I took my Soul Walk on a beautiful March day that felt like early summer here in Boulder. It was shorts and tank top weather, at a time of year when it could just as easily have been 30 degrees and snowing. So already the day felt like a treat.

I went to Bald Mountain, a short drive from our house, which provides a great vantage point when you get to the peak, which sits at about 7200 feet. And it was there, at a bench on the peak, that I spent most of my time and had My Big Transcendent Moment #jokingnotjoking.

While the view of the Continental Divide was lovely, and the sounds and smells were equally enchanting, my experience was really about how I felt after sitting for some time on the peak.

I’m going to backtrack first, though, to My Big Sit Spot Epiphany, which happened a few months ago. Pretty much whenever I do sit spot practice in my backyard, my dog Cannoli will be back there with me. Cannoli is part livestock guardian dog, and she loves nothing more than sitting in the yard and guarding/watching the fence and yard . . . for squirrels, birds, rabbits, or any other potential property invaders. Cannoli can literally sit for hours in ANY weather – rain, snow, you name it – almost motionless, carefully watching. One day when I was sit spotting it occurred to me that Cannoli and I were BOTH doing our sit spot practice. And not just “occurred to me” but felt to me. It felt like were part of the same larger family of creation, and together, we were beholding the world around us. It was a delightful and yet stunning realization. Ever since that day I’ve had a different feeling about my relationship with Cannoli (with both my dogs, really), that stems from this shared practice of being together in the world, looking at all that surrounds us, without any species-separation.

So back to my Soul Walk!

After sitting on the summit bench for what felt like minutes (but was actually hours) alternating between engaging my senses, walking a bit, reading a book, and just sitting and relaxing, I suddenly realized, suddenly FELT, that I wasn’t looking at the landscape any more, but that I was looking with the landscape. I literally felt like I was part of my surroundings, and we were all looking together in the same directions . . . seeing, smelling, sensing, and hearing our surroundings together. It was truly an epic moment. It was both subtle, almost ineffable, yet trippy trippy trippy. I had never felt this way before on such a cellular level, such a sense of being one with the more than human landscape. Not “subject” appreciating “object,” but a merging of subject with subject. It was the same kind of species-erasing connection I’d felt with Cannoli, and it was spectacular.

Soul Walk on Bald Mountain is the reflection written by Laura Kupperman, January 2025 cohort.

Soul Walk on Bald Mountain

The Pine and the Bird