The actual outdoors

Moving back to Utah has been good for me. I had forgotten about being outside, and how much love I had for the mountains and trees and sunrises and sunsets. 

My love for the outdoors began when I spent a summer in Alaska. It was a good granola time, a time in which I slept outside, played outside, woke up with the sun (or mosquitos), and never bothered with bug spray. I came back realizing that I needed to move on with my life, but still wanted to keep a bit of the outdoors. I joined Alternative Spring Break, which took advantage of my spring break to go and do service somewhere. There were social service trips, and environmental trips, and so I opted for a week spent outdoors. It was nowhere near the kind of immersion experience of Alaska, but it was a good substitute.

I vaguely remember realizing that part of the calculated sacrifice of graduate school was to give up all of the outdoorsy side of myself in order to learn what I needed to as a scientist. It wasn't until my post-doc in New England that I was able to get back outside for camping or hiking. 

In coming back, I had to remember things like hiking clothes and hiking shoes, and being able to move. I had to remember dirt and sweat because it's hot and the elevation is unexpected and comes at you fast. I had to remember that going on a hike, didn't mean what it meant in New England or the Midwest and instead was the real deal. I'm slowly remembering what it means to hike, what it means to make it to the top of a mountain, what it means to want everything from REI not because you want to be all cool and granola, but because the right gear can make all the difference.

There's this song we sung in Alaska, "Thinking like a Mountain" by Libby Roderick. We sang it at a faster pace and at the top of our lungs with 10 year olds, so it was a little more exciting than versions found online. Regardless, the chorus:

"Make it home, like a mountain, make it home, like a stone

Find the mountain deep within your heart, nobody is alone

The wilderness calls out our names from deep inside our bones

And thinking like a mountain, honey, we will make it home."

has kind of stuck with me for almost 15 years now. I may have fought and fought and fought, but it may possibly be true that moving back west was always in the cards. I have this theory that all the different parts of me just have times to stick out farther and more dominantly than the rest, and that I'll eventually feel more whole when all the parts are alloyed together instead of feeling fractured. It'll take a while, but I feel like I'm healing quicker than I thought I would.