Week 1: Tend to Your Why
From Bloom to Basecamp — A 4-Week Spring Preparation Series
Look outside.
Spring is doing what spring does…pushing up through cold ground, reaching toward light, pulling back, trying again. Some days it feels like summer is right there. Other days winter returns and you wonder if you imagined it.
My nervous system is living that same back and forth right now. The polarity of this season is real. It lives in our bodies.
And yet…something in us is reaching up and out too.
Maybe it's been there all winter. A pull toward wildness. A quiet knowing that this summer needs to be different. A longing for something to look forward to, something that is yours - a goal, a journey, a few days where the only thing asked of you is to walk and breathe and be.
That longing is information. It's a seed. And spring is exactly the right time to tend to it.
Why our brains need something to look forward to
This isn't just words - it's biological.
Our brains release dopamine not when we receive a reward, but in anticipation of one - in the craving, the desire, the leaning toward. The planning, the imagining, the I'm actually doing this - that is the medicine. Our nervous systems are already being nourished by the decision to go.
Research confirms what many of us feel intuitively: it's healthy - good for our mental health - to have something to look forward to, especially in challenging times. And spring, with its back-and-forth weather and its push-pull energy, is one of the more dysregulating seasons for our nervous systems. The light is returning but the cold keeps coming back. Our bodies don't know what to prepare for.
A goal, a journey, something real on the horizon — it gives our nervous systems an anchor. A direction to lean into.
The trail does that. Even before we set foot on it.
The trail and your life are not separate things.
When we prepare for the backcountry, we are also preparing ourselves. The questions we ask before we ever lace up a boot — why am I going, what am I carrying, what do I need — these are the same questions a full life asks of us.
This series lives in that space. The outer trail and the inner one, walked together.
So before we talk gear or miles or elevation gain — we start here. With your mind. With your why. With the thing that is blooming in you whether you tend to it or not.
Some ways to engage:
1. Plant your why - Sit somewhere quiet…outside if you can…and write freely: What am I being called toward this summer? What do I want to feel, find, or release on the trail? Don't edit. Don't make it practical yet. Just let it come.
2. Name what needs to shift - Make a simple, honest list of what is weighing on you. The exhaustion. The noise. What your body and spirit have been asking for. You're not solving anything yet…just naming it. This is how a garden begins. You look at the ground honestly before you plant.
3. Remember your nature - Think of a moment you were outside…truly outside…and felt something in you loosen or lift. Write about it. Sit with it. That feeling is your compass for everything that follows in this series.
Spring is the tending. Summer is the bloom. Fall is the grounding. Winter is the rest.
You are right on time.
