Return of The Musical Mountaineers
Climbing back... together.
Last Thursday, pianist Rose Freeman and I climbed Vesper Peak for the first Musical Mountaineers summit concert in over a year. Life, with its unexpected twists and turns, had prevented us from planning too many expeditious concerts recently… but the heart of The Musical Mountaineers is something that does not fade in the absence of making music in the mountains.
I shared in one of my recent posts that The Musical Mountaineers had the opportunity to perform at Benaroya Hall in 2018 and 2019 to benefit the Washington’s National Parks Fund. Well, I’m very excited to share that we will again have the opportunity to perform live at Benaroya Hall in April of 2024. This time, the concert will benefit the Washington Trails Association.
In anticipation of this concert, we met with our dear friend Mitch Pittman to film a video that will be played on screen behind us for our concert next year.
Almost two years ago, I hiked by myself to the summit of Vesper Peak at sunrise. I woke up at 2 am, drove to the trailhead, and I started hiking around 3:30 am in the dark. Shoving away thoughts of attack bears and cougars waiting for me in the forest, I pushed onward. I arrived at the summit before sunrise, and just as the sun burst over the horizon, I found a flat rock just below the summit… and I danced.
I’ve thought about that rock since I first visited it in 2021, and dreamed about being there with The Musical Mountaineers. If I’m being completely honest, I was not at a good place in my life when I was dancing on that rock. My relationship with my husband was in shambles… I was an emotional wreck attempting to run a business… and I had swirled myself into a tizzy of wishing that I were somewhere else in my life. I had completely deluded myself into believing that I’d be happier if things were different — meanwhile, I was ignorant to the love and abundance that was completely surrounding me. I had always been good at keeping up a charade of happiness — and certainly, a woman dancing on the summit of a mountain at sunrise seems like a happy person, but I assure you that I was not. I sent my husband a GPS message from the summit of Vesper Peak at 6:18 am, which was about 30 minutes prior to sunrise that day (he was at work):
I’ve never told anybody this, but I sat on that rock that day and, it probably won’t surprise anybody … I cried. I cried because I felt like I was a fraud. Everybody on the outside saw one thing — a dancing, happy woman who seemed to ‘have it all’ — but on the inside, I felt something very different. Even worse, I knew that I had created the mess I was in. I didn’t know what to do. I was alone on the summit that day, and as I danced and cried, I asked for the answers to come. I asked for help. I asked for the ability to see and to let go. I envisioned coming back to this rock with Rose and playing my music there. I envisioned a moment in which it would feel good and right to be there and to share that experience with the people that I loved. I envisioned my husband being there with me. I saw it all in perfect clarity, and prayed to anything that would listen that I would be given a second chance to make it happen.
Vesper Peak is, by all accounts, a relatively challenging hike even when you are carrying a small daypack, let alone a keyboard and a violin. And so, when Rose and I, along with our husbands Tyler and Aaron and cinematographer Mitch left the trailhead last Thursday, I was starting to regret packing two mega burritos in my backpack. The trail to the summit is around 4 miles long, with approximately 4,000’ of vertical elevation gain. Rose, hauling her ridiculous looking pack with a giant keyboard sticking out of it, led the way as we slowly plodded up the trail, step by step.
The last section of the ascent to the summit of Vesper Peak is a scramble up steep granite slabs and boulders. This section of the climb is usually my favorite, but hauling a violin and giant burritos… plus watching Rose navigate steep gullies while carrying the piano… added a bit of extra spice to the climb. Mercifully, we reached the summit after 3 hours of hiking… and my husband and I quickly devoured our breakfast burritos for dinner.
As we scoped out the area, I pointed out the rock to Rose and Mitch, but Mitch was a little bit concerned that we would lose the sunlight in that location, which would make it a poor choice for filming. We picked an alternative spot nearby, but it didn’t feel quite as epic or special. Rose, in her infinite brilliance, knew that we had a little bit of time before we filmed with Mitch, so she suggested, “Let’s just go play a song or two on the rock and see how it goes.” Quickly, we hauled the piano and my violin and our gowns to the rock and got set up. The temperature was warm and the sun gently kissed our faces. We changed into our gowns and were thrilled that we didn’t even need to wear our puffy jackets. My husband perched himself above us to watch, and Rose and I stood, in silence for a moment.
The moment before we start playing is one of my favorites — it’s a suspension of life — a brief pause before we exhale with our notes and send our music out into the world. It is a moment where we connect and open to the everything-ness around us. As we’ve Musical Mountaineered over the past few years, I’ve learned that there are moments that feel somewhat forced… when we are trying to achieve a certain thing with our music. And then there are moments when something more magical is created — a moment where we are in true concert with the cosmos around us. While there are obvious technical aspects to playing music, such as the chord progressions that Rose is choosing, there is also something else at work… a thing that I can’t name, but something that I only know when I am in the process of creating it. The best description that I can offer is that the music and notes come through me rather than from me. I am not consciously thinking about what to play and how to play it… but rather, I am translating a story that wants to be told through the music.
The story that we told through our music last Thursday was a story of two friends. It was a story of pain and loss and grief. It was a story of love. It was a story of finding ourselves. The recording of this moment is not perfect - it’s windy and the sound quality is not ideal, but the melodies that we created are very clearly saying something. I want to share that video with you all so that you can listen… and perhaps you can hear the story too:
It’s not in the video, but after we finished playing, we both stood there on the summit of Vesper Peak and cried and we hugged each other for a long time. It had been over a year since our last Musical Mountaineers concert — and while we hadn’t forgotten the feeling of bringing our music into the mountains… the emotion of the experience was still overwhelming and beautiful. We were back again, and the newness of who we were and who we had become in the last year was with us too.
On the hike down, we stopped at a creek to filter water before the slog back to the car. Naturally, as the founder of a pee cloth company, I had to pee… which meant that I needed to hike at least 200ft away from the creek in order to follow Leave No Trace principals. By the light of my headlamp, I scampered away from the group to find a spot away from the creek. I turned off my headlamp to pee because I didn’t want to spotlight myself for everybody… and when I was done, I left my headlamp off for a moment and looked around. The stars up above were twinkling… and down below I saw the headlamps of Aaron, Rose, Tyler and Mitch as they quietly chatted and filtered water together. I was struck by the beauty and simplicity of this scene and I hiked back down to them, “That was the cutest pee break I’ve ever had,” I said as they laughed, “I looked down and saw all of you talking and filtering water and I thought to myself… What did I do to get so lucky to have such incredible people in my life?”
But deep down, I knew that answer. I didn’t do anything. In fact, what I did do was stop looking outside of myself for something that I thought was ‘missing’. I had forgiven myself for all of the things that I believed were wrong with me. I had stopped seeking validation from outside of me, and started to find it within.
This past Friday, Rose and I released our first album on Spotify and iTunes. This album is called Sunrise Serenades: Notes Left in the Wilderness. All of the music is original improvisation recorded by me and Rose. We also announced that we will be performing at our very first feature concert at the NW Stream Center in Mill Creek, WA. This is a 1.5 hour concert that will feature live performances, story telling, and a lot of fun and connection. I hope that all of you enjoy the album… and I hope that some of you will be able to join us at the concert. All of the proceeds from the concert will be benefiting the NW Stream Center.
Rose and I have been Musical Mountaineering together off and on since September of 2017 - over 6 years of friendship, music and mountains. In our Kula Diaries Book Club, we are currently ready Eckhart Tolle’s, ‘The Power of Now’ … and chapter 8 talks about enlightened relationships. He writes about the flowering of a relationship as saying, “you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.” Over the past 6 years of our lives together, much has changed, but much has also stayed the same — including the love that we have created together and shared through our music. Each time we play together, it is a reflection of the love within each of us — and as our notes dance in harmony together, I do believe that they create something more… an unnamable knowing of a feeling that each of us finds familiar, but can’t really describe with words.
I write a lot of words here, but there are things I can’t write down. I can’t write down a sunrise and I can’t write down a sunset. I can’t write down a friendship. I can’t write down the love that I feel when I peer through the darkness and see the headlamps of four people that I care about very much. I can’t write down the love I feel when I look into the vastness of the cosmos and contemplate the stars and the space in which the canvas of life is created. I can’t write those things down, but I can feel them. I can put them into a song and let them go into the world. I can close my eyes and let the notes come from some place I can’t name, but believe is there.
I open my eyes as the last note gradually fades away into silence and I can feel the rock I’m standing on beneath my feet and I can see and feel that this rock is part of it all — just like me. It has seen a woman dancing at sunrise who sat and wept … and it has seen two women in gowns playing music for the sunset. We arrive, we sit, we dance, we cry, we play, and we leave. And the rock is still there. It’s sitting there now… waiting for the return of whatever is next. Knowing that it doesn’t matter what that will be, because it will be there to welcome it with the love that has no opposite.
Friends, thank you so much for being here. I’m sharing a poem below - and I hope you love it.
Love,
Anastasia
Just beautiful 💞
Sarah Lane and I love to read about your adventures!👍🏻✌🏻