Am I back?

 This blog has languished for more than a decade yet I keep paying to keep my domain name, Just In Case.  

I suppose FB has supplanted much of my writing, but it's hard to search and find things so I don't know why I've let this go.  Google is apparently managing blogger now and I'm sure the platform is easier to manage than before.  Gawd..... 2007! Dark ages, iPhones were just being released.  How the world has changed.  

How I have changed, that job I was anticipating getting as a RR in Baxter back in 07 was the shift I needed, that I knew was coming.  It changed everything. 16 years later different husband, different town, different career, different pets.  Retirement looms.  Crazy.  

Meanwhile as the ankle heals..... 

Out with the old

After almost 8 (mostly) loving years with my beloved Subaru GT, it was time to let it go. I've been in denial since my divorce that the cost/benefit just wasn't there. The engine went 5 days after I moved out in 05, weeks before the divorce was final. I wasn't in any shape emotionally to handle looking for a new vehicle, much less financial shape. House wasn't sold, yada yada yada. Most friends thought it foolish to dump that much $$ into an old car then, but it was the decision I made at the time, the body and interior were in great shape and I thought I could buy myself another 150 K miles.

Well, that was most likely a foolhardy thing to do in hindsight, but you do what you do at the time. A month ago when a local service tech with more insight than myself cautioned me that this engine had a limited life and I should just "fix and get rid of" I finally woke up.

As I told a friend yesterday speeding down the highway in my new 07 Outback, my old car looked fine from the outside, but boy did it have issues. Hey I said, just like you-know-who! What a great analogy. He seems to be a great guy from the outside, but don't pop that hood..... there are perils lurking under the surface that you don't realize til further diagnosis is done. And investing time and money may initially seem to fix the problems, but they always resurface again, no training that old dog.........

Yep, issues.... they're there. Who knew?

Strength

I had an awesome night at the rock gym tonight; best ever. I may have climbed a 5.10 which is crazy! And not just climbed it, I darn near flashed the thing. It's all so mental. I had a pretty good day, been negotiating a deal for a new car by myself, through email. So I was feeling pretty powerful about that.

And I'm finally letting go and giving up with the d***head I was involved with, who doesn't even have the god damned courtesy to call me back when I ask for it. I'm done with all of that. It's too bad, as anger can turn to bitterness and that could prevent a future friendship. His choice now. It's all his issues, his stuff, hard to keep remembering that, but it's true. So take that mental energy and see how it translates into climbing a wall.

I am Woman! Ha!

Oh, and I organized a project at our camp this weekend that is sorely needed, merely by putting out a few emails and finding out that fortuitously my cousin the engineer and project manager who has a very large toy box of heavy equipment is arriving from Atlanta this weekend. My brother is sure to spin this in some negative fashion, but tough poopy, it needs to be done and he's stressing about it, so I just accelerated the process. I'm no engineer but I can organize!!

So shaping up to be a good weekend with a big hike on Saturday for Dalydog and myself, bagging another 100 Highest hopefully, looks like snowshoes are still de rigeur.

Springer Fever

The seasonal affective disorder of any past AT thru-hiker: Springer Fever . It's real, it hits out of nowhere sometimes, but typically around one's start date. For me that would be 16 days from now - April 18th.

What am I doing about it this year?

Reading TJ of course. The added twist this spring is the knowledge that I am going to meet most of these hikers in Baxter, the ones who make it to Maine of course.

As I type this, I'm listening to Takoma Tedd's Song of the Blue Ridge Runner CD. Taken from the writings and poetry of Earl Shaffer I especially like Track 2, "Walking With Spring"; it brings a heartache of tears to my soul. A longing for a southern ridgetop on which to walk again. There is the feeling of falling in love all over again - in love with the trail, the freedom, the peace of walking.

Damn.

And I plan and dream about another dream coming to fruition this June. The Walker's Haute Route. 180 km of walking in the alps from Chamonix to Zermatt. The latter a spot that has held my heart hostage for almost 30 years. Since I first stepped off the train that summer I was 18. Accompanied by a passle of 30 kids, we spent the next 3 weeks of our tender impressionable lives in that mountain haven. We skied, we bouldered, we drank and ate platefuls of pomme frites @ the Brown Cow, we loved, and we learned to live amongst ourselves drunk in the experience of a foreign and beautiful land. I made a life long friend that July, we've been through 3 marriages between us, and the death of his oldest son who so uncanningly reminded me of a boy I loved that summer in Zermatt. Ahhhh.....Selden. After two weeks of skiing on the Plateau Rosa, we packed up and split into 3 groups to spend a week hiking in the Bernese Oberland.

How could I ever be normal again after this freedom? This taste of international travel w/o a parent? Sure, we had "chaperones" in the form of Ted and John, 20 something ski bum types who were our race coaches. Their fraternity like antics at night in the Swiss mountain huts didn't exactly lend themselves credibility as anything more than older versions of ourselves.

So I go back. This time walking there, with the carrot of the Matterhorn dangling in the distance. The few people I have mentioned this trip to are astounded I'm going solo "no guide" "no tour"?

Ahhhh....no.....am I a little too complacent and confident that I can handle this sort of thing alone? I don't think so, it's Europe, it's not even wilderness, sure it's a big hike with alpine size elevation climbs and descents, but I don't see it as that difficult to arrange on your own. Buy my plane ticket. Check. Find a place to stay in Cham the first night. Check. Start walking with Mont Blanc to my back, guidebook & maps in my pack. Stop when you get to the pointy mountain.

At any rate, it's quelling my desire a bit to head to Georgia in a couple weeks. But not by much. A 15 day hike has substance, but it ain't no 6 month thru-hike.

It'll do.

For now.

ICE!

The job offer came as expected. And once I could visualize myself there, it stopped seeming so scary. I got the paperwork the other day and that really made it real. I'm going to be posted in Baxter State Park for the summer, or rather half the summer and half the fall. At Abol Bridge, basically handling thru-hikers and sections hikers as they enter BSP and navigate the rules and camping registration that our gem "forever wild" demands.

On another note, the rock climbing I've been doing at the gym has just started to pay off in several ways. It's providing great focus and diversion in a time of heartache for me, a time when I'm not sure who I will adventure with in the future. That part isn't so certain. But when I'm on the wall and most recently ICE, there isn't another thought in my brain. Climbing ice scares the shit out of me, but I have found a place there; a home. It's addicting is all I can figure out, the adrenaline, the absolute feeling that you must keep going up, thunk, clink, pft pft with the feet. I never thought it was something I would or could do and look, here I am!

Truly down a path

I'm waiting to hear on a job this week. A job that I am certain, while seasonal in nature, will send me down a different path. It's the aftermath I'm scared of, I feel a shift. That's the only way to describe it, a shift. Things are shifting, moving, and I know I gotta let them, but there's unknown there. In brief, I would be spending my summer on the AT here in Maine, as a ridgerunner/caretaker of 1 of 4 backcountry sites. It's a dream job I've wanted ever since I returned from my thru-hike, yet up til this year it just wasn't feasible.

I'm still not sure it is this year either.

I'm not 22 y/o and just out of college, I have responsibilities, some of them even adult type. This will require some difficult (maybe) conversations with my brother, my mother, my ex-husband and anyone else of consequence in my life. I have to find a home for my cat for the summer, I have to talk to my landlord and see if a sublet it even possible (doubtful).

There's a high degree of certainty the offer will come in by later this week and then all these things have to align and get worked out. I won't be home much this summer, and never on weekends, which means most usual summer plans will not involve me this year, that's hard to stomach. Last time I did this, in 02, I came back to mostly the same circumstances, but there were new people in friend's lives and I didn't always fit the same way anymore.

That's the shift. It's there, I feel it, I'm resisting it, yet I'm drawn to it. And at this point, it's pretty much inevitable. Change must happen, but change is hard.

Testing

Having trouble adding photos to my last entry from September. This is a test. Alright, maybe you can't go back and add photos afterwards. That's pretty stupid.

Anyhow, here are some shots of Ski Haven, two of the interior bunks and fireplace and the sagging porch & exterior of the cabin now obscured by trees.