through a stream bed. We looked for geodes. It was three young teenagers in the woods, looking for geodes. I saw the…