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Take It Easy

Stay Wild

INTERVIEW BY MEGAN FRESHLEY

PHOTO BY MATT GONZALEZ

Kate Saul 

Yogi, Acupuncturist, Outdoor Reveler // YoYoYogi

Kate Saul knows how to take it slow. We’re not talking kicking back fireside in a Mt. Hood cabin after an afternoon on the slopes, although that might not be too far off. Kate’s version of slow living is also a deeply engaged one, connecting the dots of acupuncture, women’s health, and yoga in the Portland wellness community. In each of these practices, Kate invites people to tune into their bodies with awareness and intention. But that wasn’t always the case. Like so many mindfulness pros, she’s been to the other side, too. “I moved to New York right after college and got myself into a place where I was biting off way more than I could chew. My stress level was through the roof,” she says. “My mom was a yogi and she suggested I get into it again.” Yoga led her to other wellness practices, and soon she started seeing an acupuncturist. “I became so inspired by the healing power of what’s around us,” she says. “I wanted there to be more people like that out there to see there are choices outside the conventional. So I went for it. I got a master’s degree in acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and I’m joining practice focused on women's health at Willow Tree Wellness.”


To catch Kate in yoga teacher mode, Portlanders know to hit up her classes at YoYoYogi. “My classes are fluid and playful, but also about paying attention to what’s happening in the body. The only way to do that is to slow down enough to feel,” she says. “At the same time, it doesn't have to be serious. That's not how life is. The mat is a place to grow and be mindful and have tenderness toward the self.” After becoming a pillar of Portland yoga with these awesome classes, Kate was approached by Lululemon Athletica to become one of their Portland ambassadors. “A few of the team members there came to my classes and started inviting me to things they were doing,” she says. “They really want to make sure those they bring onboard are interested in being active members in the wellness community. I just want people to be happy and moving their bodies. And they want that, too.”

VISIT LULULEMON'S REFRESHED AND RENOVATED PORTLAND LOCATION IN THE PEARL DISTRICT

1231 Northwest Couch St.

Swing by the refresh Lulu this Sat Oct 8th, 8:30-10am for coffee and conversation. Oh, and keep up with their latest news on their Facebook page >>>

 

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Your Place is My Place

Stay Wild

The USA National Parks are Stolen Property

Art & Story by Justin “Scrappers” Morrison // @scrappers

There are more than 600 tribes native to the area we call the United States of America. Most of these tribes have had their sacred places taken away and turned into national parks. Whether by sneaky treaty or bloody war, their ancestral land was stolen and turned into a tourist destination. So cool your Jet Ski for a minute and look into this deep, murky water with me. 

“Early park officials quickly realized that Indians could prevent tourists from experiencing all the benefits and enjoyments that Yellowstone had to offer the American people.” (1)

The Blackfeet were banned from hunting and gathering food in Glacier National Park, like they had sustainably done for thousands of years, to preserve game for tourist hunters.

Heck, even Yosemite National Park is named after a tribe removed from the valley.

This sort of history goes so deep it’ll put your brain’s butt to sleep, so let’s just look at Mount Rushmore. It’s the most awesome example of turning a sacried, natural place into a tourist trap. The Black Hills in South Dakota were promised to the Lakota Sioux in an 1868 federal treaty (2), but the government kinda forgot to keep the promise when gold was discovered. Then, in 1927, some men showed up with drills and dynamite to carve big white faces into the Black Hills—big white faces of federal government employees. What a burn! They may as well have nailed up a sign that said, “Your place is mine.”

But don’t think for one second this kind of bullshit goes on without protest from tribal members. One of my favorite videos is a black-and-white 1970 CBS news broadcast reporting, “Another dawn rises above Mount Rushmore and a small band of American Indians who cling not only to the craggy edges of the mountain, but to the hope that someday this land will be theirs again.” (3) Professor and activist Lehman Brightman lays it out hard to the reporter: “We’re sick and tired of sitting back and turning the other cheek, then bending over to get those other two kicked.”

Members from different tribes sat together on top of Mount Rushmore shouting, playing loud drums, and photo-bombing tourist’s snapshots by hanging a huge flag that said, “SIOUX INDIAN POWER.” Tribal protesters occupied the top of Mount Rushmore for three months until severe winter weather forced them down. 

Mount Rushmore is a national memorial overseen by the National Park Service. It’s pretty cool. You should check it out, but if you’re in the area, swing by another part of the Black Hills, Crazy Horse Mountain. The name honors a chief who kicked the shit out of General Custer when he tried to take the Black Hills before the gold rush. Chief Henry Standing Bear took to the idea of carving big faces into rocks, and hired one of the Rushmore carvers to do a depiction of Crazy Horse that’s even bigger than the dead presidents. It’s so freaking huge it’s still being carved, and its purpose is to honor the “culture, traditions, and living heritage of the North American Indians.” (4) I love it, but I wish they’d carve Crazy Horse flipping Rushmore off.

Here’s the punchline, though: Nothing is forever. We can fight each other over property rights and even carve our faces into mountains to claim ownership, but nobody owns this planet. Long after we’ve killed the air, the water, and our beautiful cultures, nature will keep dancing to its own song. It’s a slow song. Listen up, and you might be able to hear it if you turn off your fucking Jet Ski. 

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Parques Nacionales

Stay Wild

Photo and words by Randy P. Martin // @randypmartin

National parks are one of my favorite things on the planet. Learning about their history, exploring them as much as possible, and crossing each one off my list are the most fun things I can think of. Last year I got to experience some of Colombia’s best preserved spaces when I visited a handful of their Parques Nacionales with my 35mm camera on my hip and a tent in my pack. 

Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona: This place is exactly why national parks exist. No development is taking place in this jungle paradise, which is still home to native tribes, howler monkeys, ocelots, sloths, and 40 different species of bats.

Frailejón plants start their spring bloom under the snow-capped peak of Pan de Azúcar.

After getting rained on and scrambling up an embankment in Chorro Aguabendita, the clouds cleared and two bright blue, glacially fed alpine lakes came into view. 

 

Parque Nacional Natural El Cocuy (The Bogeyman): Above the clouds at 15,000 feet without another single soul around. Don’t stand up too quickly or you might find yourself face first in the dirt at this high of an altitude.

 

 

Cocora Valley boasts the tallest palm trees in the world. Walking around under the 200-foot wax palms made me feel like I was on the set of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

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Trespassing Through John Day Fossil Beds

Stay Wild

I pretend to not see “No Trespassing” signs. It’s my duty as a dad, since my wife Amy is a firm rule follower. I need to give my son Camper a balanced point of view, so he can decide for himself when, and when not, to trespass. I tell him it’s not trespassing if we don’t leave footprints. As we hop from rock to rock on the outskirts of the Painted Hills National Monument, we take care not to squish any plants. Finding a log shaded by a big old juniper tree we sit and listen to the view. A raven flies overhead and we can hear the wind between the feathers of its wings. The tall grasses growing in the pond knock into each other with the breeze making the subtle sound of leafy wind chimes. We hear water splash and look to see small fish jumping out of the pond to eat insects flying over the water surface. The longer we listen to the view the less we trespass. We are leaving nothing, yet we are taking in everything. 

The most photogenic view of the Painted Hills has a set of footprints walking out beyond the boundary to the top of a smooth red clay mound. The footprints sink 6-8 inches into the red clay and they will be there for many years. They are like a plastic bag stuck in a tree, flapping in the wind like a flag that says “Fuck You Fuck You Fuck You...” until it fades away. These footprints trespass and everyone knows it. 

Later in the day Camper eats the cherry from my milkshake and says, “Tastes like freedom.” I have eaten many milkshake cherries. I know what freedom tastes like. That’s why I forgive those footprints in the Painted Hills. They are either a monument to freedom, or a monument to selfish sloppy tourism. Either way those footprints belong to us all. It’s not worth complaining about or blaming some kid with a selfie stick. The footprints are there for us to learn from.

On the open road I see the difference between land fucked with by humans and land unfucked with. That’s why I pull off the main highway and go down a dirt road into the Ponderosa Pine covered hills of the Ochoco National Forest. We drive past cows eating grass and pooping all over the place. We drive past RV camps set up by hunters. Further down the dusty road a brown and white government issued sign points in the direction of “Public Agate Beds.” We follow the sign deeper into the woods until we come to a fork in the road. There is no sign telling us where to turn, so we just park and wandering into the forest. The ground is soft from centuries of pine needles falling and fading into the ground. We find mushrooms growing out of cow poop. I reach for what looks like an agate, but it’s a ball of honey-sweet pine sap. It smells so good I actually lick it to make sure it’s not honey. Nope, it’s tree sap. We don’t expect to find agates here, but we do. They bubble up from the ground. They are diamonds in the duff. We leave most of what we find, but can’t resist bringing a couple crazy ones home. It feels kind of wrong to take them, but Camper is more excited about a rock than he is about playing a video game. My seven-year-old needs to remember his connection to nature and if a rock can do that it’s worth taking back to the city.

I put this rock back exactly where I found it.

Deeper into eastern Oregon we walk a trail up the Blue Basin. The trail follows a small muddy creek of sage-colored water. The color matches the smell of the trail as it snakes through shoulder high sage brush and sappy juniper trees. I pick some of the leafs and rub them between the palms of my hands. Cupping my hands together I take a deep breath of the plant’s goo and it shows me a deeper side of this place. The smell is so strong I have to close my eyes and imagine what life is like for these plants growing in this weirdly colored canyon. Further down the trail we come across fossils of a prehistoric turtle shell and a strange dogthing skull with crazy fugly teeth. The sage colored mud walls really take shape as we go deeper into the canyon. By the dead end of the trail we are surrounded by monster-sized prehistoric mud teeth in the mouth of a place that dares us to see things through its geologic eyes. This muddy canyon has swallowed life that we try to understand from the fossils left behind. What will our fossils look like?

The highway we travel goes through the Warm Spring Indian Reservation. Driving through feels like trespassing, but I love it. I just feel like I’m on land that has been taken care of by people who know how not to fuck this place up. It feels more natural. As if the people here know they will not rule the planet forever. I can’t help but get out of the car to explore a couple abandoned houses. I ignore the signs. I am trespassing. I am hunting for modern fossils, but I only find broken glass in rotting carpet. I go back outside. Don't mind me, I'm just trespassing through.

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