What I Found Beneath Blossom Rain

*a story about connecting the dots backwards

Dear Kula Diaries,

In 2017 I sent an e-mail to a stranger that, through a completely serendipitous and unpredictable series of events, led me to performing at the Flagship REI store this past week for the reading of a book about Grizzly Bears.

With the Kulas at the REI Flagship store!

You’re probably wondering: WHAT THE HECK? How does that even make any sense at all?

So, I guess I have to backtrack — because this is a story about the wild and beautiful ways in which the universe aligns things to happen, without us needing to do anything at all — except for following those tiny impulses that arise on the crests of being in touch with our own creativity and goodness. It’s a story about trusting your heart, and knowing that when you look back on things … you might just see how they all worked out more perfectly than you could have ever orchestrated on your own by trying to make them happen.

Me, in Bhutan — circa 2011.

In 2011, I had the incredible privilege of going on a trek in the country of Bhutan. Bhutan is a tiny country in Asia — nestled in between Tibet, China and India. For 21 days, I visited monasteries and trekked nearly 140 miles over high mountain passes — some over, 16,000’. Without a doubt, it was a life-changing experience for me, and when I returned back to my ‘normal life’, I quickly sunk into a deep depression: my marriage was on the rocks and I was notified of my impending layoff from my dream job as a park ranger on my first day back to work after the trek. I felt like I was living in some sort of weird purgatory — and the only thing that I wanted to do was get back to Bhutan. When I was in Bhutan, I had experienced such a deep sense of peace and beingness — and I wanted it back, desperately. I didn’t yet realize that I could cultivate that feeling from within myself, so I did everything that I could to try and reconnect myself to this place. Along the way, I stumbled across a book called Beneath Blossom Rain: Discovering Bhutan on the Toughest Trek in the World by Kevin Grange.

Hungrily, I devoured this book — and, without needing to travel back to Bhutan (which was logistically very challenging), the book helped me validate the experience that I had while I was there. As I read Kevin’s words — and the way in which the experience of being in Bhutan had similarly affected him — I started to feel a lot less alone. I struggled so much coming back from Bhutan, and I needed to know that what I had felt in that place was real. As I read Kevin’s book, I realized that it was. I realized that my experience had, indeed, been that special, and that it was OK to feel a sense of loss at its absence. Slowly, I started to pick up the pieces and move forward with my life — no longer grieving the loss of this place that I had fallen in love with, but rather feeling deep gratitude for having had the experience in the first place.

Nearly 6 years later, after my near death experience in January of 2017, my life had made an about-face and I was taking little steps to try and point myself in the direction that I really wanted to go. I hired a coach in February of that year so that I could hold myself accountable — I was sick and tired of the endless cycle of ‘having ideas and quitting’. As I started meeting with my coach, and as I started taking tiny steps forward… everything in my life began to change very rapidly. At some point in the midst of these changes, I had visualized myself leading a trek through Bhutan — and I remembered Kevin Grange’s book that I had read so many years before. On a complete whim, I searched for Kevin’s contact information online and, totally out of the blue, I sent him a message:

A quick search of Kevin revealed that he was an accomplished writer and a firefighter paramedic who had worked as a park ranger in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. I remember feeling that twinge of ‘imposter syndrome’ when I sent Kevin that first e-mail… I mean, why would he go out of his way to respond to me? I was just a burned out railroad police officer who had spent an entire lifetime convincing myself that I wasn’t good enough to pursue any of the ideas that excited me. And here was Kevin — a guy who was actually doing the thing. Amazingly (and not surprisingly), Kevin was an incredibly nice human and he wrote back to me quickly and shared some great advice — we connected through my Instagram account, which, at the time had about 100 followers. It felt like a tiny spark of hope during a time when I needed all of the illumination that I could get.

I hadn’t started Kula Cloth yet, and I was still working as a railroad police officer — trying to ‘figure out’ what I wanted to do with my life, without really knowing how to do it or what it might be. During the exact same time period, I had a ‘weird idea’ to perform my violin in the mountains (although nobody responded to my Craigslist advertisement for my ‘services’). I was also running a Facebook group teaching hiking and backpacking skills… and I decided to host a ‘book giveaway’ on aforementioned Instagram account. Only ONE person entered my giveaway… and that person was a woman named Rose who had a dream of bringing a piano into the wilderness. Later that year, on September 1st, The Musical Mountaineers were born high on a ledge at sunrise as Rose and I hauled our instruments up the side of a mountain.

Meanwhile, Kevin Grange — the author who had written about his trip to Bhutan — remained my Instagram friend, and also began to follow the journey of The Musical Mountaineers. We, as wilderness loving women, simultaneously followed Kevin’s journey as an author and we helped him promote his books as he wrote them… As The Musical Mountaineers began to perform on North Cascades Peaks and at Benaroya Hall… Kevin’s career as an author continued to bloom: he wrote a book called Lights and Sirens about his time being a paramedic in Los Angeles… and another book called Wild Rescues about his time as a paramedic in Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Tetons. Each time that Kevin would write a book, Rose and I would share it with our audiences — supporting a friend that we had never even met in person, who had been supporting our adventures from day one.

A few months ago, Kevin reached out to me and Rose about doing a collaborative performance in Seattle to celebrate the release of his latest book, Grizzly Confidential: The Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of America’s Most Fearsome Predator. Now, nearly 7 years into my Kula Cloth journey, and with REI being our largest retailer in the USA, we hatched an idea to host an event at the Flagship REI store in Seattle that featured not just one, but two of the most elusive creatures in the world: Grizzly Bears and The Musical Mountaineers. Rose and I never announce our backcountry performances, so the number of people who have ever accidentally stumbled across us at sunrise is a number that I can count on one hand. Strangely enough, most people don’t wake up at 11pm the night before so that they can drive to a trailhead and climb to a summit before sunrise. But, we decided that we wanted this experience to be a really special and beautiful concert for folks: a true celebration of nature and a celebration of the creatures that share their lives with us on our incredible planet.

The official event description on REI’s event page!

The first concert sold out within a few days… so we added a second night. Then, with a waiting list of over 40 people, REI agreed to take down the wall in the center of the room so that we could invite all of the waitlisted attendees to the event. A few days before the event, Rose and I met with Kevin on Zoom to review our plan: we wanted to start the concert with a Musical Mountaineers segment, featuring videos that we filmed in the mountains to accompany our live performance. After about 20-30 minutes of music and sharing stories, we’d transition over to Kevin’s talk about his book and about Grizzly Bears. The end of the performance would feature a collaborative tribute to famed Grizzly Bear 399, who was tragically killed by a vehicle strike just a few months ago.

I’ve performed at a lot of concerts over the past few years — in a lot of places that my younger self would have never believed that I’d have the opportunity to play. As a classically trained violinist, I always thought that I had to be a ‘certain type’ of violinist, but I never wanted to be that type of violinist. I loved the outdoors… I loved nature… I loved sharing a deep and special connection with others through my music. Over the past 7 years, Rose and I have been able to create something unique, special and beautiful through combining our love of music and nature … and to be able to have the opportunity to share that music alongside Kevin felt like a very full circle moment. In 2011, Kevin unknowingly gifted me the kindness of his words about Bhutan, and his book helped me navigate a time in my life where it felt like many things were falling apart. And, oddly enough, as I began to put the pieces back together six years later, it was the same author named Kevin who I reached out to… and, against all the odds, he wrote back.

I’ve always been fascinated by this Steve Jobs quote, “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

As I look back on my life, I can see the perfection of the ‘lining up’ that I couldn’t see in that moment. As I struggled with my marriage, I decided to throw caution to the wind and spend all of my money on a trip to Bhutan — a trip that, at the time, my ‘realistic and lackful’ brain had suggested that I shouldn’t go on. And yet, I went. And, upon my return — I felt like my life was falling apart, and yet, now I see that it wasn’t falling apart… instead, it was creating an opening for something else to enter — it was that very distress that caused me to discover Kevin’s first book. Many years later, it was my own near death experience … and my feeling of camaraderie for another park ranger that gave me the courage to send an e-mail to a stranger. And now, over a decade after I read Kevin’s first book, we had the opportunity to meet in person for the first time to create an experience that created a collective ripple of love, kindness, awe and connection.

Somebody once asked Rose and I if performances in the wilderness were more special than performances inside of a building, and we both agreed that it was not the case. While our performances in the mountains are indeed special, what makes music special is not where it is happening, but rather, the love with which it is offered to whatever environment that it is in. Namely, it’s not what or where you play, but how you play it.

As I reflect on the past week of having the opportunity to deliver two unbelievably special performances, I am feeling an immense amount of profound gratitude for the gift of YES. I am feeling deeply grateful for Kevin — who answered my e-mail so many years ago, when he had no clue who I was, except for a fan. I’m deeply grateful to Rose for the connection that we feel with each other and with our audience as we share music — there is simply nothing like it that I’ve ever felt in my life, and I know that it is something that everybody else can feel too.

What I’ve learned from this wonderful journey is: follow the little impulses in your heart, and trust that even when the path doesn’t make sense, it is often moving in the direction of what you want to create, even if you can’t tell. This isn’t about looking for a silver lining — because there are certain experiences in life that will never make ‘sense’ and will never feel good when we think about them. This is a deeply complex process of acknowledging the emotional palette of life, processing our unique life experiences, and simultaneously allowing the current to continue to flow. If we can drift downstream and practice acceptance of where we are, we open ourselves up to the unfolding of life in unexpected ways.

Rose, Kevin and Me at the event!

I called this writing piece, What I Found Beneath Blossom Rain… because that’s what Kevin wrote about in his first book. He went on a quest to find blossom rain, to discover what it meant. I won’t spoil Kevin’s book, but I can speak to what it means to me. It is a night of sharing music, and connecting with friends. It is trusting the path, even when you can’t see around the bend. It is the feeling of gratitude for the opportunity and the gift of this life. There was a time when I believed that something else was going to save me…and I spent nearly half a lifetime running from myself, only to discover that the journey to find peace in my heart would lead me right back to a mirror of self-reflection. And, much to my surprise, it was in the reflection of those tears of wishing for something new… that I saw very clearly what I already had.

---

Friends — thank you so much for being here, and a huge thank you to Kevin Grange for the inspiration that he shared with me so many years ago, and for joining me and Rose in such a beautiful event. And, of course, a huge thank you to Rose — a dear friend who has been by my side for the past 7 years on mountains of many kinds.

Wishing you all a beautiful week with abundance, joy and peace in your heart.