Promotion

I didn't want this new job. 

I love my job, have loved it for four years, not without reservations but it felt like the best application of my talents, a constant challenge, an unceasing exploration of things that interested me and, sure, things that didn't. I took on more than the bare job description entailed and learned so much and grew. 

Then my boss quit and I didn't want her job. The editors I have worked for often struggled as the public's whipping boy. It's a thankless job made more so by the constant erosion of the industry, the steady elimination of support structures and staff and resources.  

But I did the job for a month and then two months and then ten weeks. It began to make sense for me to keep doing it, and people I trust encouraged me to explore the possibility. There are parts of the job I'm bad at and scared of, but there are parts I've learned from my more capable predecessors, and parts that I am better at than they were.  

It took the corporate office so long to offer me the job after I said I was interested. I considered quitting because I knew that even when I was promoted I still had to keep doing it alone until we got approved to hire a second writer. 

Finally last Friday I received the job offer. I sat on it for awhile, weighing it, and then let all the negative thoughts go and focused on the good stuff, which is really good: I have been promoted to editor. I have received a raise with back-pay. Our team is poised for excellence. I am scared, but I have the relevant experience, an eye for detail, and a nearly inextinguishable enthusiasm for thorny local government issues and articles about nonprofits and quirky people and stories that make parents proud. 

This is my process and Cy always teases me about it.

Five years ago who could have guessed this would be my life. Certainly not me. 

Co-Ed Bachelor Party

Squad

In 2019 we started planning for a Canada mountain bike trip this month to celebrate our pending nuptials with Nate and Amanda, Sam and Jordan, and Chrissy, a group of people that could handle basically any ride, conveniently including women that would be happy pedaling all day and guys that were interested in goading each other into hitting gaps and stuff. But COVID happened and closed the border, as well as delaying my and Chrissy's passport renewals, so we cast our eyes elsewhere and came up with Winter Park, Colorado. That was the plan until last Tuesday, when we learned that Jordan, who went down early with Sam, had a major crash and broke bones at Trestle Bike Park. She needed surgery and they wouldn't be able to come along on the trip. 

Suddenly, Cy and I were thinking the same thing: Colorado is hot, Colorado is crowded, why were we planning to go there? He started pacing the kitchen and spouting the benefits of northern Idaho, his beloved old stomping grounds. I was soon convinced, so I called our other group members. Rather than resenting our last-minute change of heart, they were totally game to go northwest instead of southeast. 

Base camp, night one

We departed early on Thursday morning. After finding a campsite outside of Kellogg, we set off for what I'd mistaken for a short afternoon ride nearby. We were all immediately delighted by the dense dark woods and rich creek beds lined with ferns and huckleberries, but less so by the unrelenting climb that continued growing steeper and rockier. (The adjective "unrelenting" was used in the description of the trail, a detail I glossed over.) We finished the slog soaked in sweat, then descended over steep root tangles and scattershot rock piles and through stream crossings. One crossing was studded with the remains of a moose skeleton and Cy claimed a paddle for our bone garden at home.  

Top of a very hard climb

Friday was dedicated to Silver Mountain Bike Park, which quickly proved to be technical, challenging, fun, and humbling. We learned that black diamond trails are accurately rated and that I'm still a bit too skittish for real DH, but it was a great day. Cy and the Careys took extra laps while Chrissy and I drank beers and lounged in the sun, counting our blessings to not have sustained injuries or bike failures on the rough, feature-laden trails.

Silver Mountain was hairy

After sleeping in the Silver parking lot we headed over to Coeur D'Alene for an easy little dog ride, then kept going to Spokane where, Cy promised, there was a rowdy in-town trail system. We rode Beacon Hill despite the devastating (to our delicate mountain bodies) heat and sun, and found some of it absurdly challenging (chunky rock rolls into kitty litter) and some of it quite entertaining, including an impeccable pump track. After a quick splash in the very inviting Spokane River and a brief stop at a dispensary, we headed north into Idaho. The town beach in Sandpoint was wildly crowded so we ate some tacos and drove up to Schweitzer Mountain Resort. Cy's nostalgia grew palpable as we arrived at the ski hill where he held his first season pass and started down the path to becoming the person he is now.

On Sunday, I enjoyed an actual breakfast burrito at an actual coffee shop after a few days of campground granola, then Cy and I took the dog for a short ride. We all regrouped and pedaled a mellow but lovely trail to the Schweitzer summit, where Cy felt all the feelings. We took a rocky, loamy descent back to the base, set a shuttle, and dropped further down the resort road on a purpose-built downhill full of small and large features, ripe with good dirt and giggles. 

You can sense the nostalgia

Although we had planned to spend another night at the resort parking lot because it was easy, the previous night had been marked by strong winds that knocked over camp chairs and filled every crevice with sand, so the Careys lobbied that we descend. Fortuitously, we found a quiet, scenic campsite on the north end of Lake Pend Oreille and enjoyed an evening swim in the choppy but not too cold water.

A lovely evening at Pend Oreille

On Monday morning our paths diverged. The Careys returned to Silver (it was that good) and Chrissy moseyed home, while we had firm plans to go for a run that Cy loved. He truly undersold the experience. After four miles of perfect running trail we summited to massive, breathtaking lake and peak views and visited with some very docile, photogenic mountain goats. Definitely on my top five best runs ever list.

Now we have more photos of us together

Perfect, perfect running

Oh yes, there were goats

Despite obligations looming on Tuesday, we opted to make one last detour on the long drive home, splitting the distance with a Monday night stop at hot springs deep in unknown (to me) territory. Despite being very popular hot springs, we found them nearly empty and devoid of weirdos. An easy night's sleep at the trailhead and a six hour drive home ended one of the best road trips I've ever gone on.

A worthwhile detour

Idaho, it's terrible. Don't come here.

A Belated Announcement

I met a guy.

We skied Taylor together with mutual friends on a late March morning with the unresolved promise of rain. The snow was subpar. The boy was interesting and fun to talk to. I distinctly recall saying to my friend in the car afterward, "He's cute." My friend would go on to date my ex, so all's fair.

The guy and I developed a pretty great friendship. I inserted him into my big noisy group of roommates and extended friend-family, and when we weren't partying or riding with them he and I did something that I wanted so badly and didn't have a partner for: long runs. We talked constantly. I couldn't stop. I imagined bigger adventures, overnighters, traveling together out of the valley to find new mountains, feeding my craving for novelty.

I was an outlier in my friend group. Our ratio of getting high and drunk and socializing and hanging out versus going hard, going uphill, maintaining constant motion, was a little out of whack for my taste and I would get antsy and agitate for action. They put up with me but I was kind of annoying to them, and they were kind of annoying to me.

Also I had a boyfriend, had had one for over four years. He was strange and so smart and incredibly funny, loyal to a fault, passionate, stubborn, and polarizing. But he didn't run and hadn't read a book in quite some time, and while I thought we were probably going to get married, because I settled into that mindset pretty easily in relationships, I started to dream of climbing mountains, fastpacking, bikepacking, talking for hours about books and ideas. 

And then I did something about it. I poured my sadness and dissatisfaction and longing into a vessel that didn't fit and gave it to my boyfriend with little explanation. I moved out and forfeited the dog we owned together. I hid from our friends and tried to find normalcy and cried a lot.

But I also started pursuing this other opportunity. He was a big reason I did what I did, although I've barely admitted that to anyone. It's probably obvious to everyone now but I so, so, so didn't want to hurt my ex even more by putting that out into the world, that simple, common trope: she left you for someone else.

This guy though, he was sexy and funny and smart and interesting and engaged and kind and full of joy. He wanted to go everywhere and said yes without hesitating to every questionable adventure I cooked up. He was there for me always. Before we were together and I got the job at the newspaper, he was more excited and proud and supportive than anyone besides my parents. He still reads every article I write, and when I bought my house he threw his time, money, and expertise into the task of doubling the property's value. And he puts up with my fixation on the "right" way to wash dishes.

My mom and her sisters met him in 2018. That was five months after he first talked to my parents, when he stood outside the operating room and called to say I was under the knife after a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy. Fortunately my parents are good, understanding people and appreciated him and that hard call, instead of placing blame.

Anyway, my mom obviously liked him, because he's easy to like. And then he came to New Hampshire,  to the Tellman stronghold itself, even though for a couple years I felt too burned by the decimation of my past relationships to try and draw him further into my family. But it was fine, great, he was an ally and he charmed my sister and was open and kind to everyone and during dinner prep one night my father, who has been able to find something to like in all my young men although he clearly wants the world for me, leaned over and said, "I love him," with that emphasis.

While it rained we talked in the New Hampshire breakfast nook about engagement and titanium rings and none of it was surprising. But then we were back at home and he did manage to surprise me, on one knee with a ring box as I turned back around after applying sunscreen on a mountain plateau during a run in the northern Teton range, with a titanium ring that he had bought even before my whole family asserted that I should have a titanium ring, and I shouted in shock and cried and wasn't sure, because what is marriage? And are all relationships really doomed to failure like I've already convinced myself?

I told almost no one about our engagement for three months because it's a small valley and I still didn't want to hurt the other guy. I couldn't figure out how it wouldn't hurt. It turned out to be okay, ish, and we actually went for a big bike ride, the three of us, on my birthday last year and it wasn't that tense. I also kept the engagement a secret because I didn't see myself as a fiancee, and because I don't talk about relationships a lot or post about them on social media. That was a habit I picked up when I was younger, when I was doing some shady shit. And I have this stupid idea that love makes you weak or vulnerable.

After three years I'm still one hundred percent into this guy. He's just so great and I have friends who still regularly comment on that fact, which I love. So that's why we're getting married in September.

It's hilarious that nearly half of the photos of us that exist are candid, awkward laughing photos at special events. We don't take photos together. Ever.

Open Season

Last week at an informal state of the snowpack talk, Don Sharaf of the American Avalanche Institute told his audience that, while the Bridger-Teton Avalanche Center forecasters don't like to turn the whole pyramid to green, it's officially open season in the Tetons. The frightening early season instabilities have healed themselves and slow, steady accumulation with negligible weird weather means the best possible snow conditions: deep and not moving.

"This kind of stability means you get your bucket of balls and just start teeing up shots," Big Don told us.

Indeed.

We had planned in advance to go use up a couple Mountain Collective days at Big Sky, so unfortunately we weren't taking as much advantage of open season as we could be, but decided to aim for a big walk on Sunday. Talking about it and poring over trip reports on the drive home from Montucky, we laid out a plan for Buck. We decided to approach the massive jutting peak from a different route than most people did, a route that added in a little chute and seemed to make more sense.

Buck is a beaut, for sure.

I had a vague sick feeling in my stomach thinking about the descent, mostly because a half decade of hyper-awareness and timidity around avalanche terrain really runs counter to the idea of skiing a huge, steep, open, east-facing aspect, completely at the mercy of those twin snow-movers, sun and wind.

But we packed all of our sharps (a whippet, ice axe, and crampons for each) and arose at 4 a.m. to tackle the peak, maybe. Our biggest fear was that the face would warm too quickly, but at the trailhead the temperature gauge read -10 degrees, and the shock of cold totally blindsided us. Our concern turned to the wisdom of leaving the dog in the car, which we usually do in the Park because it means she isn't left at home to her own devices for what could be twelve or fifteen hours. We fluffed jackets and blankets onto the seats for her and hoped the sun would emerge quickly and turn the van into a greenhouse.

After last week's mission I wondered if big tours were getting easier, but this week I wondered why I felt so shitty. We were both slow and dehydrated from a quasi-debauched Big Sky weekend with Bria and soon lost sight of the objective. Halfway up the annoyingly uneven Maverick skin track, we stopped to have that important conversation: we're not moving fast enough to tackle the summit.

Also, the standard way people get up the peak is via an airy knife ridge with 1,500 feet of exposure, and while we knew the bootpack had been well-established by purportedly fifteen skiers the day before, I loathe exposure. I'm not really cut out for ski mountaineering, obviously. We could boot up the less-exposed face instead but it'd be slower going and people might drop onto us at any time.

We skinned up a gusty, wind-slabby traverse to the top of Chute the Moon and I remembered how much I need to work on keeping my composure when the uphill is even a little bit sketchy. I fall apart every damn time.

So so so so so beautiful.

After skiing the mellow chute in crappy snow, we did another short, windy, butt-clenching climb that should have been a breeze, then pushed past that into the calmer sunshine.

Looking around the deeper part of the range in perfect visibility, it was astonishing to see ski tracks on some of the most consequential lines and faces. Wow, everyone got the memo about open season.  This weekend people tagged the biggest summits in the Tetons and tackled objectives that only get skied a few times a season, if at all. It's very inspiring, and very humbling, because I don't have the ability to climb or ski most of that stuff.

Backing off an objective but still getting to ski two couloirs in a day is pretty neato.

The line we skied, Buckshot off the north side of Buck, was very cool and very steep (for me), and because it has a big snowfield above it, I would never touch it in more dangerous conditions. As it was, the snow was edgeable but wind-battered and firm. I skied slowly, stopping often to catch my breath and shake out my legs.

We continued to admire ski lines all the way down Avalanche Canyon, then committed to the undulating luge through the trees that spat us out on Bradley Lake.

A quick snack stop on the lake. I'm so fortunate to have this one as my backcountry partner.

While we didn't even come close to the summit, it was worth the walk to look around at the majestic peaks in the range's interior. And being done by one left plenty of time for lounging in the sun, eating pizza, and bemoaning the new tanlines on my face. And the dog was fine.

Sparkle Day

The bloated moon hung low in the west. We piled into Sam's second homeowner SUV and made the quick trip into the canyon. It was a day of utmost sparkle. The trees were thickly laced with rime. We breathed in sequins.

I was still hanging onto one of those lame little winter colds that never fully evaporates. I coughed and blew snot. My lanky companions skinned away from me. Their long legs worked up and down like pistons. I tried not to be grumpy about always getting dropped. Immediately.

Our progress slowed when the trail turned elsewhere and we had to cut up to the plateau. The only sound was the gentle collapse of powder under our skis.

We peered across the canyon at the objective. We gauged wind-loading and line choice. A lot of snow and a lot of wind had just happened. Concerning but perhaps not a deal breaker. Perhaps.

The first run was fast, a little sun affected. We straight-lined through a chute. Our fingers got cold in the shaded basin below. The climb out of the creek bed was taxing. We each felt fatigued for different reasons. The pistons pumped at half speed through untouched snow. We swapped pulls at the front.

The Grand emerged before us, an apparition with gusts of cloud wreathing it. I had a beer in my pack but I am rarely in the mood to drink on cold summits.

We picked our way carefully along the softly corniced ridge. My heart beat fast. Moving snow might lead to unmanageable consequences. No snow moved.

Cy was nervous. He was leery of the unknowns. There might be a cliff choke. The chute is a big empty expanse, an obvious slide path. He dropped first into the west-facing trees because he has an airbag. He radio'd back to us. We picked our way down. The snow was really really good.

Our nerves receded as the line revealed itself to be open. It hadn't been blasted by solar rays yet. Nothing moved under our skis. We slashed deep turns. Lovely. Not scary.

We soon had to put skins back on. It was that or wade through snow down the flat canyon. The walk out felt inexorable. My boots found new places to rub. My backpack chafed my shoulders. My nose burned. But all walks end eventually. We lounged by the car. Our gear was strewn around us in attention-seeking piles. I looked smugly at the cross-country skiers filtering in and out of the parking lot. I thought, Going uphill and downhill is far superior.