Home Sweet Home

Being self-sufficient in the backcountry is one of the most liberating, simplifying, and grounding experiences a person can have.

You need nothing you don't have, you want for nothing you don't need. Life is nothing but movement, food, and sleep. The most basic and essential elements.

Perhaps too simple.

NPR has had an excellent series lately, called The Human Edge. They have been exploring all the adaptations, quirks, and habits of our species, and analyzing how each eccentricity has given us an adaptive edge -- made us advance in ways other species never had.

Emotion has been a prevalent subject. Some of their featured speculations (theories posed by various anthropologists and scientists) have challenged my hard-science trained brain -- conclusions drawn more from reason than by experimental replication. Thus is the nature of a subject which cannot be subject to experimentation!

But whether or not you can provide a replicable experiment, every human can tell you there is something more than just food, sleep, and basic physical activity that we need. That something integrates our complex emotional side -- it is the feeling of being home. The companionship, security, and belonging that we associate with our home.

And so, it is very nice to be, once again, home. We are spoiled to live such controlled, predictable lives.

Perhaps this is why we seek out the mountains -- to remind ourselves what we appreciate about the place we call home.

Nonetheless, I had a spectacular month backpacking a very large swath of the Sierra Nevada. For me, some new trails, some old, but ever spectacular. The more time I spend in these mountains, the deeper I fall in love. There is a subtlety hiding behind the harsh exterior. A softness to the arid landscape, a comfort under the brooding peaks.

It is this which I enjoy sharing with my clients -- whether on the side of Matterhorn Peak or from the depths of Le Conte Canyon.

I am glad to be home for now, but soon enough, home will feel too safe, too comfortable. And I will seek that reminder -- the essence of the life we used to live. The simplified version -- where we walk, we eat, and we sleep. And that is all.

"Hard rock, thin air, a rope."

Pardon the cliché, but really, where does time go? It's as if, with every passing year, time itself seems to accelerate.

But I suppose that is better than if it were slowing, dragging on, challenging you to find ways to fill it up lest you get bored.
I have a good friend who has suggested that our own inability to ever accomplish everything we want to do, the fact that we never seem to have the time to do it all, is the root of all unhappiness.

I disagree.

I think it keeps you interested; tuned in.

Thus it has been for me this summer: Interesting.
Indeed, there is no way to recap it all in the few short hours left before I head back out into the field once again. But for the sake of preventing literary stagnation on this blog I decided to keep, I will give the highlights:

Late April, I headed up for the season on Mt. Shasta. El Nino treated us well this year, and we had some seriously stellar climbing (and skiing) conditions. With winter storms swirling through well into April, we saw periods of very challenging conditions interspersed with conditions that can only be described by the phrase "Stairway to Heaven." In short, it was a full-on season. And somewhere in there, I started learning to fly fish. I think when I retire from this mountain guiding stuff, I might like to be a fly fishing guide.

At the end of July, it was time to say goodbye to Shasta, and pick up in the Sierra Nevada. I had a couple of trips on Matterhorn Peak with some extraordinarily strong climbers. One up the regular mountaineer's route (3rd class gully with some 4th class scrambling to the top), and one on the ultra-classic North Arete (full-value 5.7 alpine rock), one of my favorite routes in the Sierra Nevada.

August had been booked for months ahead of time -- I was to be guiding the John Muir Trail. Unusual guiding opportunity -- how could I pass it up? My client was a bit set back by the terrain (having done most of his backpacking in the desert) and his heavy gear, so we had to adjust our itinerary. Luckily, he was not set on completing the JMT for any reason, and we have been able to pick several highlight trips along the JMT. We just completed the Evolution Loop, from North Lake to South Lake through the Evolution and Dusy Basins in northern Kings Canyon National Park. Hands down one of the most spectacular areas in the Sierra Nevada.

It has been a lovely respite from the challenges of guiding in the alpine realm, and I am savoring every bit. But come September, refreshed and re-energized, I will be much excited to get back to "hard rock, thin air, a rope." (High Conquest, James Ramsey Ullman)