Category: Skiing

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Outing Club and an Announcement!

Before I get started I want to note that the members of the Purdue Outing Club often refer to their club as the POC. However, in America POC is more commonly used to refer to People of Color. And since it is important to listen to and respect our POC siblings, I will be referring to the Purdue Outing Club simply as the Outing Club. Also, if you are a member of the Purdue Outing Club and are reading this you may want to consider dropping the POC acronym.

Last weekend was my fourth time attending the 2019 Annual Purdue Outing Club ski reunion. Held over President’s day weekend the event consists variously of: miscellaneous outdoor activities, drinking, reveling in the delicious nostalgia of playing Never Have I Ever, drinking while in a hot tub, and watching old Outing Club videos on YouTube.

Imagine a frat reunion and a Scouts of America weekend mashed together and you have some idea of the general atmosphere. Though as folks age, the weekend has become substantially less alcohol infused. There are fewer naked laps around the rental cabin. And more reasonable bedtimes as members of the Outing Club slide into their 30’s. This laissez-faire attitude is how I found myself seated on a messy, shedding IKEA rug at 10pm watching teen-aged versions of the people seated around me throw themselves down waterfalls, clamber through muddy caves, and whip on iconic Red Rock sandstone.

The videos, which are little more than carnage reels set against the bucolic Midwest and accompanied by a 90’s indie rock song are to me, quintessential to what it means to be a young adult. Before video it was film, and before film it was photography and written word. Regardless of the media these efforts are a distillation of what teens have been doing for generations. Expressing themselves through one of the only ways they know how–showing the world the stupid shit they get up to with their friends.

And perhaps I came to love these Outing Club videos so dearly because I too have a series of poorly produced videos of my friends launching themselves off DIY ski jumps or being towed behind cars down snowy city streets.These videos were some of the first attempts I made at visual storytelling. A Coldplay song worth of awkwardly edited clips was the best way I had of expressing what was important to me. And I think more than that, it was a way of drawing like-minded people to me. Because that’s what those ridiculous videos were. Beyond the capturing of adventures undertaken between friends, they were an effort to show the world what really captured my heart.

Being reintroduced to these videos has shifted my thoughts around outdoor exploits being a creative pursuit. People who play outside the way I do, the way the members of the Outing Club do, place the freedom of the outdoors next to their very souls, families, friends. And in making these videos and image we are attempting to show the world this fierce kind of love that comes from the outdoor places we inhabit. Truly, my efforts in photography, video creation, and even this very blog are all born out of those early clips of my friends. And as widespread as my interest have become, capturing the life outdoors boils down to the singular desire to help the world love these places as much as I do.

An Announcement!

Hello lovely readers! How are you today?

I want to let you know that from here forward Wild Country Found will be publishing once every two weeks instead of once every week. The exceptions being when I have a special announcement to make or am on a long hike, in which case you can expect posts more frequently.

The reason being that I have taken on some extra commitments this year (and some exciting news I can’t announce just yet) which has resulted in a decrease in my free time. I was starting to feel like I was bouncing from activity to obligation with no down time for myself. I enjoy writing this blog, and I want to be able to give appropriate time to each post instead of just firing them off. When I looked for things to cut, this blog came up first. But don’t worry, WCF isn’t going away! Starman and I have some amazing adventures in the works and you can look forward to reading about them here.

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A Week to Revisit

Hello my beautiful readers! Thank you for coming to this site today and every Friday to read my posts. This week I’m reposting an old favorite titled Things I’ve Learned From the Trees. I’ve never reposted a blog before, so I’ll be transparent as to why I’m doing it now.

This week I traveled to Colorado to visit friends and family and ski until my legs fell off. And during this week I gave myself permission to fully break from all the obligations I manage on a weekly basis and just rest. This break meant that when 10pm Thursday night rolled around my ski bags were packed and my blog had been left unattended. In placing family over productivity something had to get cut and this week it was the blog. But more than that, I have come to value my writing practice, and the small community we are growing here, too much to fire off a lazy post. So for now I’ll leave you with a repost that I love and an image that I took while skiing with my parents this week. Next week I’ll be back with a new post and I hope you’ll be here to read it.

Things I’ve Learned From the Trees

When the world seems a dismal place, I like to think about what we can learn from the trees. The value of silently observing the world as it changes around you. The deep quiet of solitude, loneliness, the simple act of standing witness to the passage of time. Being committed to just one thing: growth. Living in a way that does good for the world; and knowing that even the sentinels of the forest are not without their flaws. For even the most resplendent tree casts a shadow upon the ground that keeps the ferns from growing.That it is impossible to live a life that is devoid of harming others, but, tandemly, simply because something is impossible doesn’t preclude it from being worthy of our attention, our efforts.

After all, it was impossible for man to reach beyond our little blue dot and sail to the mood. It was impossible right up to the moment that we decided to test our hypothesis of impossibility. In doing so we move the bar just that much further, set a new impossible, a vast horizon on which we can build and destroy dreams so grand, that from here, their greatness makes them all but invisible.

When I look at the world and see all the greed and indifference, the shame and confusion, I think of the trees. The old giants.

I like to imagine a stand of soaring pine trees which no man has ever seen. Trees that took root before this great democratic experiment, before you, before me, before anyone you’ve ever had the slightest possibility of knowing came into being. When I look at the trees, not the tame, domesticated blooms that adorn our city street and front lawns, but the wild ineffable misers who live out their lives – which are so inexpressibly different from our own –  away from the prying eyes of humans. When I think of these trees – it feels like the greatest form of hubris that we should endeavor to write our stories on their skin. 

These trees don’t strive to have their names written in the pages of our history books. Instead, they are the pages of our history books, the pages of nearly every human story, the true and the tabloid, the sweeping epic and the stereo installation manual. And if tomorrow, we are called upon by some desire within ourselves to cut these giants down; to bring their soaring-ever-reaching limbs crashing down to earth, they will not complain, but simply acquiesce to our desires and we will have lost something grand and powerful, and very nearly the closest thing we have on this planet to the divine. We will have lost a teacher.

For the trees know we are small confused mammals with minds that are smaller still. They accept us and our hubris, our carelessness, our ceaseless errors, knowing that these flaws are simply part of our DNA, and they forgive us. And in their silence they hold space for us to learn. To grow not as they do, but in our own way.

The trees teach us that there is an awesome power in growth, in being huge, fat, bursting in our liveliness, and that it does not do to make oneself small. Conversely, they also show us that the notions of who is better and best does nothing but divide us, and that living only to take is not only cruel, but so beyond pointless that only a silly little animal like a human would spend their one fleeting, glorious life in pursuit of this pyrrhic victory. 

I like to look to the trees, and know that one day, all of it, all of you, will be gone, as surely and completely as the silence that stood in your place before you arrived. And then what? Just the trees and the dirt will remain, until one day, they too are swallowed up by the gaping maw of space. And we are, all of us, returned to the star dust from which we came.

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Everything I Don’t Know

Sunday Afternoon

I am on my knees in the snow frantically digging. My shoulders are searing from the effort. The shoveler in front of me tosses a wash of snow into my face but I am too focused on chopping my own shovel into the snow to pay any attention to the wet trickles of snowmelt now racing down my neck. “Rotate!” Is the only word uttered as our team of five digs a V pattern towards the tip of the avalanche probe buried a meter into the snow. “Rotate!” Once the person at the front begins to slow. “Rotate!” Even if you haven’t been digging as long as the others. “Rotate!” This isn’t a practice in who can dig the longest, it’s practicing to save a life.

Even though I know this is a drill. That there is no person at the end of the probe, I don’t slow my digging. Because even in a drill scenario with our guide standing over my shoulder I am deeply aware of the fact that the skills I’m developing now could very well be the difference between life and death. And that if it is ever me at the end of that probe I hope my friends won’t slow their digging either.

24 Hours Earlier

I am sitting in a chilly classroom above the Canada West Mountain School’s Vancouver offices. Where I, along with 15 guys with beards, two guys without beards, and one woman, are taking our level 1 Avalanche Safety Training. We’ve spent the day analyzing pictures of avalanche crown lines, snow crystals, slide paths. Talking about safety, improbability, and learning from the mistakes of others.

From the safety of my desk I feel confident in what I have learned today. My Harmonie-ish nature is on full display, answering question after question while my taciturn classmates remain silent, arms folded while our instructors eyes rove over the group looking for engagement. I have a natural skill for classroom learning, good grades come easily for me. Add to this the excitement of procuring new skills which will allow me push further into the backcountry and I’m practically bouncing out of my seat with zeal for this new knowledge.

As the day winds down our instructors throw a final slide onto the projector. It’s one we’ve already seen. The title reads: The Harsh Facts. And below the title, in frank black text it says “Most people fully buried in avalanches die.” Statistically the odds are about 50%.

You’re buried and it’s a coin toss on your survival.

By the Numbers

In the event that you are fully buried in an avalanche there are few numbers to keep in mind. The first being that 50% of people who are buried will die. On average you have 15 to 30 minutes to find the buried person and clear their airway or else they will suffocate before they can be dug out. For others no amount of digging will help. Many people who are killed in avalanches die as a result of blunt force trauma instilled upon the body as it ragdolls down a slope. And no matter how fast you dig, you can’t keep your friend from striking that tree. Sometimes you fuck up and people die. Sometimes you have put yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time and all the practice and luck in the world won’t keep you alive.

That’s what day one taught me.

Day two taught me I know even less than I imagined.

Safety Card

Our class is standing a the bottom of a tree-strewn slope looking down at our Avulators–cards that serve as a checklist for determining avalanche safety. In the game of safe backcountry travel the goal is to get as low a score as possible. Fresh snow earns you a point. Slopes over 30 degrees earn you a point while slopes over 35 degrees earn you two. Sparse trees, one point. Persistent weak layers, one point. Terrain traps, one point. Then more points the more caution you need to exercise as you travel.

On this small, unassuming roll we wrack up four points which pushes us into the area of Extra Caution. Again and again throughout the day we tally our points and never once are we in that green band of simple Caution. With each analysis my understanding of what is a safe travel zone shrinks. And with each undulating hill we climb my body begins to wither with fatigue. If yesterday I was the smart and vivacious Hermione Granger, then today I am the blundering Neville Longbottom. The outdoor portion of AST-1 has taken me right to the edge of my comfort zone. Right to the point where my toes can skim the bottom of the pool while out in front of me stretches the vastly terrifying and enticing deep end.

The Thing Is

Out here on the edge of comfort I can just start to see an entire world opening up in front of me. And right now that world, the opportunity to explore it, is too big for me. It’s like getting the keys to a Porsche when you’re 16, barely know how to drive, and don’t have anywhere to park it. I would be better served by a riding lawnmower. My skiing skills have atrophied after two years of pushing the sport aside as I saved and prepped for the PCT. Meanwhile my knowledge of snow travel is in its nascent stages.

Standing knee deep in snow, arms trembling from the effort of digging I am like a young child being taken into the wild for the first time. I am all searching eyes and tentative smiles. Eager to explore but confident only in the knowledge that I don’t know anything. However, I would argue that understanding what you don’t know is far more valuable than boasting about what you do know.  It’s too easy to find excitement in exploration and forget to appreciate the joy of learning. So for the time being I will be content to learn all the land has to teach me about its myriad secrets. About what I must understand before I can pass safely across it.

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The Invisibility of Nature

My skis glide uphill across the icy, granular snow. Each sliding footfall accompanied by a sound almost like a toy laser gun. Slowly, my mind is schussed into silence as I descend the hill into darkness. Lights blare in the distance, floating orbs in the night sky that belie the presence of grinding, mechanical ski lifts. Bundled forms slide past spouting fragments of conversation, laughter. Meanwhile, warm breath sibilates between my teeth to form a cloud before it’s gobbled up by the greedy cold.

For an indeterminable minute, hush.

A slackening of the thoughts that ricochet around the echoing gymnasium that is my mind and I am lost in the effortful movement of my body.

This is why I do it. Walk, or ski, or run alone in the wild places that are the very furthest away from civilization that my body can carry me.

For the unconscious moments of mental stillness that I am afforded when my entire being is consumed in a driving blitz of burning movement. Moments that I can only recognize once something has pulled me from deep below the water and I am deposited, spluttering against the shores of cognizant thought. Sometimes, I can find these moments in efforts of muscles screaming so loud that it drowns out my entire interior world. Others, like tonight, when the repetition of movement sneaks into my mind and lulls it to quiet. Like falling asleep on a rolling tide.

There is a distinct kind of pleasure I’ve found in these moments of complete abandon. One which is so compelling that I am coming to build an entire life around it. I push my body deep into the wilderness for the stillness it bestows on my recalcitrant mind, yes. Undeniably. But also, for the time spent unwatched by a single one of my fellows on this billions-populated speck of careening space rock. The opportunity to shed the wet blanket of gaze that I carry with me daily. Though some of the days are easier than others. I have found that no matter how comfortable that wet blanket becomes it’s presence it’s still noticeable. I am still wearing the wet blanket.

But not out here among the darkness and the trees. Here I am joyously invisible, able to take whichever form I choose.