For the most part, my trip went according to the way I imagined it. I was a bit more tired, and drove a few (thousand) more miles than expected, however I still went hiking, I saw lots of alpine lakes and gorgeous views. To cap off my trip out west, I planned to go backpacking in British Columbia and Alberta. Instead, I drove home.

I drove out from Glacier national park and sat in the back of my car and looked up as much information as the slow cell-phone service would allow. I was getting mixed information about permit requirements, I realized the permitting was different for BC and Alberta, I realized that my route took me through two parks which had different regulations and governing bodies. I became stressed out, and finally just put away the phone and took a nap on the shoulder of the highway in the back of my car.

Usually there is a clear answer, and napping allows my brain to filter out the emotional details and make a decision based in logic. Not this time. I wanted to go so badly, but was really nervous about the whole situation. So I consulted the expert-I called my mommy. I told her about what a good time I was having out here, and the bears in Glacier were common, but I kept my distance. I talked to my dad, and aunt and cousins as well. After the call I thought I would be feeling better about going to Canada. Nope.

It occurred to me that I could go back to Bozeman where Sophie and Zach would be for another day. That might give me enough time to regroup and make an intelligent decision about what to do with the rest of my time, but I finally had come to realize that I was not prepared to do a multi-day, multi-province hike in a foreign country.

Defeat.

This was the part of the trip I had been most looking forward to for the last few weeks. I was going to go solo hiking in the Canadian Rockies, in a remote provincial park. The Height of the Rockies Provincial Park is a wilderness park without even roads. There are few trails, and some “routes” labeled on the map with lots of warnings about bringing with your compass.

Finally, I called Sophie to tell her about my new plan. The first thing she said was, “That sounds like a really good decision! You seem to have a good sense of the risks and what you are ready to manage.” Ohmygod she doesn’t think I am lame. Thank goodness. I had been so wrapped up in my adventure mindset that I had forgotten that backing out was not viewed to the rest of the world as weak or lame. It was just that I was getting tired and was ready to be done. That’s cool. I am on vacation-it’s not even supposed to be difficult.

This has been a theme in my life in many ways recently. I wrote last winter about the joy of skiing without the intensity of training on a team (I am a Recovering Racer), and experienced a similar mentality switch in my running during college. I never thought that I would even take camping too far. As one woman said to me while in Zion, “What are you going to do out here? Walk faster than me?!” Well, I found a way to do it, and now I am looking for a way out. I guess I just need to back off a little and slow down a bit.

Everything is good in moderation. Even moderation. It seems like I need to find the right balance still.

I hopped back into the drivers seat and pointed the car south to Bozeman. Back to family. Back to familiarity and belonging. It’s a good thing my sister is the best person ever.

Iceberg Lake-one of many alpine lakes I loved to death with my camera

Familiar faces in Bozeman

A young family in Glacier on a scenic walk.

I rode my bike to the peak of Garnet mountain today. As I was nearing the top, the terrain became so steep that I essentially walked my bike for the last 1 to 1.5 miles. It was technically rideable, but considering my fitness, and the 1,500 feet of elevation I had already climbed, I was not going to be riding that section.

As I was walking through this section of the climb, I started to realize how some people think that getting to the top is “conquering” the mountain, or how they overcame and beat the mountain. I disagree, although in the moment, I could understand how people think that way.

Rather than defeating the mountain or checking them off the list, I think that it is more helpful to think of climbing the mountain as becoming part of the mountain’s story. I was with the mountain, dedicated to it, and experienced both highs and lows. As my energy wore down, the difficult sections became more difficult, but the beautiful sections also became more beautiful. I imagine this is how a healthy relationship works.

The higher up you go, the more difficult situations arise, but if you are willing to embrace and address the challenges, it makes the joyful times even more special. Eventually, you make it to the peak. On your way back down, you get to enjoy all the great times you had and all of the things you learned on the way.

I am in my tent, set up on a platform on the outside of a switchback on a forest road. I made it to my 1 billion star hotel early today.

Before the mosquitos were out, I had an hour to lounge in my hammock. When the bugs came, I put that away and replaced it with a tent. In my tent, I played my guitar and sang as loud as I could until I ran out of songs.

When I ran out of songs, I decided that I could get ready for bed. It was after 7:30 after all. I grabbed my things I would need from the car: a blanket, a sleeping pad, a jacket, and some water.

The coyotes realized I was done singing, so they started to sing for me. Their song was full of excitement and energy. I am thankful for their song.

The birds have been singing to me as well, and I sometimes can sing along. When the concert is done, I will finally go to sleep.

Montana.

I left home 4 days ago. Some parts of vacation are great, some parts aren’t the way I want them to be, and other things just sometimes happen.

I have done a bunch of mountain biking, and it’s been great. I never really biked on the multi-use trails in MN that are shared between bikes and atvs and horses. I guess there aren’t that many horses in Duluth, but that’s somewhat beside the point. I always looked down on those trails because they weren’t built with biking in mind. What I have discovered out here in Wyoming and Montana, is that these trails are built with different, but arguably better motives. They usually bring you somewhere, and give a lot of views along the way. The biking here is not technical at all–but the terrain and altitude makes the trails anything but easy!

Sometimes parts of traveling alone aren’t the way I want them to be. After all the solo backpacking trips and canoe trips and road trips and… …you would think that I would be comfortable hiking in the woods by myself. Not so. Every new place has its unique challenges and fears. Tucson gave me snakes and scorpions, the Bighorns gave me snowfields and wind, Teddy Roosevelt Natl. Park gave me bison (and didn’t give me water). Here in Yellowstone, the biggest challenge for me is conquering my fear of grizzly bears. They are built up to be almost mythically dangerous. Since I still haven’t seen one in the wild, I don’t really know what to expect. Along with the usual nervousness of going into the wilderness so far from home, I have spent a lot of time during the last day or two reminding myself that I am a competent camper and have a smart sense of risk management.

Sometimes things just happen. I discovered just before leaving that my climbing crash pad is exactly the width of the inside of my car. The pad, coupled with a sleeping bag and a backpack near my head, have made for a perfect sleeping area. I have been careful to be neat with my stuff during the day so that each evening I am able to just take out my bike, lock it to the back wheel of the car and then crawl in to the trunk. Mobile command center 3.0, here we come. I still haven’t mastered preventing the inside of the car from fogging up, but I am going to try cracking a couple of windows tonight. I was hoping it wouldn’t be a problem in the summer, but I suppose I am using the term “summer” loosely. The day before I arrived in Yellowstone, (the day before summer solstice) areas of the park received 8 inches of snow. There is no snow in the places where I have slept. The car is also a good way to sleep without worrying about bears as much.

Here are some thoughts from my 10 mile hike today:

• Quote from an anthology of sayings a student made for me “And off to the woods I go, to lose my mind and to find my soul.” (John Muir) I repeated that quote in my head and out loud at least 1,000 times today.
• Why can elementary students in Minnesota identify a tiger and an elephant quicker than a pine marten or a lynx?
• Some students want me to teach chem 2. I would rather teach environmental chemistry.
• I want parents next year to come and talk about trial and error (a.k.a. Scientific method) in their jobs or hobbies. I proceeded to tell a story about how I tried to solve my problem of wanting to climb more. I talked to myself about this for a full hour of hiking. The sound was hopefully warding off the scary bears.
• Wouldn’t it be nice to have a spouse to share this with? What do I really want in a spouse?
• What kind of spouse would I be? What kind of spouse should I be?
• Is my spouse waiting on an online dating site? Only if I join a dating site. Until then, my spouse is the kind of person who doesn’t look for a spouse on the internet.
• Is it just foolish pride that keeps me from wanting to use a dating site?
• What the heck? Yellowstone is beautiful without a wife too. Just enjoy your life dude. All that spouse stuff will happen when it’s supposed to, if it’s supposed to.
• I did the “lose my mind” part, maybe a little too easily. When do I get to do the “find my soul” part? Until then, I am just wandering. If I am without a mind or soul, am I anything? Am I real?
• It’s weird that in Wyoming, while scrolling through radio stations, I found one where a priest from Virginia, MN was being interviewed. They introduced him as living “just outside of Duluth.” Wyoming operates with different distance standards from the rest of the world.
• Being super religious and following all the rules in the Bible–I don’t think that is what it is about. If I base any kind of disservice or unkindness or prejudice on something from the Bible, I have lost the purpose.
• My legs hurt.
• I thought I was going to run this, but I walked the whole thing and I am still tired.

A couple weeks ago, some people at lunch were discussing spring break ideas; “I would like to go to Colorado,” “I just bought plane tickets to China,” “I am going to sleep for the next 100 hours or so.” “I am going to Arkansas.”

“Arkansas?” someone asked. “What’s in Arkansas? I mean, I am sure it’s a nice place and all, but it doesn’t really sound like a spring break destination…”

It is.

In the ultimate week of getting outside and doing stuff, Zach and I biked, bouldered, hiked, and ran for 8 of our 9 days off of school. Here are some reasons that Arkansas is cool:

1. The mountain biking is fabulous! We rode in 4 different trail systems, covered 15 to 20 miles in each, never repeated a trail, and could go back next year without repeating a trail in three of the four places we already rode.

The namesake of this post comes from the Upper Buffalo River National Forest Area. We biked for several hours without encountering another trailhead, completed around 4,000 feet of climbing, and crossed many rivers. The water is a dazzlingly milky blue color amidst the gray trees on the verge of budding out.

2. There are trails all over the place. Mountain biking is not the only recreation: there is canoeing, hiking, running, and climbing to be had. We found the tallest waterfall in Arkansas, a climbing crag that was likely more than a mile wide, and are excited at the prospects of coming back for some paddling.

3. Arkansas has cool people. Everybody we met was excited to talk to us. The guy at the bike shop took 20 minutes of his day to explain to us all the best places to send it in Bentonville. We didn’t really try to “send it.” Zach and I aren’t as in to things like “huckin and shreddin” as most of the other bikers of Walmart world were, but we found some nice cross country trails to ride.

Towards the end of our stay, we visited the Blanchard Cavern Springs. There are caves that you can tour. Our tour guide was the bomb, and she told us to spread the word about the forest service park because “The National Park Service has a big advertising budget, so people will visit places like mammoth springs and the other parks. We (National Forest Service) tend to spend most of our money doing things like fighting forest fires, and we don’t have much of an advertising budget at all, so if you could tell your friends about this place, that would be great!”

All in all, if you are looking for a good adventure without the 34 hour drive to Utah, Arkansas is the place to be.

From 2006 to 2016, I participated on a racing ski team at some level. I started in seventh grade and raced every year through my senior year of college on whichever team was available to me. Anybody who knew me, even superficially, probably could have told you that I ski. However, things change, and the pendulum swings.

After graduating college, I started to do more trail running (that pendulum swings to a different rhythm), and actually ran through the winter for the first time. At first, it felt offensive–why would I be doing a sport like running which requires a low standard of conditions, when ski trails are available and groomed? But the truth was, I didn’t want to ski. I skied probably around 15 or 20 hours that winter (a volume that I had been doing in just over a week the preceding year). Of those times, I participated in only 2 races.

For the first time since I was 12 years old, I didn’t have a race schedule, training plan or teammates to push me to train more. I could just follow what I wanted. And the pendulum swings.

That first winter, I hardly skied at all. I was stuck in my mind. I couldn’t enjoy the times that I did go skiing because I was still mentally stuck in training. I couldn’t let go of thinking critically about my technique, how efficient I was skiing, whether I was being snappy enough with my motions, and so on. I had the voices of six ski coaches, and dozens of teammates through the years always critiquing my skiing. I hated it. Although I loved the teams I was on and the people who I skied with, I couldn’t ski without feeling inadequate. So I stopped. And the pendulum swings.

The next winter, I moved to Hinckley, a small farm town in central MN. The land is flat, and I live on the edge of the North Woods. South of here is fields. North of here is fields too, but they have some trees. There are few places to ski, and they are mostly well hidden. I signed up for the Mora Vasaloppet, and to get ready for that, I would have make the drive to Mora. I trained for one week before the race, but skiing in fields and big woods is not the same as skiing in the jack pines and balsam firs. At least the race got me out of my house to train. I started to ski again. I still skied seldom enough that my skis only got waxed once.

Two years out of college was not enough time for me to forget how critical I could be about my skiing, but it was enough time for me to figure out how to ignore it. For what seems like the first time in years, I was able to ski for the pure pleasure of being out in the snow. I could focus on technique if I wanted, but I could also leave all that behind, and live in the present. And the pendulum swings.

This year, I have skied most weekends, I have started to race more, and I in a place where I have knowledge of technique, but I don’t worry about it. I don’t have anything to prove because I didn’t spend any effort preparing for the races. I don’t care if I ski faster or slower than I did last year, because I didn’t really ski much last year. I feel like I’m starting over. It’s fun. The pendulum swings.

In my years of racing, I have acquired many race suits in various places, a memory of where I have been. My school closed so I got that suit, somebody gave me team Rossingnol suit as a hand-me-down, and I received one as a gift from a teacher. Her husband used to race, but was not racing anymore, so our deal was that I could have the race suit for free, but I had to race in it. I like this suit best for a few reasons.
1. It’s fun. I always like wearing weird ski clothes.
2. Other people don’t take me seriously because I don’t look like I belong to a team. Sometimes that works to my advantage.
3. Most importantly, I don’t put myself under pressure to be extra fast when I wear it. It is the suit that lets me be me without trying to be the person I used to be. And the pendulum swings.

Two gratitudes:
1. The suit has a pocket that is the perfect size for a pop tart. I know this from experience. It has saved me from passing out in the middle of the woods more than once.

2. The teacher that gave me this suit is awesome. KH is the person who taught me to write. Before that class, I never journaled, and would agonize over writing a whole page. KH made me journal in a WNB (writers note book), and I always waited until the night before it was due. One particular night, I wrote 12 pages of my thought stream while waxing skis for the race the next day. She read it too–she commented on some stuff that I wrote. It was amazing. It’s more amazing to me now that I am a teacher. Anyways, I am grateful for KH for trusting me with an awesome suit and for giving me the confidence to write. KH, I took these pictures this year to show you that the suit is still going to races, just like I promised.

And the pendulum swings.

Book recommendation: Touching Spirit Bear

I just read this book yesterday. It’s a teen novel about a boy who never had a childhood and is heading down the prison pipeline, but his parole officer gives him a different route. During a restorative justice circle, the protagonist is offered a chance to recover by living alone on a wild island in Alaska.

One of the central themes to his recovery is a morning ritual or practice that an elder teaches him in the three days before he is left to himself. Every morning, he soaks in an ice cold stream until he has cleared his mind of the hot anger inside him. Then, he carries a large rock up a hill. The rock represents his ancestors and the people who have brought him to be who he is. Once at the top of the hill, he gently sets down his ancestors. At this point, the rock represents anger once again, and he pushes it down the hill. Then, he can start his day.

I think I could benefit from a morning practice like this. I think that most people could benefit from something like this. We are culturally trained to be efficient. Morning practices are not efficient at accomplishing work. Morning practices accomplish excellence, not efficiency. I can take some extra time for that.

So I decided: I will do a morning practice.

I need to pick one that will work well for me. Soaking in an ice pool until I am numb is difficult because the nearest stream is on the other side of town. Maybe in the spring, I will run there and then soak. For now, I might take an ice shower. But I don’t think that a shower would accomplish the same thing. I want to be outside in the world where I can hear the birds waking up and see the squirrels busily searching for their acorn caches.

I will go for a bike ride in the morning, first thing, before breakfast. HA! No I won’t. I will tell myself that I will and then after one day, I will decide that putting on so many layers of clothes and my helmet takes too long. Today, after realizing that my bike light is out of battery and that the fenders on my bike are loose, I also see that there are too many technical failures related to that activity for it to be a morning practice. What I pick must work for me, get me outside, and must be simple.

Walking.

I can walk without risk of gear failure. I can simply pull snow pants on over my pajamas. And I have used walking as a form of meditation before. When I say I want to “go for a walk,” I don’t expect to go far. Typically I just walk around one or two city blocks, but it will take me between 15 and 45 minutes. I don’t usually stop, but I just walk so slowly that any stimuli from the world around me has time to be acknowledged, observed, and noticed before I move on. Birds, squirrels, drifting snow, street lights, an unrecognized tree–all of these are events that occurred in my practice walk this afternoon.

The rules for my walks are: no phone, no glasses, no turning back.

I don’t want to have a phone distract me from being present in the world. Even carrying the phone with me is a physical reminder of my attachments to other obligations beyond myself. This is a time for me and the world, not for emails or music or posting where I walked or how fast or anything.

My glasses are my personal symbol of civilization. When I have them on, I am expecting to read. I am acting more professional. I am driving. I almost always take them off for running and hiking. By taking off my glasses, I am removing from myself the responsibilities of modern society that often require reading. I am not turning off my brain, rather I am shifting my focus from details to the broader world. Rather than squint at the weather forecast on my phone, I look to the sky and can see the clouds approaching from the west. I am looking at the world through unobstructed eyes.

No turning back. There is no reason to betray myself. I am doing this for me, so I might as well do it, and learn from it everyday. If my feet are cold and wet, it is my job to experience that. Maybe I will learn from it. Weather will not stop me from being in the world. I have to go to school on easy days and difficult days. So it is with my walk. Some days it will be enjoyable to walk for 15 minutes in the rising sunlight. After daylight savings, I will most likely encounter cold, dark, windy days again. People too often speak of the weather as good or bad, but it is only different, always changing and beautiful in its own right. Walking will help me to remember that.

Walking is like life. In the winter, it will always be cold and dark, but there is joy in the cold too. Spring will come and the sun will rise earlier, but there can be pain in summer time too. Everything goes in circles. Don’t worry too much if you are experiencing winter, because the seasons will change.

I wrote earlier about loving the darkness. As much as I try to love the darkness, I am still struggling. But I don’t fear it anymore.

In winter there is a stillness that blankets everything. Some say it is just the snow, but I am sure there is more.

In the winter, all is calm.

In the late autumn, there is a frantic energy as all the critters are storing what they can for the cold months to come.

Just before the first storm, the land waits in nervous anticipation.

Snow falls.

Then all is calm.

There is nothing more to do but survive. For some, this means sleeping for the season. For some, they puff out their feathers to fortify themselves against the chill. For some, they search for the locations of their caches.

But all is calm.

Sometimes you get disappointing news. That’s just how life goes. I got my news last Friday. I didn’t make it through the lottery to be a part of the Superior 100 this year. I was really excited to go test myself, so rather than giving up, I looked for other 100-mile races to sign up for.

As it turns out, there are a few obstacles. I thought that the Superior 100 was crazy for charging me $270 to run 100 miles. ‘Here bro, give us a ton of money, and we will feed you every once in a while while you destroy your body.’ Turns out that $270 is pretty cheap compared to some of the other sanctioned suffer-fests.

Of all the ultras I looked at out west, most of the registrations were in the $300-$350 range. Holy crap! I got into this sport because 5ks were too expensive. (A 5k with $30 registration is $10/mile). I ran the Voyageur 50-mile race, and that was a deal! (After volunteering, $0.50/mile) Yeah, a $300 ultra is only $3/mile, but there are a lot of miles there, so it still leaves your wallet in a bit of shock. So I got to thinking that I should just do my own ultra.

There is a bit of pride in doing an ultra endurance event unsupported, but it’s not the kind of thing that I want to jump into like I would with a supported 100-mile race. Running 100 miles without a party at the end seems rough. So there are two ways to go here. I could have a giant party at the end, or I could make it look more like a camping trip where I run instead of walk. Unfortunately, hosting giant parties gets expensive, so I decided to go with the camping route.

After googling “runpacking,” I was redirected. “Did you mean “fastpacking?” Maybe…Just let me read a little about this…Yes. That is exactly what I was thinking about!

There is a whole world of people who go around camping with hardly anything on their back. It’s a small world, but still awesome. Most people do it as ultralight backpacking, but then there are the masochists like myself who see this as an opportunity to run the whole time.

After looking through a couple blogs, and checking out what people actually bring with in order to stay alive, I came to the conclusion that I could get by with just a couple new pieces of gear: a down blanket, and a decent daypack. (A smaller sleeping pad might be nice too, but non-essential.)

During a trip with my trusty shopping sidekick Michael, we went to the outdoors store. I often go shopping with him, intending to only look at gear, or bikes, or bike parts, and without fail, he convinces me to buy something. I should know better than to invite him. Anyway, we went for a short trip to look at down blankets. They didn’t have any. But there was a whole wall of daypacks!!!

Long story short, after running some laps around part of the store, and trying on just about every backpack there, I walked out with a small daypack that should do the trick.

Just to make sure, Michael and I went for a trail run in the -5 degree sun. Good news, the backpack fits, and it’s comfortable running too! I’m not real big on writing gear reviews (if you want to talk, send me an email or comment), but I feel pretty confident about my purchase because after 15 minutes, I forgot that I was wearing a pack.

So once I got home, I decided to see if all my gear will fit. There are a couple things missing here, and it is a tight fit already, but it’s close enough that I am confident that I will be able to swing some endurance running with this thing. It should be great for long bike rides too.

My apologies to all the gear snobs who cringe at this poorly packed bag. I will fix it before I actually go out in the spring. Maybe. Or I might just stuff everything in again haphazardly and deal with it. Also, don’t worry about the lack of toiletries, there are some small spaces for the essentials in the front pouch.

This isn’t just a backpack anymore, it is my key to the world of minimalist camping. Minimalism and camping probably belong together.

Friday, 9:00pm. I am staying over at my sisters house so that we can get an early start on the road tomorrow as we head up the shore for some skiing.

Saturday, 6:00am. The alarm starts to ring. I turn mine off. I hear Sophie’s still buzzing in the other room.

6:18am. I roll out of bed. Sophie is probably drinking tea, wondering when I am going to get my butt out of bed so we can get out skiing.

6:19am. I wander to the bathroom. On the way there, I notice that Sophie still hasn’t emerged from her bedroom. Nice. Well, the early start thing seemed like a good idea the night before…

7:04am. Sophie and Nate hit the road.

Sometimes life gets full of things that don’t matter. Bikes, grading homework, lesson planning, snapple chat, doing dishes, etc. Don’t forget to put the big rocks in your jar first.

On the way up the North Shore, we stopped so I could show Sophie my favorite waves spot. The waves were crashing up against the cliffs, some reaching heights of around 20 or 30 feet against the shore, spray flying 50 feet in the air, well above the surface of the presiding cliffs.

We kept driving. The snow-laden pine and spruce trees looked like they were wearing shoulder pads as we rolled down the icy road of the gunflint trail. We stopped to ski. Not to train, not to exercise, just to ski. There was no pressure to go fast, no worrying about technique, no goals for getting in shape. Just skiing. Should we check the map? No, we can ski whatever trail lands in front of us.

Later that day, we made it to Tuscarora. After catching up with old friends, Andy and Ada, we made some lunch and then returned to the snow globe outside. I will never be as content as I was this weekend. I got to ski with Sophie! Sometimes, the trails were hard, so we slowed down. Sometimes, the grooming was weird. Oh well. Don’t care. We just talked and ate food and skied for hours and hours. It was like I hadn’t seen my sister in years, except that I hang out with her every weekend. What a great way to live.

Every person needs to figure out what is important. I am lucky to have an awesome sister that I like to spend time with. We share the same hobbies, the same friends and yes, I even share my food with her sometimes. Find what is important to you and invest your time there.