Pull up a chair, love. Pour yourself something warm—tea, cacao, coffee swirled with cinnamon—and sit here with me for a while. Olivia’s curled up nearby, damp from yesterday’s river swim, snoring like she owns the world. The morning air smells of pine sap, hummingbirds dart between purple wildflowers, and for a moment, everything feels timeless.

This week on the road brought me deep into Colorado’s van life and RV community, facilitating powerful breathwork sessions among ancient Aspen groves, celebrating my birthday with paddle boarding on the Arkansas River, and rediscovering the glimmers that make van life so deeply alive.

Some weeks feel like lifetimes, don’t they? This one felt like a whole universe blooming inside my chest.

🏔️ Returning to Buena Vista: A Memory That Changed Me

After days of solitude, waking with the dawn, watching golden light spill over the mountains, and falling asleep to the hush of creek water, I rolled back into one of my favorite corners of this country—Buena Vista, Colorado. 

Five years ago, I stumbled into this little mountain town at the start of my TransRockies Ultramarathon—122 miles running across wild alpine passes that cracked me open in ways my soul had been starving for.

I remember my feet pounding dusty switchbacks, lungs burning in the thin air, the smell of sagebrush and sweat mingling under a searing sun. Back then, I was running from things I couldn’t yet name—chasing finish lines I didn’t understand, trying to outrun a grief that lived in my bones.

Now, I come back for different reasons.

🌬 Breathwork at JalaBlu: Home in My Body

This time, I walked into jalaBlu Yoga Collective, a place that feels like an anchor in this ever-shifting life on wheels. The moment I stepped through the doors, I felt it: the land rising up to hold me, familiar eyes softening with recognition, arms wrapping around me in hugs that said welcome home. 

Guiding breathwork there cracked my heart wide open again. Breath weaving through the room like wind through the aspens, clearing what no longer served, making space for what was always meant to root.

✨ Breathwork does that, doesn’t it? It brings you back to the truth of who you are beneath the noise. Back to the quiet knowing that your worth isn’t in your doing, but in your very existence.

🥃 A Whiskey Prelude to My Birthday

And because waiting for the actual day is overrated, I gathered sweet friends for a pre-birthday whiskey tasting in Buena Vista.

The sun was warm on my shoulders.

The smoky, oak-aged sips burned sweet down my throat.

Laughter rolled across the patio like thunder, cracking me open wider than any barrel-aged bourbon ever could.

We clinked glasses under the Colorado sky, feeling like rebels and saints all at once—wild hearts anchored in the moment, no destination beyond the depth of connection.

🚐 Xscapers: My Family on the Road

Then came Salida, where I rejoined my Xscapers family.

If you’ve never heard of Xscapers, let me tell you—this is more than just an RV club. It’s a tribe of nomads who live life untethered from four walls. People who’ve traded mortgages for mountains, office cubicles for campfire circles, and alarm clocks for sunrise rhythms.

We gather in dusty fairgrounds and forest clearings, in desert washes and lakeside parks, creating spontaneous villages wherever we land. The connections forged here run deeper than Wi-Fi signals and shared resources. They’re born from long nights around propane fire pits, stories whispered under shooting stars, tears shed in vulnerability, laughter that echoes across empty plains.

There is a sacredness in these convergences.

In knowing you’re surrounded by people who get it—the freedom, the loneliness, the constant recalibration it takes to live life on the road.

These are the humans who will crawl under your van in the rain to help you fix a leak. The ones who’ll offer an extra solar panel, a cold beer, or a listening ear when your heart is heavy. The ones who become your pop-up neighbors, your wilderness family, your reminder that you don’t have to do any of this alone.

🌊 Birthday River Wild with Olivia

At the convergence, we rafted down the Arkansas River—yes, it’s strange the Arkansas River is in Colorado—its crystal-clear mountain snowmelt roaring with an energy that makes your bones hum.

For my birthday? 🎉 Stand-up paddle boarding. 

🐾 Imagine this:

I’m channeling full-body balance vibes, rooted through my feet, breath steady, heart wide open, Olivia perched like a queen at the front of my board… until she decided peaceful paddling was overrated.

With zero warning, she LEAPT OFF into the freezing water, tail wagging like her life’s mission was to greet every single human floating nearby.

Everyone else drifted by in quiet bliss.

Me? Paddling like a frantic mama duck 🦆, scooping up a soaking wet, 65-pound Labrador who smelled like alpine river and blissful rebellion.

And honestly? I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Seeing her so alive reminded me that chaos is just another flavor of joy.

🌳 Breathwork Among the Aspens

Later that week, I guided three breathwork sessions at the convergence. Each carried its own intention, but one rooted us deeper than the rest—inspired by the quiet, ancient magic of the Aspen trees. 

👉🏻 Did you know,  that a grove of aspens isn’t really a group of separate trees?

What looks like a forest of individuals is actually a single, living organism.

Each slender trunk above ground is just a stem—an expression—of a vast shared root system beneath the earth. These roots spread horizontally, weaving through soil and stone, connecting tree to tree across entire mountainsides. Some aspen colonies cover hundreds of acres, and their roots can live for thousands of years.

Even when fire, drought, or disease wipes out what we see above ground, the roots remain alive, quietly waiting for the season to send up new shoots.

✨ Just like us. 

Above ground, we breathe, love, grieve, and rise in our own ways, thinking we’re separate in our struggles and dreams. But underneath it all? We’re woven together by invisible roots of shared humanity, holding each other upright when the storms come.

The aspens remind me how we’re meant to live:

🌿 Connected in community

🌿 Nourishing each other

🌿 Speaking through silent pathways of wisdom, grief, resilience, and grace

We breathed into that truth together, and in that breath, something ancient within us remembered: we are all interconnected. 

🏔️ Morning Glimmers Beneath Mount Princeton

Now here I am, parked at the base of Mount Princeton (14,197 ft), sipping cacao as hummingbirds flit past Alani’s open back doors. If I sit silent enough, I can hear their wings whispering prayers onto my soul.

😎 Fun fact: Mount Princeton is one of Colorado’s proud 14ers, part of the Collegiate Peaks range named by surveyors after Ivy League universities. Learn more about Mount Princeton’s history here.

The air is cool, smelling of river rock and pine. Olivia is sprawled in a sun patch, her fur still scented with river water. My mug is warm in my hands, and for a moment, there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

✨ Glimmers: The Opposite of Triggers

I’ll leave you with one final nugget of wisdom today.

I learned a word I didn’t know I needed:

✨ Glimmers. 

They’re the micro-moments that spark joy, peace, gratitude, wonder. Proof your nervous system remembers how to soften and receive.

🌬 The breeze lifting sweat from your neck

🐾 Your dog’s sigh at midnight

☀️ The first sip of coffee in the quiet glow before sunrise

Once you start looking for them? They multiply. They rewire your entire energy.

💭 So tell me, love… what was your glimmer today? 

Share it below in the comments. Let’s collect them together, like sacred offerings reminding us why we’re here.

PS: 🌬 If you’re in Colorado, I’ll be facilitating a live, in-person breathwork session at:

jalaBlu Yoga Studio in Buena Vista, CO

 Thursday, July 10 at 6 PM MST. 

👉🏼 Click here to join us

If you loved this story, you might also enjoy my reflections from Capitol Reef, Utah, where I facilitated breathwork beneath red rock canyons. Read that Postcard here.