This big, big world

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever fall in love again. I'm not talking in terms of human relationships, although this thought occasionally crosses my mind as well. But, no, I am speaking of Alaska. The Great Land. The place I loved. The place I left, three months ago, without regret.

How could I leave Alaska without regret? This thought still occasionally drifts through my mind. I reason that I live in a world adrift, where a sense of impermanence prevents attachments from growing too deep. Now I am in Montana, finding new places to explore, seeing old places in the changing light that comes with the passage of time, and finding an affection for my new home that almost feels like love.

This is how I came to plan a weekend trip in Glacier National Park with my friend, Danni. The trip was my idea — Glacier seemed like a pretty place to spend a Labor Day weekend. In invited my friend Dave in Missoula to join me, and then Danni invited her friend Brad, who had an idea for "getting away from the crowds."

The way I came to know all of these people individually is an interesting commentary on modern life. Dave is a recent social work graduate in Missoula who has been my blog friend almost as long as I’ve had a blog, somewhere in the range of four years, but we’d never met face to face until I moved here in June. Danni is a lawyer and roller-derby chick in Kalispell who is a mutual friend of my 2010 TransRockies partner Keith, who I only met because Keith’s wife, Leslie, extended an generous invitation to me — then a stranger — to stay with them in Banff before the 2009 Tour Divide. Brad is a sign designer and Hammer Nutrition employee in Whitefish, who along with Danni helped organize the Swan Crest 100 trail race, where I volunteered, and that’s how I met Brad. There was a time in recent history when the chance of the four of us meeting would have been unlikely at best, but on Saturday we found our paths intersecting on a remote mountain ridge in the southeastern corner of Glacier National Park.

Brad's plan was an off-trail ridge walk between Two Medicine Lake and Marias Pass, which is outside the park. Dave looked at a map and said, "I'll be really interested to see how this all works." The two points were at least 18 miles apart in a straight line, and blocked by a veritable wall of big mountains, some of which Dave said appeared from the highway to be actual walls. "It's probably going to be a little hairball," he warned Danni and me, because both of us suffer from varying degrees of vertigo, and Danni hasn't had much big alpine experience. "This will be my first hike off-trail," she announced. I put my faith in Brad's assurance that the route was "mostly" non-technical, then scrutinized the map and brought my GPS, bivy sack, fire starter, lights and a ton of extra food should I need to plan a drainage escape into East Glacier.

The day dawned auspiciously, which means it was raining and filled with pre-sunrise darkness, but we were stoked anyway. The clouds had mostly cleared by the time we reached the Two Medicine trailhead, only to be replaced by a cold and vicious wind. Even at the small lake, 35-mph gusts drove roaring whitecaps across the water. “That wind’s going to be cranking above treeline,” Brad observed nonchalantly. “Bring a jacket.”

We hit the trail and started chatting away, blissfully lost in conversation the way four people who met through the vast web of social networking can be — sharing an array of esoteric interests and commonalities that linked us in the first place. The elevation gain passed without effort or notice, and soon we were walking the lichen-coated tundra and talus of the high country.

At 8,000 feet we crested the Continental Divide. We moved swiftly along the spine that divides the golden prairies of Eastern Montana from the crumbling granite walls of the northern Rockies. The wind raged from the west, often blowing so hard that it knocked me into a teeter and I had to brace myself against my poles before I could start walking again. Dave and I estimated it was gusting to at least 60 mph and drove a windchill low enough to sometimes necessitate a down coat and gloves — not the kind of environmental conditions that boost one’s confidence in their already below-average sense of balance.

We approached a needle-shaped, 8,800-foot peak called Mount Henry. "We don't really have to go up that, do we?" Danni whispered to me nervously. There was no way to sideslope around it without severe exposure. The way up looked like a class-four scramble at best, with a far-away but uneasy notion that we might be entering the realm of low class five without ropes. "Let's wait and see what Brad does," I replied, expecting that Danni's and my combined lack of experience and exposure fear would probably lead to the girls retreating to Two Medicine while the boys finished up the hike alone.

Brad did indeed find a fairly simple chimney — probably class four because the potential to kill oneself was there, but full of comfortable handholds and small ledges. Danni was at her limit of acceptable fear but powered through as Brad helped guide her up the chimney.

When Danni reached a good half-way perch, she stopped, so I started up. Suddenly she screamed, "Watch out." I heard the sickening sounds of knocking and scraping as a very large boulder tumbled toward me. I instinctively ducked my head, pressed myself against the wall and threw my arms over my neck in a blocking position. A watermelon-sized chunk of old granite brushed inexplicably gently over my shoulders and plummeted beneath me. I looked up, confused, only to see Brad braced directly behind me. He held up his right hand, which was covered in blood. Brad had stuck his arm out and halted the momentum of the rock, and for all practical purposes had saved me from a skull fracture or worse. I didn't quite understand what had happened at first, and in the rush of adrenaline, I forgot to thank him. I'm not sure I've ever been in a position where someone may have actually physically saved my life. I still haven't processed it fully, but I did later tell Brad that I owe him a beer.

With that adventure behind us, Danni and I took a mutual celebratory self-portrait to mark our survival of what we hoped would be the most difficult obstacle of the traverse. Mount Henry is behind us, blocked by my thankfully non-fractured head.

We stopped for lunch in front of the foreboding silhouette of Mount Henry.

As we dropped down the tundra toward our next talus climb, I looked at my GPS and my jaw dropped. "There's no way we've already climbed 7,000 feet today," I said to Dave. "No way." He just shrugged. "I believe it," he said. We looked at the next massive mountain in front of us. "How much higher do you think it is?" he asked. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe 1,500 feet." "I was going to say 1,400," Dave said. "It adds up."

Mount Ellsworth turned out to only be 800 feet higher, but the talus was so loose and steep that we probably climbed 1,500 feet getting there. Danni was unnerved by the loose footing on a 60-degree slope. "It's not like snow," I said. "If you slide backward, you'll stop ... eventually." We made our way up into small cliff band where loose talus over hard rock made the climbing extremely sketchy. But there was nowhere to fall, so I felt fine. Danni and I were starting to see where our irrational fears divide — I feel uneasy with big exposure, but she has a harder time with difficult terrain.

The exposure started to open up as we walked along the spine of Bearhead Mountain, where a veritable wall dropped 2,000 feet into the drainage to our left. Initial route-finding kept us near the top of the ridge and uncomfortably close to that dizzying exposure. I started to lose my nerve. At first, it sank in slow and cold, numbing my fingers and darkening my vision. Then came the nausea, and an urge to either vomit or cry — I couldn't decide which. By the time we started dropping down the cliff bands to the right, where the exposure wasn't nearly as bad, I was quivering, just trying to hold it together for holding it together's sake. Dave looked back and said, "Are you OK?" "I'm scared, but I'm OK," I mumbled. After that, I hummed "Going Going Gone" by the Stars to get my mind off the mountain ... "There's nowhere to move on ... there's nowhere to move on."

We finally crawled off the cliff bands and shuffled down the steep scree. My dizziness began to fade, and I started taking larger steps, loping down the loose gravel with an exhilarating feeling of suspended gravity, as though I were walking on the moon. We connected with a goat trail as a clouds streamed by over our heads. I began to digest the massive quantities of adrenaline I had generated, and practically skipped along the narrow passage.

"You look much better now," Dave commented. "Back there, you had this look on your face like you were about to swallow a tarantula on Fear Factor." "You know," I said, "that's exactly what vertigo is like. Something really isn't all that likely to hurt you, and in your mind you know that so you can make yourself do it, but that doesn't stop the gut reaction that causes all kinds of trepidation."

The afternoon grew late. We still had to scoot around Red Crow Mountain and descend Firebrand Pass. As we approached our final contact with a ridge, I faced the freight train of wind to take one last longing gaze of the huge views we had spent the day with. "This is a big place," I said to Dave. "This is a really big place."

Walking down Firebrand, I thought more about what that largeness meant to me. We ended the day with 11,800 feet of climbing and 12,060 feet of descent. We traveled somewhere in the range of 25 miles, to elevations as high as 9,000 feet. We straddled the watershed divide that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Pacific, many times. We saw the rolling prairie stretch beyond the horizon, and we saw the jagged mountains ripple endlessly to the West. Alaska is amazing and beautiful, but it certainly isn't the only big place in the world. Not even close.

I often fall in love with places, and think about them wistfully in much the way I would an old friend. I'm going to add this ridge in the southeastern corner of Glacier National Park to this list, not only because it is big and awe-inspiring, but because of my new friends.

Hiking is harder with a bike

"Are you sure you don't want to join us?" I said to Danni after she dropped us off at the trailhead. "I bet you could beat us." Danni looked up as she gave the notion serious thought. Brad, Dave and I planned to ride our mountain bikes from Six-Mile to Broken Leg along the Alpine 7 trail in the Swan Mountains, a one-way route that traveled about 24 miles of hikers' singletrack. Danni hasn't ridden a mountain bike since high school, and doesn't own one, so she planned to go for a run. She finally shook her head. "No, I'll just do an out and back from the other side. I'll try to finish just before you."

The initial climb was right at the limit of granny-gear bikeability, gaining 3,000 feet in four miles on a narrow, side-sloped trail. I red-lined early and lost my steam. With 13 difficult hours already behind me on the weekend, I didn't have a lot of steam to start with. When I can only muster 3 miles an hour in the saddle, I feel no shame in walking at 3 mph with half the energy expenditure. In fact, I will go out on a limb and say that sometimes I think wheels are downright silly.

We crested Six-Mile Pass and began the descent into the next canyon. The trail conditions in this section ranged from faint to almost entirely overgrown. The boys attempted intermittent riding and walking, mostly blind as late-summer brush whipped their faces. I kept tripping over unseen obstacles and decided that the silly wheels were just getting in the way, so I picked up my bicycle, balanced it on my shoulder, and walked almost the entire downhill, with a silly bicycle on my shoulder. One pass down. Three thousand feet climbed and dropped. Total riding on the day: Negligible.

Crossing a stream can only mean one thing - time to climb again.

As my engine sputtered and choked, the boys waited for me to work my way up the steep slope, mostly with the silly bicycle still dangling from my shoulder. Brad was kind enough to pick huckleberries and offer me handfuls. The invigorating rush of tarty sweetness should have alerted me to the fact I was bonking, and hard. But it is hard to refuel when carrying a 25-pound bicycle on one shoulder. My downward spiral continued as we worked our way up.

As we neared another 7,000-foot pass, it started to snow. It snowed hard. Wet white powder accumulated on the ground at a rate of 2 inches in an hour. The air was probably cold, too, but I didn't really notice because I felt increasingly more dizzy and nauseated. I really, really wanted to curl up in a patch of that oh-so-soft-looking white stuff and fall asleep. But I knew I couldn't stop because the boys would probably freeze to death while they waited for me to wake up, and I couldn't be responsible for anyone freezing to death. The absurdity of the situation finally woke me up to my obvious bonk, and I stopped long enough to grab a Power Bar out of my pack, which I ate as I trudged to the top with a silly bike still dangling from my shoulder.

The perk-up was slow but it started to happen. I first knew I was coming back to life because the chill sank in hard. I put on my gloves and balaclava and pulled up my hood. The snow was really slippery and I have a 2" bald tire on my rear wheel, so I continued walking downhill.

Finally we made it to Broken Leg Ridge. I ate a little more food and felt increasingly like a real person. I even attempted riding the bicycle that I had carried all the way up there, but the rocky trail bounced me around like a pinball, and I was still feeling more sleepy than alert. Gradually, I descended to stretches of trail that actually contained more dirt than rocks, where I could pick a real line and stick with it for more than 50 feet. Soon I was flying, weaving tight curves through the woods, giggling involuntarily. Holy cow, I was riding my bike! I had almost forgotten what this feels like! The feeling was frequently interrupted by rock slide paths, downed trees, and bear scat. Then Brad got a flat in his tubeless tire, and my rotor started rubbing, which caused my bike to moan like a demon bumble bee.

Finally at the bottom, Danni came running toward us. "What happened to you guys?" she said with a tinge of panic in her voice.

"Um, we went for a bike ride."

"How far did you ride?"

We consulted the GPS. "24 miles, with 6,500 feet of climbing."

She looked confused. "I just ran 21 miles, and I started an hour after you, and I finished more than two hours before you."

I just shrugged. What could I say?

Later, while we were driving home, she blurted out, "For the record, that ride took you guys more than nine hours. Nine hours!"

I shrugged again. What could I say? Hour for hour, it was the toughest workout I'd had in a while. Maybe all summer. And sure, we had just proved to Danni what she suspected anyway - that running is far superior to mountain biking. But she can't disprove the fact we had a ton of fun.

First snow

Thank you for the kind words and thoughts about my grandfather. As I reflect on his life and what he meant to me, the more peace I feel about his passing. He went gracefully, in his own home, with his wife and three daughters at his side. It was the way he would have wanted to go, in peace and on his own terms - not imprisoned in a hopeless battle with his pain. And next weekend, I will have an opportunity to attend his funeral and share memories with the scores of people who loved him.

As for me, I am in the midst of a fantastic Labor Day weekend in northern Montana. I drove up with my friend Dave from Missoula and we met up with Danni and Brad from Kalispell, then the four of us headed to the east side of Glacier National Park. We spent an incredible 10 hours traversing a high ridge, walking the tundra, scrambling up and down cliff bands and sliding through scree as we were blasted by 60 mph wind gusts. Sometimes cold, sometimes fending off dizzying bouts of vertigo, often giddy, and always in awe of the big world surrounding us. We ended up clocking 11,800 feet of vertical gain over 23 to 25 miles. I have a slew of pictures I'll have to sort through in time.

Today we decided to take it "easy" with an eight to nine-mile lollipop loop in the Swan Mountains, in Jewel Basin. I think the spirit of my grandfather was smiling down on me because we were met with what is one of my favorite events of the year - the first time I get caught outside in the snow.

Can you find the mountain goat in this photo?

Snow made our mellow hike giddily dramatic, one the fog moved through and the snow-dusted cliffs of the Bob Marshall wilderness rose into view.

Climbing high above the Flathead Valley.

Descending toward "The Bob."

First snows are most special when they happen in the summertime, in a world still alive with bright colors and brilliant greens. An early-season powder-coat paints it all with a kind of frosty softness, whitewashed edges and splashes of silver.

And you know these first snows won't last, which makes them that much more unique ... and palatable. After all, we want to relish these last days of summer. It won't be long now 'til it's fall.

For my grandpa

Today was spent tracing the contour of a ridge high above Glacier National Park, where wind howled and clouds swirled and we clung to cliff bands, perched on the edge of infinity.

It was the day my grandfather died.

I will think of him when I visit these high places.

Alden

This is Alden. He's 68 years old. He's a recently retired professor of computer science at the University of Montana. And he's just about the toughest mountain biker you'd ever have the pleasure of riding with. He's mountain biked in Missoula for a couple of decades and ridden every single span of dirt in a 20-mile radius, every single one ... or at least he has the reputation for it. He raced the Butte 50 and then attended his 50-year high school reunion on the exact same day. How many people can write that in their yearbook? His trail knowledge is as deep as Hellgate Canyon, his calves are as rippled as an Olympic sprinter's, and he won't tolerate sandbagging from anyone. Don't ever step off your bike if Alden can see you. Even a near-vertical, loose-gravel-strewn uphill headwall is no excuse. You could be on your knees and Alden will spin past you, grinding his meticulously slow rotations, admonishing in his gruff and friendly way, "If I can ride it, you can ride it." And, really, who are you to argue?

And what Alden dishes out, Alden can take. He even has his own trail, "Alden's Bear Right," which is really just the rugged profile of a long-ago logging road cut with the faintest hint of singletrack. He'll tear through the weeds and alders and it's downright terrifying to even try to keep up with him - so much so that only a few in the Thursday Night Ride group were close enough to witness Alden smack a well-hidden, cantaloupe-sized rock and cartwheel several yards, breaking the high-speed fall with his face. Blood gushed from the bridge of his nose and upper lip and he stood up and calmly announced that one of the lenses in his glasses popped out. A half dozen people scattered to search, but he ended up finding it on his own, pulled his toppled bike out of the embankment, accepted the application of a band-aid, provided satisfying answers to every head-injury question, and walked down the rest of the trail with a big smile on his face.

Oh, he's going to be in trouble tonight," Julie whispered, referring not to Alden's rather painful-looking injuries, but to his wife.

Alden's my hero.

The second book

I've been keeping this blog for nearly five years, and every so often, I create a post that I come precariously close to deleting before I publish it — whether it's too intimate, too "off subject" or too personal. The previous post was one of those. I "wrote" most of it in my head while driving home from Salt Lake City, sleep-deprived and trying to process a swirl of emotions. I tapped it all out after work on Monday, late at night. Then I read it over and decided that I didn't want to publish it. I thought it straddled the barrier of comfortable and uncomfortable for both my family members — all of whom read my blog — and strangers who might happen across it. But a few years back, a woman writer who I greatly admire told me, "Whenever you're convinced you should throw a piece of writing away, that's the stuff you really need to keep." So that's how I treat my blog. Generally, I keep it pretty and bikey, but every once in a while, I venture out.

I'm going through similar thoughts right now with my "Great Divide Book." I've talked about this book on this blog before, and recently have received several questions about it from both family members and a few blog commenters, so I thought I'd update. I started the project last August, completed a couple of chapters, and put it down for most of the fall. I picked it back up in December and dove into the writing full-bore. I was riding less and generally just trying to cope at my place of employment and my personal life in Juneau. I was trying to make some hard decisions, and the project was very cathartic for me. It helped me through a tough period, and I was genuinely sad when I finished the initial draft in March. I went through a couple of self-edits and decided to start pursuing publication in May. I was "funemployed" in Anchorage at the time, and although a overwhelmingly large block of my time was dedicated to the fun side of things, I did spend quite a bit of time researching options and sending out proposals to agents. I caught the initial interest of three agents, one of whom seemed poised to pick it up. However, everything came to a head during a period of monumentally bad timing, the very same week I had been offered a job in Missoula and was faced with uprooting my entire life. I dropped the ball in an embarrassing way, and the agent rightly decided to end discussions with me. So now I'm back to square one, except for I'm employed full-time, and have other training aspirations brewing that will cut into my free time even more.

I could start over, but I find myself asking why I should bother. It does seem a bit futile as a writer to aspire to traditional print publication when the entire industry is struggling. So many jobs are being cut and profits are being slashed that there's almost no money in it for writers, except for a small fraction of the most successful, and niche publications by little-know bloggers about little-known bike races aren't likely to find their way into this upper tier. I could follow a growing trend that I tapped two years ago with a fair amount of success — self publication — and I am considering it. However, before I went forward, I would need to fund a professional edit that I'm not sure I could afford right now, and then there is the time investment that I found to be surprisingly large when I experimented with the format two years ago. Plus, for all of its advantages is the modern market, self-publication of books still carries a huge stigma that I admit does bother me a little. It is still considered preferable to be "legitimately" published, so much so that all serious writers pursue it even when all of the evidence suggests the payout is laughably small for all of the time they have to invest.

My first book, "Ghost Trails," I wrote because I felt I had to. It was something I sincerely believed I had no choice but too create. It really wasn't intended for public consumption until the 11th hour, when I cobbled together a "book," zoomed over to a self-publishing site, and hit "send." I learned a lot from that experience, and now have better ideas for a possible second go. At the same time, I also created the Great Divide Book for personal and admittedly cathartic reasons, so I often wonder if it wasn't just meant to be bound and placed in a drawer, the way so many memoirs have for so many years.

But that's what I'm considering right now. It may be a while yet before I make any solid decisions. In the meantime, I need to somehow find a third project to begin. I can try to improve my Great Divide Book as much as I want, but I miss the intimacy and excitement of its initial creation.

Lone Peak

On Tuesday, I received the call that I had been expecting, the call that I had been hoping for but also dreading.

“Your grandfather has decided to go on hospice,” my Mom told me as I ducked outside the office with my cell phone.

“And his treatments?”

“Those are going to end,” she said.

It meant my grandfather had made the most difficult decision of his life, the decision that meant his life. It meant that one thing that none of us were willing to voice, but we could say enough to acknowledge that there wasn’t much time. It meant that weekend plans and a few tanks of gas didn’t matter so much. I wrapped up my work at the office and hit the road Friday evening.

In my memory, my Grandpa Homer will always be a robust 60-year-old, swinging an ax in front of a massive pile of logs. I admit I cannot recognize him at 80, pale and gaunt, with scabbed skin stretched across his bones as he struggles to sit up in his chair. Disease stole his strength but not his spirit. I still see it in his eyes, sparkling with the peace of acceptance, but also flecked with fears for the unknown. My grandfather lived a good life, but a good life can never be complete. He reaches out and lets me wrap my arms around his thin shoulders. I’m so happy his pain has subsided enough that I can hug him, perhaps for the last time.

Grandpa Homer owned property in the mountains. As a child I would skulk through the aspen groves and marvel that my grandpa could actually own a place as wild as this. At camp he built massive fires. He doused a giant stack of logs with gasoline and ignited the inferno with the flick of a match. The 10-foot-high flames filled me with wonder, and a tinge of pride, because going big was the Homer Way.

On Sunday, asleep in my old bedroom, I don’t want to wake up. My mind swims with memories — some wistful, others sad. The alarm goes off 7 a.m., and again at 8, and then again at 9. At 10:20 I finally roll out of bed. I open the front door to a chilly blast of wind and look bleary-eyed at the towering massif that looms over my childhood home, the most prominent feature of a hundred memories of walking to school — Lone Peak. The previous night, I had thought a lot about climbing that mountain, but my late start precluded what promised to be a daylong adventure. Still, I think I can hike part of the trail. Perhaps to a cabin near the halfway point.

I drive two miles to what can best be considered a trailhead — a park located on the edge of the city of Draper, but still in town, elevation 4,500 feet. Far above the park, at a distance so close it can’t be seen from the bottom, the 11,250-foot peak rises like a giant startled from a long sleep — abruptly and angrily. I follow a trail that cuts a deeply eroded scar up the hillside. Charcoaled skeletons of scrub oak rise from the yellow grass; they’re all that remains of a forest recently scoured by fire. Absent trees, the trail is washed in views. I glance over my shoulder and take note of the many pieces of my past — there’s Indian Hills Middle School. There’s the building that used to be the Albertson’s where I bagged groceries. There’s the grassy bluff we used to tumble down after school. I glance at my watch. 11:35 a.m. I really should be home by six because my sister is coming to dinner, but perhaps … perhaps. I push harder, taking faster, longer steps up the slope. My heart rate skyrockets and my head spins. I’m completely maxed out, moving as fast as I physically can, even though I’m still walking. Between ragged breaths I catch glimpses of the Salt Lake Valley, with the pieces of my past fading into the abstraction of distance.

From the seat of his idling motorcycle, Grandpa Homer scooped me up off the ground with one arm and plopped me down in front of him. “Keep your feet away from the engine,” he told me, and I held my bare legs like rigid poles in front of me. Grandpa gunned the throttle and motorcycle's wheels spun forward in a cloud of dust and gravel. The aspen groves blurred beside us as we rocketed toward the sky. I grinned and sharp wind needled through my missing teeth until it pierced my throat. The sensation tickled and I squealed uncontrollably, because I knew, really knew, what it felt like to fly.

The elevation disappears behind me. My leg muscles throb with acid and hot blood, but I feel so strong and alive that I can’t imagine slowing down. I come to a trail junction and turn left, dropping into a cool, forested canyon. About three quarters of a mile down the trail, I meet a man who tells me I won’t find the Outlaw Cabin in the canyon, so I turn around and return to the open hillside. I cut my own route because the only other way is down. I crest a broad knoll and the granite spires of Lone Peak suddenly rise into view.

My parents went out of town for a week and my sisters and I went to stay with my grandparents. I came down with the flu, so sick I couldn’t even stand to go to the bathroom, and I writhed on the couch with sweat-crusted hair stuck to my cheeks. Grandpa brought me a glass of Sprite. “Is it medicine?” I asked him. “It’s better than medicine,” he replied, “because it tastes like candy and will make you feel better.” I took a tiny sip and felt the cold liquid crackle in my throat. Grandpa was right.

I start jogging toward the mountain, taking thick breaths full of yearning. I have no idea how much time it will really take to reach the peak. It looks close enough to touch, and far enough to be a jet in the sky. The trail butts up against a granite wall and fades in the rocks. I follow scattered cairns along the rocky drainage, but lose track of them amid a sea of stones. I keep my eye on the peak and head straight toward it. There's no route like the most direct one. I scramble up a tiered pile of massive boulders — a staircase fit for a sleeping giant.

I hoist myself up the final pitch and crawl into the giant's shadow. I have climbed thousands of feet and it's still as massive as ever, more massive than ever, blotting out half the sky. In front of me, the cirque is filled to the brim with jumbled boulders. Some are the size of houses, with crevices that could swallow a human whole, never to be found. I groan. This is clearly not the right way. I begin scrambling across the boulder field like a clumsy spider, rolling my ankle on razor-sharp rock edges and creeping around the human-eating crevices. At this point, I'm just looking for a way out, but there's not one in sight — only the towering fortress and its minefield of obstacles. "Why do I always have to get myself lost?" I grumble. "Why am I so completely inept?"

I have to climb over a couple of minor ridges, but I finally reach the base of the mountain at 3 p.m. I try not to think about the time. Even if I turn around now, it's still unlikely I'll make it home by 6, but I'm so close now, so close. "I can run down," I justify. I launch myself up the wall as fast as my arms can lift me. My biceps burn from an afternoon already full of scrambling, but at least this final scramble was expected. I've been breathing so hard for so long that my throat burns, and it hurts to swallow, and the air is getting mighty thin, but I'm so close now. Closer than I ever expected to be. Endorphins course through my veins and my heart sings. I am free, independent and strong. I never feel so alive as I do when I am alone and elated.

The wind that has been howling all day hits gale force at the ridge. Gusts up to 50 mph tear around me and I drop to my hands, moving like a monkey over the narrow knife-edged ledge. Fear starts to gurgle up. I scramble up the final ramp rock and barely touch the table-sized peak before scrambling back down. I scoot along the exposed ledge as my heart beats louder and louder. My head spins faster, my vision begins to blur and the edges turn black. My breaths become short and a wave of nausea sweeps over me. I drop to my knees, clutching at nothing on the smooth face of a chair-sized rock and staring in horror over the precipice. The sea of boulders appears to be churning in the cirque, a thousand feet directly below. I can't move. I'm paralyzed. Vertigo. "Not now," I whisper. "Not now." I try to recapture my breath. I remind myself this fear is irrational. I appeal to humor, that I certainly didn't inherit my vertigo from the Homer side of the family. Grandpa used to say, "When it's too tough for everyone else, it's just right for the Homers." I scramble a few tentative feet, then a few more, until my back is pressed up against the chimney-sized spire of the false summit.

I was 12 when Grandpa built his cabin. He started from nothing, dug a foundation, poured the concrete, erected the framing. My grandpa could do everything, and never asked anybody for anything. My aunts and uncles had to practically beg him to let us help. I went up one day to help lay the floor. He showed me how to use a caulking gun. I vowed that one day, I would learn how to build a house. I hoped my grandpa would teach me.

Tears fill my eyes. I know the worst is over, but I can't help myself. I never feel so lonely as I do when I'm alone and afraid. I just want to see somebody, anybody, just so I know I'm not the only person perched on this wind-blasted vertical moonscape. But it's 4 p.m. and no one is left on the peak. I haven't seen anybody for hours. I think about the notepad in my backpack. I carry it with me sometimes to write down thoughts. I take it out and rip a corner off a sheet of paper. On the scrap, I write a note to my grandpa.

"Dear Grandpa Homer,

Thank you for your love, your example and your kindness. Thank you for everything you've done for me. I love you. ...

I stick the pen in my mouth and in nervousness chew the end right off. Then I remember to add, "Please don't be afraid.

Love, Jill."

I muster up the courage to stand and face the full brunt of the wind. It roars in my face as I hold the note to my side and release it to the gale. I turn around quickly but I don't see it go.

Grandpa Homer comes from a long tradition of fierce independence. His parents toiled in the fields of Cache Valley during the Depression. One set of grandparents crossed the Atlantic from Sweden; others before them walked across the Great Plains when there was nothing on the other side. Grandpa started working at age 11; he had a high standing in his church, raised six children, cultivated a large garden, rebuilt motors, raised cows. He had several dozen grandchildren and treated us all like we were special, like we were somebody, like we could grow up to be anything we wanted to be. I never really imagined what it would be like, the day my grandpa stopped being Superman. I wonder if he ever imagined what it would be like, himself.

It's after 4 p.m. when I start making my way down. I realize losing more than 7,000 feet of pure elevation in less than two hours is a near-impossibility, but I have to try. I scuttle down the ridge using the small, quick, feather-weight steps I've been trying to practice, and increase my stride to a loping jog in the cirque. I find the right drainage and plunge down a smooth granite chute. I remember my Dad's stories about dropping too low too soon and do everything I can to hug the wall, scrambling over and down minor ridges. I see a faint trail and follow it along a ridge until it begins dropping into the next canyon. The wrong canyon. Gaaa! I don't know where I am. Was I supposed to drop sooner? How much sooner? How will I hook up with the right drainage? What if I end up in American Fork, in the entirely wrong county? Why am I always getting lost? Why am I so completely helpless when left to my own devices? I start sprinting down the rock slope. I suck in erratic gulps of air. I can't help it. I hate being lost. I run and run, and every time I hit the mildest of upward inclines, my heart shoots to the redline. I am becoming very tired. Very worn down. I was too ambitious. Too selfish. But I can't stop now.

It's too hard now, not to think about the end. I can believe that my grandpa isn't afraid, but I have to admit that I am. Everything that makes me who I am is wrapped up in the people, and the moments, that all seem to slip away before I'm ready. Life sometimes moves in fast-forward motion, spinning in a blur of color and noise. In my dizziness I look to the past for clarity, only to acknowledge that those moments are gone.

I bee-line in my preferred direction until I find a trail, and take it until I find familiar landmarks. Back on known ground, everything that was holding my effort together seems to disintegrate. I climbed too hard, too fast, for too long, and I didn't eat enough, and I didn't drink enough, and now my body no longer wants to listen to me. I eat a Honey Stinger bar and slow back to a walk. The Salt Lake Valley is bathed in golden evening light, and behind me dark clouds gather around Lone Peak. The wind finally sputters and fades, and the air becomes eerily calm. It's 6:45 as I approach Draper City - late but hopefully not too late to see my sister. My iPod clicks over to a sad song. I feel a tear gathering beneath my eye. I think about letting it go, but as soon as I notice it, there's nothing left. I left it all on the mountain.

Already with the guilt

It's been a simple week so far: Work, arrange apartment, bike, run, late dinner, arrange apartment, upload more photos to the Shutterfly archive, sleep. Yesterday I didn't get out of the house until 7:30. I rode my Karate Monkey 10 miles up to the Ravine Trail, parked, and began running. I knew I'd be out after dark as it was and planned to only run for 20 minutes or so. I turned on my iPod and started up the trail, wheezing a bit as I rounded the steep switchbacks. On a steep grade, the simple act of running at all, even slowly, calls for surprisingly exhaustive bursts of energy. I gulped air but kept my motion fluid, floating along the edges of the pain cave as flickering sunlight and shadows put me deep in a meditative trance. I can't even say how it happened but, just like that, I was suddenly at the SnowBowl overlook, two and a half miles and 1,000 feet into the run. A little farther than I planned. Whoops.

But the run down felt great, the ride home even better, metabolizing an overabundance of endorphins as a blur of city lights streamed by. I felt a tinge of guilt about going longer and probably harder than I should have, but holy cow is BikeRun fun.

Today Dave and I set out for our weekly Wednesday night ride. We both agree that heat is the downfall of all things fun, and today was another scorcher, 90 degrees with smokey hints of barbecued forest in the air. We went in search of shade on the Deer Creek Sneak, a loop ride that's a healthy distance in its own right, but then we worked our way up the Crazy Canyon singletrack and plunged down The Gut of Mount Sentinel. Probably more than 2,000 feet of climbing in total, and 20+ miles. (I really need to start GPS-ing these rides, or at least purchase a working odometer once again.) I should also mention that I'm bike commuting daily on the fixie now. It's only about five miles total, but these things add up.

Anyway, it was a good ride, made great toward the end as we descended back into the valley with the smoke-filtered sunset casting eerie light across the hillside. Then we stopped for pizza, and lounged around The Bridge until well after dark, musing about winter and adventure. As I rode the empty bike path home, full and happy, that nagging thought came into my mind ... "Ugh. I didn't run yet today."

I know I don't need to run every day to get in shape for running. I know I shouldn't run every day to get in shape for running. But right now, when I am still very early in my resolve to do this, I really feel like I need to make a solid effort to add it to my routine - form a habit to prevent me from falling quickly off the wagon. And as long as I don't feel any negative physical effects from running, I feel like I should make a regular commitment.

I call this photo "The August Sun." Anyway, I had to make a quick phone call before it got to late, and by the time I set out it was 10 p.m. At least the pizza had time to digest. I cued up my iPod and turned on the red blinky I clipped to my bike jersey. Into the dark neighborhood streets, I listened to music and blinked against the sporadic flickering of street lights. With nothing to see and nothing to focus on but the movements of my own muscles, I again fell into a quiet, meditative state. This is one thing that really sets running apart for me - I'm not operating a machine, not dedicating intense focus to my movements or anticipating the obstacles ahead. I'm simply moving, body and mind focused only on itself, and it allows me to quickly reach that peaceful place that I sometimes spend hours seeking on a bike. I value that place. It's certainly not the only reason I ride, but it is, for me at least, one of the best reasons to run.

And before I knew it, my quads were on fire and my feet were pounding into the pavement. I was running fast again. Whoops. I slowed down and drank in all of the smells surrounding me, the stale dew, the smoke, the dusty sweetness of August weeds and cool air that ever-so-slightly hinted of autumn. I finished my wide loop in 28 minutes - probably about three miles. Short but consistent. For now, that's the goal.

And the unexpectedly serene trip around the neighborhood after dark? That's just a bonus.