Monday, July 13

TETON CREST TRAIL.





Even when I can see the shadow of my greasy hair standing straight up on the trail beneath me. A trail lined with lush green and laughter of indigo and yellow flowers. There are snow mounds and still lakes and white, snowy water. In the chilly heights there are perfect white wild flowers smiling up at me, perched safe in the grounded earth above the deep sinking, dark muddy trenches.


My head pounds. It is late. I rose this morning in a tent on a grassy field in the hills of the Alaska Basin. The sun shown down warm upon me begging to break my sweet, late slumber. I heard my calling but I didn't quite know that I would be hiking one of my stellar kids 7 miles out of the wilderness to seek help for his head trauma. We both rose to the occasion. With so much snow still on the ground we lost our trail early on and with persistence found it again to walk out of the woods within 3 or so hours.


1 ambulance ride, 2 hospitals and a big, lifted white old man's van later, we are both safe and sound in Idaho Falls. My boy is fine and still shaking off the effects of a concussion. The rest of Team Paco is still in the Park and we will reunite with them on the 15th, maybe sooner.


This time in the back country has been so precious. So extreme. So untamed. We ran into so much snow on the first 2 days that we went off trail into lands so overgrown and treacherous that the kids called it Vietnam. We camped on a ridge they referred to as Narnia. We have found many a smooth rock to call Kitchen and built fires to rival any of Jack London's.


The sparks are flying. The legs are carrying. For now the dirt is washed away and I will welcome what surprises tomorrow brings. God bless the wild lands and the rugged hands.



HAVE YOU EVER
Brandi Carlile


Have you ever wandered lonely through the woods?
And everything there feels just as it should
You're part of the life there
You're part of something good
If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods
If you've ever wandered lonely through the woods

Have you ever stared into a starry sky?
Lying on your back you're asking why
What's the purpose I wonder who am I
If you've ever stared into a starry sky
Have you ever stared into a starry sky

Have you ever been out walking in the snow?
Tried to get back to where you were before
You always end up not knowing where to go
If you've ever been out walking in the snow
If you'd ever been out walking you would know

Saturday, July 4

BLACKOUT BILLIE.

Ah, she is no longer the girl she once was on that crazy freshman year of college. Or our 1st Fall in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. My Blackout, amazing girlfriend is now a woman intrigued by healthfoods, vampires and snow lepoards. She glows, habla espanol and sleeps in a silky kimono. She is right next to me and giving me rest in her warm, loving home before I rise in the morning to mother 6 incredibly lucky children for 16 days in the greater Yellowstone wilderness.

I am so overwhelmed with love upon return to my green, happy town. I long to embrace my community and reconnect with friends, but I will have to wait 2 weeks. This Teton Crest wilderness expedition sends shivers through my bones! It is a chance to share my passion for wildlife, natural beauty, simple living, community living with youth. It is an opportunity to unveil the secrets of the Earth and ourselves on trails overgrown with wildflowers, rivers spilling over with new rain and mountains breathing through the melted snow. I give thanks to Wilderness Ventures for calling me home to lead this trip. To share this blessed land I love and see it for the first time through new, twinkling eyes of our future. I cannot wait to meet the 6 highschool freshmen flying in tomorrow for backcountry, boating and belaying. The trip entails trailers, rations, latrine shovels and travelers checks- artistic* flare that the International trips lack and that I have lost no time celebrating.

As I drift fast away, I recal the Apurimac river. Watching burning meteors stream across the night sky, nesting upon the highest rock towering above the white water below and in the court of a jagged, mountain skyline. Eating "potatoes of the earth" on a golden, mountainside meadow before hanging from a parachute looping figure eights through the heavens of the Sacred Valley. I recal El Arbol and a seasoned fleet of diverse musicians creating song, one after the other, passing the limelight from guitar to drums to flutes to hangs and then relishing in free cake and chai tea. I remember the toothless smiles and cannot believe that in a blink of an eye I am in another world, only to carry the vigor and vivacity that is Peru wherever I go.

I remember Machu Picchu, dancing, learning hebrew (sababba) and strange fruits at market. I smile for those that will see these things in me and believe in local clinics, cafes that change lives, angels breaking falls because there I have had surgery, there I have seen the children and by their watch I have walked away... with renewed love for life.

Feeling exceptionally delirious and wishing all a Happy 4th of July.
Write soon from the Tetons in a couple of weeks.

Keep It Simple Stupid.



*Aaron "Blackass" Black, my co/leader asks, What is art? and Who is your favorite artist?
I told him, quite frankly, My mother.