The other day I was frantically packing in my friend's Bellingham driveway for a trip in to Mt. Shuksan in the Cascades. It was nearly dark and I'd strewn my possessions across the asphalt driveway. I feel like a pinball knocked all over the inside of the machine sometimes. Here I am writing from hotel in Bolivia looking out on the expanse of La Paz as it sweeps in shanty-brick homes up the hillside to 13,000 feet. Last week I was being drenched to the bone on Shuksan where I supposed to take two Texas lawyers up a challenging route. We didn't half the distance I'd planned before we threw down our tents and spent the rest of the day and night listening to the pouring rain. I made hot water bottles ever hour just to keep warm because my bag was soaked and useless. Its not too often I feel sorry for myself, but shivering all night made me feel a little bad.
Since leaving Antarctica in early Feb the tick list went: New Zealand, California, Idaho, Alberta, Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, Washingon, and now Bolivia. Its hard to complain but there is a growing, or maybe lingering, longing for a place I can call my own. Today I walked down the streets of La Paz and saw all kinds of people going about their day under a cloudless sky. Bolivia is an easy place to go as an American to feel lucky. I mean that people here are poor, and their opportunities for advancement are severely limited by their poor economy and lack of opportunities. And here I am, complaining about being stuck in a wet sleeping bag on a mountainside, and getting paid for it. Most of these people couldn't in their whole lives even get the mountainside that I lay soaked on a few days ago. I feel so lucky for the opportunities afforded me simply because of where I was born.
So many people I know and meet, including myself, have dreams to do all sorts of things. Its just so amazing to me that at any moment in time, any one of you out there reading this could, if you wanted to, actually accomplish that dream. It might take quitting your job, achieving a deeper level of honesty with ourselves, selling the house, dumping that girlfriend, or maybe even asking a new one out on a date. I have no idea what you dreams are, I'm having a weird enough time sorting out my own. But I do know that whatever your dreams are, they are achievable. And one more thing I've learned is that to achieve our dreams won't bring happiness. Sometimes it might open more desires and dreams. So where do we get our happiness from then, if not from the achievement of dreams?
Perhaps living a good and honest life is part of happiness, I don't know. I just got back from the Telluride Bluegrass festival which I went to with my dad (over father's day, how cool!) and I met two amazing friends there, Hol and Susan. I saw a lot of other friends too. I swear that I only saw one unhappy looking person the entire time, out of nearly 14,000 people. The festival I think may offer some answers to my question of "where does happiness come from." Obviously the music is a central theme. And bluegrass, more than most of forms, is a populist music. It is made for the people, it is deeply rooted in our history and it seeks to illuminate (or at least dwells upon) life's most challenging questions. Not the soon to be forgotten questions like what should we do about Iran or is it a good time to by that house I've always wanted, but instead this music asks: what is love, why do I feel it so deeply, and why can it hurt so much, why does it redeem me so, and so many other questions. Sometimes bluegrass might seem shallow to the observer, it is infatuated with whiskey, but the whiskey is a symbol for the greater issue at hand, pain, and how to deal with it.
Water fights are the most dangerous part of the festival
David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads) headlined night one. His band brought the love.
But I said its a populist music. This means that everybody in the band has an equal share and is encouraged to share themselves by taking breaks and harmonizing on the vocals. In the tall arms of the beautiful San Juan mountains in Telluride, surrounded by sunshine and beautiful people who have come to experience as a group what it means to care for one another, I found out that happiness is the result of allowing life's beauty to overtake me, without judgement or reserve; to dance my own dance under the stars, and surrounded the people I love.
Susan and me, having a blast
Before Telluride I returned from Alaska, which was a two month long adventure filled with guiding and my own climbing, and a whole bunch of shenanigans in between. My last trip was six days on the Pika Glacier teaching greenhorns how to live on a glacier and the basics of alpine climbing. We had no clouds in the sky for the first five days, then the ceiling dropped like a judges gavel and we got picked up by a skiplane just before the weather locked the glacier in.
Dante, from Harlem, first time on a glacier, ascending out of a crevasse. I think the place blew his mind, which always inspires me to keep going at this work.
My big trip was guiding Denali which was awesome, although anyone who says that Denali is awesome is lying. There are awesome parts to it, there are scary parts, and there and grueling parts. No one is bummed when flying back to Talkeetna and the infamous Fairview Inn where all post-mountain trips should be celebrated. Luckily I was working with the best friends and guides I could hope for, Gabe and Paul. Here are some photos from the trip.
"I love this shit!" Good on ya Paul!
17,000 foot camp.
Paul at the edge of the world.
I'm still here in La Paz wondering what the meaning of this post is and why I felt compelled to write. Basically I'm wondering why I'm not more psyched that I'm being paid to travel to Bolivia and climb some mountains with some people. Shouldn't that be exciting? I used to think so, but now we'll see. With such great experiences just behind me I long for the feelings that those people and those places gave. The challenge is mine, to live presently and explore my world here with zest and a beginners mind. A mind not attached to outcomes of any sort. I'm already feeling better knowing that a whole city of people I don't know awaits me, a whole mountain range, and a whole life to come.