Mountain therapy, Ikea, & feminist book club

I woke up bright and early (for Utah) and read in bed until I heard others in the house stirring awake. My friend got her kids to do a house cleanup and then we had a late breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and avocados. A real treat, since I rarely eat breakfast (maybe once or twice a year). This definitely counted as a special occasion.

Then we headed up into Big Cottonwood Canyon. Her family owns land a few miles before Solitude and Brighton ski resorts. We parked at a campground and hiked the rest of the way in. There's a tiny one-room bunkhouse, an outhouse, and a big clearing with picnic tables and a firepit. Their property includes part of Big Cottonwood Creek as well as a natural spring, which we drank water from. We hiked up, trying to find a meadow higher up on their property, but she couldn't find the right trail.

We had an idyllic few hours lying in hammocks, talking deeply about our lives and our histories. This was therapy for me on so many levels: being in the mountains is a spiritual practice in itself, plus having a friend who I can talk to about everything, really everything, and who has enough shared experiences that she understands what I'm communicating. I realized that this is a part of my life I've been missing deeply.

Some of the time we laid in silence, looking up at quaking aspen.

We finally had to pack up and head back into the valley. Salt Lake Valley is a neverending city with overly wide streets and unnatrually lush green lawns (hello, Utah is in a megadrought--please stop watering your lawns!) and gigantic shopping centers. We stopped by Ikea in the south part of the valley to pick up houseplants for her sunroom, then a grocery store for dinner and snacks for tonight's gathering: a feminist book club.

I helped repot and arrange her houseplants. Her sunroom feels like a little oasis with all of the greenery.

My friend prepared a delicious curried lentil soup and I made a dark chocolate tart. Around 7 pm, her bookclub friends started showing up. We shared delicious food and drinks, talked politics and religion and intersectionality and marriage counseling, and also eventually got around to discussing the book (Audre Lorde's collection of poetry, The Black Unicorn: Poems).

The most moving part of the evening was when one of the women, her first time at this gathering, revealed issues with her marriage that she hadn't shared with anyone. We all affirmed that what she was experiencing was not only gaslighting but abusive and that we had her back, whatever she needed. Some of the women had great advice for first steps in protecting herself and what to do if she wanted to end the relationship. I know it might sound cliche, but let's just be honest: if women could run the world, we'd get things DONE.

My friend disappeared before the end of our book club, trying to find where her youngest had gone. I haven't seen her since, so I suspect she fell asleep with him. Too bad...I was hoping for more moonlit hot tubbing!