LJ Idol Season 10 - Week 10: Take a hike!
It has been too long.
There are pictures in my office. The view from the top of a stack of southern sandstone; the green foliage dense all around the weathered boulders that are riven with seams of strangely flattened iron deposits between rounded pillows of hard sandpaper textured stone. The grand canyon in the sunset light, with the words "Be inspired." A picture of the family in a train car, deep in the San Juans. Almost nine years ago, we were supposed to hike up to Chicago Basin, surrounded by fourteeners and open blue Colorado sky. But it didn't happen then and it hasn't happened since, and it's very very easy to get to the place where you look back and say, "Well, what has happened?"
A lot has happened. It's true. A whole lot. But still.
Lying sick in bed this weekend, I read two great books. And both of them relate strongly to the idea that we, as humans, need something like trail time. We need it for our health as individuals, and we need the larger context of a world of interconnected trails and biomes in order to maintain the health of a biodiverse earth that supports human life.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora has almost the vastest backdrop of anything I've ever read. It follows a giant generation starship, equipped with the souls and genes and seeds that people thought they would need to start a new world. But the characters learn hard lessons about balance, and the give and take between species great and small, and complex chemical cycles that's necessary to life. And even in the constrained context of a book that's mostly set off-planet, people who spend their whole lives in the great ship spend a period wandering among the simulated biomes of the ship's great rings.
Luke Mehall's American Climber is the story of the journey of one man. And it is limited to North America. But the journey of it's one climber is set against the backdrops of big walls and wild spaces that make the American landscape seem anything but small, even in comparison to the galactic scale. And Luke talks not just about camping through parts of college and living out of his car and tent for long stretches, but also about enjoying the places he is in while he does that. About getting to know the high dessert in Colorado and the regular dessert in Joshua tree and loving those paces. I know that feeling, and recognize that appreciation of place and the way it can heal what ails you.
Both books share characters that ultimately benefit from a deep connection to place; the kind of connection you get from really spending time in a place, and I relate to that strongly. I feel like one of the things that's particularly broken in our world is that people aren't encouraged to or given the chance to form those kinds of strong connections to places. Maybe if people had those bonds, not only would it strengthen our resolve to protect common resources, it would give people strength to face some of the complicated and difficult things we have to deal with these days.
I sometimes tell people that the best job I ever had involved living in a condemned structure that actually couldn't be closed off from the outside. In my cover letter, applying for that job, I offered to live in my tent for the summer, if they had a position for me and a place to pitch my home. And it turned out that the Pigeon Key Education Foundation was able to go one better than that when they let me stay in the soon-to-be termite-damage-repaired lighthouse keeper's cottage.
There was no power in the cottage, but I could run an extension cord from the next building for my fan and the windows and back door opened right out on the water. Waking and falling asleep to the sounds of the wind and the waves was hard to beat. I had to be up early there, but I never needed an alarm clock. I fell into a rhythm of the place. I can still smell the low tide smell and imagine the feel of the warm humid air clearly, seventeen years later. I love that place, and my time there is a period I hold onto when things are rough.
I don't think you have to hike or camp in a place to get that kind of strong connection, but I certainly think you can develop one that way, and it really feels good to have that sort of touchstone.
***
The first night I spent outside near Moab was a perfect camping temperature in the dry spring air. Our site was near a bend in the Colorado river- probably relatively humid for the dessert, but nostril-achingly dry for my Floridian body. I strung my hammock in the scrubby willows near a boggy bank, but ended up sitting around the fire with the folks I would be climbing with the next day. The stars that spangled the sky before the moon rose were so numerous and bright. And then the moon was bright enough to illuminate the landscape. Sometimes, even when you first experience a place, you know it's going to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
__________________________
tonithegreat has a southeastern climbing trip coming up in a few weeks to be stoked about! But she's also still fighting that nasty cold from last week and hopes readers aren't similarly afflicted in this spring of strange weather.
This entry was composed for therealljidol, Season 10. Check out that community for lots of great writing from all kinds of folks. I highly recommend it.
If you enjoyed this piece, please remember me in idol-land and vote for it when the polls go up!
There are pictures in my office. The view from the top of a stack of southern sandstone; the green foliage dense all around the weathered boulders that are riven with seams of strangely flattened iron deposits between rounded pillows of hard sandpaper textured stone. The grand canyon in the sunset light, with the words "Be inspired." A picture of the family in a train car, deep in the San Juans. Almost nine years ago, we were supposed to hike up to Chicago Basin, surrounded by fourteeners and open blue Colorado sky. But it didn't happen then and it hasn't happened since, and it's very very easy to get to the place where you look back and say, "Well, what has happened?"
A lot has happened. It's true. A whole lot. But still.
Lying sick in bed this weekend, I read two great books. And both of them relate strongly to the idea that we, as humans, need something like trail time. We need it for our health as individuals, and we need the larger context of a world of interconnected trails and biomes in order to maintain the health of a biodiverse earth that supports human life.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora has almost the vastest backdrop of anything I've ever read. It follows a giant generation starship, equipped with the souls and genes and seeds that people thought they would need to start a new world. But the characters learn hard lessons about balance, and the give and take between species great and small, and complex chemical cycles that's necessary to life. And even in the constrained context of a book that's mostly set off-planet, people who spend their whole lives in the great ship spend a period wandering among the simulated biomes of the ship's great rings.
Luke Mehall's American Climber is the story of the journey of one man. And it is limited to North America. But the journey of it's one climber is set against the backdrops of big walls and wild spaces that make the American landscape seem anything but small, even in comparison to the galactic scale. And Luke talks not just about camping through parts of college and living out of his car and tent for long stretches, but also about enjoying the places he is in while he does that. About getting to know the high dessert in Colorado and the regular dessert in Joshua tree and loving those paces. I know that feeling, and recognize that appreciation of place and the way it can heal what ails you.
Both books share characters that ultimately benefit from a deep connection to place; the kind of connection you get from really spending time in a place, and I relate to that strongly. I feel like one of the things that's particularly broken in our world is that people aren't encouraged to or given the chance to form those kinds of strong connections to places. Maybe if people had those bonds, not only would it strengthen our resolve to protect common resources, it would give people strength to face some of the complicated and difficult things we have to deal with these days.
I sometimes tell people that the best job I ever had involved living in a condemned structure that actually couldn't be closed off from the outside. In my cover letter, applying for that job, I offered to live in my tent for the summer, if they had a position for me and a place to pitch my home. And it turned out that the Pigeon Key Education Foundation was able to go one better than that when they let me stay in the soon-to-be termite-damage-repaired lighthouse keeper's cottage.
There was no power in the cottage, but I could run an extension cord from the next building for my fan and the windows and back door opened right out on the water. Waking and falling asleep to the sounds of the wind and the waves was hard to beat. I had to be up early there, but I never needed an alarm clock. I fell into a rhythm of the place. I can still smell the low tide smell and imagine the feel of the warm humid air clearly, seventeen years later. I love that place, and my time there is a period I hold onto when things are rough.
I don't think you have to hike or camp in a place to get that kind of strong connection, but I certainly think you can develop one that way, and it really feels good to have that sort of touchstone.
***
The first night I spent outside near Moab was a perfect camping temperature in the dry spring air. Our site was near a bend in the Colorado river- probably relatively humid for the dessert, but nostril-achingly dry for my Floridian body. I strung my hammock in the scrubby willows near a boggy bank, but ended up sitting around the fire with the folks I would be climbing with the next day. The stars that spangled the sky before the moon rose were so numerous and bright. And then the moon was bright enough to illuminate the landscape. Sometimes, even when you first experience a place, you know it's going to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
__________________________
tonithegreat has a southeastern climbing trip coming up in a few weeks to be stoked about! But she's also still fighting that nasty cold from last week and hopes readers aren't similarly afflicted in this spring of strange weather.
This entry was composed for therealljidol, Season 10. Check out that community for lots of great writing from all kinds of folks. I highly recommend it.
If you enjoyed this piece, please remember me in idol-land and vote for it when the polls go up!