The Fire

Once you open the door to housesitting in a new place, you get tons of requests. I watched my coworker’s big dumb Goldens for a couple weeks and then her wealthy friend enlisted me to watch an independent Bernese, some chicks (she described their care with bemusement—her kids were in charge of the poultry), and a semi-feral cat.

The house was nice-not nice, a model I’ve seen so many times when housesitting. Shockingly expensive touches (immaculate gas range, flagstone flooring) compete with chintzy touches (all of the doorknobs barely functioned). I have stayed in modest, thoughtful houses and I have stayed in garish houses where the thoughtful touches happen to exist because they were the premium option.

I am hopelessly nosey. When I stay at a house, I poke around, observe, judge. My biggest takeaway is often a suffocating claustrophobia—how can these people own so much STUFF? I have moved almost twenty times in my adult life and the thought of filling every drawer, closet, rafter, and bureau in your four thousand square foot house makes me choke on anxiety. I was in the midst of moving the last time I stayed at this particular house, and I stashed all my earthly possessions in a single bay of their three-car garage.

Four days after they returned from their most recent trip, I was lazily checking Facebook in bed and started seeing posts about a fire.

The house had burned to the ground. Every matched pair of toy firetrucks (twin boys), every elaborate wall hanging, the countless drawers of stainless steel specialized-use kitchen implements (pizza scissors?), the three sets of flatware ordered by occasion, the pantry full of organic kid’s energy bars, the four-post king-sized bed with decorative throws, the shower with multiple heads and a sauna setting, the four bikes, three stand-up paddleboards, and two lawnmowers…all gone.

By some divine grace, a neighbor saw flames coming from the house at 2 a.m. and was able to wake the family. It sickens me to consider the alternative. The gregarious Bernese also survived.

I went to the property, shifting roles from family acquaintance to journalist. I took photos of the blackened shell, smelled the aftermath of the burn, registered the empty space where the big wooden chicken coop had been.

The outpouring of support online was immediate, because people are good. Well-wishers were offering food and clothing donations. The family’s friend took me aside and asked how the newspaper could help head off this generosity—she didn’t go quite so far as to say, “They don’t want other people’s used clothing,” but it was implied.

Their cell phones and three (four?) cars burned. Their friends quickly provided them with new phones and a new car. Someone in their network set up a GoFundMe page and it’s currently sitting at an incredible $24,000.

Looking at that number, more than I make in a year, and thinking about the size of the insurance check that I know they’ll get, makes me sick and confused. The tragedy of losing everything, birth certificates and wedding photos and special art, is a terrible blow, but these people are positioned to weather it with minimal suffering. I couldn’t help thinking what $24,000 could mean to nonprofits, other families, people less blessed with opportunity, affluence, or a support system.

It made me squeamish to question this family’s right to benefit from the generosity of others, but I also kept imagining the McMansion they’ll be able to build with their insurance pay-out--bigger, better laid out, more storage space for newly-acquired possessions.  

Then I ran into her at the grocery store. It was the first time I'd ever seen her without make-up. I was scared to engage but she didn’t mind talking to me about the fire. She said they were looking for a long-term rental while they rebuilt. “Housing here is hard,” she said with tired amusement. I choked out an agreement. Housing here is hard, and it’s harder if you have a limited budget and if insurance isn’t footing the bill.

I used my mournful tone (I’m so awkward with condolences) and tried to express how glad I was that she and her husband and their two boys had made it out alive.

There is no right answer.

Running Away

I've been wrestling with how to write this trip report.

My first yurt trip wasn’t a rosy experience. Last week's yurt trip was a massive improvement over that, even though the distinct taste of pure snowmelt still reminds me a little of ralphing for twelve hours.

I didn’t have a group, a gameplan, or any idea of what life would look like five months down the road, but in October I booked two March nights at Baldy Yurt.  They were a couple of the last nights available for the year.

My life did change in the intervening time. Tyler and I broke up last month. I am embarrassed to give the reasons because they look trivial and selfish on paper, but it happened. I moved out. I gave up my dog except for occasional custody.

I’ve been staying so busy that my new room is still full of unpacked boxes, and mounds of clothes have sprouted up on the floor because I haven’t had the time to deal with them…or I’m just avoiding facing the reality of life right now.

I had been looking forward to the yurt trip forever, but began to dread it. I couldn’t find enough people to fill the roster. I felt disorganized. I’m not a great trip leader. Should we plan meals? Was I going to end up footing the whole bill? Was the guiding outfit ever going to get back to me or could we just waltz up there with no confirmation?

A damn good crew
Pics courtesy of Cy

I pieced together the group with the only people in the valley who gave me a firm yes: a fellow Julia, new roommate Pat, frequent accomplice Cy, and all-around rad person Amanda.

Pieps and Pat, getting ready for a big day out

It seemed like an incongruous group and I was nervous about how the personalities would mesh, but it ended up being the most perfect union. Everyone was well-informed, decisive but not pushy, communicative, and happy to do yurt chores. I don’t want to say everything went smoothly because the chicks outnumbered the dudes but…that didn’t hurt.

Oh yeah, it was really deep

Picking those two nights five months ago proved to be serendipitous. In the week before our trip, it dumped but conditions stayed stable. On our ingress we broke trail through deep, light snow and took turns shlepping the heavy sled of food and beer. Visibility was poor as snow continued to fall.

Oh yeah, it was really pretty

The sun came out the next day. Everything we could see was our playground. Big bowls, long steep runs, mini cliff lines tucked into trees, all untracked.  We were on the same page—open to walking a lot, stoked on skiing but not interested in tempting fate. Each lap yielded whoops of delight. 

Disco ball: essential yurt accessory

Footsore on the third morning, we cleaned and packed, and skied some more. The return track was fast and playful, the snow just on the cusp of turning to garbage. We drank beers on the tailgate of the Subaru. Everyone else’s smart phones were flooded with little dings and beeps from stale notifications. My phone stayed silent. It stresses me out to get messages after a hiatus from service, so I was glad no one missed me while I hid in the woods for a couple days.

I dragged my feet on reacclimatizing to real life, preferring to stay in my cocoon of post-yurt good vibes. Monday was tough, trying to crank out four days' of content and talking on the phone with recalcitrant interviewees.

I still think it's worth the comedown to have these perfect experiences. Strengthen friendships, explore the backyard, run away from sadness, and ski deep powder? Yeah, I'll take that.

It's the End of the World As We Know It...

The world is ending in Jackson. I wrote a story about it: TVN

It's not so bad over here. I wrote a post about that too: Snowbrains

We have a mountain range as a buffer. We have more space to breathe around the massive plow piles. We still have arteries out of the valley that are open. We're on the periphery and Jackson is in the maelstrom, as roofs collapse and crews toil to resurrect the downed steel utility poles and the mountains shed their mantle onto the highway and the skating rink streets flood with water freed in the thaw.

I guess this is what California has been facing all winter.

I feel numb. None of this directly impacts me. I'm caught in a tempest of my own creating.

But at least there's skiing.

In Which I Use a Funeral as an Excuse for a Ski Trip

Tyler and I drive the empty roads across southeast Idaho. We've done this drive probably a dozen times but these are unusual circumstances. The normally sagebrush-gray landscape is softened by snow. The expansive lava formations of Craters of the Moon look less like a suburb of Mordor than usual. Unless it snows in Mordor, I guess.

We enter a thick fog in the Wood River Valley that turns to precipitation as we near Ketchum. There's a lot of snow hemming in the narrow streets. North of town we locate the grand vacation home of Tyler's brother's friend. This is the new base of operations, since Tyler's grandparents' home (which he calls the Palace) is no longer available. 

Thanks to the Mountain Collective pass, i.e. the best deal in the West, a couple days at Sun Valley costs zero dollars instead of hundreds, so we go skiing. Warm snow falls and the visibility is soupy. Tyler says this is completely unlike Sun Valley, land of sunshine, groomed runs, and no snow. 

We retire for burritos, beer, and a scenic hot tub buttressed by snow banks. Sophie chases snowballs across the yard. 

Thursday is a stunning bluebird powder day so we ski the resort again, where the tree glades, of perfect density and gradient, are almost untouched. It is very enjoyable until I exit onto a cat track at high speed and slam knee to mouth. No teeth are knocked out, just duck lips and abrasions. I quit. 

Turns out Sun Valley is a fun resort when it snows

We're back at the house on schedule. The rest of Tyler's little clan has arrived: his two brothers, his mom, and her boyfriend. Everyone dons Nice Clothes and we go to the Episcopalian church for the memorial service for Tyler's grandfather. I see other attendants' grief and tear up thinking abstractly about losing a parent or grandparent. My brain shies away from specifics because I don't to want sob audibly at the funeral of a man I barely knew. Afterwards I flit around the reception eating cured meat and trying to avoid talking to relatives I don't know. 

Our crew retreats to the house to debrief on all the politics and power plays happening. I feel grateful for the simplicity of my family. 

Just another beautiful day in big mountains

Tyler, Ben, and I have a window the next morning to go for a backcountry tour before the interment of Charles's ashes. After studying some topo maps we have a potential objective, but driving down the canyon yields disappointing options, so on the way back we pick a National Forest access point at random and are greatly rewarded with an easy climb in the sunshine and pristine powder through perfect trees on the descent. This never happens. 

We go to the cemetery. The priest extols the beauty of our surroundings and I warm inside, but it is hard to the reconcile the sweet sadness of the ceremony with the uneven family dynamics, the permanency of death, the shadow cast by money.

My loves on the summit 

Tyler and I drive to Boise the next day but not before a repeat of the successful tour, to tire the dog out and get another taste of powder. 

We have dinner with some of Tyler's oldest friends, kind and funny and charismatic and fiercely loyal to him. The intensity and longevity of Tyler's friendships, I think, are a testament to his character. 

On Sunday a bunch of us ski the local hill, Bogus Basin. Boise down low is shrouded in a chilly gray but the road to the resort climbs out of the haze into bright sunshine. The group splinters because of different ability levels (or one could say lifestyle choices: occasional skiers vs. habitual snow sliders) but we regroup regularly for beer and pictures. 

The gang and me at Bogus

Too soon we have to say goodbye and drive the long interstate back to the Tetons. Temperature variations cause impenetrable fog and we're both tense, half-listening to Serial while peering into the abyss. 

It is bitter cold and clear in the Valley. We try to organize the detritus of our trip and then pass out. Today it is back to work, back to real life, back to a place where everyone counts their wealth not in dollars, but in days spent outside. 

It's Not Fair

Tyler and I were in Boise for the weekend, officially to work a beer event but also to eat at his favorite burrito joint multiple times, see his grandparents/take advantage of their hospitality, and mountain bike on dry trails with the pup.

I stole his Iphone to peruse social media for a second and a notification from a Fitzy member popped up on the team page: this news item. I didn't comprehend it at first and then it hit like a sledgehammer.

They all worked at the company next door to Tram Bar World. I only knew one of the men, and not as well as I would've liked. AJ was our neighbor, and taught our avalanche course in December, and was the best racer of the Fitzy team. He radiated competence and kindness and humor, and wrote riveting trip and race reports on his blog, which I read before I even met him. I don't have any ownership over this grief. I am not his loving family. Once I stuck my head in his house looking for a star hex wrench. He wasn't there but his visiting father, as lanky and trim as AJ, was doing yoga in the foyer. He didn't even mind when my dog stepped all over his mat. That friendly man must be so unfathomably sad. I am not his chipper, involved wife, or one of the dozens of NOLS students that he mentored, or one of the equally mellow but intense skiers with whom he did crazy backcountry tours. Those people have to learn to use the past tense, and deal with the sucker punch of grief every time some little memory surfaces.

I am gutted with empathy for all of them, and sad that I had finally decided he was approachable and was going ask him to show me the guerrilla mountain bike loop in the hills behind our neighborhood. It feels wrong: someone who went after big ski-mountaineering objectives, someone who was healthy and beloved and influential, felled by something as stupid and terrible and unexpected as a plane crash.

No one in the community is unaffected by the tragedy. Driving back into town, I imagined a pall over the valley. I think this is the part where I should talk about how everyone pulls together and takes care of the bereaved and sees the silver lining but I don't want to say those things, because I think this thoroughly sucks.

Environmental Factors

Western fires are no joke

A chunk of land northwest of Yosemite is ablaze and in the past week the conflagration has crept into the record books--right now it's the 6th largest CA wildfire in recorded history.

A haze has inhabited Tahoe for a week, obscuring mountains, sprinkling ash on windshields, infusing the evening breeze with the smell of campfire, turning the sun neon pink and the moon blood red. At the end of the busy season, the fire has summarily staunched the flow of tourist dollars and left the service industry to wallow in the slowdown of autumn. My parents are arriving on Saturday, hopefully to more ideal circumstances, although the Heavenly trail run was just canceled, to our dismay.

Ignoring respiratory warnings, I've continued as usual, mountain biking, hiking Mt Ralston, climbing Tallac under the full moon and sleeping up there. (The magnificent sunrise made up for the bitter cold, blustery night.) These exertions did cause noticeable discomfort--burning eyes, lingering cough, and a weird feeling of excessive fatigue. I can only imagine how people with asthma, people coming from sea level, toddlers, and old people feel. And more pressingly, how the people whose homes and histories are threatened feel. Our dining room assistant manager is from that part of the state and her parents' house is sitting two miles from the fire in the territory of her tribe. Her family and home is safe so far but her fear is palpable. Sobering stuff. When guests are complaining that they can't see Cathedral Peak while waterskiing on the lake, we remind them that there are worse things.

Bad Tidings

Bathed in the glow of aspens and Indian summer sunlight, camp has undergone a very strange and sad week. In such a small, isolated, tight-knit community, any incident reverberates through the staff and leaves us all at a loss.

Two staff members were fired as a result of a flirtation that soured irreparably and caught the attention of certain managers that wanted to set an example, no matter the fairness of the decision. One staffer was shunted back to Georgia, the other stranded in the limbo of South Lake in October. The latter was a riding friend and I can't help but resent his perfunctory termination. 

In the tense, quiet aftermath of the firings, our wonderful dining room manager received word that her young, healthy husband had died in his sleep. 

She was devastated. Catatonic. 

Laura and I escaped the funereal pall of camp and rode our bikes down to Taylor Creek to watch the salmon spawning, and saw two bears munching blissfully on the plentiful fish carcasses. Then we went to Kiva and sat in the sand and eventually started talking about love and grief and the terrifying fragility of life. 

It was necessary. 

This Is One of Those Things Words Can't Express

The cycling world just lost one of its most promising, talented, and friendliest stars. Carla Swart was a truly amazing individual and I can't believe she's gone.