A Renewing Reunion

Monday, March 12, Day Two at Taos, arrives crisp and clear, exactly the kind of morning that prompted some heart-happy mountain person to turn “bluebird” into an adjective. Yesterday was a behemoth of sunburned exhaustion and my body initially rebels at any thought of rolling off the air mattress and doing it again. But the mind, filled with dizzying ski dreams for the last eight hours, easily wins this battle. Coffee, ibuprofen, and eggs with red chile soon have me something close to refreshed, and as we wind up the cold canyon road to the Ski Valley, I'm irrepressibly giddy with anticipation.

Once we get off the lift, however, reality is more painful than peachy. Right off the bat, Sam – my partner in crime for the week – and his uncle Bill drag my sore and sunburned ass up into Taos' renowned hike-only terrain. The lift stops three-quarters of the way up, and if you want the mountain's steepest, most unique skiing, you must work for it. You must take your skis off, throw them over your shoulder, and trudge.

I've been skiing for about as long as I can remember, but this is something entirely new. From a tyke harnessed to my uncle on the hills of upstate New York to a middle school daredevil in Vermont to a mediocre high school racer, skiing had always been about the downhill. The speed, the rush, the risk.

During my college years, I spent summers as a backpacking guide in this same New Mexico high country, learning, as John Muir advised, to “climb the mountains and get their good tidings.” Contact with nature became a central, necessary part of my life, but skiing – done much less frequently now – was an entirely separate endeavor, a vestige of my younger self. I was becoming more Thoreauvian than thrill-seeking. My giant slalom Dynastars sat rusty-edged in the garage at home.

So even when Sam and I realized we shared the same Spring Break and agreed to spend it skiing, I could not have predicted this. I'm slogging up through bristlecone pine, yesterday's pain searing through my legs with each small ski-booted step, a world away from those have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too days of chairlift rides and bombing down the groomers at Okemo. Feeling like a shaggy, lumbering moose, I still manage to smile through gritted teeth as Sam gingerly waltzes ahead, deer-like in his lightweight backcountry boots.

The first climb is of course the worst, and we've soon surfaced onto the Kachina ridgeline. Yesterday morning was cloudy post-snow, but today we're greeted with the true Rocky Mountain wake-up call: brightest blue sky, snow-dappled peaks, deep evergreen groves stretched out in a visual smorgasbord that is really quite impossible to appreciate all at once. I look north and there are the Spanish Peaks of Southern Colorado, huge and timeless, present in a high-definition clarity of blue, gray, and white. Rising in the east is Wheeler Peak, New Mexico's tallest, towering over the Ski Valley like the steadiest of guardians. I stood on its 13,161-foot summit on the morning of my 21st birthday, but there's no room for nostalgia in my brain right now – the present is, quite literally, too breathtaking.

Yet past experience and emotions are inevitably a part of my time with this landscape, and when Philmont's own Baldy Mountain emerges through the Wheeler saddle, an irrepressible sense of homecoming arrives with it. Unlike yesterday, the entire ridge leading up to Kachina Peak is open for skiers and as we hike on, I hardly notice the lancing pain in my shins or the claymore-like skis digging into my shoulder. Sam has told me that for him skiing out here is as much about the ascent as the descent. It's a new concept for me, but it's suddenly ringing true. As we climb on, my buddy is still way ahead of me; now it's not just the altitude's physical effects, but its spiritual ones too that are causing me to tarry.

It's hard, maybe impossible, to put accurate words to the feelings I experience above treeline, but the ones that keep coming to mind are perspective and awe. Whatever creative force led to these mighty mountains pushing their way skyward and to my insignificant speck of a self being here, with intricate retinas and pupils capable of witnessing them; whatever master catalyst sparked the long, winding chain of events that led to such a moment – I have never felt more connected to that power than when I'm in a high place like this one. Daily concerns wash away in the presence of grand, overwhelming peace, and I feel miniscule yet mighty, fleeting yet full with praise.

Cosmic romances pouring through my mind, I hardly remember that I'm actually here to ski. But as we stop partway up the ridge at the precipice to one of the treacherous “K-chutes,” a whole new kind of flood enters my brain: it's time for my first real big mountain skiing. Below me is a ten-foot, nearly vertical drop preceding several hundred feet of descent that seem nearly as steep, then the frosting as the chute mellows into a beautiful powder field that extends down to the resort's topmost groomers.

I watch as Sam and Bill expertly drop in and link their first carving, poetic turns. There's a second of hesitation as I realize that in my decade and a half of skiing I've never done anything as bad-ass as this. I flash through memories of middle school wipe-outs, of a hellbent ninth-grader waiting for the start of my JV run down the icy, rutted course, then smile slightly as the old “fuck it” mentality takes over. I push my poles hard into the ground, plunge my body forward and drop into the vicious slope.

***

There will be many more hours of skiing on this trip. I'll immerse myself in beautiful, challenging glades, stopping to lean against an aspen in breathless satisfaction every now and then. We'll hike above treeline a few more times for shorter, still-exhilarating drops off the ridge. Later in the week, we'll spend two days exploring crusty, snow-starved Crested Butte Mountain with a couple of my Philmont buddies. The peaks of Colorado will tower before us, even more jagged and indomitable than New Mexico's, but none of the many highs will quite match that second morning at Taos. Simply put, it was one of the most vital shots of time I can remember, a barrage of physical, mental, and spiritual stimuli to which I can find no previous comparison. Because as sublime as that slow climb up the ridge was, the experience was only partial until the blurred rush of the descent: the joy of carving a hard turn in the soft snow then plummeting down into the next one, feeling the body find its synergistic balance in the struggle to control itself against the force of the mountain. On the top of the ridge, I stood speechless in the midst of vast and ancient beauty. At the bottom, my heart pounded with the thrill of having, for a few minutes, tapped into that indifferent yet generous power.

Just that morning, not to mention the rest of the trip, was enough to reignite my love for skiing with the kind of flames it had once possessed, back when my buddies and I would watch ski movies all night then sweat all day building a little jump in one of our backyards. But now there was an added layer to my boyhood hobby. This was a new, more mature skiing, a pleaser of both my contemplative and adrenaline-seeking sides. A wholly unexplored world had suddenly opened its doors, a world as broad, imposing, and irresistible as the Rockies themselves. All of a sudden I wanted Alta, Jackson Hole, Whistler. Alaska, for God's sake, and not just the resorts, but the backcountry too. I wanted miles and miles of snowy ridgelines to traverse and endless chutes and faces and powder lines. I wanted the sweaty trudge as much as the heart-stopping drop-in, for it was all part of this bold, uplifting adventure. I had thrown my old Dynastars in the car expecting a reunion with that familiar friend named Skiing, only to find him changed tenfold for the greater, beckoning me with fat new powder skis to demo and arms opened wider than ever.

It must have been a similar welcome that John Muir heard at the top of that Douglas Spruce as he swayed like a dandelion in the heart of a Yosemite squall. He put it simply and best: “the mountains are calling and I must go.”

So what was I to do, having heard that call louder than ever? When Muir discovered the Sierras, he stayed for good. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think once or twice about doing the same after this trip. But the world is changed. It's not 1868 and I'm not John Muir. Student loans, car payments, and a strange budding loyalty to this little place in Texas have sent me eastward after a week that contained a month's worth of adventure. And you know what? As sad as it was to leave the mountains in the rearview, I was okay with it. Okay with pausing my ski dreams after just an appetizer, okay with those snow-dusted peaks returning to their role as distant attraction. Because the truth is the best times are the fleeting ones, the ones you can't have whenever you want. We so often forget the beauty of something when it becomes everyday. Perhaps it's best to restrain oneself from some pleasures in order to preserve their purity. The mountains will still be there this summer. And next winter. And whenever I find a full-time job closer to them that's as fulfilling as this one. Until then, I'll smile at the thought of that perfect bluebird morning.

The Silver Bullet in its natural habitat. Crested Butte, CO.

Update from the Work Zone

It's a busy time around here. Spring has sprung and it's barely March: the trees are popping forth all manners of yellows, greens, and purples, and today we watched four alligators sun on the banks of Caney Creek. And oh yeah, our property looks less and less like a nature center and more and more like a construction site daily.

We've been removing dead trees from our woods ever since the historic drought last summer, a move that is rankling enough on its own, being hardly the healthy choice for the forest but a necessary one for the safety of our students. Now, however, the summer camp with whom we share our facility has upped the ante, deciding it necessary to raze a patch of Loblolly Pine and Yaupon so it can build four new cabins in one of our most trafficked areas. I now read my students The Lorax while bulldozers whine in the background. I teach them the importance of conservation to the tune of backhoes.

I'll spare you all the choicer phrases that often come to mind, but suffice it to say, I've been itching for changes of scenery. And the adventures haven't been lacking. Two weekends ago, I joined various Carleton friends in Baton Rouge for the annual Mardi Gras ultimate frisbee tournament. Torrential rain on Saturday made for a one-day tournament and a wetter weekend (in numerous ways). No frisbee today? Shucks, I guess we'll have to settle for the jolly Spanish Town parade in Baton Rouge, eating crawfish on the porches of locals, and stumbling into a diner for late-night seafood omelets. Don't worry, though, our team – The Sour Patch Adults – got in three good, muddy games on Sunday. Nothing kills a hangover like chasing down the plastic.

Not satisfied with one weekend full of wonderful friends and vivacious surroundings, however, I split for Austin last Friday with a trio of co-workers. It was my first trip to Texas' liberal oasis and it won't be my last. We landed on the grungy, hipster haven of East Sixth Street and each received two free beers within an hour (as if the place's economy cars and food truck forums weren't welcoming enough already). Saturday was spent climbing limestone at Reimer's Ranch Park, as I watched my more-experienced friends scale some of Texas' best routes and tried in vain to swindle someone into lending me a pair of Size 12 climbing shoes. Newbie status and all, the day was a total blast. I even made it up a few of the easier climbs in my Chacos before topping it off with Fat Tire and a cheery fire at the nearby public campground. In the dry air of the gorgeous Texas Hill Country, the backhoes seemed far more than 200 miles away that night.

After two truly excellent weekends, you might think it would be time to settle down for a nice stretch of lazy times in good ol' Trinity. False! As long as they keep tearing up my woods during the week, I will seek greener pastures at week's end! Today's paddling/gator-watching escape was a smaller one, but still exciting. A week from now, however, 2012's biggest adventure yet commences. It's Spring Break, baby! While some might equate that last exclamation with words like bikinis, margaritas, and preseason baseball (at least the last one is true for me), this year my winter-starved self will be symbolically turning back the seasonal clock and heading for the high country: northern New Mexico, Colorado, and my dust-covered pair of skis. Friends from numerous chapters of my life await in the Rockies and I couldn't be more excited to hop in the Silver Bullet a week from now and take it into the Mountain Time Zone for the first time. I even have a special stop planned for a certain Ranch in Cimarron, where I intend to sign and submit my contract for a fifth summer of paradisaical servitude to the Boy Scouts of America.

That's right folks, I'll be heading back to Philmont once again this summer, and with that just one of the happy prospects ahead, it seems appropriate to shift focus to the question I'm sure you've all had burning away since you started reading this post: what's up with the new blog title? Well, it does indeed extend back to that special place in the Land of Enchantment, the place where I first grew enchanted with the writings of one Edward Paul Abbey. For more, I direct you to the archives of my C-drive and the following essay which I wrote for Dennis Cass' creative nonfiction class last spring. Warning: a story of youth baseball, Age of Empires, and lots of middle school angst awaits. Read on at your own risk.

Ed and Me: The Multi-worldy Life

It's late November of 2010 and I'm sitting on a railing at Bradley International Airport in Connecticut waiting for a suitcase that will not arrive. After a spring spent in London, a summer in New Mexico and a fall in Minnesota, I'm finally coming home to New England for the holidays. I will find out soon that Delta lost my bag somewhere between Minneapolis, Washington, and Hartford and I'll have to live out of my backpack for a few days until they can ship it to me (oh the horrors!). Right now, however, as I hammer away at my journal, my waylaid sweaters are far from what's on my mind.

On my flight from DC to Bradley, diligently reading for my senior thesis, I finished a chapter of Edward Abbey's The Journey Home in time to catch New York City out the window, a stunning patchwork of lights in the black night. We were high enough to see the overhead view of Earth usually relegated to maps. An amazing perspective. Amazing that something so beautiful could be so unnatural. But only from above. On ground level, Manhattan's a maze of aluminum, concrete, pollution. Yet there's a different kind of beauty at play there – the same found in the thick accents and creased leather faces of the O'Briens in Boston, in the warm smiles of the Olsons in Minnesota who you don't even know. Ah, life, you always find a way to leave me hopeful.

Thinking about Abbey – the iconoclastic nature-writer and environmental figurehead whom I've chosen to study for the next four months – I miss the mountains of my beloved northern New Mexico. Brightest New Mexico, as Ed calls it. Cool evening breeze with ground still warm and smell of ponderosa pine filling my nostrils. Cholla and aspen and Indian paintbrush dazzling the eyes. But I miss London, too. The organized chaos of Bloomsbury Square during a sunny lunch hour. The pigeon lady in Russell Square Gardens undaunted by joggers and tourists. The walk to Sainsbury's to pick up bananas and yogurt after class. It's just like Abbey said before leaving his home in the desert for another one in the grime of Hoboken: “Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.” I feel you, Ed. I wish you were still alive – we could have a beer together and talk about fire ecology and women and what a beautiful gift life is every day.

***

I didn't realize it until recently, but I've been doing my best to live Ed Abbey's philosophy of balance for as long as I can remember. I have a hard time confining myself to one world, whether it's the world of the dedicated athlete, the A student, or the lonely artist. Places, roles, sometimes relationships I'm afraid – I've always struggled against tying myself down to one thing in particular. I guess you could say I'm committed to multidimensionality.

I return for a minute to eighth grade. It's the typical lunchtime mayhem of a middle school cafeteria: jocks spoon-catapulting carrots at nerds, skaters conferencing in hushed tones about their latest sexual escapades, mashed potatoes stuck to the ceiling against their will. I'm waiting in line for my chicken nuggets – five-foot-three, mouth full of braces, struggling with the early phases of puberty that have finally started to arrive. Towering ahead of me is Dan Morris, who hit his growth spurt in sixth grade, now stands six feet tall and plays baseball like the man I wish was.

Dan and I were best friends through most of elementary school. We lived a ten-minute walk through the woods from one another, played baseball with and against each other every spring and summer, and shared a love for everything from sharks to Space Jam to, of course, the Boston Red Sox. For our sixth-grade talent show, we performed “Who's On First” and were the talk of Crocker Farm Elementary School for a few glorious days.

That was before the maelstrom of middle school. Before they put Dan and the rest of my sports-loving pals from Crocker on one “team” (think Hogwarts houses) and me on another one with all of the students who were in band and took Latin like I did. Dan became a six-foot tall alpha male; I stayed at the back of the pack with the awkward, mangy scrap-seekers.

Back in the lunch line, Dan and Ahmed, another former friend, are talking about yesterday's Babe Ruth League baseball game. My team had played theirs, Dan had probably tattooed a ball into the kiddie pool over the left field fence, and I had made a soul-crushing error at a key moment. At some point in their conversation, Dan makes a quip and Ahmed responds in an intentionally-raised voice, “More like under the second baseman's glove!” I flush maroon, look at my sneakers, and don't challenge their ringing laughter.

What's funny about the whole thing is that I could probably have been on the other side of the situation if I'd wanted to. If I'd taken Spanish instead of Latin, if I'd started going to parties on Friday nights instead of watching movies with my parents, if I'd gone against my humble upbringing and become an over-confident, status-obsessed asshole I could have been the one bloating my ego by attacking what remained of another's.

Instead, I tried to do it all because, well, I loved it all. I had a blast playing the bass clarinet and going to Latin Club, but I kept playing baseball too, letting the Dan Morrises of the team bask in their adolescent glory while I took my knocks on the bench. The logical choice would have been quitting, going the route of cross country and ultimate frisbee like most of my new friends, but nobody told me the rules so I kept playing the game I loved even though it did its best not to love me back.

***

Edward Abbey grew up in a different place and time than I, but we were both living in multiple worlds from a young age. Young Ned Abbey – he dropped the “N” from his nickname later – was a fish out of water in his rural 1930s Pennsylvania school, thinking and writing on a different plane from his peers. His escape from the isolation this intelligence created: his brothers, backyard games of baseball, and the woods of their Allegheny Mountain home. Sounds familiar.

I too sought refuge on the homefront, leaving the wolf pack behind for the refuge of my house and yard at the base of Western Massachusetts' more modest Holyoke Range. I forgot lunchroom drama in the hours of shenanigans spent with my two older brothers – although we enjoyed some diversions the Abbeys couldn't have, wasting away in front of the computer screen conquering the world in Age of Empires (Abbey, meanwhile, famously posed for a photo later in life after shooting his television with a Winchester). Yet for both of us family was an early constant, an alternate world to the confusion of the public schools. So too was nature. With my family and my scout troop, I roamed Appalachian hillsides, crunching over the same brown leaves, weaving through the same birches and pines Ned had 60 years before. Aldo Leopold wrote in A Sand County Almanac, “I am glad I shall never be young without wild country to be young in.” I'm pretty sure Ed and I would fall in the same camp of grown-up woods-kids.

Of course, it wasn't until after my Holyoke Range days that I discovered my affinity with Abbey, but I've now realized that his mantra has been the repeated soundtrack to my life. Since the days of T-Ball and Youth Choir, I've been trying to make the best of multiple worlds without losing my mind or too much sleep. Often I've suffered the consequences of a divided self just as Abbey did when dreading the transition from desert solitude to urban squalor. There are stories of high school chorus concerts which I raced to from the end of a JV game, not stopping to shower between jersey and dress shirt and tie. Or the summer when I skipped Boy Scout camp to ride the bench for the 12-year old All-Star team because I was so excited just to have made the cut. My parents stood behind me, driving me from practice to rehearsal to troop meeting, our Honda Odyssey racking up miles as I racked up merit badges and minutes spent in the dugout.

***

It ended up being another decision between Boy Scouts and baseball that unquestionably changed my life more than any other choice I've made. It's freshman year of college, I'm buried at the bottom of the depth chart for the Carleton baseball team but I've embraced the life of the college athlete and become as close to one-dimensional as I've ever been. When I was the last one rejected by the a cappella group I really wanted to join, I dove headfirst into the Carleton baseball life, eating with my teammates, partying with my teammates, complaining about the nerdy student body with my teammates. I should have known right away that it wasn't me, but I was too swept up in the trip.

The decision was made in late winter, after I'd been named one of three players not to be taken on the spring break team to Florida. I'd been waffling between playing baseball for the summer back home in an effort to actually earn some playing time for Carleton and working at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico, Scouting's National High Adventure Base. I'd wanted to be a Philmont Ranger ever since I went to the Ranch as a participant twice during high school, but my recent conversion to full-time ballplayer had me doubting myself. Fortunately, when I needed it most, my parents were there to parent me in the right direction through their cell phones.

I remember the conversation more than many things from freshman year. Me sitting in the floor lounge, trying to explain my new self over the phone, and my mom and dad not buying it one bit.

“You've given so much to baseball for so long,” my mom said for the umpteenth time. “But what has it given you back?”

“Remember how you felt after you got back from Philmont two years ago?” asked my dad. “You know which decision is the right one.”

Ultimately, with their help, I did. I chose Philmont and have never looked back. Working as a backpacking guide for youth has since shaped me more than any other experience of my life, and it started by waking me up to the undesirable reality of the predictable jock I was becoming. After a sublime first summer at Philmont, I stuck it out for one more year on the baseball team – although the people I was spending my weekends with changed significantly – then junior year I took the next step, quitting the team in favor of club ultimate frisbee, making it into the a cappella group this time around, and even spending a term living in the Outing Club's interest house, adoring the kind of culture at which I was determined to scoff two years before.

Philmont did something else, too – it introduced me to Edward Abbey. A favorite inspirational quote of many Rangers comes from a speech of Ed's in which he tells environmentalists, “it's not enough to fight for the land; it's even more important to enjoy it while you can.” Spurred by this and other nuggets of wilderness wisdom, I returned to Carleton and wound up in a course on American Nature Writing where I read Thoreau, Muir, Leopold, and most importantly, Abbey's Desert Solitaire. I was hooked, and when it came time to find a topic for my senior thesis, the search did not take very long. Fittingly, the decision to work at Philmont and break out of the jock world indirectly led me to the author who has now brought me great insight on such choices.

So for the latter portion of college I've been back to making the best of both worlds like I did in high school. I still run from practice to rehearsal. I split my weekend nights between beer pong tournaments and campfire singalongs. I maintain some of the best friendships from my baseball days, but others have faded. And while I'm saddened knowing there are far more wonderful people out there whose company I desire than I have waking hours for, I sleep easy knowing that I'm living my life the way I love, many worlds at a time. What's more, I know I'm not the only one to go for this crazily multidimensional life. I know that decades before I came around, a bearded Ranger-type was reflecting on the same things I write about today.

Now I must look forward, with graduation looming like a mountain that's long been in view but has finally come into focus. I may not have another opportunity to split myself between a million different clubs, groups, and teams but I know I will remain committed to well-roundedness. Perhaps, like Ed, I'll go from summer in the mountains to winter in the city. If I'm lucky maybe I'll even write a bestselling book or two about it. So while I have no intention of copying Abbey in every facet of life – I'd prefer not to tear through five marriages if possible – his life and his words will continue to guide me along my sure-to-be windy trail. And with his blessing, I plan on stopping to enjoy the view as often as I can.

Love, Hate and the OEC

We had planned the two-day backpacking trip the weekend before, but little did we know how much we'd need “the tonic of wilderness,” as Thoreau called it. I had picked out the quote the morning before, but little did I know the levels on which it would apply. I had watched my friend's speech the previous night, but little did I know how strongly it would resonate.

I hadn't connected the unrelated signs, but after the most challenging and at times hellish week we've experienced this school year at the Outdoor Education Center, they now seem to have been three serious omens.

I suppose this presents as good a time as any to elaborate briefly on the nature of my job for those of you who say “Outdoor Education Center? What exactly does that mean?” Each week, 200-250 fifth-graders from the Houston Independent School District make the two-hour drive north and east from America's fourth-largest city to our remote campus near the remote town of Trinity. From midday on Tuesday through midday on Friday I lead two groups of students. During the mornings and afternoons it's a coed group of 10-14 which I instruct in our five three-hour class blocks (Adventure, Aquatics, Conservation, Farm, and Forest Study); over mealtimes, evenings, and overnights I supervise a boys' cabin of the same size.

Last week, we welcomed students from Oak Forest and Longfellow elementary schools. As our staff's resident English major and de facto librarian, I present some kind of motivational and/or random quote at our morning meeting before student arrival. I usually try to put some effort into choosing said literary nugget, hoping perhaps naively that resonant words might give a few co-workers a lift, but last Monday I had been too distracted with finishing one book (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, finally) and starting another (Chad Harbach's fantastic new baseball novel, The Art of Fielding) to peruse the internet for the next morning's quote. At the last minute, recalling the name of one of the visiting schools and the dire weather forecast, I googled Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and settled on his simple but fitting words: “The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.”

I introduced the quote to my co-workers as appropriate both literally (severe thunderstorms were projected for the next 48 hours) and metaphorically (with two staff members departing for new jobs this month, a small deluge of change is currently engulfing our little OEC bubble). There would be a third kind of downpour this week, however, one that I could not have predicted when choosing Longfellow's words. Or perhaps an outpour would be the more appropriate term, for it was a week full of fifth-grade emotions and behaviors I could not have fathomed before they arrived on seven yellow school buses. Outright racism from students, the worst bullying I'd seen all year, and a fistfight in front of the entire camp were probably the most torrential bursts of the week, but it seemed like nearly every teacher had more than his or her fair share of trying moments. Add in a tornado warning that lasted most of Wednesday morning, confining everyone to the oh-so-spacious floors of our concrete bathhouses and there's your recipe for a memorable tempest of a week at the Outdoor Education Center.

My particular cabin group was not exempt, which brings me to the second of the three omens. My brilliant friend Tim graduated from Harvard last spring and gave a commencement address called “Love, Hate and Harvard.” I finally found it on YouTube on Monday night, and his words set the tone for a week in which those two most intense emotions dominated my cabin. When my eleven rowdy students weren't chasing each other all over camp or nearly coming to blows over whose t-shirt was whose, they had their arms around each other and smiles on their faces like a pack of bros teetering home from a frat party.

One particular bungling, Caliban-like student, suffering from severe but non-medicated ADHD, began the week as the laughingstock of the cabin. Despite my numerous remonstrations on the importance of respect, the bullying commenced whenever my back was turned, and knowing nothing different, the target soaked in the attention and played along with the mockeries. Yet something changed ever-so-slightly by the end of the week. Perhaps because he never fought back physically and kept on smiling, the bullies began to accept their idiosyncratic cabinmate. They stopped laughing at him and starting laughing with him, finding a space for him as the good-natured goofball of the pack who just happened to speak and act a little differently from the rest of them. The turning point came during the performance of the cabin skit, when our awkward friend starred in front of the whole camp in his self-volunteered role as “The Ugliest Man in the World.” Afterward, back at the cabin, one of the ringleaders, clad in his fresh Nikes and flat-brimmed ballcap, told his former victim, “I'm gonna miss you the most when we leave tomorrow.” Hate had turned to a quirky kind of love and all of a sudden, the doubled effort that the week had required seemed deeply worthwhile.

Even so, it was with great relief that two co-workers and I headed to the woods for the weekend. Hiking the first 23 of East Texas' hundred-mile Lone Star Trail, we let our ears heal from a week full of shouting 11-year olds with the quiet of the wild. And while it wasn't much of a wilderness trip – we saw a grand total of zero non-domestic quadrupeds as most of our time was spent trekking through previously clear-cut forests now inhabited only by the fast-growing loblolly pine – the simplicity of trail life served as a perfect Thoreauvian tonic after a manic week.

***

That week and its omens are long gone now, another having come and passed since I wrote most of the above words. This one featured a much calmer cabin and no tornado warnings, yet there were still plenty of wonderful plot-lines running through the four days. A rambunctious girl in my class, for example, began the week flipping off boys and doing anything to look older than eleven; by Friday, she was belting out camp songs and telling her cabin teacher how cool the nerdy girl in their group really was, declaring honestly that she had changed this week.

Of course, the tragedy of it all is that my co-workers and I will probably never know if her claim holds true. We see our students for four days and carry the lofty goal of sparking lifetimes of stewardship and tolerance (at least the idealists like I do). We don't know if they will actually stop bullying each other and start turning off the lights when they leave a room. Optimism, I suppose, is a prerequisite.

As one of our coordinators put it, “every Tuesday is the first day of school.” When that means a frenzied week is over and a new one has arrived, you love it. When it means you'll never see that amazing kid again who begged to hide in your backpack so he didn't have to leave, you hate it.

Still, it's hard to complain when I realize I'm being paid to spend time outdoors with kids. And the handful of students for whom I might really make a difference: that's like the dazzling vista after a hike that was already rewarding on its own. Even if a tempest or two passed through along the way.

In Memory of Tim Tebow's 2011 Denver Broncos

I wish I could resist chiming in on this Tebowmania business, but I can't. Not after seeing him garner the lead story on not only ESPN's, but also the New York Times' website this week. All in anticipation of a season-ending drubbing that everyone who knows football easily predicted. As I watch in my Tom Brady jersey a thousand and a half miles from New England, I can't help but take a great deal of pleasure in my hometown boys beating up on America's Most Popular Athlete (according to an ESPN poll) for the second time this season.

We're all getting a little carried away with the Tebow mystique. His David Ortiz-like knack for late-game heroics is undeniably compelling, and I honestly appreciate that such a wholesome, selfless guy has drawn some of the spotlight away from the poor role models that litter professional sports. But this “Mile-High Messiah” talk is what drives me nuts. It's one thing for religion to mix with sports on an individual level. Ballplayers are constantly pointing skyward after a home run trot, and in Tebow's case, his faith-based composure surely helps him overcome those fourth-quarter deficits. It's another to talk of divine intervention in football games or a 24-year old who happens to be very pious and pretty good at his job converting the masses. Tebow's spirituality, like the rest of ours, should be a personal matter, not a magnet for cameramen and nosy reporters (was there anything more sickening than the footage of Tebow performing his now-iconic knee-drop after last week's winning touchdown only to have an overweight cameraman scurry up and shove a huge lens within inches of his face?).

The problem is that Tebow, humble as he is, doesn't seem to want any privacy. It's hard to imagine that his version of God demands instant midfield groveling after a score or Bible verses on one's eye-black. And the John 3:16 ad which Tebow-supported Evangelical group Focus on Family unveiled to the national viewing audience tonight was more than a little sanctimonious. If he's such a good guy, shouldn't he respect our right to make our own spiritual choices rather than using his celebrity as a preaching platform? I admire the charity he performs, devoting great portions of his time to visiting the downtrodden, but let's not forget that there are countless others, both Christian and non, performing extraordinary good deeds every day. Being a playoff quarterback doesn't qualify you for sainthood last time I checked.

But now, thanks to the brutal efficiency of Belichick, Brady, & Co., our beloved Timothy won't take the field again until autumn, and his throngs of worshipers will have some time to cool off. Now, hopefully, we can get back to watching sports for the reasons we always have: for the poetry of great games (this post should really be about the instant classic between the Saints and Niners that preceded The Brady Show), and for the connections that it fosters to the people with whom we cheer and the places from which we hail.

Those are the bonds you'd find me praising in a postgame interview.

Keeping Texas Wild

Texas certainly has its redeeming moments. For every gurgling F-150 on a five-lane freeway, there seems to be an occasion like last night's, which found me sitting at the point just after sunset.

Savoring my first moments of solitude after the week's busy return to teaching, I am the lone human spectator at Lake Livingston's daily festival of dusktime beauty. A great blue heron flaps casually by. How long did it take, I wonder, to find that perfect height for flight, with wingtips stopping just millimeters above the glassy surface, giving the eyes the best possible look at what's beneath? A low, ringing croak, a rush of water on spindly feet, and it is now a rigid stalk in the shallows. Prey will not be hard for it to find. Despite the current cold spell (it might dip into the twenties tonight – gasp!), the fish are jumping like midsummer, questing with a splash for their own meals. Meanwhile, above my head comes a surprising hiss of air as a squadron of coots b-lines towards destination unknown. Marvelous sounds. There are dogs barking and trucks' muffled roars from across the lake, but for now, the choruses human and non-human strike a peaceful balance.

It's hard to imagine anything but peace prevailing in this moment, with the eyes treated to comparable wonders as the ears. The Western horizon soft and orange as a ripe peach, its light painted across the mirror of water before fading to violet and blue-black in the East. Jupiter and Venus are already standing proudly in the cooling sky, portending the kind of clear, winter night that makes Minnesotans smile and Texans gawk.

The planetary reflections bring Thoreau to mind, and Professor Mike Kowalewski, whose favorite moment of Walden came on a night like this one. Fishing under a blanket of stars, the transcendentalist loses the boundary between sky and water, starlight and reflection, descending into the depths of his own mind, “haunted by waters,” as Norman Maclean would later write in A River Runs Through It.

Myself, I'm just content soaking in the beauty around me. Of course, it's a one-sided view I'm taking tonight. I'm allowing myself a few minutes in that “sunset raving” trap that nature writers shun like a poison these days. But why not? There's a pyre-like brushfire blazing a few hundred yards away, burning the piney corpses of the summer's historic drought. There's that roar of trucks across the lake reminding me this is no wilderness. Why not celebrate the waning beauty that's still in front of me?

Water often seems to inspire optimism, especially now that the drought has passed and Lake Livingston is filling back up. After all, it's a lot harder to clearcut a lake for a stripmall than a forest. And while there is no real, protected wilderness at hand, its scrappy cousin, wildness, is filling my nostrils with vigor.

It's official: if I get Texas plates on my car, I'll pay the extra $30 to Parks & Wildlife for the ones that bear a Horned Lizard and the words “Keep Texas Wild.” I can't think of a more important phrase to take with me through this rugged and resilient place.

I'd be honored for the Silver Bullet to wear this plate.

Be Here Now: More than Just a Great Song

"Be here now, no other place to be.
This whole world keeps changing, come change with me.
Everything that’s happened, all that’s yet to come
Is here inside this moment, it’s the only one."

-- Mason Jennings, "Be Here Now"

Where to begin? The time from my grandfather's unexpected death until now was a nonstop torrent. Exhausting in many ways, it has finally subsided and left me back home in Amherst on Friday night, with a hot fire in the woodstove, a dog and cat for company. Drinking a beer and listening to Bon Iver while my microwave lasagna cools, I'm pretty damn content with this peaceful, albeit hermit-like, occasion.

David Gessner writes that transcendent moments are often aided by beer. I would add great music to the list as well. So here goes some kind of attempt to find truth in my recent reality.

On our hike through the woods yesterday, Dorri (the two-year old golden retriever who occupies my parents' empty nest with more energy than my brothers and I ever combined for) and I came upon a big oak tree that had been chewed completely through its base by beavers. A beautiful wooden hourglass with a sizable carpet of chips beneath, it was the kind of precise effort any craftsman would admire. Yet it was all for naught. Early in its fall earthward – it would have been majestic – the great tree lodged against one of its forest cousins and never completed its descent. It remains stuck up there, its crown crookedly intruding on the neighbor's, waiting for some exceptional gust to send it crashing home.

Do you think the beavers were upset? All that work – imagine the toothaches – and no reward? It's tempting to picture the squat rodents gnashing incisors and slapping flat tails in frustration. Wikipedia even tells me there was an animated Nickelodeon show called “The Angry Beavers” that probably illustrated such imaginings (see what I missed out on growing up without cable?). But reality is not a Saturday morning cartoon set in Wayouttatown, Oregon. No, the beavers probably faced only momentary confusion at the abnormal result of their felling process before moving mechanically on to the next tree, the next lodge, the next dam.

If only it could sometimes be the same with people.

Annie Dillard tells a magnificent story in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek of a certain transcendent moment (no beer or music involved) that she stumbled upon outside of a gas station in Appalachia. Smelling her hot coffee, patting a stranger's puppy behind the ears, and watching a mountain sunset, the author is consumed by the sensory present. But, she writes,

the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I've lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him.

For the nonhuman world, the present is the only concern. I think of a line from the rapper Atmosphere: “So now I keep a close eye on my pets / because they make most of their moves off of instinct and sense.” Imagine it: a life ruled by the senses. Pure experience of present moment, undiluted by excessive thought. The smell of woodsmoke. The taste of beer. The sound of guitar and harmonized voices. The fierce orange of burning coals. Nothing else.

I should clarify. I'm not saying we'd be better off living like all of Earth's other animals. I'm not saying we should reject our beautiful, analyzing, contextualizing brains in favor of primitivism. But there's a whole lot to be said for not over-analyzing, not over-contextualizing our experiences.

Reflecting on the puppy-mountain moment, Dillard writes, “Consciousness itself does not hinder living in the preset. In fact, it is only to a heightened awareness that the great door to the present opens at all.” Indeed, here on the couch, if I do not elevate my focus, I ignore the taste of the beer and the impossible brightness of the coals. The dissatisfaction, however, comes when I start thinking about myself doing these things instead of just doing them (Nike had a lot behind its “Just Do It” slogan, ya know), when I start picturing myself sitting here on a Friday night, unkempt and alone, start imagining alternatives to this reality (Matt at some crazy party, Matt on a date with a pretty girl, Matt anywhere but here). “Self-consciousness, however,” writes Dillard, “does hinder the experience of the present.” It's the over-thinking that kills, the “looking over my own shoulder,” as she calls it.

The same hike that found the beaver tree produced another example of beautiful simplicity when Dorri stumbled upon a Common Water Snake hidden in the leaves along the bank of Plum Brook. She stood erect, tense as a bowstring, as the black reptile bunched itself up and commenced a mesmerizing, twisting dance toward the water, gliding away from the dog while never taking its eyes off of her. Even I, a few yards removed from the scene, was momentarily entranced by its ancient energy. Of course, once the snake was out of sight, it was also out of mind for Dorri, as she hurtled away after a new olfactory intrigue. And although I replayed the episode in my head a few times (as I'm doing now), it wasn't long before I too returned to the forest in front of me, to the deep dark green of the pines and spruces, the grays of the leafless beeches and maples, the moist air and the indifferent slate of December sky. Back in my native woods, I was gladly complete in the moment.

***

It has been pretty easy to maintain such present-mindedness doing the kinds of things I've been doing lately. Two weeks ago tonight, I was on my way to Tucson, Arizona for a few days of ultimate frisbee and great fun. Team Train Wreck, clad in varying degrees of conductor outfits, was a ragtag bunch of players who either hailed from Santa Fe or, like me and a few other Carleton friends, were convinced to make the trip to Tucson by our unflinchingly upbeat captain, Sam. When we weren't playing bluegrass in between games, we played hard and competed admirably on the field, going 3-3 on the weekend and reaching the semifinals of the “Fun Bracket.” After spending all fall desperately beseeching and rarely convincing my co-workers to play ultimate with me in Texas, I can't tell you how wonderful it was to simply participate in a real tournament again. That feeling after four draining games on Saturday, the one where your entire body rebels at any movement whatsoever yet you find yourself waking up on Sunday to pop some ibuprofen and take the field again? Yeah, can't beat it.

We also happened to be there for probably the only rainy weekend Tucson will see for the next year. As a result, Saturday's games were moved an hour north to drier fields in Tempe. At the end of the day, this shift in location led to the wildest twist of the weekend when Drew's car broke down with all five members of the Carleton contingent inside it shortly after leaving the fields. Closer inspection on Sunday revealed a break in the exhaust pipe that we could have driven back to Tucson with, but we were exhausted and the rain had just arrived in Tempe, so we decided to utilize all 100 miles of free towing that AAA had given Drew. Thankfully, the truck that picked us up was enormous (how often am I thankful for enormous trucks?), with plenty of room for four cozy Carls behind our soft-spoken driver, Gilbert, and me riding shotgun.

The ride down to Tucson became an instance of present-mindedness turning a lemon into wonderful lemonade. Once we concluded that Gilbert was not going to provide much in the way of talk, the rest of us quickly returned to reunion mode. I found myself deep in conversation with Sam, the two of us detailing everything from our romantic lives to winter ski plans as we held one of those talks that reminds you why you make the effort to see good friends who live far away. I felt a little like Kerouac, riding some extraordinary automobile through the deep American night, talking about deep things.

Before long we were back in Tucson, cleaned up, and heading to a tournament party full of delicious beer and awkward dancing, but it was that completely unpredicted tow-truck ride that I'll cherish most from the evening. Had we let self-consciousness enter the picture, had we thought about how ridiculous a thing it was – five of us crammed into the cab in damp, smelly overalls and conductor hats – we probably would have silently shifted in our seats all the way back to Tucson. Instead, we embraced the bizarre present and forgot about most everything except our conversations and the joy of being together as friends, creating an experience that still seems too absurd and too great to have been true.

***

The time in Tucson wasn't the only intensely present episode from recent weeks. I could go into depth about the many moments at work when I find my mind and heart entirely devoted to the fifth-graders in front of me, whether I'm watching one complete a close-up illustration of a pine cone, stand slack-jawed under a star-strewn sky, or fiercely stick up for a handicapped cabinmate who'd been a stranger 48 hours prior. I could also spew about the unprecedented, heartfelt connections I made with many relatives surrounding Gramp's memorial service this week, about how a gathering to celebrate 91 years of past life became a greatly meaningful present for me and many others because we weren't just mourning the man who wasn't there anymore but were celebrating the goodness that we found alive and radiating in one another. I could go on and on, but I won't. Three paragraphs about a ride through Arizona in a tow-truck was probably more than enough.

The point is this: when you spend most of your time fully engaged with the things and the people around you, the unmeasurable beauty of life can't help but soar into omnipresence.

So what am I saying? That we should ignore past and future entirely and never let our minds spiral at will? Of course not. This largely retrospective blog, for one, wouldn't exist with such an approach. Unceasing present-mindedness is the business of Zen masters and an unrealistic expectation for most of us. If we want to live within the demands of our society, there are times when we must take our eyes away from here and now and look ahead to then. So too, there are countless cases when recalling the past makes us wiser, safer, happier in the present. Yet so often we go too far. So often we over-analyze ourselves and recapitulate unnecessarily. We must choose our battles, striving only to distract ourselves with the thoughts that truly make us better. Then we can spend the great bulk of our lives embracing the dear present, and when the next watersnake or puppy or tow-truck ride comes along, we will drink it clean with eyes wide as children.

Memories of Gramp

Last night my 91-year old grandfather died after a fall on Thanksgiving left him with substantial brain damage and injuries to an already weakening body. He was a proud and strong man who never desired a compromised mental existence at the end of his life and when it became clear that he would not recover to a place of dignity, the decision to take him off life support was a unified one for my family.

The night of his fall will remain clear in my mind for a very long time. We had just finished our traditional late Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunt and Uncle's home and were lounging around in lazy, tryptophany conversation. Earlier in the evening, I'd had the chance to catch up with both Gram and Gramp, explaining my job to them and thanking them for their graduation present of financial help with my new car. It had been most of a year since I'd seen them, and it was plain to see that Gramp, especially, was in rougher shape than I remembered. Much of his hearing was gone and his short-term memory starting to falter, a reality that I knew infuriated him. Our last conversation was a confused one, as he attempted to ask me over the voices of others what my plans were for going back to school. “I imagine you'll want to return soon to academia,” he told me. It might be a few years later than he'd hoped, but when I revisit the idea of grad school in the not-too-distant future, I know I'll remember Gramp's final words to me as a motivator.

The aftermath of the fall itself was probably the most cinematic thing that I've ever experienced. One of those caught-in-the-moment times after which you struggle to believe that such a sequence truly occurred. There we were, carelessly sprawled across couches when my cousin Geof's shouts rang up from the basement like something out of a dream. With my brother in the first-floor bathroom, Gramp had tried to walk down the stairs to relieve himself. But something horrible occurred within his 91-year old body just before he reached the bottom, something that caused him to faceplant on the carpeted cement floor with no apparent attempt or ability to break his fall. Several minutes later, Geof, who'd been out walking his dog, decided so thankfully to come in through the basement door where he found the scene that I would unforgettably witness moments later: our grandfather, our ever-steady grandfather prone and unconscious on the white carpet with a platter-sized pool of blood issued from his broken face.

The ensuing blur of paramedics, Gram upstairs surrounded by family, and the awful wait for news needs no elaboration. What I will vividly remember is the basic need to be doing something that felt useful, to be in action and not thinking about the reality of what had just occurred. Now, however, one week later, with the outcome of that night realized, the truth is setting in. The truth that I will never see Gramp's crinkled face again, hug his weathered, bony shoulders, listen to one of his bad jokes or old farm stories. And in grief, I have remembered just what a remarkable man my grandfather was.

Harry Hart was a quintessential member of his golden generation. He grew up rural in North Rush, N.Y., but as the son of one of the little town's most respected farmers and a dedicated schoolteacher (that's my great-grandmother Martha, or Mattie, after whom I'm partially named), he was educated well along with a childhood of feeding pigs and baseball games with his older siblings. Leaving the farm, he attended the University of Rochester, where he studied engineering. I'll never forget, however, his story from an introductory literature class of a renowned professor striding in on the first day of the semester, leaning back in his chair, lighting a pipe, and whipping off a one-period summary of the English language. It must have been experiences like this that gave Gramp his adroit way with words. Up until the end, he was an eloquent man and a prolific purveyor of dry humor, both traits to which I, of course, aspire.

It was also at the U of R that he won the heart of Jean Lincoln and made her his high-class bride. The rest is the stuff of classic American iconography: the young couple moved to the city, started a family, Gramp became an engineer and rose in the postwar boom, moving the Harts to the suburbs and making a living in the budding global market of the mid-century. Selling the machinery for auto plants in Japan, he explored a far larger world than that of his rural ancestors and gave his family a life of middle-class baby-boom comfort. He traveled the continents, often with Gram alongside, and the home at 8 Greenridge Road, Pittsford became an embassy for businessmen from the Far East and beyond. His livelihood helped give Dad and my uncles the chance to fulfill their own ambitions, to raise loving families, to live in relative ease. In turn, Dad's career has done much to pass those opportunities down to my brothers and me, and I am endlessly grateful both for my father and for the man who helped raise him honest, hard-working, and humble.

Yet for all his rise into modern 20th-century life, Gramp never forgot his rural foundation. Though he settled in the suburbs, he gardened and fished avidly, keeping contact with the land even though he'd chosen not to stay on the family farm (as the youngest son, the family's abnormal succession tradition would have passed it to him). He was in many ways a cosmopolitan man, but he was never too good to get his hands dirty. And when my brothers and I came along, he was never too busy to take us out to cast for perch or pull up carrots, finding the same pride in these simple things as in showing us his photos of Egypt or Korea. After the Saturday opera, he'd talk baseball with me. His knowledge of wines matched his knowledge of bird species. And I wonder where I get my jack-of-all-trades tendencies from? They're from the huge old willow by the pond and the Audubon paintings on the walls. From the zucchinis in the garden and the home-canned peaches in the cellar. From Gramp's creased face and strong back – deep roots of an enduring family tree.

With Gram and Gramp at my HS Graduation, June 2007