​If you look to the Northwest of Steamboat Springs you will see the graceful slopes of Elk Mountain, better known as Sleeping Giant.

I was introduced to Sleeping Giant during my first season here in 1993. Back then the skis were long and straight, most visitors stayed off the mountain on powder days, and we were riding the Silver Bullet Gondola up to mid-mountain. On one of those rides a fellow passenger pointed out that mountain to the west, slightly north as Sleeping Giant. I did not see the Giant. Like the famous Old Woman/Young Woman Perception Illustration (also known as “My Wife and My Mother-in-Law”), my brain was not able to perceive it. Then, as the various features were pointed out, I did see the Giant, and have seen nothing else ever since. I see the Giant lying on his side, knees pulled partly towards his chest, one arm flung out to the east, head turned to the west, his lingering gaze toward the setting sun. 

Seeing Sleeping Giant never fails to bring me a sense of peace. On my many evening Covid walks, I would climb the CMC (Colorado Mountain College) campus hill and view Sleeping Giant. The sunset symphony in the sky behind the Giant was some nights soft and quiet pinks, oranges and golds, other nights it was a turbulent throw-down of charcoal and fuschia, and my emotions at the time were equally varied. But the Sleeping Giant was a stable presence - solid and dependable. Hopeful. 

There are several tales (Steamboat Pilot & Today article: Legend Has It…) about how the Giant came to be. One is credited to Charlotte Perry, who, along with Portia Mansfield, founded Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp, the oldest continuously operating performing arts school in the United States. The story Perry told (read it here: Steamboat Chamber: The Legend of the Sleeping Giant) is about a giant who protected the Ute people who lived in the Yampa Valley. The giant could remain as long as he did no harm to any living creature. When an evil ogre came to the valley and the giant did away with him in order to protect the valley and its inhabitants, the giant was put to sleep and became the Sleeping Giant. 

Interestingly, rumor has it that the Ute people who were indigenous to the Yampa Valley, were worried as settlers moved into the area. The Utes gathered all the rattlesnakes from the valley and laid them around the base of Sleeping Giant to protect his sacred slumber.

In the days of the Roman Empire, milestones were placed along roadways as markers of distance, and sometimes as signposts of sorts. In current times, the term milestone refers to life events and goals achieved.

My daughter Charlotte is graduating from high school this weekend, and milestones as both life events and accomplishments have been on my mind. Although completing high school is a somewhat unremarkable step in the scheme of things, it is truly the culmination of a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and brain-demand, and I think for a lot of people, getting through high school can feel deserving of a finish line t-shirt: I SURVIVED.

Celebrations such as graduation feel important because they are the life happenings by which we mark the passage of time. There is a depth of connection between family and friends unique to significant events like birthdays, graduations, weddings, anniversaries and funerals. Even with family in-fighting or friends who don’t always see eye-to-eye, celebrating these milestones together creates a bond of shared experience. 

With personal challenges or goals such as climbing a mountain, surviving cancer, finishing a race, recovering from a serious car accident, sometimes the milestone marking is an inside job, or shared with a more intimate few. When I ran through the finish chute at my first marathon in Los Angeles, I walked away from the finish line party vibe to find a quiet spot in the grass. I was on my own, and I was happy to relish my accomplishment in relative peace and solitude.

When I think of milestones as road markers, I imagine a smooth gray ribbon of asphalt dotted with uniformly sized and evenly spaced boulders, disappearing into the horizon. It’s a frighteningly dull view of life: birth, school, graduation, career, marriage, children, grandchildren, death. 

But real life is so much more than that. It is a wide dirt road morphing into a dusty footpath, then a slick superhighway into a barely-there double-track with puddles and grassy clumps. The way meanders - through meadow and forest, maybe through the county dump or a toxic waste site. The stones can be small, the size of a fist, or huge - a mammoth chunk of rock tossed to the side when the glacier rolled through. The path doesn’t always go straight or end up at the intended destination. It doubles back, or heads off down a hidden slot canyon. Years might be spent at certain stones, their size not indicative of the length of time spent there.  

Our milestones might be smooth, mottled with colorful lichen, rough, sharp, rounded. We may have hundreds, or twenty - that doesn’t necessarily matter. What does matter is that the milestones in our lives are meaningful, deeply so, because they are our milestones. Our achievements, our scars, our hard-won life stories. 

Charlotte is in the midst of her milestone-making. I am grateful to watch as she creates them. And though I have a few more miles on the path, I too am still in the midst of milestone-making. I am grateful for that too.

​What is it?
Imposter Syndrome (noun): anxiety or self-doubt that results from persistently undervaluing one’s competence and active role in achieving success, while falsely attributing one's accomplishments to luck or other external forces. (Dictionary.com)

First coined in the 1970’s, the term imposter syndrome is used to describe feelings of self-doubt and being “found out” to be a fraud. Often associated with career, people can experience imposter syndrome in just about every area of life, including schooling, parenting and social situations.

From this VeryWellMind article, some common characteristics of imposter syndrome include:

• An inability to realistically assess your competence and skills
• Attributing your success to external factors
• Berating your performance
• Fear that you won't live up to expectations
• Overachieving 
• Sabotaging your own success
• Self-doubt
• Setting very challenging goals and feeling disappointed when you fall short

Who experiences it?
There used to be a general perception that only women experienced imposter syndrome, and only high-achieving women at that. But research has demonstrated that anyone can experience imposter syndrome, regardless of gender, age, and socioeconomic status. A greater percentage of millennials are thought to experience imposter syndrome due to the prevalence of technology/social media from the time they were born, as well as being raised by parents who swung from over-praising to over-criticizing. 

This BBC.com article discusses how although anyone can experience imposter syndrome, women, and especially women of color, are more likely to experience it. Why? The article mentions a number of factors and I’ve listed three here:

1. Lack of role models (in 2019 in the US, only 26.1% of women held directorship positions and less than 5% of corporate board seats are held by women of color)
2. Systemic oppression (experiencing that one is “less-than” makes it tough to buck the narrative) 
3. Racist and sexist stereotypes. 

How to deal with it?
Small steps seem to be key in overcoming imposter syndrome. Here are a few, you can find more in the VeryWell Mind article:

• Make a list of believable accomplishments that are close to home, like completing a project or caring for an ill family member. With that solid foundation, start to build upon that list to grow realistic confidence in achieving goals.
• Talk with trusted people about the experience. This not only allows the fear and doubt to be expressed, but hearing other’s experiences helps with knowing you are not the only one going through this.
• Try not to put yourself in a situation of comparison (social media, anyone?)

Source Articles

• VeryWell Mind: What Is Imposter Syndrome?
• BBC.com: Why imposter syndrome hits women and women of colour harder
• BuzzFix: Is Imposter Syndrome Exclusive to Millennials or Are We All Just Human?

Originally published October 2022

​Exercise feels good and we know it is vital for our physical health. But just as important, exercise benefits our mental health. Check out this dynamic and informative Ted Talk by Wendy Suzuki: The Brain Changing Benefits of Exercise.

Physical exercise - great for increasing circulation, the strength and mobility in our muscles and joints, and helping to improve cardiovascular health and maintaining body weight, has corresponding effects on the brain. Chemicals like dopamine and serotonin are released, which improve mood. Anxiety is lessened, aiding sleep. Exercise supports both existing brain cells (neurons) as well as the environment to develop new neurons. Exercise has even been shown to lessen depression.

All of these benefits are immediately accessible when one begins to exercise. It is a regular exercise routine which extends these benefits, having a greater and longer-lasting impact on our lives. With brain health, there is a protective factor with exercise: the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, areas of cognition, are bolstered, staving off conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s. 

Exercise does not have to be costly or time-consuming. The general goal is 30 minutes, 5 times per week, but benefits can be seen if exercise is broken down into smaller time frames or crammed in on the weekends. A gym membership is not a requirement. Walking outside, exercising in your home, even turning household or gardening chores into purposeful movement can result in benefits for both body and brain.

Learn More
Scientific American Article: Exercise Helps Your Brain as much as Your Body
HelpGuide.org Article: The Mental Health Benefits of Exercise

Sunset Beach is an eclectic little town tucked between Huntington Beach and Seal Beach along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in Southern California. In the early ‘70’s a couple of the big draws were its iconic Water Tower House and World Famous Sam’s Seafood restaurant. Sam’s sported a gigantic neon blue-and-pink swordfish sign looming above the palm tree entrance. That swordfish was visible for miles around, and when my parents and I went to dinner there soon after moving to town I was thrilled. Unfortunately the food didn’t measure up to the sign, so regular meals under the sign of the swordfish were not to be.   

Just down the road from Sam’s sat Captain Jack’s, one of our favorites of all time, and still thriving today. Sitting right on the corner of PCH and Broadway (the road and bridge that led to Sunset Island) Captain Jack’s was known for its World Famous Crab Legs. It had aquariums in the bar full of colorful tropical fish that I liked to watch while we waited to be seated. The bartender always put plenty of maraschino cherries in my Shirley Temple, and the servers were decked out in Hawaiian-style shirts and friendly smiles. Unfortunately, the young busser that tried to remove my grandmother’s plate before she’d finished with the last crab leg still bears the scars from the fork she stuck in his hand.

When I was five, my parents and I moved into a little street-level apartment on Bayview Drive,  Sunset Island, right across the canal from Captain Jack’s. Captain Jack’s was the bus stop for kids on the island - though the restaurant wasn’t open in the morning it sure was fun to clamber around on the log and rope decor in front of the entrance. 

Squeezed between the closely built homes on the island were dark walkways where cats hung out - and where I wouldn’t be caught dead on my own after dark. The tang of salty sea air - on clothes, skin, hair - was a constant as we were only a block from the ocean. Closet corners had to be constantly surveilled, as they tended to sport mold the minute you let down your guard. Our landlords, Marilyn and Jerry Jones, were kind-hearted people and lived directly above us. I used to climb up the stairs to Marilyn’s at cocktail hour. She’d pour me a fancy glass of grape juice and we’d sit talking, she sipping her wine. I don’t remember what we talked about, but she must have found the conversation scintillating as she continued to invite me up. 

We had a small rowboat, and one evening we dressed in our best and rowed over to Captain Jack’s for a fancy crab leg dinner. It was hard to find a spot at the dock between the gleaming white yachts dwarfing our little boat, so we walked over the island bridge after that.

The rowboat came in very handy when exploring with my cousins. We were fairly close in age - the two boys were a little older and their sister was a little younger than me. Together we were an adventuring team. The four of us would row through the canals to our very own Pirate Island. It was just a large concrete seawall and sand with a bunch of tiny shells, but we dug for the treasure we knew was buried there every time we went. Turns out the treasure was in the developing - that island is now known as Trinidad Island, where homes currently sell for up to $6 million.

My dad, who’d been a lifeguard since his teens and still worked the beach towers in the summer, decided to teach me to swim one day. We jumped in, and after several minutes of wailing, whining and a near strangulation, he pried my arms from around his neck and enrolled me in swim lessons at the bay just down the canal from us. It was a small bay, perfect for kids and beginner swimmers. I can still feel the mucky bay floor squelching between my toes as I walked out to deeper water. 

Being in the canal was fun once I could swim, and I loved to eye the gems at our dock’s waterline. There were the purplish-black shells of the mussels who’d attached there, and a flourishing garden of undulating sea lettuce. Although I was never brave enough to eat any of that, it seemed like a magical feast to my young self. 

Life changed for a few weeks the day the red tide came to town. Red tides occur when there is an abundance, or bloom, of a particular phytoplankton called dinoflagellates. With normal numbers we wouldn’t notice them, but because there are so many in the bloom, their color is visible and the ocean water appears red or even reddish brown. Red tides occur all over the world. These days they occur more frequently, most likely related to climate change, and more research is needed to understand the exact mechanisms driving the frequency. 

I remember my dad explaining the red tide to me as we stood on the dock looking at the weird color of the canal water. Some red tides can be toxic but typically the ones caused by dinoflagellates are not. Still, we didn’t really want to spend time in the water because that red color was so strange. 

As the days went by the bloom intensified, maxing out the available oxygen. That’s when things started to die. In our little canal, we could see the mussels, shells wide open, the inner meat hanging in dried black strips. Lifeless fish floated by. Even the vibrant sea lettuce succumbed, sliming the dock in an oozing sickly green. A foul stench permeated the air: the smell of fish, vegetation and other sea life gone bad. The smell of death. My mom has a visceral reaction to the putrid stink to this day, it made that much of an impression on her.

Eventually, as my dad explained, over the next few weeks the tidal currents would begin to move out the dead and bring back new life. Thank goodness. 

But the red tide wasn’t all bad. The dinoflagellates use something called bioluminescence to avoid predators. We can see this at night: when the water is agitated, by waves breaking or a dolphin swimming, it glows an electric blue. Here’s a Scripps article about red tides and bioluminescence, with photos and videos of the phenomenon.

Though my research turned up descriptions of bioluminescence as blue, my recollection of the bioluminescence I viewed in ‘74 is different. I remember being on the dock one night in the initial days of the red tide. My dad pointed at some small waves lapping at the dock and I caught a glimpse of bright green effervescence that reminded me of the eerie glow of my glow-in-the-dark yo-yo. Then my dad dove in! As he swam across the canal, the water all around him, agitated by his swimming, glowed lime green and he looked like a radioactive Aquaman. Now, if that didn’t make the red tide worth it, I don’t know what would’ve.

We moved away from Sunset Beach in 1975. Captain Jack’s is still a place we’ll go to for a great meal when we’re visiting. Even Charlotte has eaten crab legs there. It is fun to walk around the island after dinner. Of course Bayview Drive has changed. And yet, squinting my eyes down the canal, I can almost see that little rowboat tied at the dock.


Link for more on Sunset Beach: history and individual homes on the walking tour.