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     “You’ve got to make the choice to take a chance if you want your life to change.”  A quote I’ve seen recently on the ‘net.  No credit, but whoever said it was speaking truth. After 11 seasons at a job in which I loved what I was doing, I left.  I had no real plan at the time, I just knew it was time for a change.  I applied at a company that is known for it’s positive, amazing energy and a real work/life balance walk, not just a talk-the-talk.  That company was REI.  It was a leap of faith, and I was not disappointed.  Instead, it was as… Read More »Choice, Chance and Change: Sky Lakes/Hanging Valley Cabinet Wilderness,Montana June 8-10, 2015

   Today was a hard day.  Not even as hard for me as so many others.  After an emotionally exhausting morning, I sought out the solace and peace of the woods. There, I reflected, as always.  Things began to sort themselves out in my mind– slightly, as grief is such a complex emotion it can’t ever be compartmentalized–and a few things seemed clear.  When someone is placed upon a path of grief, it is always a solo trail.  There isn’t anyone that will be on that trail alongside you.  They have their own– and each trail is completely unique.  That is one of the cruelest burdens of grief. You are… Read More »A Search for Peace

 The Enchantments: the name speaks for itself.  A magical place, with names like “Gnome Tarn”, “Rune Lake”,  “Valkryie Lakes”  (the original names).  Land of high alpine larch, mineral infested blue waters, glacial boulders. Mountain goats bound like unicorns all over.  So tempting, that to preserve it, the FS only grants overnight access by lottery in the dark of winter.  Of course I had to go.  We won — if you use the term loosely– a permit for the Snow Lakes zone, which, while not the Core zone I wanted, was acceptable.  All spring and summer my dreams were filled with golden larch against blue skies. core zone old map here… Read More »Cairns, Company and Caught in the Storm: The (dis?)Enchantments

    Robert Frost once said that.  Or actually: “The best way out is through”. Truer words were never spoken.   When I’m running and I want to collapse and die, when I’m in the midst of some terrible heartache, some horrible turmoil, physical or mental: you just get through it.  I have often thought, during such times of duress, if I could ‘only’ go back.  I could change this.  I could change that. But should I?  Would I be who I am today, who I will be tomorrow, if I didn’t face the challenges in front of me?  As I’ve said before, I hate the expression “Everything happens for… Read More »The Only Way Out is Through: Going Forward by Going Back; Upper Geiger Lake, Cabinet Wildnerness July 1 2014

  Autumn?  Yes, it’s been gone for quite sometime now.  In fact, chinook winds have been blowing for a week here.  Yet the cold grey shadows that dominated the fall of 2013 still remain. Tragedy struck the community just when the leaves were beginning their brilliant swan song, the air was turning as crisp as the apples ripe for the picking, and the sky was a blue you couldn’t stop staring at.  Although not close friends with my daughter of the same age, two of her classmates were killed in a car accident.  It was akin to sitting in a movie theater and having the seats next to you blow… Read More »Running and Reality; Autumn’s long, cold goodbye.

I’ll get to this picture in a minute.  But first, a quick background:  Scott and I, once again spur of the moment, decide to hit the trail.  He remembered like on a Monday that he had a vacation day that Friday. :eyeroll:  So we made a few fast arrangements, and at 7am Wednesday morning, we hit the road to Cliff Lake. This was going to be an easy hike; the worst part is the 14 mile drive off of Highway 200 to the trailhead.  Now, I’ve grown up on Montana roads.  I know what they consider the definition of a “road” to be.  Believe  me when I tell you it… Read More »Cliffs, Climbs and Consciousness

  “I’m going to ask you something and you’re going to get mad but I don’t care”.  These are the words my sister said to me, as I stood in the door, Scott impatiently waiting, ready to leave.  I braced myself for the inevitable disapprovement of my backpacking that I endure every time I go.  “How can you leave your kids, especially when you know DD1 is still afraid to stay alone at night?”  (My oldest does not like to spend multiple nights as the only adult in charge here; she is fine if someone her age or older is with her though, so usually –and was the case this… Read More »Angst and Ass-kicking: Cabin Lake, Thompson River Range, Thompson Falls, MT August, 2013

     Actually, this isn’t even going to be about my winter.  I’ve thought many times about the blogpost I wanted to write, but nothing moved me enough to write it.  Let’s just suffice it to say, sometimes it really is darkest before dawn, but suddenly, the morning is so glorious, all of the anguish of the night vanishes so completely, it’s as if it never existed at all.  Spring did this for me, which has passed so quickly that here I sit, on the eve of mid-summer already, with one fabulous backpacking trip under my belt already.      For the season’s break-in, we settled on Granite Lake in my… Read More »The Winter of My Discontent (Or how I stopped worrying; Granite Lake, Cabinet Mountains July 2013)

      “How silent the forest would be if no birds sang except those that sang best”.  I’ve intended to sit down and write several times in the last month–each time, I’ve stopped before I even got started.  I’ve wondered if what I wanted to say was “interesting”.  Was it “blog-worthy”?  Did I have enough to say?  Should I say it? I’ve always imagined any blog I would write would be more of a funny blog (intentionally, I mean–the ‘we’re laughing WITH you’, not the laughing at me, heh).  Unfortunately, the best laid plans have pretty much guaranteed I haven’t found much to laugh at lately.  Everything that’s happened in the… Read More »A Silent Forest