079 – Adventure Series: Ending Close to Home

Sarah Tacy [00:00:05]:
Hello. Welcome. I’m Sarah Tacy, and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:29]:
Join us. Hey there. I’m adding on to the adventure series for Threshold Moments. The adventures that I began with had to do with Costa Rica and Scotland and Bermuda, but these kind of things that might seem like a privilege or are a privilege and may not be accessible, or perhaps they are. Maybe there’s more choice than you think. Maybe not. And then it could be, where else could we find it? And the very first one I actually opened up about going to National Park that is in our state. And recently I’ve had more smaller experiences of adventure that keep me coming back alive and to life.

Sarah Tacy [00:01:26]:
And I’m even thinking, Oh, maybe it’s worth even just saying that my husband last night left to go tuna fishing and he had to leave the day before so he could be at a hotel. So he’d get up at 2 am to be on the boat by 3 am going through rugged waters for 2 and a half hours. It was pretty miserable. And then they get there and they fish all day and nothing. And come all the way home and has lost a night’s sleep and won’t be back until later tonight. And just this idea that sometimes the adversity in the venture might outweigh that part of like, Oh, that was so awesome and life giving. And I also imagine that that might be why, especially back in the day when the only way to get food was for that adventure, was for that hunt, was for that foraging, It could be such a bigger victory when you are eating the food, when you are getting that fish or the elk, that there are so many times that you go out and you venture and you come up against hardship and you don’t get what you hope for. So adventure does also include getting the times where you don’t get what you hope for.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:45]:
There are also the times where you don’t know what to expect and you don’t expect a lot. And another local thing that happened for me on my birthday, June 14th, was very last minute. I really left my birthday open. I didn’t want to plan something with all of my friends. I didn’t want to do a big thing, which is unlike me. I knew actually that I wanted to do QuickBooks with my sister. I was really into like having financial clarity and empowerment. And I knew I wanted to dinner with my parents, my sister, and my nuclear family here.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:21]:
And that morning, a friend reached out and said like, Hey, do you wanna go for an ice dip in a sauna at 6 AM? Yes. So like unexpected surprise. Saying yes to the thing really lit me up. Got to see 2 of my friends followed by somebody else saying, we’re going for a mountain bike ride. Do you want to join us? So I borrow my husband’s bike and I really don’t know if I need the equipment. I do have a helmet and some of these people are fully decked out. And I’m clear that there’s some discrepancy in skill levels and time on the trails. And I want to say that just saying yes to this adventure, of course, it could have turned out in many ways, was one of the best at or and a half time allotments that I’ve had all summer.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:09]:
We there were times where I’m trying to get up this trail, up this mountain or the section of a hill, and it’s super steep, and there are rocks and then roots, and I’m not sure if I can make it. And I’m trying to switch my gears just right. Literally, I’ll I’ll go, yes, Sarah. You got it. You got it. You can do that. So And I’m finding myself cheering myself on on in a way that maybe I hadn’t done since being a college athlete where I’m cheering on a teammate. And, yeah, different parts have been like, ah, we’re so awesome talking to all the women who are out there.

Sarah Tacy [00:04:44]:
And and when, you know, when I would fall off or not make it up, like, okay, you got this next time, or something where I was like, maybe next year, if we do this enough, maybe I’ll try that jump on the way you know, on the way or in or out. And then on the way out, after doing that hour, you’re going over this little ramp and being pretty psyched. And one thing that I can take from mountain biking that I could share with you here, and maybe it sinks in more deeply when when you’re having an embodied experience of it. But it is that you cannot hold on to the past tightly. Being in the present moment is essential. And in the present moment, looking exactly where you want to go. If I focus on the tree, I would drive right into the tree. This is just very similar to lacrosse and shooting or getting around an opponent is you look where you wanna go, you shoot where you you look where you want the ball to go.

Sarah Tacy [00:05:53]:
On the bike, you’re looking in the direction you want to go. And as soon as you’re anticipating too far ahead, you’re in trouble. You’re missing what’s in front of you. And as soon as you focus on all the obstacles instead of what is my next best step, my next best path, then you end up off course, more challenged than you have to be. So from that adventure, I both got the camaraderie of being with other women who were really going for it. I got the reminder to look where you want to go. Keep your focus on where you want to go. Not too far in the future.

Sarah Tacy [00:06:44]:
You can’t hold on to the past. So the present includes the next right depth. I also got an opportunity to hear my inner cheerleader so loud. There was this vocal part of me that isn’t generally quite there at that volume and that pace. And maybe I would also add that what some of these adventures are giving to me is what Bridget Vixens might call fast health. So often we have a momentum that may not be indicative of health. Our momentum may be a familiar habit that we keep at so that we don’t have to feel what’s there, so that we can just keep getting things done, and that we can override things, that we can be in the hustle culture without any time to rest and digest and feel and process. So one might want a variety of speeds.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:41]:
And it can also be that in a recuperation phase in life, that there would have to be more slow. And slow could look like meditation. It could look like reading. It could look like a nap. It could look like cooking, if you’re cooking at a slow pace just for yourself. Medium could be like cooking for a family. It could be going for a walk with your dog. It could be getting a newsletter done and fast might be an intellectual banter.

Sarah Tacy [00:08:11]:
It could be going down a mountain. It could be as you’re on a huge wave and, you know, kind of ripping back and forth and you’re in the flow and there’s speed, but there is health to it. And so this adventure also had fast health where I got to both speak fast and loud, and I got to move fast and hard, and it brought so much joy. I’m wondering if there’s anything like that that’s available to you, and maybe not. And so maybe even then there could be the show me. The last part that I might add then would be our trip to MDI again, where this whole series started. MDI is Mount Desert Island where Acadia National Park is in the state of Maine. And we took a long foot ride from South Portland, Maine up to Northeast Harbor, which is on Mount Desert Island and, or is part of Mount Desert Island.

Sarah Tacy [00:09:19]:
And we took our e bikes with us. And every day we did a 2 hour voyage on the boat on our way up to MDI. And each part of that voyage, there was incredibly dense fog. And during that time, I got to see that we would have our true bearing, which would mean if North is 0 degrees, in order to get to our destination, maybe we would be heading at 298 degrees. And then we had our relative bearing, which means this is where the GPS would like us to go. This is the quickest direction, the true bearing, but our relative bearing is like, this is the direction we’re actually going. And in the fog, when we can’t see anything and we’re going off radar, then we might have to turn right starboard, just in case that red dot we see on there is a boat. And when we get off the true bearing, it is amazing to see that that could lead us out into sea and eventually over to Europe.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:40]:
And so we go from that relative bearing and then we have to turn harder left past what the true bearing was before. If that makes sense. It’s like a pendulum swing until eventually we get back on course and can go back onto the true bearing. And I think that this is so analogous to life when we get off course. Let’s just say, like, we get off course and we get some sort of parasite, and then we have to do a really hard parasite cleanse. And it’s an extreme diet and extreme way of being, and then we can get back to our normal. You don’t have to keep it at the extreme cleanse for the rest of your life, but it might take that to get back to normal. And sometimes I think life is like that where it’s like, Woah, how did I get so off course? Who is this person? I’ve given this example so many times.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:37]:
And then I might go like, okay. I what is what are my desires? I’m thinking about sovereignty now and being in a relationship. What are my desires? What are my preferences? I’m gonna really have to stand up for them, and it might feel like such an extra effort and so much harder. And this is me now turning, like, hard left perhaps before I find that interdependence, that place where I know I have myself and I have a place within the community. The next thing that I learned at Mount Desert Island was about foraging. My daughter goes to a school that has time to have sit spots and to notice what’s around them in nature. And as we were on our bikes at Acadia National Park, going up and down the mountain, I totally missed it and Steve totally missed it, but Sophia’s like, ah, there are low bush blueberries and they can be really well hidden. Low bush blueberries tend to be very high in antioxidants.

Sarah Tacy [00:12:39]:
It’s a national park, so there are no pesticides and they are in abundance. We pull over and start picking them. And when you forage, your senses get turned up, right? You are very clearly focused on this one thing. There’s a pattern of picking and drawing back and picking and drawing back. And at that same time, Mel Robbins was sharing this idea of sensory foraging, this idea of using your 5 senses, which is not hers, and it is not new, but using your 5 senses to turn down self judgment. So there are studies that show that when you are in a place of rumination, self judgment, or dullness, that you are not able to access your senses. And so when you purposely begin to forage your senses, you like my daughter was foraging for berries, are really on the lookout for them. When you start to be on the lookout for what you can see, for what you can hear, for what you can smell, for what you can taste, for what you can feel, that you start to reverse engineer a state of well-being for your nervous system and your mind.

Sarah Tacy [00:13:52]:
That rumination and self judgment go down as soon as you start forging for your senses. So there was beauty in the actual forging and in the reminder of sensory forging, and perhaps that would be an episode for another time. But for now, since we’re doing these mini catch up moments of what adventure can bring, the little lessons that we can garner from saying yes to life when there’s this call and response of life calling you to it. And you responding when appropriate. Not that you always need to say yes, you can start with a no and feel if there’s that tug. What might you learn? What might be revealed? Thank you so much for tuning into this series. And in September, you can expect more regular programming from Threshold Moments. For now, thank you so much for playing with me in this summer of adventure.

Sarah Tacy [00:14:55]:
Thank you for tuning in. It’s been such a pleasure. If you’re looking for added support, I’m offering a program that’s totally free called 21 days of untapped support.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:08]:
It’s pretty awesome. It’s very easy.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:10]:
It’s very helpful. You can find it at sarahtacey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe and like. Apparently, it’s wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom. Subscribe, rate, maybe say a thing or 2. If you’re not feeling it, don’t do it. It’s totally fine.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:33]:
I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.