And then I went for a bike ride

The weather forecast for the next week is jaw-droppingly unbelievable. I keep re-checking it, scarcely letting myself believe that "mostly cloudy" and "partly cloudy" days could really carry into mid-October. But even if the predictions hold partly true, there may still be more opportunities to run up mountains, and maybe I'm not in such a hurry after all. I got a lot of stuff done this weekend that I've been putting off. And I finally rode out to Echo Cove for the first time ... well, probably the first time in 2009.

It's only 62 miles round trip from my new place in Fritz Cove. It took me a little less than four hours with a snack break, so my pace wasn't totally slacking, but the time just flew by. It was one of those rides where I reached the end of the road, slowed to a stop, and stared at the boat ramp that marks the absolute dead end, wondering how I could possibly be there already. I was totally zoned in, or maybe zoned out is a better word - in heavy bike therapy mode, spinning pedals and letting my mind wander all over the landscape of my life. By the time I returned to Auke Bay, I had drawn three strong conclusions that I said out loud to myself, which felt great. Honestly, I don't know why people pay others to help them work through therapy when bikes are so good at that sort of thing, and free.

Today I woke up late and had more errands to do, so I only got in a fairly quick run (oh yes, I went running) up the Dan Moller trail. I made it to the cabin in about 40 minutes and decided to continue up to the ridge for good measure ... which turned out to be surprisingly treacherous. It's a quick jaunt in the winter, so I didn't think twice about stomping up the same steep drainage sans snow. But I slipped on the wet, rotten grass, fell to the ground hard on my hip and started sliding down the mountain. I clawed at the slimy slope as I gained momentum, laughing even as I was falling because it seemed ridiculous that I was going to slip-and-slide my way all the way back down to the bowl. Finally I reached out and grabbed onto a spruce branch, suspending my downward slide, and used that line of trees as ropes to pull myself up to the ridge. It was pretty humorous ... Here I've been, all worried about impending snowfall, when what I really need an ice ax and crampons for is autumn groundcover.

I'm headed back out the road tonight, this time to go camping at a cabin for a friend's birthday. It was a great, mellow weekend, but if that unreal weather forecast holds up, I'll probably have no choice but to ramp it up again next week.

Modern romance

"Don't hold on.
Go, get strong.
Well don't you know,
there is no modern romance."
— "Modern Romance," Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Tuesday morning rose misty and warm, with flecks of sunlight burning through the cracks in a disintegrating ceiling of clouds. I packed up my Camelbak the way I did back in July, with just a light shell and gloves, extra socks, my GPS, and water. I held my camera in my hands, wavering on whether or not I should stuff it in the outer pocket. Maybe, maybe just this once, I thought, I should leave it behind. Maybe this one will be a quiet trek. I won't tell anyone, and I won't have any evidence I was there. It will be a secret.

I stuffed my camera in the pack, just in case, and set out into the promising morning with the same sense of irresistible anticipation and cautious reserve I have been feeling recently in other areas of my life. I thought again about leaving the camera behind. Already, some of my friends have been hinting that I have a problem. That I spend too much time in the mountains. That I have only just emerged from a very long, committed thing (a-hem ... the Tour Divide), and in my drive to get back out there, and the overzealous way I am going about it, I may be setting myself up for a long fall.

"It's not so much about being tired," my friend said as I told her about my Sheep Mountain trek and how I've been feeling a little under the weather ever since, but can't seem to stop as long as the actual weather is nice. "What do you even think about when you're out there alone, just out in the woods with the bears and wolves, for like seven hours all the time? Aren't you scared? Don't you go crazy?"

And all I could think of the answer is, "I don't know. I think about everything, I guess. That's really the only time I have to think." But why has it been so hard for me to decipher what "everything" actually is? All of the time I've spent stomping through the mountains lately, I've had a lot of time to sift through the pieces of my life, to look for ways I can fit them together in a puzzle that makes the most sense and makes me the most happy. And all I seem to have found is a flight of ideas surrounded by exhilaration in the high country, transforming flawlessly to fear when I am back in the low country. The ideas feel something like love up high, something like insanity down low, and the pieces stay scattered. As I come down, I cling to appreciation for the "regular" life I have, and the new friendships I've found, and mountains.

"Time, time is gone.
It stops stops who it wants.
Well i was wrong ...
it never lasts ...
there is no ...
this is no modern romance."

So I thought about keeping it a secret that I was heading up Thunder Mountain on a tranquil Tuesday morning. After all, I can hardly complain about achy muscles if I am the one who keeps pounding them into the ground. It could just be me and the mountain, a quiet October morning, where instead of gathering and analyzing the pieces of my life, I could just scatter them in the gentle breeze. But as I worked my way up the mountainside, hands clasped around the exposed roots of 100-foot-tall Sitka spruce trees that filtered flecks of sunlight down their moss-coated trunks, exhilaration started to take over again. Confidence swelled, and in those perfect photogenic moments, I believe I could do it, all of it: living the dream, the cabin, the writing, the trips to Nigeria and Banff, the skiing, the winter bike touring, the freedom, the unhindered freedom. There are so many chances out there waiting to be taken, so many feelings ready to be exposed.

Clouds floated along the edges of the ridge, which looked more like a rolling, Midwestern prairie than a mountain top. I like this world because it is so close, but so different than mine. I love this world because it is mine. Every time I'm really tempted to mix things up, all I need to do is come up here and realize that I actually have it pretty good. Still, the empty spaces remain. Some of my married, parenting friends have expressed envy at my freewheeling, single-girl lifestyle, which on its margins must appear to be all fun and hottie potential, with no room for dull responsibility. And, of course, I look at the margins of their lives and I want what they have - partnership and love. Why would anyone want more? Why do people always think they want more?

But up in the mountains, above the confusion and contradiction, it's easy to condense what I know about life and love. I know life is short and hard. I know love is long and abstract. I know I want to experience both to the very edges, the very heights of my abilities, because I know, in the end, they're all I have. But I know fear is powerful and pain is unbearable, and those two things will battle life and love, always. And as the battle rages on, I know it will be difficult to fight when there is so much I do not know. If I am brutally honest with myself, I know that right now there are just two things about life and love that I actually do know:

I know I love mountains. And I know they do not love me back.

Overtrained for regular life

People only seem to call me when I am traipsing up and down mountains. Twenty hours a day, I am inside a building, surrounded by all kinds of social media, but the phone calls ... from my friends, from my boss, from my family ... only seem to come when I am clinging to Sitka spruce roots on a precarious ledge of some muddy slope that absolutely should not be located in cell-phone reception range ... but is, all the same. I guess maybe those calls come then because those hours, the morning hours, are the hours I'm supposed to be "around." But, lately, I haven't been "around." I've been everywhere else.

"Can't talk long," I told a friend from Utah who called Saturday morning. "I'm about to head down and the trail has turned really slimy. I'm going to need both hands."

My friend groaned. "Where are you?"

"Grandchild," I said.

"Again? Weren't you just there, like, last week?"

"Probably," I said. "But I have to get these in while I can. We had another nice day today. Can you believe it? That's like, two, at least, in October. More than we usually get in the whole month. I have to take advantage while I can, because you never know when the clouds are finally going to sink in for 36 days of rain. That's how many we had last October."

"There aren't 36 days in October," she said.

"I think the streak carried over into November," I said.

"Don't you have better things to do?" she asked.

"Oh, tons. I haven't gotten anything productive done, well, besides my job, since, well, probably since August."

But it's true - around here, I have to roll with the weather. I just have to. Every day, I track the forecasts and monitor the cloud ceiling and gauge the snow line - the combination of which threaten, every day, to shut me out of most of Juneau's high country until next summer. And every time a good weather window opens up, I think "this could be the last one." And I suit up, and set out.

And another window opened up Sunday - high overcast, a bit of wind, but no rain. "This could be my last chance to go up Ben Stuart," I thought. Ben Stuart is one of the few established trails in town that I had not yet set foot on. It was a horrible trail ... shin deep in mucky mud and decaying slippery grass. I'm usually not a rubber boot person, but my one of my running shoes pulled off my foot in sinkholes, twice, and I had to reach into the stinky swamp and dislodge it with a sickening slurp. By the time I hit the alpine, I was grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. I plopped down and stuck my feet in a stream, watching the clear water whisk away large chunks of mud. The vegetation on the ground, ravaged by too many killing frosts, was slimy and brown. Even though I had been walking across a level basin, my heart was racing. I had a headache and felt hungry, but the thought of eating the Power Bar I had in my pack was nauseating. And as I sat soaking my aching feet in the frigid water, the thought suddenly occurred to me ... "Holy cow, I'm totally overtrained!"

Overtrained for ... what? All I've been doing since I returned to Juneau is enjoying myself. And then I enjoyed myself some more. And then I enjoyed myself into a hiking habit that sometimes stretches to upwards of 20 or even 30 hours a week, or more, with exercise that is decidedly more strenuous than the biking I usually (used to?) do. And then there was that 30-hours-in-three-days bike tour in the Yukon ... was that just last weekend? It's all a blur. All I see is mountains, mountains, mountains.

A big fall storm moved in today ... 25 mph winds, 45 degrees, 1.25 inches of rainfall. I was grateful. I did my laundry. I typed e-mails. I talked to my sister. I pet my cat. I called my friends.

I felt a little more human. A little more grounded. I put bandaids on my blisters. And checked Tuesday's weather ...

Which calls for decreasing clouds. Again.