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.