Chasing Delight

This is an entry for a contest asking what ice climbing meant to you that Alpinist held.  It was not chosen, but nicely sums up my relationship with this improbable activity.

           My ice climbing had an ignominious start in the bunk of a crab boat bobbing listlessly on the wine-dark sea.  Words stolen from Kiss or Kill under my diesel-flavored pillow resonated with the intensity of a young deckhand with toughness to prove.  Vox clamantis in deserto originating in her ego, crying for the world to hear:  No, I am more than the Betty you see. No, I will not accept your mediocrity. 

           Last moments of warmth from a pickup that barely made it to Montana from the Westport docks.  Tang of cold air stinging my lungs and the sluggish restart of limbs too long folded into bucket seats and galley benches.  Blood half coffee at least.  Movement in the cold and roiling doubts silenced: Wait and see.

            The further we went into the canyon the further  I went back and back into the part of my past in which delight lived.  Perhaps delight was not just in childhood innocence lost but here in the powdery climbers’ trail winding up creek drainages and around outcroppings, under cliffs and around cobbled corners. The sun had yet to rise, but its glow arced in a diffuse corona over the sheltering walls of Hyalite.  This forest was home to mystery.  Small blue flows peeked through dark timber and promised beautiful challenge luminous from within.  So much light and shadow.  So much sweat and fear, heat and cold, exhausted shaking and delight.  Everything flowed out of me hot and froze hard with the water suspended in cold on the face of the rest of the land.  It was a dance with so many forms of water.  And there we were in the midst of this vast cold.  Little pockets of heat at the top of Mummy 2, watching curtains of snowflakes add depth to the tops of lodgepoles in the approaching storm.  Trailhead bullshitting, door-latch opened beers and a hot, hot shower.  I had found my tribe.

          It began as this.  Sometimes I was climbing to something - a higher grade, the newer and more terrifying mental dance of mixed terrain, Alaskan summits.  Pursuit of intensity is a dark game to play.  The ribbons of ice I rode grew longer, higher, further away and my life off mountains spiraled down.  When climbing, the ice demanded everything of me.  I left the cruel words and broken doorframes of my man at home behind and lived at the end of sharp points.  Attached by a v-thread, a thin cord.  Nothing more.

          It was another climber’s book, All that Glitters, that validated ice climbing as the anchor that held my life from spinning apart in the centrifugal forces of its own constant motion.  I was climbing away, now – away from an abusive relationship and its concomitant self destruction. Back and back beyond pain-fed rage into a sharp cold gray jay morning under dark timber, racking up and swinging onto an ephemeral road to the sky.  Shattering ice under my pick, rhythmic kick.  The sound of my breath.  Chasing delight.

Death

The youthful self-congratulations I crowed from the mountaintop (of Nez Perce) have been tempered by sadness and time.  Shortly after I wrote that last post I returned to the state of my childhood, Connecticut, to visit family.   My good friend and climbing partner Bojan called me shortly after I arrived.  "Greg never showed up for beers Sunday night.  Did he call you?"  "No, not yet.  Nobody has heard from him?"

"No."

A normal night visiting: my parents and I, eating some good fresh food at the kitchen island as night fell outside, drinking wine and talking, dogs sprawled out on the floor and the chair.  I told my parents just hours after sharing the amazing ski adventure Greg and I had undertaken with photos and enthusiastic story that he did not show up to meet mutual friends at the appointed time.   Told them some of the very real danger of what I choose to do over and over.  What I measure my days by.  What earns me a living.  I usually shelter them from these dangers somewhat, but this time they were sharing it.  They were waiting too. 

Everyone went to bed.  As Tucker, the German Shepherd-Collie that remembers me from her puppy days and searches for me after I visit my parents, curled up on most of my bed I lay awake looking out my childhood window towards the west.  I used to look at the opposite valley feeling trapped by all that continent and unknown life between Marlborough and the mythic West.  I never thought I would get to live the life I am living.  Now, thousands of miles separated me from the people I loved and cared for, the people who I was living these dreams with.  I wanted to be there, but what could any of us do?  Search and rescue was doing its job.  I finally slept with a pit in my stomach.

The next morning my mom, who keeps up with the mountain news that reaches the national media (and whose awareness is particularly tuned to disaster) told me there was a search going on for two missing skiers in the Tetons.  These were my friends, weren't they?  Oh no.  The feeling crept up the back of my neck.  Over those same beers in the Brew Pub Greg had spoken with great excitement of his upcoming attempt to ski the Grand.  Warming had turned snow conditions from marginal to worse in the days I had been gone from Jackson.  I talked on the phone with Bojan.  We waited.

I went to New Hampshire.  My grandfather, who had just moved to assisted living, was as thin as I had ever seen him but still clear-headed.  He had fought a 20 plus year battle with cancer and had so far won, as he was still living.  He had become a celebrity in the assisted living facility for his performances on his keyboard of big-band hits that all the old folks knew and that quite a few could sing along to. Yet he was declining.  My grandmother, as sharp as ever but a bit more frail, knew it.  It broke my heart the way these two people who had spent a happy lifetime together knew it.  I had come to say goodbye, and they knew that too.  He told all the folks from the town where they had spent their retirement about his granddaughter the mountain climber at the formal cocktail hour.  I was heading to Denali to work for the American Alpine Institute.  He was proud of me.  How could I say goodbye?  I had said goodbye to my Gram, my mom's mom, before, and as she had Alzheimer's I think she knew what I was saying.  But this was different.  His health had declined but he knew what was going on.  I felt like the Grim Reaper.  When she visits from the West, it's bad.  There is love there, but things are not going well.

As I drove to my parents' I got the official news about Greg.  As a climber who knew the Tetons and had seen his motivation and acceptance of risk somehow, in some place, I already knew.  Buried in an avalanche while he and his friend slept in their tent in Garnet Canyon.  In their sleep.  He had just finished med school and was charging around doing big ski objectives before accepting a job.  He was strong and motivated, and headed for a life that balanced work and mountains with grace. 

I finished the Connecticut visit and flew to Jackson.  Said goodbye and drove for Seattle and my upcoming job in Alaska.  No time.  Just a week later I got the news that my grandfather had died.   We had known Burkett's time was short, but nobody expected it would be this short. There was no time to fly back for the funeral. Instead, I got on a plane and flew with two clients into the Alaska Range to meet the other 6 clients and 2 guides on the pristine snow of the East Fork of the Kahiltna for our Denali expedition.  We were the first trip of the year, earlier even than the Parks Service.  We battled guide health issues and bitter cold to get six clients and two guides to the summit.  I flew back to Washington and continued guiding for Mountain Madness on Baker and Shuksan, Olympus and Christie, Washington Pass and Leavenworth.  I groveled up the unrelenting Index cliffs on my off time, fought Seattle traffic, fixed Rosie Car, walked to pho and watched funny shows with Michael, and tried to rest from the whirlwind with June in my little Index apartment.   There was no time to think.  There was no time to process.  The deaths of Greg and Burkett flowed behind me into the river of my past, marking time, leaving sadness.  I won't pretend to wrap last spring up into trite conclusions about death and risk and life well lived.  The best way to honor this time and the loss of these two fine men is just to tell this story, and say that I cared about Greg.  I loved my grandfather.  I still do.

And I miss you both.

I Have Seen The Gnar, And It Is Good

When I lived in Jackson in my early 20's I didn't know squat about ski mountaineering. The stinky, fit gods and the rare goddess in polypro wore their transceivers to the bar and huddled in a tight knot around pitchers of local brew talking about 'The Gnar'. The Gnar, as well as I could figure it, existed in a changeable location somewhere above 10,000 feet and was an alchemist's brew of steepness, inaccessibility, and length of vertical drop guaranteed to create social-status gold among the local hardcores. These backcountry bro-bras held the allure that the drenched hikers with huge packs coming out of the White Mountain trailheads once did to the 8 year old version of me. They had been out there, and were back. Like a plume of cold air that follows you inside on a subzero day, the wildness of the terrain they had travelled over clung to them, followed them into the heated haunts of civilization where lesser mortals chugged beers and talked about how sick they had been in-bounds at the resort.

I was a college dropout with hundred-dollar, 185 GS skis with ancient tele bindings and a crappy job serving soup to keep my Teton Village pass. When I thought of backcountry skiing I thought of avalanches waiting spring-loaded under my boot-packing feet, ready to release at random for reasons still unknown. The upper reaches of the Tetons, the couloirs, the faces, were the realm of mountaineers (*ahem* alpinists), of TGR guys filming and of climbers and guides. The mystery and challenge had me hooked. My second week in the Tetons, knocked down by dry air and a bad chest cold, I hitched to the park and hiked my New Balance sneakers up to the campground in Garnet Canyon. "Hey," I asked someone who looked climber-ish. "How far can I go without ropes?" He smiled and pointed up towards the Grand. "Lower Saddle. That way." I scrambled on into the late morning, crossing patches of snow and using a hand line to ascend to the saddle. Guide huts and the Parks Service structure huddled against the wind. I saw someone in an official-looking puffy with Exum embroidered on the side. "Hey, how far up the Grand can I go without ropes?" "I'd say the Enclosure. It's fourth-class scrambling up until there, and the descent isn't that bad." I thanked him, knowing that I was simply radiating Noob vibes but too excited to care. That, perhaps, is why I have ended up so in love with climbing and being in the mountains: false pride, pretense, whinyness: these all fall away as I look up and ponder how to get there. As I am climbing. As I figure out how to get down. Whatever I must do to spend my time among those peaks, I will do it, and worry about looking good later.

I ended up at the base of the Owen-Spaulding route, contemplating the face. This is where I stop. Kicking around on the summit I found a circle of rocks. Perhaps this was the enclosure he was talking about? I stepped into the middle, wondering if climbers had made the circle. It lacked the practicality of the little windblocks I had seen among the boulders on other mountains. It was old, sort of ceremonial. I sat there watching the sun sparkle off the Snake River threading its way through the flatness of sage and cottonwood below. The wind played its high and lonesome music around the tops of the peaks. All around me, mountains. It was the same feeling that the spring ascent of Mt. Washington long ago had stirred within me. Up here was the right place to be. Later I learned that the Enclosure predated the climbing history of the Tetons. People speculated one of the nomadic Indians that passed through the valley had built it on a vision quest. There was nobody around to tell the straight story to the settlers, though, so it remains unknown.


I told this story to my climbing partner yesterday as we skinned up the ridge between Bradley and Taggart Lakes towards Nez Perce. As we ascended we shared the kind of stories of climbs, skis, ranges, and mishaps with sketchy climbing partners that made me feel safe at my choice to undertake such a trip with a heretofore unknown ski partner. Bojan and I had met Greg in the parking lot after skiing a safe line on Albright Peak. The conditions in the Tetons had changed with a recent warming spell into a spring transitional snowpack, releasing big slides on south and east aspects and carrying world-class athlete Jimmy Chin in a 1200 foot slide down Shadow Peak. Bojan and I had found a bulletproof top section and a challenging, mushy bottom section on Albright, and were dubious about there being any good snow in the Tetons. Greg had just finished the Apocalypse Couloir and was grilling at the trailhead on a mini propane grill and offered us beers. We went to the store in Moose, got some more brats, and rejoined him for an afternoon of huddling against the light spring rain and recounting stories at the tailgates of our cars. What we all did for work didn't even come up until the next ski trip: we were climbers. Such is the beauty of the Tetons. These mountains and what you have done in them will say who you are among women and men, not how you earn your living or what material trappings you have accumulated. We all knew and spoke of with bemused wonderment the climbers who had made the speed traverses and ascents of the range and the times of said ascents. It was a common language. As I skinned with Greg up towards the high couloir I saw that I had finally learned the language of those skiiers in the Brew Pub. But was I worth my mettle? How would I actually do once in the business of The Sliver?

As we skinned up onto the treed ridge that leads to the false summit of Nez Perce we could not help but notice that the light dust on crust powder had deepened to a respectable 4 inches. Huh. Powder. "See that, Greg? Face shots all day." He laughed, poking the snow with his pole. We hadn't expected fresh snow! Our mood grew happier the higher we went and the more powder we found. By the time we stood at the top of the false summit looking down into the bowl below the Sliver we were breaking a skin track through a foot of powder. A strong, gusty wind and light snow shrouded Nez Perce's rocky upper reaches as we de-skinned and picked our way down to the little couloir that led to the basin below the big one. The snow was still dust on crust.
This soon changed as we skinned up to the mouth of the big chute and began our bootpack. Kicked steps turned to a vertical wallow. Ten thousand feet, ten five. Between the breathless business of breaking trail we hid our grins from the tooth-freezing wind: there was so much snow. The couloir was 1500 feet long and never got steeper than 40 degrees. There was a good 18 inches of fresh powder wind-loaded from the west. We took turns plowing upward, finishing our effort with a terse "Spell me," a term Greg had learned for switching leaders when breaking trail from an old-timer in Montana who had climbed ice since the seventies.


When you see the top you think it's close. But it isn't. The couloir doglegged as we struggled on up to the slot between two huge rock walls that disappeared up into the snowy sky. The snow in front of my face was sparkling with the diamonds of weak sunlight. I focused on the unbroken white and my breath as I found firm snow beneath the powder. The altitude was making itself known and breathing just wasn't doing what it usually does for me. In this mindless rhythm I flopped through the last of the drifts and reached a small, sheltered spot at the 20 foot gap between cliffs. A natural wall blocked the wind that howled up out of Garnet Canyon and created a hulking cornice with a delicate curve sculpted by moving air. We ate and clicked in. The moment of truth.


The truth is this: powder skiing is amazing. Thirty feet at its narrowest point and full of untracked fluff. This is a recipe for turns the like of which neither of us had ever experienced. Hours from town and alone in a cradle of stone and wind we entered a soft dance with gravity. In the midst of a strange snowpack we had read the signs right: the warm spell of a few days earlier shedding the aspects prone to sliding. Wind from the west loading the east-facing couloirs with what powder there was in the Tetons. And this is what we found. We reached the bottom of the bowl, faces red, whooping and grinning. We did it right.

Later we ate well at the Brew Pub, sharing the story with Bojan, him and I sharing stories with Greg about our trip last spring in Alaska. All of us cracking each other up. Powder, friendship, leftover adrenaline - what was it? All of it. Too much to say. Between us, hundreds of climbs, of runs, of ski lines in the mountains. We bore signs of our passage out and back in our windburned faces and ratty functional jackets and we told our stories to these two others who understood more deeply than those who have not been. Walking back to the table after the restroom I looked at these climbing partners of mine. We were not different from those gathered at the other tables. In the company of both I had broken down what I once considered impossible into the small steps that shift such undertakings into the realm of the possible.

What we had done on skis that day was not that difficult for either of us. Nor were we setting speed records or creating legends among Teton climbers. We were just getting after it. The Gnar was not so intimidating or mysterious: it was one more puzzle to solve. It is then I realized the beauty of Jackson and the Tetons: wherever you are in your progression, there is someone there just as eager to get up there with you and try something harder. I had never been any different than those bro-bras with their transcievers prominently displayed at the bar, just a few years behind. Now I am not. Except that I prefer to take a shower and change into cotton before I go out to eat: all-day polypro stinks, and cotton is way more comfortable.

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.