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.