The Cake Project
Using fancy cake to unleash creative evolution
Morning golden hour hit the forest, illuminating the millions of pine needles gently swaying around me with the breeze. I moved at the same pace in my hammock, opening to the experiment that I’d unleashed upon myself.
Unleashed is kind of a strong word for what I did, but it’s not entirely inaccurate.
Unleashing something is like “opening” to it, right?
“With love and compassion for myself and others, I open to what’s unfolding in my experience so that I may know what I need to know” is unleashing, yes?
It’s okay to laugh. I laugh at/with myself all the time. Especially when “I didn’t mean to do it (whatever it is).”
In this case, I didn’t mean to unleash 3 years of journeying upon myself. I simply wanted to give myself a special birthday.
Unleashed…
Sunrise in the mountains
Early mountain mornings when you can just see your breath and wait as long as possible to climb out of your warm sleeping bag (to go pee behind a tree) do something for the soul that’s hard to put words to.
What I am most aware of in these moments is the feeling of expansive, peaceful, knowing connection to everything–the birds in the trees, the ants moving through the pine needles, the beyond the horizon I saw in the moment. It fills my experience with a soft diffuse mellow yellow glow I can almost touch and am never separated from.
I didn’t know that … until I knew that.
This was that learning.
This was my first dispersed camping and adventuring in Colorado…solo.
After it warmed enough to climb out of my sleeping bag I walked back to my car (parked maaaayybeee 100 feet away) for the zillionth time and grabbed my yoga mat. I wanted to open my body while the sun warmed everything up and then adventure onto the glassy reservoir with my inflatable kayak and giant piece of cake.
Let the learning begin
The “things I didn’t consider” camping list is long and kinda funny. Funny because of what’s acutely obvious and I can’t help but question why I didn’t consider that before it became acutely obvious. Also funny because of what is more surprising than obvious, the experiential stuff that you never could have predicted, let alone orchestrate.
I’m good with both kinds of funny.
In this moment the funny was: “Hey city lady, no cell service means no yoga apps or un-dowloaded YouTube videos”.
Oh. Right.
So I made up my yoga for the first time.
Wearing two sweaters, giant mittens, and a poofball hat (because I hadn’t yet discovered the warming magic of wool) I tried to remember yoga flows while managing the inner commentary of “Everyone is watching you.”
To be fair, I set up my tent in a nearly-full dispersed campground in the White Forest and if my nearest neighbors wanted a full sightline view of me in a poofball hat concocting yoga in the woods, all they needed was to warm some coffee and pull up a chair.
No time like right this second
If you were camped near Meadow Spring Resevior in early June 2021 and kept seeing someone in a poofball hat peeping at you while you peacefully cooked breakfast by the water…hi! That was me scoping out the paddleboard and kayak traffic on the mirror-still reservoir, waiting for “enough” people to get going so I could get going.
Then…it was time.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make my necklace jump around, and I seemed to have lost any sense of coordination, fumbling with my daypack, giant piece of cake, and kayak essentials I might know how to use.
Always a great phrase to be floating through your head before embarking on a maidan inflatable kayak voyage on a frigid mountain lake…I might know how to use these things. Probably. Really there’s a great chance. At least there’s other people around??
Again we get the “things I didn’t consider” kind-of-funny.
Along with some deeply absurd thoughts that also make me giggle because I hear them and then re-decide I’m gonna do the thing I’m gonna do regardless of deeply absurd imaginings.
Long story short
The order of operations when I inflate and launch a kayak for the first time:
Pull the giant blob of a kayak bag out of the trunk (along with the ton of stuff I’d overpacked for the sake of learning lessons about what not to pack).
Dump all the contents of the giant blob bag out in the very dusty dirt because I’m focused on fumbling a loving response to my inner panic (about being watched…what else?) and can’t quite feel my fingers or toes. Hello fight or flight response. How nice to see you.
Breathe. Stop. Breathe. Give space and go slow.
Magically inflate and assemble the kayak in less time than with a paddleboard (Who knew??).
Wait the exact amount of time to walk to the water that it takes for the wind to start blowing 5 mph.
Run after the boat.
Wrestle the boat and the 5 mph wind (yep, totally launched by boat across the parking lot) and do better this time, getting it on the water and daypack fun inside.
Step in the water with my regular shoes while keeping my water shoes nice and dry in the boat..
Launch the boat!
Realize I put the seats in backwards.
Re-launch the boat!
Take from that what you will. I have.
What-ifs and other shinanagans
The energy of the morning shifted into a softly fluid flow, quiet and expansive. Even my awkward shifting and fidgeting to get the right seat couldn’t break the flow.
My fear of the bottom of my boat suddenly disappearing (not ripping, but specifically disappearing into nothingness) had some things to say, but the fear kind of trailed off in its babbling as the rocky shoreline and horizon views shifted and changed.
I was looking for “the most beautiful spot” to eat my giant piece of 5-layer fancy cake. A tough goal for sure given I was paddling the shores of a mountain reservoir just after morning golden hour. Did someone say decision paralysis?
Not today. Not in this moment.
In this moment I felt the soft, fluid energy…quiet….expansive.
Knowing.
Criteria for the “most beautiful spot”
Lights up all the feels (including feeling completely safe regardless of exposure)
I want to do all the things (look, sit, draw, walk around) and loudly monologue about the contrast and shadows and how the light does this thing and the other thing
Opens the space in my solar plexus where me and the universe come together for grounding and expansion
Criterial for the right kind of cake
(specifically for existential workings of the highest order)
Must be fancy (think multiple layers, special fillings or toppings, or unique)
Must feel special (like holiday/celebration special, not crying at the gas station special)
Cannot be something I talked myself into when I actually wanted something else
Makes me giggle with joy
As I sat bobbing in the wake and eating my cake warmed by the sun, I had a “what-if”-- one of those stop-me-in-my-tracks, softly safe, yet wildly expansive questions from the depths of….somewhere.
The center of the universe is what it feels like. The center reaching out to little ole me floating in Colorado, eating cake just to say “Hi, I see you and I might have a mission for you if you’re game. Want to here it?”
I sure did.
What I heard was this: “What would happen within me and my life if every week for the entirety of summer (the next 10 weeks) I whisked myself away to eat fancy cake somewhere beautiful?”
Well . . . what constituted “whisking"?”
Criteria for “whisking”
Easily feels like deep adventure without convincing or compromising
Lights up all my delight centers
Fueled by playfulness and joy
After a thorough review of criteria involved and eating the entirety of my cake I felt convinced…this was obviously the best creative experiment ever imagined.
I said yes to all of it.
