In It For the Long Haul

There is a delicate, invisible line that has been forming ever since I started working in the mountains. My life is more public now. The things I say and post carry more meaning. So I write the following with restraint based on this knowledge. I think it is important to say - this is part of my story, as much as fishing or Denali or relationships. However many decades or generations after the feminist movement began (or has it always been going on?) there are still many professions that are male-dominated. Being who I am, I seem to have gravitated towards them: fishing is FAST AND FUN! Climbing is TOTALLY SWEET! Now give me a job, suckas, just like that guy you gave a job to over there!

Ah, it's not as easy as that. I have found that oftentimes I have to prove myself more than my male counterparts when seeking employment in these arenas. There is great reward in it later - I remember walking back into the bar in Westport a year after I worked on the Betty Lee and having the bartender and some other fishermen tell the others in the bar how I could lift and stack crab pots. They claimed me, in a way - I know this chick! She can do the job! It was a great feeling to have proven I was up to the task. I had exceeded the expectations of what a female could do. In the end, though, my friend Ginny in Seattle was right. She once told a younger me fully entrenched in butting my stubborn aggro short-cropped tele-skiier head against sexism in another mountain job that I could perhaps gain a special place within the group for being a woman and undertaking difficult tasks, but I would always remain different from the guys in the group by virtue of my femaleness. She works in the computer gaming industry - a similar world - and I listened to what she had to say. I have found since then that I will not ever be one of the guys - but by focusing on excellence and just being my strange funny self I will invariably become part of the group. If I was a guy I also don't think I would ever fit in any conformist sense. My place is there, I just have to create it. People are wary of something they have not seen before, but after a time come to appreciate that which is new and different. I'm not what people expect. Only part of that is due to my gender.

In fishing, I never quite found my place, though I did get that glow of validation from co-workers. I had some great times with the guys I worked with and the people I met and saw some strange and amazing sights that I doubt I will ever see again (if only by virtue of the fact that they were made so amazing by my degree of exhaustion and sleep deprivation and this is not a state I seek to duplicate outside of single-push alpine climbing). But in the end, I would always wait for the clouds to clear so I could see whatever mountain range lay across that expanse of gray moving water: the Chugach, the Olympics, the peaks of the snowy Katmai peninsula, hell, even the Willapa hills. A wise friend in Westport told me that successful fishermen are in it for the love of fishing. Bad year, good year - they love the ocean and love catching. If I loved the mountains, he said, go back to the mountains. Ride out the bad and see the good doing the thing you love in the place you want to be anyway. He had musical ambitions he put aside to go fishing, and I felt his sense of loss in not pursuing this goal when I spoke to him about important things. I am pretty sure he was telling me to get out of fishing before I felt that sense of loss. I am honored to have received this advice, because it is among the best I have gotten in this lifetime.

This brings us back to here. I am pissed as hell at some of the attitudes I am now butting heads with in the world of earning a living in the mountains, but I'm in it for the long haul. In the end my personal climbing comes back to the upward motion, the slice of a well-sharpened pick into solid ice, the placing of a piece, the puzzle-completing joy of navigating a tricky route in the mountains. Guiding comes back to a group of clients laughing, enjoying the trip and focusing on their own goals and expectations without realizing the planning and constant vigilance occurring in the mind of the guide. I want to continue my growth as a climber and as a guide, constantly seeking new challenges and opportunities. The fact that I am a woman and want to make a good living from this while others have different ideas is, to me, just one more annoying detail to be attended to. Experiencing discrimination only makes me more determined to succeed, both to prove those fuckers wrong and to pave the way for other women, who, like me, want to make a life in the mountains. I am learning to navigate the politics of gender and not become bitter or closed off to my ability to be friendly and form emotional bonds with people. The mountains are just too full of joy for that.

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.

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.

Worstport, isn't.

You will know what I am talking about when I tell you the roof from last night's rented shelter lies in black pieces on the parking lot. You will know what I say when I tell you of the smell of mold, sea slime, crushed barnacle, wet iron and rubber and steel wire and rotting cotton of a crab pot, line, and buoys. You will know what I am talking about when I say the minuscule cuts on my fingers will not heal in the constant wet of gear work. You will know what I say when I speak of the rough banter and competition of everyone's best, grossest, most outrageous stories tossed around the moldy cold damp air of any of dozens of gear sheds out here on the November coast.

Crab pots stand five high and skippers dart from boat to shed to Englund to Tacoma or Seattle or wherever buoys or lines or engine parts lie. Deckhands smoke one endless cigarette after another, ash dropping into pots, and live on borrowed cash. Crab scuttle on the ocean floor, feeding and unaware of their fate at the Christmas plate of a hundred heavily decorated Bellevue homes. Families miss their dads, girlfriends miss their men, a few lucky or think they are lucky boyfriends miss their ladies. The reality sinks in for these gals and guys: your commercial fishing lover or spouse is actually a fisherman, ergo is gone for several months at a time, and is gone now. Surfers lift crab pots and count fathoms of line with an eye to the surf and watch dark fall with their hopes of one good wave before the day's work is done. Skiers dream of Crystal's backcountry, chutes and endless pow. Ice climbers count fictitious dollars and dream of Canada.

I find myself on the winter coast once again. There is no desperation. I am not alone. I run in the dark over slick wet pavement puddles against thirty mile an hour winds and feel strong and solid. I might make money, I might not. I might surf, I might just crab and talk and drink and leave. My stories recall Denali, Red Rocks, Vegas, Valdez, Jackson Hole, the Winds, the hard rock of Index and the Cascades, weird hipsters in Seattle, strange parties on boats in Lake Union, unsuccessful fishing in Friday Harbor, La Push, successful hauls in stark green bays in Kodiak. My best friends hail from all corners of this world and fill my life with days and evenings and stories I could never in a thousand years make up. November on the coast is just as stormy as it always has been, but damn wonderful right now. Winds can howl and roofs can fall off, but I'm here, alive, a pocket of vibrant warmth against this early and long night. I love this life and the people in it. I love this forgotten coast and its moldy wet sadness. I fit here. It's so strange to find this. In a way I have never found amongst the brobra ski culture, the yuppie weekender Seattle crowd, (only, perhaps, amongst dirtbag climbers living in the rock places of the southwest) my strange private melancholy hardcore soul fits out here.

As in all things in my life: for now it fits, just for now.

Running

I've been runnin' all my life
I'm still runnin'
I'm still runnin'
I could walk and never turn
Never falter when I fly
and if you give me skies of grey
I'll bring you rain
To wash us clean again

- Po' Girl

Upcanyon somewhere in Idaho in a borrowed Subaru. Friend downvalley celebrating the joining of two ski bums' lives, up here in Stanley far from their snowy winter home in Utah. The Sawtooth jags the horizon, and I have driven in the opposite direction. Idaho's green mountain canyons wind up into open crumbling fields of talus and bright puffy white cloud sky. The landscape's shoulders are at once rounded and severe. The canyons of early fall - yes, the bite of morning frost is here - are private. They fold back and back in surprise and seclusion. The landscape answers my need for the ultimate privacy of solitude. For what, you ask? Reflection, careful consideration of my next best move? Fuck no. I need time to take off as much clothing as possible, sit in tubs of hot natural sulfur water, stretch long-unused leg muscles up valleys with no plan and minimal gear at inadvisable hours of the late afternoon smelling subalpine fir, talking and singing to myself, pika, deer and the bright blue sky. In short, I'm coming back into my found and chosen home. Mountains.

Pain in my shoulder, numb fingers and a re-sprained right ankle remind me (at my structural-integration practicioner uncle's severe admonitions) to slow down, heal, to regroup after an intense summer. Serendipity and a series of small, shrewd decisions unseen to most but myself (you got so lucky!) combined into a brilliantly executed summer of travel in Alaska. To tell the whole story would take a novel, and I tend in my current state of perpetual motion to be a soundbyte/book on tape kind of storyteller. So I offer the following excerpts:

East Fork Kahiltna Glacier, Alaska Range, July 7

Backstory: A contact with Blaine Horner made at the VertiCulture Randonee Race at Alpental this winter led to a stint as a volunteer ranger on Denali. After a few days of preparation, Fairview-inspired debauchery, hip-hop dancing and perpetual twilight we flew in courtesy of Talkeetna Air Taxi. We spent a little under 2 weeks at Denali Base Camp watching warm temps and a fine dusting of volcano ash from the Redoubt eruption melt the range down to rock and dirt. Many stories of rescues, pranks, and mountain mishaps were told by ranger, guide and climber alike.

Basecamp in the shadow of Hunter and Foraker. The scale is difficult to comprehend. Clouds move in and out, over and through. A few parties trickle in on haggard, stinky ropeteams. They are soon whisked away by TAT planes. Lisa and Mark Westman deconstructed their basecamp a few days ago. The runway is getting too soft to use here. Skis poke up out of the snow; we practice and practice crevasse and high-angle rescue techniques, swap books, nap in our own yellow basecamp sauna tents, covet The Sex Lives of Cannibals and Dancing at the Rascal Fair. Blaine and I set up a slackline with the big I-beams from Mark and Lisa's tent. We walk it with tele boots, try to ski tour, get overheated and spooked by the groan of opening crevasses.

The impassive, impressive mountains watch over all and send forth volleys of snow, ice, and stones unhinged and tumbling rowdy and free in the heat of this endless summer day. The day the mountains poured down to the the sea and the runs of salmon danced up to meet them. They met in a frenzy of post-solstice copulation in that long summer day. They were too tired to care by the time the fireweed had done its celebrating and popped the last pink firework off the top. They languished spent in the shallows. Their lazy tails rotted but they didn't care. The mountains stood blocky, crumbling and naked in the summer heat. They weren't embarrased. Somewhere in the great debauchery of the summer melt they left their dirty sides exposed and lay passive as busy, active gravity stole pieces from their flanks and shoulders. There was little ado and no fuss, much noise and great piles to finally greet the first firming freezing snowstorms that would again blanket and solidify, beautify and homogenize. Those snows and that freeze would allow those small dots of frenzied carbon to move freely across the landscape. To land the little planes dwarfed against the massive shoulders of wanton, uncaring, beautiful, senseless mountains.

Those busy pieces of carbon are folding up shop by the end of our weeks there. I have met many I know from other places in these weeks, beginning the one abiding theme of the summer: the affirmation that I have indeed built community in the places I have been and the circles in which I have traveled, a roving, mobile community of serious men and incredible women who love mountains and wild places.

By the time we have broken the National Parks Service basecamp into a pile ready for Chinook helicopter transport (highgrading Nutella and fresh foods from the loads flown down from 9 and 14 camp) it is too warm to transport our four human souls plus the high camp patrol (also four) out on fixed-wing aircraft. In swoops Bruce, the Kiwi pilot of Papa Hotel (papa?), to save us from the long walk out sucking smoke from the many fires and glacial silt. After transporting High Camp patrol to Talkeetna the four Basecamp patrollers climb on board for the ride of a season or lifetime, depending. We buzz the Moonflower Buttress, hover at the pass towards Huntington. We nose up to the Harvard Route and my mouth gapes like a dying fish. On our way back down into the green we pass chaotic icefalls, turquoise meltwater lakes languishing on top of glaciers, miles of moraine, huge waterfalls coming off sidecanyons fed by the melt of major peaks. And return to bright town.

Kodiak (Town), July 24

Backstory: A brief conversation with the captain I had worked for in 2006 and 7 out of Valdez painted a bleak portrait of Prince William Sound's salmon returns. I opted instead for a marathon journey to Hatcher Pass to climb the spectacular route Toto with two Alaska Mountaineering School guides, then an all-night hitchhike down the Kenai to catch the ferry to Kodiak the following day.

Really good day today. Down to coffee shop with overburdened Lisa - as is her style has taken on six big projects, teaching at a camp on Afognak, director of her work leaving next week, preparing for her trip to Mongolia, etc, etc...it took two cups of metal-lined coffee to wake up, then walked around. Geoff from Westport on Beverly J, met all on the dock. Skiffman on Bev. J gave me heads up on a 38 footer, this while I'm talking to Steve at the Aleutian Lady. Later I helped Steve put a bumper - like chafing gear - on the front of his skiff. He bought me a Subway for lunch for this help, unasked for by me. Steve asking casual questions about my life. CILM, (Crazy Insane Luggage Man, so named by Djuna) was nosing around with his small backpack, rolling suitcase, messed up face and a sturdy stick he had wrapped in 100 year anniversary stickers and electrical tape. Hitting stuff and playing with Vicky knives, trying to ask for a quarter or for Steve to also buy him a Subway. Steve's son was asking CILM for a quarter. "Why?" asked CILM. "To buy a Subway." Steve's son really good at quoting from The Perfect Storm - 'fishin' in New Bedfahd on the Grand Bahnks' - in a really good New England impression. The kids on the Aleutian Belle were the ones who told me about the guy walking around with 'Super G' duct taped on his shirt. "What does that stand for?"
"Super Greenhorn"
"You better take that off."
"I think I'll just leave it on."
"Then you might as well make it say Super Gay."
Another funny story - some ten year old kid in King Cove at a bonfire party: "I'm gonna drink a bottle of Crown, smoke a doobie and punch someone in the face. My grandfather was a fisherman, my dad was a fisherman and I'm a fisherman." The same kid was seen later that night in a stolen car with his seventeen year old friend.

Walked over after helping Steve to cannery, then Dog Bay, with Kenny the Fishhugger. He has a company so named in Phoenix where he sells frozen reds for upwards of $20 a lb, promoting sustainable wild fishery harvests. Married with 3 kids, fishes for his share of fish for his business, has been for 14 years. His family is beef ranchers, runs a sustainable amount of cattle on their land. He eats lots of fat and natural honey. Has photosensitive square glasses, a startled blink, a no Pebble Mine hat.

Yesterday Lisa and I took a short run through Fort Abercrombie Park. Her poor truck is ready to shake the back end off. Day before I was driving up partway to the windmills on Pillar Mountain and locked her keys in the car after running in the wind and rain. The guy who unlocked the car was a rather eccentric guy - normal for AK - who runs the antique store. The run was very windy, green vegetation all around at the top.

Picked salmonberries with the Mycological Matrix guy, who said he knew all the healing properties of mushrooms, especially Reishis, and had concocted a brew that would get you wasted and prevent a hangover a the same time. This while picking salmonberries big enough to cap the ends of our thumbs on a steep slope behind the cannery and telling me of the rigors of nursing school.
Me: "My aunt and uncle are really involved in the Oregon Mycological Society. They had a show with all sorts of wild mushrooms and labeled them with red for do not eat, yellow for be careful and green for go ahead and eat."
MM: "And purple for psychedelic?"
Me, deadpan: "Actually paisley."
MM, emphatic: "Yeah, that's right."
Lisa saw me walking with him just as it was dawning on me via the turn in our conversation had taken to psychedelics that this was indeed the Mycological Matrix guy who was all but 86'ed from the Brew Pub for harassing people into trying his vomit-inspiring brew. We exchanged looks - Lisa, I told you all the weird people always find me - and I quickly loaded up into the haven of her red and rattling truck under her sleek sea kayak.

Avoiding little boats, green skippers, tenders, and known non-payers, savoring the respite from Denali's sunburn brightness in the Kodiak rain I told Steve of Aleutian Belle one Friday that I was going to get a job the following day. "I don't see why not," he replied. "Everyone likes you."

Santa Flavia, F/V Carlynn (56ft) July 27-28

Laguna Star, Venturess, Valiant Lady, Erika. We waited in line until 9pm, set, delivered to tender after dinner. 2am bedtime day, but 21k lbs! Great first day! Kenny Fishhugger great skiffman, experienced seiner. Rick Blair a good skipper, calm and confident and experienced though young. His dad knows the good spots, he grew up fishing Kodiak. Mac is learning but needs a better mentality for boats - very intellectual, nose in book constantly - but seems to be adjusting albeit slowly. Andy an experienced fisherman, Dungies in La Push and knows me from Len and Nell's boat Lady Nell! Told me of a small Puget Sound Dungy fishery that goes on in Oct, herring in Westy. Boat in alright condition, gear works. We caught a salmon shark on day 2, after we caught a rock on the first set. Rough weather, wind came up, rain, a small Dungy crabber Andy's uncle used to own (Chiniak) running for the cover of the bay with its stabilizers down. Fucking hole started in my Grundens jacket, Kenny teasing me to get a new one, me being broke and sensitive about it. Fished till about 10 and watched Boondock Saints until midnight.

Day 3 small sets and a fouled web, stern haul. TIME BANDIT a movie star Deadliest Catch boat invited us aboard. Drawer full of candy from fans and fancy electronics. Huge engine room. A sauna! Electric heater. As the salmon slime melted out of my pores in luxurious beads of human sweat I saw a patch of slate blue glowing sky outlined by trees bobbing gently with the motion of the boat. The TIME BANDIT song started to play very loud on speakers just outside the sauna. Paraphrased, it went something like: "We're on the TIME BANDIT, we're gonna go catch a bunch of crab, then we're gonna go to Dutch Harbor and deliver our crab and I'm gonna DRINK A BEER then we're gonna catch more crab because we're the TIME BANDIT. La la la." At times like that I think there is no way I could have ever predicted this.


Uganik, Aug. 1-2

Rough seas crossing from Santa Flavia. I stood wheel watch for first time on this boat. Skiff got shifted by a big wave and guys had to hook it up with single line on hydraulic boom through hole in back of boat. Didn't puke, made dinner in rough weather. What day is it? Uganik, some boat telling us to go ahead for fishing, so we leave and motor on. The south part of the island has fewer trees. The passages we went through last night, Whale Pass included, were forested and beautiful, brooding and hung with fog, like Prince William Sound or Southeast. Here in the north the landscape is sparse, streaks of willow dotted with the occasional tree. There is a clean and open beauty to it - big stretches of water with sodium yellow lights of seiners far off. The bright orange buoys of setnet sites. Beautiful white cones of volcanoes across the water. Varied light and shadow on the steep green sides of mountains. How improbable is it that after two lost years of commercial fishing I could come to this incredible place? We motor to these beautiful bays and capes, so many. I not in a state of jangling disharmony, of blind and determined striving towards redemption from exile from mountains, but rather a state of excited and interested grace, of learning, exalting in this beautiful environment. In the fresh clean smell of seawater as we haul the net. In the delicious heaviness of hearty boat food. In the ache of hard work (not that hard yet) and the sense of space gained in open water. At the promise of the unexpected that lurks at the periphery of vision and knowing in Alaska.

Rasperry Cape, Aug. 3

Good day at Raspberry Cape, 35k lbs, dogs and 1 huge silver, 1 huge king about 50lbs. Leads over purseline all day. Yellow flowers starting on hillside, sunny in morning - AC/DC Back in Black 'Givin' the Dog A Bone.'
Me to Mac, who had it stuck in his head: "Mac it's your song."
Andy to Mac: "I'll give you a bone."
Tender went by with a guy Andy knows - Crazy Mike - the only person since the 1800's to be charged with piracy on the high seas - for boarding a longliner who had been stealing their gear with Vicky knives taped to buoy poles. Kid on a tender gave me a lead on crab jobs for fall.

Santa Flavia, Aug. 6

Motoring towards Santa Flavia. Town last night, Andy and Rick got groceries, everyone yapped on cell phones. Kenny has endless energy and Mac finally showered.
Lisa off to fieldwork. Geoff brought me chocolate ice cream and gum because I could not leave boat.
Lots of fish at Duck Cape, but we're going to the SE. Rick doesn't like lines. Beautiful weather but very windy yesterday morning at Steep Cape. Difficult to pile net in wind. Kenny doing good job on skiff, he, Andy, Rick very experienced. I lumped in with Mac in 'new guys' and it makes me determined to learn more so I'm not just cork monkey/galley help.

Town, Aug. 8

Saw Djuna randomly at coffee shop, offered her some ice cream float - she got a surprise (a skiff ride) and did not meet me at brewery for hours. Then beer in sun with friends, joking about Real World Kodiak and Quentin Tarantino pornos - sitting on loading bay of brewery with fireweed and fishing boats and canneries in sight, deckhands walking by. Overheard: "We should just get a keg of beer and roll it back to the fucking boat." Sunny day, treats at store, Djuna's house tall and with many rooms and wood floors, now off to Duck Cape.




Ghost Rocks, Aug 13

Big day full of sets at Ghost Rocks yesterday - 45k! Worked hard. Rick: "You guys are on autopilot." Calling out jumpers, the jasmine rice everyone likes, short plunger pole, tied-on seine, fixed net yesterday PM. Incentive - Linnae and co. - best tender ever - so much Dr. Pepper today my teeth hurt - gave us ice cream and pop and groceries yesterday PM - yesterday also averaged 3 dogs per suck and stood at really nice sorting table (flat plastic bottom!) smiling joking as fish went on by.



GHOST ROCKS '09!!!!! (Sometime in late August)

Great hauls last few days, nonstop, up @ 3:30-5:30, set @ 1st light.
Kenny in wheelhouse, jogging sets watching tide rips those lazy humpies want to wake up, yawn, have a coffee, then get going.
Mack growing more competent.
Rick: Get a million lbs, keep going.
'That's why we have a fifth guy I'm not stopping.'
One day deckloaded, 69k lbs! Over $1000 crewshare for me that day. Sunny days last 2, laundry yesterday, conversation about writing with me and Mac today.
GHOST ROCKS 09! Carlynn and Legasea.
God is great, beer is good, people are crazy. Bad wind for fish, blowing from SE, blowing fish out, humpies are lazy don't want to fight it.

The salmon run died quickly. Rick, as efficient in his decision to quit as he was making decisions while fishing, packed up his seine and skiff and he, Andy and Kenny flew home. Mac got on a boat doing silvers. I relaxed a bit at Lisa's (including a not-so-relaxing hike up Mt. Sharatin) and flew home soon after. Chris and I immediately hit it hard and climbed Rebel Yell, a beautiful offwidth on Chianti Spire in Washington Pass. During this climb it became apparent that my nagging shoulder injury was worse than I had thought, so when it came time to go on the Idaho climbstravaganza I was pretty well out of commission. That old trickster, circumstance, is again beating me at my own game of always planning and living in the future and telling me to learn balance. For this is my practice as I stare down the latter half of my twenties: learning to balance physicality and contemplation, constant geographical movement and career/community building stints in certain places, brutal honesty of word or expression and a socially appropriate, even friendly demeanor. This injury is even teaching me to balance hard work with periods of rest and recovery. Teaching me to think in longer timelines. I'm in this game for the duration.

Solstice

Across the flat dark water the lights of Seattle houses shine. Across Puget Sound lights lie low on the flat bowl of the Northwest sky. This is a maritime city. It is a departure point for many journeys past and present. I am standing on the edge of waters that hold the rivers of the mountains that have saved my life. It is the solstice and I am in Golden Gardens park in Ballard. There is not a soul in my sight.

I strip to sandals and wade in. My body is spare and toned by resistance to gravity and lack of superfluous calories. A constant new strength hums in it. There are lines and curves foreign to me. I am seeing the tangible results of my efforts. I am being shaped by the things I do. I once admired lean climbers throwing gear in cars hungry after big efforts. What enervated them to become thus? What were their secrets? What did they sacrifice to look like that – dusty, hollow-cheeked, strong and precise in their movements, muscle and tendon and swollen veins playing under limbs darkened from the sun? How, in my unformed and ill-disciplined body of youth, could I make the passionate need to understand the language of crags and ice and high places match my exterior?

I turn towards shore and dip into the salty clarity of Puget Sound water. Cold. I rise immediately and head to shore to towel off tingling and alive. “Welcome home.” I say to myself. I look back and the dark water shines with the light of the city I have decided to call my stage, resting ground, working learning playground.

Your own history layers upon itself in a city. It was on this beach I walked on a first date that ultimately fizzled. I ranted about the waste of edible plants while picking cress with my ex on a drunken walk from his little rented room across from Shilshole Marina to a punk party with a stolen keg up a closed Golden Gardens Park road. I sat across from my fellow deckhand from the crab boat I crewed on in Westport this last winter at a restaurant on this road as we talked about our own struggles as intense people in a dulled down world and continued the long series of conversations that have made us true friends. It is solstice and I am twenty eight. I am at the height of my powers and at a tangible turning point in this wild young life of mine. This year I forgot my Solstice cleansing ritual until I, reluctant to re-enter civilization, turned on my phone and checked my messages in the familiar comfort of the Ballard house I am coming, with no little surprise, to call home. My best friend’s voice apologized in advance for being sporadically available on the solstice and promised to catch up later. Solstice! I looked at the calendar, and indeed, it was. I had wondered earlier if I would be high on a glacier somewhere by now. This year that was not to be, though in a week and change I will be low on a glacier. In my warm room with Juniper bothering I thought back on my two stellar days of sparkling granite, sunshine, clean abundant flowing water, and alternating heat and cold wind. There were lots of moments when, charging hard from crag to crag, I could have roped my good friend and climbing partner into a solstice swim. The days were seamless, our drive to go up too strong, our banter both New-England caustic and light, our understanding as fellow seasoned climbers roped together for the latest few of many shared climbs solid and growing. We lived for the hold and the piece and the joke and the moment. We lived for the guidebook and the camping spots and the food and water and the friction and crack and temperature and the joy of leading. We lived for nothing more than the moment and I lost time, day, hour, year. I lived in sun and shade, muscle ache and decision point. I was, as has happened so many days this year, completely removed from anything but the exigencies of climbing. This is my happiness. This is perfection. Joy. I forgot about Solstice.

This night now finds me here, hurrying back into a shirt and pants lest someone walk the beach. Uncertainty, by now an old friend, looms bright as the lights at the last point of land I can see before the darkness of open water. Alaska, that mythical word and world-changing state rears its majestic and terrifying head. I am hesitant to respond with the rowdy enthusiasm I have had in the past. This hesitance to embrace the unknown again surprises me, but I know why.

This spring I have learned to temper my intensity and channel it into climbing, into training, into friendships with people who have learned to do the same in their own ways, healthy or not. I have stayed long enough for the Seattle climbing community to open some of its tight-sealed doors. I have calmed enough to keep my demeanor socially acceptable, thereby easing into friendships and climbing partnerships without my usual overwhelming onslaught of Aili-ness. I have turned up the volume by degrees and waited for a response, then ramped it up some more. I love what I have become and I know how to stay this way. I am in love with my friends and my house and Washington’s mountains (and I count Squamish too). I have realized finally that I could change my location a hundred more times but it wasn’t gonna mean shit until I changed what was inside of me.

I feel the change like a freight train and a whisper each time I walk these streets bike these trails or ride these roads in my stinky gassy pickup (anyone wanna buy a truck?). I can’t believe that this place I once derided at the side of my ex as a festering enclave of materialistic yuppy scumwads has become home. Why? Because in the city I can be, say, and do almost anything and most people will merely shrug and say ‘huh.’ Because I am forty minutes from excellent sport crags and two hours away from world-class granite, glaciers, ice climbing, and alpine objectives. Because I can walk to pho. Because I am sick of running and decided it was. The decision still feels arbitrary, as I am indeed going to throw myself to the demon-gods of chance and fate and big Alaskan summer bucks in a few weeks. But I have a place to return to. I have plans in the works to drastically alter my pattern of living and adventure into one that is both reliable and flexible. And I have people already saying “When you get back in September we can do….”

Gunsight Nooksack Slesse Squampton Warrior Wall Index Washington Pass

Those seeds of plans, coming from solid alpine partners, are worth more than any wild scheme.

Fuck Yeah

Move to city.
Be broke.
Be brokenhearted.
Get a job at outdoor gear company.
Really learn Excel.
Make friends.
Go skiing.
Climb great crags.
Eat shit on a bike.
Joke with new friends about your cage fighting accident while climbing great crags.
Climb sweet new alpine routes while recovering from cage fighting injuries.
Get accepted on a volunteer climbing ranger patrol on Denali.
Write blog.
Bitches.

Falling

I open my hands and grab at fistfuls of air
the moon calls blithe and pitying
over sublimated mist and rotten snow
under wet dark trees
black moss beards
broken old pine needles
last year’s sticks

winter winds
tore down those

Hours before
I stood on the dull knifepoint
of my own steel and rage, held,
an asterisk against sky
blood muscle tendon bone kept
warm dry balanced
sky
air
and the adjustment of light
between narrow dark streaked rock wall,
all
mica fleck shining beneath sodden spring glove,
no ice to help us on our way

It was true what she said
about me being first,
first to talk, to walk
too soon –
doctors whispered abuse
and she said
of my split lip, my grandmother
crying out from fifty feet below shaking hemlock limb
‘make her come down!’
I can’t,
she said,
how can I?

What she didn’t know in her helplessness
or maybe did too dark and well
is this:
The times I have fallen have not been in mountains

Twin scars crescent eyelids closed hood up spindrift falling
the sheer will required to exert physical force against
the abiding law of earthly gravity
is effortless
next to the force exerted
against the hard concrete glass unrelenting
which has slashed my face
and wakes me up
back down again
in warm horrible soft red beds
grasping
at fistfuls of air