2007-Present

Let me begin by saying that this is not a biography. Auto or otherwise, I will endeavor to spare the reader of the narcissistic and introspective rambling that plagues most biopic nonfiction work. That said, I will offer no apologies, commentary, or excuses. This is simply a recollection of the past 3 years of my life, which I believe represent a rather extraordinary coincidence of circumstances and events. I do not expect praise, nor even recognition, because these events are chiefly the manifestation of my own desires and projections, unbeknownst and unimportant to even my closest friends. I will attempt to characterize place, not people, because landscape forms the unifying theme in my life and how I relate to others. This is, then, not the sum of experience, but rather way I cope with the both corpse and the phoenix of the past. Or something pleasant like that. Here goes.

January, 2008. It is cold. Not unpleasantly so, just the dull, steady reminder that winter is firmly entrenched in Golden, Colorado, a somewhat flat place on the sharp divide between the urban plain on metropolitan Denver and the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to the West. I am packing.. well, completing is a better word, I suppose, as the packing process had already taken hold of my thoughts for a few weeks, drowning out the incessant doubt that seems to trail behind my frequent moves. Christmas had been wonderful. Really. I don't use that word unless it left a lingering aura of warm fuzziness, a contentment bordering on being 'just marvelous', as my grandmother might say. My mom and younger sister had flown out from the East Coast and we'd spent a snowy and tranquil week skiing in Vail, the brooding, sagging pines and bright aspens of the East Vail backcountry wrapping up my worries like a warm blanket. I had been breaking that primal, common sense rule of backcountry skiing; never go alone. I could make excuses like 'well, I was only skiing low-avalanche-risk terrain', or, 'I've skied that line a dozen times before', but really, it was just that I needed it. Needed it to keep going. The solitude, the bright snow casting secret shadows behind rocks and over frozen streams, the steep hollows and gullies funneling down the hillside, pouring out like silent liquid onto the black line of the interstate far below, I needed it more than I've ever needed anything in my life. It always amuses me how transient the experience of skiing is, how quick memories that seemed like the only true thing I'd ever felt fade into the blur of always having to move so damn forward; I suppose it is my own weight of expectation as much as anybody else's.

In any case, it was now the first week in January, and I was packing. I could lie and say this was all methodically and conditionally planned out, but really I had dropped the ball on school shit once again, and the University of Arizona had somehow agreed to let me in for a semester on some sort of half-understood, conditional basis. So I had bombed out of Mines. There, I said it. Bombed out. Not gradually faded into academic disarray [well, that might be a better sequence of adjectives, actually], but rather spectacularly let the things I hated, most notably physics, mathematics, and the notion the memorization and submission to the inane robotics of Engineering University teachings was the path to success, well, I'd let these things ruin me. Ok, ruin, ruin is a strong word, I was actually quite happy, I was riding on the financial and ego-bolstering heels of 2 superb and enjoyable internships, and felt my resume rather 'padded' even for ignorant, selfish age of 21 and a half, but nonetheless, I needed out. Skiing consumed me, comforted me, kept me going, yet it was also a convenient excuse for self-deficiencies I'd rather not face in person, and therefore could assign to a 'distraction'. That a possibly larger and more accessible distraction in the form of rock climbing and fortuitously enabling roommates might present itself in Arizona did not occur to me at the time; I was merely southbound.

Southbound. Not a word I normally would relish. North to me has always been the direction of opportunity, of bigger, steeper, faster, the unknown always resting on the cusp of that one magic syllable. It was with distinct apprehension then that I set off one frosty morning in Early January from Golden, Colorado to Tucson Arizona, just a hair over a thousand miles to the south. The drive numbed me, invigorated me with resolve to 'not fuck this up.' I always thrive on solidarity. Not with others, not always with nature, but the silent pact I make with myself on long road trips, to be an observer and not just a traveler, to value the journey and not only the destination. The landscape changes slowly, almost imperceptibly, the high, lonely plains and distant mountains of New Mexico at first not much different from the classic Western rangelands of southern Colorado. Past Santa Fe, however, it becomes apparent that the tan and earthen abode buildings and bright, amorphous redrock tableau's are not just some roadside tourist kitsch, but a legitimate, unique attribute of the culture, the magic of the southwest revealing itself across the barren expanse of I-25 South. Pines and streams, those friendly ambassadors of the north you came from, slowly retreat from view until you can just imagine them up at 9,000 feet on the crest of those distant mountains, across the ocean of sagebrush, yucca, and century plants now framing the flat, orange horizon. Everywhere, the land spills out like a wrinkled shirt, new and not worn in yet, the creases of the mountains still young and angular.

TBC