Explore Landscapes #72

December started with one of the best sunrises I've seen in a good long while. To make it better I was out in the Joshua Tree wilderness with some of my favorite people.

December 2024 | Joshua Tree National Park (CA)

From Black Friday to December 1st, I had the pleasure of volunteering on a JTNPA Desert Institute wilderness wellness retreat with the amazing Hiking My Feelings team of Sydney and Barry Williams. We had the privilege of camping at one of the private NPS campsites within Joshua Tree National Park.

Sydney and Barry founded Hiking My Feelings to help others tap into the mind-body connection and healing power of nature that helped kick her self-limiting beliefs and type 2 diabetes into remission. Every experience they facilitate helps their growing community build confidence, compassion, and resilience, unearthing a connection to themselves, each other, and the planet. Check out their fantastic lineup of wilderness wellness retreats for 2025. But be quick because the retreats are booking up fast!

After a busy month of international travel in November, it was great to be back on ‘home turf’ exploring and guiding in Joshua Tree. What’s not to like when you have scenery like the photo above right next to where you camped for the weekend? We were treated to amazing sunrises both mornings, perfect weather for winter desert hiking during the days, and then the cold crept in as soon as the sun went down, enabling cozy evenings by the campfire.

Once home, I spent a fair amount of time prepping for my upcoming workshops and giving my website a much-needed overhaul. I’ve been putting a lot of energy into my website (mainly SEO) and backing off on social media. The ROI is much more beneficial to me personally (i.e., less doom-scrolling) and my photography business.

I hope that you all had a good end to 2024 - and I wish you all the very best for 2025.

December 2019 | Miami (FL) | Big Bear (CA)

I love being in the mountains. I feel the most relaxed, happy, and energized there, so any day spent there is a good day in my book.

Since moving to California five years ago, my family and I have gotten back into snowshoeing, something we hadn’t done together since we lived near the Pyrenees in southwest France in the late 1990s.

We live close to Big Bear, which has some great hiking trails that turn into great snowshoeing trails after a fresh powder dump. The weather worked in our favor on the last Saturday of December, with 12 inches of fluffy white goodness falling overnight.

An early start from home saw us at the small parking lot at the end of the 2N10 trail by mid-morning. We got our gear on and headed up the trail (closed to vehicles during the winter) and then left onto the 2N10F path when we reached the campsite. This trail heads uphill, and winds across some of Bear Mountain’s ski runs until you reach Bear Peak.

This image was taken on our way down the hill; looking back on our tracks, we’d blazed through the snow. We rounded out the day with dinner at the Himalayan Restaurant in Big Bear, a hearty Nepalese curry to fill us up before the slow drive down the mountain and the trip back home.