Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What Next?

Sounds of a fine warm autumn coffee shop in Seattle. Whirr of espresso machines, slam of the register, hip people using their inside voices, the click of ubiquitous Mac keys. I have just returned from Colorado with Michael, have just finished my first season of full-time guiding. The leaves are turning out here, the blackberry vines still lush and dripping with late berries. Weather in the alpine won't cooperate with local ambitions, so my fingers ache from Index and Leavenworth instead of Washington Pass granite. A day ago, basking in the cool of the shadowed face of a Colorado canyon, I re-introduced Michael's stepdad to climbing and continued the mellow instructions I have been giving to the man who has become my partner.

What to do. September without a plan has always sent me into bouts of melancholy, closely followed by roadtrips to fine granite punctuated by worried online checks of my dwindling bank balance. A semi-panicked lurch back to the fishery that has never rewarded my efforts has soon followed.

Not this year. Still waiting to hear an actual offer of a promising job from an employer who seems more unreliable by the day, I am caught in the limbo and throat-tightening speculation of what to do next. Mountain Madness has been very good to me, and me to it. In finally doing the job I have been wanting to for so many years I realized guiding has little to do with climbing as I have known it. Instead, I have discovered that empowering people with information that allows them to access glaciated mountains that were out of reach before is a rewarding end in itself. I like teaching when the subject is one that I have passionately pursued as a student. One week after a one-day crevasse rescue class I saw a very keen client of mine leading his own group up Baker. He chatted and waved with great enthusiasm, happy that I had demystified the rescue systems he needed to go for it.

Indeed, it would be wonderful to do this all year. Summer work - the bountiful time, the time when the great alpine is friendly and accessible - is hard enough to come by in this highly specialized career field. For winter work you have to be good, lucky, persistent, and willing to work for not much at first. The appeal of an indoor job where I come home at night grows as the weather turns and as my love for Michael proceeds with more richness and depth. Training is so much easier when I can know my schedule in advance. Planning becomes possible. I love adventure and uncertainty, the thrill of reacting to situations as they arise, but this is not the best way to prepare for the expeditions that are, with the small taste I have gotten of them, just about the most awesome way I can think of to spend a few months of my life and effort.

Balance. Drive. Love. Physical focus and effort. I want to honor all of these. To become a better climber one must climb more. To climb more one must have time. This usually means one must either live with less and climb a lot - i.e. the dirtbag lifestyle - have a high-paying job that has lots of time off, or have a more 9 to 5 style job and maximize climbing time by being highly organized. I went for the high-paying job idea with crabbing and salmon fishing, but the toll on my body was too high. The 9 to 5 jobs I qualify for are for the most part soul-deadening, while the seasonal jobs available are rewarding but have wonky schedules and no security once the season is over. School is a possibility, and I have thought of taking my interest in geology and returning to study something in the water rights field, thus guaranteeing employment in the Rockies that won't exacerbate the already enormous environmental impact of oil and gas drilling. I am not a scientist by temperament, nor do I really want to have a career in science. My other option for schooling, an MFA in creative writing, seems like 2 years of scraping by on student teacher wages to have a piece of paper that will allow me to compete with a bunch of other MFAs for a very few assistant faculty positions in a university town I don't really want to live in. I am very place-based, which perhaps means I should chase jobs that will allow me to live in a small mountain town where the ice flows from numerous 1000 foot waterfalls all the way to my back steps, the 4WD roads and cool summer canyons are not yet shut down by private property owners and restrictive National Park fees, a master brewer who has tired of the city has set up shop, the oil and gas rigs have been kept away, the hot springs flow in abundance, the granite is solid and a snowmobile is seen as a tool instead of a piece of sports equipment. I think I just described Ouray if it was in the Canadian Rockies. Except for the good granite part.

I don't want to give up yet. I do think I can make this work. The last few years have kicked a lot out of me, but even in this money grubbing image-conscious hell of gentrification and hip conformity I have found the way - with the help of Michael and the few close friends I have here - back to listening to my heart. And it's telling me to get the hell out of Seattle as soon as possible, and only come back next summer to teach a new crop of clients just how great the Cascades are.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Frozen Beauty, Uncertainty, Home

Lying tangled in repose with a man I love I listen to the rain outside and ponder my next move. His breath comes steady and even; he is holding my hand made strong by crab pots, bait jars, and ice tools in his own brutally strong hand even as he sleeps. The coffee maker burbles and the aloes and hanging plants and orchid and sprouting seeds gather energy from the soil and grow. The room is full of cleanliness and morning light. Juniper is intent on a spider on the wall, acting like a kitten this morning even as she pushes eleven. I stare at the walls of a room that has become home without seeing. The impression left by frozen waterfalls and a few thousand miles of road and sky leaves the image of ice before my eyes, the feel of a solid stick or secure hook, the negative space of sunset over Hyalite or the Bridgers. I recall the steady feel I have leading, the worst screaming barfies I've felt on a subzero day, recall watching my friend and climbing partner work through the delicate moves of a mixed climb. Recall one crampon point on a tiny shelf of rock. The warmth of wood floors after a day in tight-laced boots. Chris and I laughing our heads off at radio shows about dolphin invasions, stuck rednecks buzzed on Bud Light wanting us to tow a Dodge Ram 2500 out of the ditch with a Toyota Tacoma, self-important climbers, ice fishermen, hipsters, posers, and everything ridiculous that crossed our path. The relief I felt after a quick call to the captain of the crab boat I no longer work on, the surge of possible futures flooding back in with the knowledge that I was now jobless but free, that focus on mountains was once again a possibility for me.

This early winter has seen the last death twitches of my attempt to work in the Dungeness Crab industry. I have won the respect of several in Westport, but have never made the kind of money which justifies time away from climbing, the ability to plan trips, regular training, friends, the home I am creating from the chaos of others' transient creativity, serious writing, such a nice kitty, and a man whose weird, unique, honestly original persona is coaxing out a true, long-buried innocent side to myself that I have not honored in this last wild decade of action and exploration.

Intent and drive. Dreams and strength. Direct honesty with myself and others. What else do I have, do any of us in this overpopulated outsourced world have to hitch our lives to? My closest friends tell me in ways which befit their different systems of understanding to let go and trust the world. I have been strung so tight for so long, a string playing a discordant but singular note, ready to snap and coil. Endless scheming, endless planning. They are sick of hearing it and I of saying it. Allow your life to unfold as it will, they say. You are on a good path. I want to fight, to claw and scratch against this, but I have a waning desire to rail against the world. My energy is for mountains, for creating a good home.

Bozeman, Jackson, Seattle, Alaska. Twitchy, nervous, chewing on my fingers and thinking of the ice I'm not climbing, I hold onto Michael's strong waist as we walk and agonize: where is best? What work is best? Wet cedar, slick oil and dormant lavender perfume the city night. My love says, tall and powerful and elegant on the rainy sidewalk, that Hunter S. Thompson once said it was all in the whims of the great bizarre. I look up at his sharp nose and goatee upturned in the drizzle, then lay my head on his chest as we walk to an unknown destination. The Cascades brood across Lake Washington and his arm is around me. For once, I am not alone in the night.