Dinosaurs

These gals know whats going on. I'd trust 'em.

Except on a rare one or two occasions when I've been lucky enough to fall asleep before we pull away from the gate, I’ve always been inclined to watch the attendants give their pre-takeoff safety talk. In part, I pay attention because theirs is a thankless job and it’s a small attempt to show appreciation for their efforts to make me comfortable. Perhaps I pay attention because I had good teachers at school and home who taught me to be respectful by listening. And maybe I pay attention because on my first flight as a wide eyed 6th grader, I found these women of the skies a little glamorous and fascinating.

It’s also a most definite possibility that my attention comes from the deeply rooted and highly functioning Dinosaur Brain nestled between my ears that does not, cannot!, and despite all engineering and scientific evidence, refuses to understand how planes stay in the sky. This bajillion ton metal beast is going to float in the air?!!? Bullshit, says Dinosaur Brain, and just keeps on talking….Oh gawd…. The pilot just came on the intercom, and he sounds so gravelly. Did he have enough coffee, is his eyesight still good despite sounding anciently old, did he get enough sleep? If a plane were to crash would you feel pain or would you just black out? Will my head implode or explode suddenly if the cabin pressure makes a dramatic change!?!? AAACK!! WHY AM I HEEEEEERE?!?

I have always counteracted my alarm-happy Dinosaur Brain with the observational evidence that if the flight attendants are calm, collected and pleasant, it means that all systems must be working as they should. So keep an eye on those gals/guys for changes in demeanor. If ever an attendant were to panic and lose her/his shit, well, that would be a different set of evidence and Dinosaur Brain would win.

Why some of us are more “in tune” with the D-Brain or less, I don't know. Is it a gender thing? A result of our upbringing and the activities our parents did/did not allow us to do and how we followed orders or rebelled? Birth order? Job title? Astrological sign? Whether we prefer Mozart or Rage Against the Machine? Does it matter?

Mine is a highly active D-Brain. Here I sit on my flight to Atlanta, four hours and five minutes long trying to rationalize my Dinosaur back into its cave (Dinosaurs are like Dragons and fire breathing Dragons live in caves, right? Right. )

Not unlike climbing unprotectable off-widths, entering a steep chute of deep pow on skis that are too long, cross-country hiking without map or compass, driving home at 2am just as the frat-packed bar down the street closes or going on a first – or third - date, while flying D-Brain just won’t shut the hell up. Chatterbox. And sometimes I just like to sweetness of silence, the space of quiet. I have no problem riding in a car or sitting next to someone on the couch in silence, reading a book, looking out the window, mining belly button lint.

There have been a lot of good posts and conversations lately about the great output of D-Brain’s efforts: fear. Getting over it, supporting one another in it, how to manage and deal. They’ve been helpful to read, I’ve learned, felt camaraderie, been reassured.

But maybe we are (read: I am) thinking too hard. The D-brain is there for a reason after all; to keep us from diving face first into a mesmerizing, warm campfire on a frozen night, or launching off the top of a peak to fly with the birds without so much as a wingsuit to catch our fall.

Why not let the D-Brain be there without putting incessant pressure on ourselves to ditch it? Maybe the D-brain just wants to be invited to the party, to be included and to belong. Maybe it will shut up already, if we acknowledge its voice and presence. Maybe that’s why it keeps yapping so freaking loud. What would be the worst that would happen anyways, if we invited it to the crag, into the backcountry or to sit in the empty seat next ours on this jumbo, way-bigger-than-the-little-green-house jet?

Ok, fine, D-Brain, hello, yes I heard you, welcome to flight 2951. Here we are at 20,000feet, crap that would be a long ways to tumble if we trip, so let’s keep our feet steady. I could use a hand to hold right about now, maybe I can hold yours? Then I wouldn’t have to dig my fingers into this shoddy armrest. Is this a Boeing plane? Gotta support the home team. Gawd I hate turbulence, you too? We have so much in common. Sorry for squeezing so tight. But I feel better, how about you?

Off The Beaten, Well-traveled Track

His email exploded with enthusiasm. And I believe in him, that he meant every word to the core of his soul.

     “This is what makes this trip different to the 100's of other emails you probably get; I'm 
     looking for a real adventure, something pure and truly "off the beaten track".

An off-the-beaten-path taken from a highway.

There is a lot of truth in his statement.

His trip is different – can adventures ever really be duplicated even if you follow a fairly well traveled path. The weather, the people met along that path, the food, the way our perception takes it all in, will never duplicate exactly what another has, even what we have, experienced in the past.


Real adventure, that’s the pure essence of what we go searching for. To do something atypical, to have to work a bit for it, to get greater reward than what we put in, to get the shit scared out of us just a little. And to come home with a story worthy of the rapt attention of everyone around the campfire, so focused on our every word that they forget to sip the beer slowly warming in their hands.

Purity. Free of the hassles and clutter most of the rest of the world bring with them when they travel. Like the lady at airport security who turned back to check her bag when she was told her three quart-sized baggies of mini bottles of shampoos and lotions and important salves of some sort or another was over the one-baggie limit rather than lose them even if it meant being late to the gate where her flight was departing. The simplicity of letting go of our comforts and embracing what another place and culture has to offer. It’s a beautiful way to travel, to get outside ourselves.

It’s also true, that I get hundreds of emails requesting sponsorship for people’s amazing and life changing adventure plans. Its part of my job, and I find it fairly entertaining, if not only a way to feel productive by sending massive “no’s” out and in a big lump, emptying out my inbox.

But going “off the beaten track” and being different from the 100’s of other ideas that are out there? In this world where community is global, where people in the most remote places have access to cell phones and internet, where for the right amount of cash you can go anywhere – is there really any place truly off the beaten track at this point? Or is off the beaten track simply a blanket description for places your friends and parents never have and may never want to travel to? And when it comes down to it, the likelihood that no one has come up with your “unique” free flying, low budget, no-guidebook idea is pretty unlikely – someone probably set out with that same travel itinterary yesterday. You’ve been scooped.

But it doesn’t really matter. What is it behind our incessant need to be the first, be different, push the boundaries past the guy who did it last time, find the new thing/people/place, have the experience NO ONE else has had? Your trip to the local farmers market could be just as entertaining and interesting as that guy over there who’s telling a story of narrowly escaping attacks by wild monkeys throwing green bananas. Are we trying so damn hard to be different simply because we cant tell a good story about what’s already around us without the extremes found off the beaten path? Am I trying so goddamn hard to climb as hard as I can simply to tell a good story around the kitchen table, when in reality, the story I want to tell is about the 5.2 I followed with a good friend in a beautiful place? A place that we accessed by well beaten trail (most of the way) and by shuttle boat ride that to arrange required we talk to at least 3 people, in our own language, without having to mime what we wanted in a goofy game of charades that we would’ve had to play in a truly exotic place where there is no book on how to learn the local language and for $15 allowed us to skip a grueling “character-making” bit of trail?

When is the last time you read a book or heard a story (not on TV) that grabbed you at the core, left you breathless with anticipation, and made the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? That made you laugh so hard that you started hyperventilating and could barely muster enough body control to grab hold of your aching sides to keep them from splitting wide open? That moved you so much that you wanted to reach across a table or into the book to touch the hand of the storyteller, give it a squeeze, offer a tissue with hand that would then wipe away your own tears.

I’m not saying we should stay on the couch forever doing nothing because its ALL been done before, so whats the point of anything. But maybe… Maybe its not so much about being needing to be different, to be extreme to be recognized and to have people want to hear our stories, but to be able to tell a good story about whatever, wherever and whomever is important to us; a walk in the park or a walk on the wild side.

The Root

I came across Hafiz recently and fell in love with his words (you can find another on Solo in Tandem). Its hard to know how close his actual voice was to the modern, English translations, but I like to think the essence of his message is still true.

This past February, I took a trip to Ketchum (aka heaven on earth). One morning, while sitting by the kitchen table still in my pjs and coffee in hand, with views of freshly snowed-on mountains in every direction out the window, the sun waking up the day, and a silence so deep it roared with gentle comfort, I read The Gift and stumbled upon this one. His words summed up the way I feel in the mountains and forests and woods so perfectly -in a way I never possibly could communicate- that I was immediately entranced...

What Is the Root?

What

Is the 

Root of all these 

Words?

One thing: love.

But a love so deep and sweet

It needed to express itself 

With scents, sounds, colors

That never before

Existed. 

Its the only explanation that makes sense to me as to how and why such beautiful places have been created. This feeling is one I crave, that I cannot live without and it makes me irresistibly long for an escape to some natural place; any natural place. So, I'd say its time to head into the mountains. 

The Gift - Poems by Hafiz, The Great Sufi Master, translated by Daniel Ladinsky can likely be found at your local mom-and-pop bookseller, on Amazon of course, and also through the Seattle Public Library 

VertFest

Clinics and demos for 2011! 

Friendly faces smiled at me as I scanned the competition while flutters of nervous anticipation filled my belly. VertFest 2010, and my first randonee race, was about to begin. Held at Alpental, VertFest includes one or two laps depending on your division, each which ascend about 2,400' for one lap over 2.5 miles and about 4,000' for two laps over 4 miles. The race includes sweaty bootpacks, sketchy switchbacks, portions under chair lifts where riders can heckle you well out of snowball reach and a crew of the nicest, most encouraging volunteers. Last minute instructions were given, beacons were checked and before I could say "kick-turn", the gun blasted the madness loose.

The bluebird sky infused the day with electric color; a lucky occurrence on what statistically should've been a gray February day in the Cascades. Minimal snowfall had resulted in a decent but not deep base and it had been days since the last dusting. Ducking into the shadows of the trees, racers surged up the challenging start. Those in my "wave" pulling up the rear struggled for traction. Carnage littered the course; a released ski here, a water bottle sledding downhill there, people slipping this way and that... But before too long, we all found footing and settled into an upward rhythm.

Weaving up through the trees. Photo: Keith Karlick

Fffzzt phhushhhh fffzzt phhsushhh... my skins glided in perfectly aligned time to Run DMC, Aerosmith, and the butterflies still dancing in my belly. I hadn't spent much time that season on skis and had never skinned for speed. Calculating these factors with the tough conditions, I kept watch for potential "outs" in case I had to bail. All this and I still had to figure out how to drop into International, a slope with a tough entrance that I'd built into mythical proportions; a terrifyingly steep chute with thousand-foot cliffs all around and only a narrow margin to keep me from falling to a gruesome lump on the slope below. The abominable snowman would probably come chase after me too. Zoiks.

Conversation with fellow racers eased my nerves and I realized many, like me, had never attempted this before. Keeping a steady pace, breathing hard from effort, and in eager anticipation of reaching the first milepost, I closed in on the flat spot that was our checkpoint. As I neared it, the pitch steepened and in a moment of poor balance and over eagerness, I lost it and began to slide! Using my elbow to self arrest (not advised), leaving a bit of DNA along the way, I quickly reversed the progress I'd just made. In an act of mercy, the split boarder behind me stuck out a foot to stop my fall. Thank goodness for friendly competition!

Passing that first gate, I came out from the trees and into the sun-drenched open of softened snow and spring-like conditions. With more grip to my skins and the help of Bryan Adams serenading me with Summer of '69 via my Shuffle, I began the steeper ascent with a renewed spring in my glide.

Busted elbowed turkey getting the beta

Sunny peacefulness of the quiet skin track distracted me (nearly every other racer was ahead of me so I had some lovely, unintentional solitude). Before I knew it, skin glistening with a dewy perspiration, a gaggle of patrollers greeted me at the final checkpoint, patched up the wreck of my bloody elbow, helped me into my turkey suit, and gave me encouraging advice on dropping into the dreaded International. Ack.

Sounds of skiers working hard to hold an edge on the icy slope below frazzled my winged self. With glittery ridiculousness and a deep breath, I let go of the grip that pinned my li'l chicken-hearted self to the top and -gasp- I dropped in.

And found unexpected cush! Like a bird in springtime, I hopped from soft spot to soft spot, overflowing with snowy glee. Below International, I zoomed through trees along the twisty course, my sparkly turkey suit catching afternoon light. Popping out at last run, I let it all go, my wings catching the air. The ding of cowbell and cheers of spectators accompanied my own ecstatic whoops of joy as I crossed the finish.

Turkey in action! Photo: Keith Karlick

At the post-race festivities, celebration filled the air. Fellow racers shared epic stories of ascent and descent. Race winners claimed prizes and exercised well-deserved bragging rights. Raffle winners took home goodies that would've made any gear-junky jealous. Good brew poured with delicious ease. And the sun set with a golden glow as the great day faded.

In the end, this chick's time was somewhere over three and a half hours which translated to 3rd from the last. My souvenirs included a rosy sunburn, a blobby scrape on my elbow, pretty black bruises on my shins, and memories of spring snow. It was my best day of skiing for the entire 2010 season.

Now, nearly into February 2011, I'm gearing up for attempt #2. If you haven't signed up for VertFest, do it now! The race is February 13th. If you want to add to your fun, or participate without racing, this year features even more fest with clinics including Ski Photography with Grant Gunderson and Jason Hummel, Steep Skiing with Bryce Phillips of evo, and Avalanche Safety with Martin Volken and the crew at ProGuiding. The full list of clinics can be found on our VertFest Facebook events page. Also new for 2011, we'll be hosting a film festival at the North Bend Theater Saturday night. Are you in?!

Now that we have that cleared up, the only question is what do I go as this year? Lady bug, penguin, Ms. Pacman....? Let me know your suggestions and I'll see you there.

This was originally posted on VertiCulture. I have a few more stories posted there if you'd like to find more. VertiCulture is my favorite work project, powered by Outdoor Research, and filled with sport-passion and stoke from athletes and friends who never cease to inspire me. Check it out!