Journal 2025-05-27

I really ought to call these Evening Pages instead — I don’t ever really write them in the morning. That’s generally true even on normal days, but it’s particularly true for the time I’m road-tripping. Because while I’m out in the parks, the morning is precious time. I get up and go, walk and walk until I’m exhausted, and then I come back and write. Exhausting the body helps sharpen the mind. I always wonder if something like that is evolutionary — when the body’s tired, we have to lean on the mind to be active and alert to keep ourselves from being vulnerable — but I also think it’s just that the mind likes novelty, and so the novelty of being out shakes us out of our routine.

I’m writing this, I should have mentioned, from my campsite in Sequoia National Park. It was a five-hour drive from Santa Barbara since I basically had to drive back towards LA (and back by the shop that towed by car, sigh) to get here. But I’m here now, it’s nice and cool and the rivers are flowing hard from the snow-melt and I was thinking about intensive meditation again. I’m excited for retreat, especially since I get the whole three weeks by essentially just gluing two retreats together into one ~two+-week retreat.