the desert, the lunar eclipse, the small but significant renewals

a post about our red rock trip!

at the top of the year, after we rang in 2025 in an apartment packed with pals and poker chips and a human disco ball rendition of the times square ball drop, alexa turned to me one day at work. “can we make red rocks happen, for real?” we agreed that march made sense for a westward venture, and started floating the idea around word-of-mouth style with our coworker climbing community. i texted my dad: what’s march like for you? can some friends and i come stay and climb? with a place secured, and his confirmation that as long as some of us didn’t mind sleeping on the floor we were more than welcome, we picked some dates and found cheap flights. throughout the drudgery of a long, freezing winter, the reminder thrummed through my veins, providing pulses of heat: you’re going to red rock, you’re going to red rock, you’re going to red rock.

photo by lucie buclet

i’ve always been a very romantic person who finds magic easily in my life, and even so, it was easy to take the splendor of las vegas’ mountain guardians for granted growing up. my family would take hikes through calico basin and icebox canyon and i would think, cool! i loved catching icebox’s occasional waterfall and noticing the smell of the wild rosemary, but i was too wrapped up in the activities of my swirling brain to practice real reverie. in high school, driving into the desert at dusk with friends did feel like a ritual of sorts, a tapping into a world that was both ours and so foreign in its infinite mysticism. since moving to brooklyn almost fourteen (!?) years ago, i’ve visited a few times and climbed in the canyon once. but this sort of trip, spending the better part of five days in the desert with ten friends, was an entirely new sort of adventure.

the first night of the trip, the earth’s shadow moved over the surface of the full blood moon in virgo. we watched the lunar eclipse in stages from the backyard and the wall-sized window in the living room, breaths slowing and chatter dying save for the occasional “whoa,” and “look at it now!” when the last of the shadow passed the diminishing silver sliver of the moon, it took on a ruddy red color that mirrored the hue of the nearby sandstone mountains in the daylight. this is so special, i thought from the onset.

the energy of the lunar eclipse, situated on the virgo/pisces axis, reminded us to release the idea- the illusion- of control, a theme that remained present on our trip as both mercury and venus traveled through their retrogrades. it rained our first two nights, rendering climbing on sandstone unsafe, and reminding us that one very much cannot control the weather.

rain and all, the trip was fantastically grounding and invigorating. the desert air and sky always feels like a much needed reset in the midst of a busy brooklyn life, and sharing the time with my dad and these friends reminded me of how rich in love and abundance i continue to be. in the morning before we ventured out for the day, and in between climbs, i got in the habit of laying out on the rock, feeling the mid-march sun gently heat my skin and my taught muscles relax. at night, post-family-style meals and poring over the guidebooks to scheme our next-day plans, we gabbed and giggled middle school-sleepover style until reminding ourselves that we did, in fact, need to get some sleep.

on one rained-out day, nine out of the eleven of us took an epic day trip to joshua tree. lucie and i, craving a slower explorative day, stayed behind to take a deep, scrambly hike in the canyon with my dad, then ventured downtown to my favorite nostalgic streets. i love las vegas. i love being from there. i love the downtown neon, the wild west-ness of it all, the fact that, as lucie pointed out, one can very easily imagine cowboys riding from their ranches in the hills all the way to saloons (today’s dive bars) on east fremont street. i could wander aimlessly for days and days in the deserts that raised me, experiencing a sort of return to wide-eyed, teenage naiveté mixed with an ever-expanding understanding of my adult self and my place in the mélange of this world.

this was, non-hyperbolically, a perfect trip for me. upon return from our red-eye flight back, i napped the day away then met a few dear brooklyn friends out at a favorite bushwick dive. a return to my ever-shifting constant, the sun-drenched reset thawing my brain of burnout and my heart of a stubborn iciness i had allowed settle over it during the winter. what a life, i am consistently reminded. what wonders i am so often privy to.

xx

photo by geraldine arseth

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in other news: my band, captain tallen & the benevolent entities, released the first single, “Be So Nice,” off our debut EP! i am very proud of it and excited that it exists in the world. you can listen wherever you hear music online. more to come!