Measured By Mountains

MEASURE (v.): meas-ured, meas-ur-ing, meas-ures

1. To ascertain the dimensions, quality, or capacity of
2. To mark, lay out, or establish dimensions for by measuring
3. To estimate by evaluation or comparison
4. To serve as a measure of
5. To consider or choose with care; weigh
6. Archaic: To travel over

________________________________________________________

Some people measure their lives by the money they make, the number of promotions they’ve gotten, number of houses they own, number of kids they’ve had. Others measure their lives by the number of people they’ve kissed, the number of rivers they’ve kayaked, the number of seas they’ve touched, the number of countries they’ve visited, the number of days a year they have free to go on walk-about.

This life, MY LIFE, however, is measured by mountains.

The Sawtooths, the Tetons, the Beartooths, the Bitterroots, the Cabinets, the Lewis’, the Livingston’s, the Rattlesnakes, the Sapphires, the Missions, the Swans. The Wasatch, the Escalantes, the Cedars, the La Salles. The Sierra Nevadas, the Cascades, the Appalachians, the Blueridges, the Brooks, the Chugachs, the Alaskas, the Andes, the Dentelles, the Alps, the Kilimanjaros (ok you got me there… Kili’s not really part of a range- it’s just a three peaked volcano), and soon the mighty Himalayas.

So many ranges that my mind can scarcely remember the names of every one let alone recall the surplus of summit names with memories attached within them.

So much life, a whirlwind of life, takes place within, on top of, at the base of, and even away from (but still thinking about) these ranges. An incredible amount. They have a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain something about them that holds your mind captive. They keep you returning no matter how many thousands of miles you attempt to stray from them. The farther you stray from one, the closer you get to another… and rest assured another will almost always appear just at the moment you need it most.

.  .  . 

Some folks think if you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen ‘em all and to them we kindly say “Good Riddance.” Those of us who know better chuckle, we shake our heads for a moment then push thoughts of them in addition to everything on the kitchen table off to the side, and plaster our plethora of maps across its surface to pour over every inch in perusal of the next adventure…

….and each successive escapade only leads us deeper down the rabbit hole exposing every new ridgeline, river, valley, cirque, and cwm to explore.

We thrive on the trials that come with hoofing heavy packs up a pass. We thrive on the moments of sheer sogginess stemming from the unexpected squall hiding behind a peak until that most inopportune waist-deep river crossing moment with no hope of respite from raingear. We thrive on the cacophony of colorful jokes that arise from folks huddling under small tarps during multi-hour hailstorms. We thrive and often even enjoy.

We know you must take the lows to earn the highs. We know we must serve our time within Mother Nature’s tempestuous troughs to stand atop her mighty crests. We know (though we don’t always act in accordance with) that the wilds are nary a place for pompousness. We accept the humility humanity must have to survive, to coexist with the wildness on this earth. We take comfort in the solace our surroundings give us, we take solace in the unknown adventures these places throw at us, we take solace in the raw experience that is this life.

When it comes down to it, we are all merely a collection of moments, of experiences, of memories, of emotions. We are the smiles, the tears, the laughs, the grimaces, the aches, the pains, and the thoughts flitting through our minds and across our faces. We are the adventures we undertake and the challenges we surmount. We are the places we live amidst, the people we live amongst, and the mountain ranges we meander through.

“Now here’s what I believe: real adventure is not polished. It’s not the result of some marketing budget, there’s no hashtag for it. It burns brightest on the map’s edges but it exists in all of us. It exists at the intersection of imagination and the ridiculous. You have to have faith. It will find you there. And when it does, remember there’s just one question…”*

…..what do you measure your life by?

* Kyle Dempster, The Road from Karakol

Trains, Planes, and Automobiles

Trains, planes, and automobiles (and motorcycles… and bicycles…. and flippers… and feet)

Montana, Georgia, Montana, Idaho, Hawaii, Idaho, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Idaho, Georgia, North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, California, Nevada, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Utah…France.

By this point you are probably wondering what on earth is this and why are there so many mentions of Idaho? Montana we can explain but Idaho? And Utah? And why the hell is France tagged on there?

The story of this offseason.  Or About a Boy. Or Adventures in Homelessness. Or how to go back and forth between as many states in the West as you can in the miles between two oil changes.

Offseason.

The offseason is a mystical period of time where seasonal workers don’t have to work. Ok, let’s be honest, when they DON’T have work. Some choose to drag their summer seasons on as long as possible and do odd-jobs for their companies until their tents are drooping from the weight of snow and they grow weary of getting stuck in a snowbank driving out of the campground simply because there are not enough folks still around to keep the loop readily accessible despite snowfall.

Others choose to rip the bandaid off as the first snow flies (and, in the case of this fall, before the government closes), making the yearly exodus to find cities, to find “civilization.”

The vast majority of the time, re-entry to society tends to be a little jarring. A little bumpy, one might say. Dependant on the person and re-entry destination of choice,  it can fail quite terribly and one could end up downtown drinking every night under the pretense of “catching up with old friends.” For other, it’s more graceful—a fun job, a good living situation (read: cheap with lots of other seasonals to split rent with), and some free time to spare for hunting, fishing, skiing, boarding, yoga, and watching every season of every show one can get their hands upon for free on Hulu or Netflix.

Seasonal.

SEA-SON-AL.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, here are the phases of being seasonal guide:

1.     1. You land a job in a location where you would be using your vacation time to visit. Life is grand. It doesn’t really matter if your job is glorified bus driver and janitor or not.

2.     2. Season one goes well, you decide you will definitely come back the next year, no matter what…

3.     3. Before you know it, your season is done… you return to society for a few days, a couple weeks, a month only to realize you’d rather flee back to your seasonal location.

4.     4. Before long, you have figured out a way to spend the whole winter in the area. Check.

5.     5. Turns out, winter in the area is long. Incredibly long. And isolated. But at least you have wolf tracks to follow out your front door?

6.     6. Next winter, you overcorrect your mistakes of last winter and do exactly opposite. You fall madly in love with someone, you don’t get a job, you proceed to travel 6 months of your life away and have some of the most brilliant adventures of your life in said places with said person.

7.     7. You realize you have no idea what to do with the one carload of belongings you own while you are traveling and proceed to stick them in a storage locker in a state you have a few ties to. But mostly you pick the state because it’s cheaper to fly out of for adventures, you will be flying out of there anyways for the place you begin to work for because your off-season is a little too long to stay sane, and your best-friend/travel buddy/love tends to spend a lot of time there.

      At least that's how many of my seasonal friends' lives tend to go.

This offseason has been spectacular to say the least. More than spectacular. Not only because of the places this one has sent me to but also (and mainly) because of the people that have been sent into my life.

Here’s to the moments of belly-ache laughter, the “oh S*** where the hell are we” times, the crowd pleasing boot-dances, the joyous weddings, the snorkels, the oxygen depriving free-dives, the multiple plane rides you almost missed, the sand-filled shoes, the canyon bottoms that turn into streams while you are out, the whirring of bike pedals, the roadtrips, the many instant mashed potato meals (and first ever MountainHouse meals),  the snowstorms that shut down cities you frequent, the warm desert sunshine, the redrock rainstorms, the knife-edge ridgeline hailstorms, the double rainbows, the tropical sunsets and the snowy sunrises, the excitement of catching up with old friends, the excitement of creating new friends, the enveloping bearhugs, the passionate kisses, the few oh-my-WHAT I have to pack up my life and prep to work abroad somewhere to be determined for an amount of time to be determined tears, and the ear-to-ear enthusiastic about life smiles of offseason 2014.

Here's to all of you who contributed, be it a day or a month (or 3 or 4 or 5) to its wondrousness.

Here's to many more to come.

For now, however, this offseason must come to a close and this seasonal worker has returned to work.