Resolving to Your Natural New Year

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The new logo! The product of a resolution that began early last fall…

 

It’s January fourth and already you’ve cheated on your New Year’s resolutions. Crap. Clearly you can’t stick to a simple plan so you may as well turn on the TV, open a fresh bag of Cheetos, and resume the path of least resistance. There’s always next year, right?

Perhaps next year is sooner than you think. If January first is irrelevant to your yearly life cycle—aside from, perhaps, a predictable hangover—then forcing a change will set you up for failure. Most likely, there is a less arbitrary place somewhere else in your year where you naturally tend to organize thoughts about the future: a personal new year.

The new year is a time of reflection, transition, and growth. It should beckon the excitement of opening a new book, not rushing to complete an assignment. Consider the rhythm of your life. Is there a time of year where something naturally concludes and something new begins? Maybe it’s as simple as the expectation that your child’s school year ends for summer and resumes in the fall. For most of us, there is a place in the calendar year that feels like the beginning of something new, but it’s nowhere near January first.

January first  is irrelevant to caribou.

January first is irrelevant to caribou.

In the natural world, spring heralds growth and welcomes a fresh start. Blossoms bloom, animals awaken from hibernation, and migrations begin. This natural transition is reflected in the human world in ways as simple as the ritual of a spring cleaning—an embracement of our awakening habitat. Throughout history, human survival in both agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies hinged on tuning into natural rhythms. It is only in the last handful of generations that humans have deafened to the more subtle of those synchronizations, yet some larger ones still pulse through human societies around the globe—even if we are less aware of them.

Nomads sync to the rhythm of the seasons and often our personal new year hearkens spring or fall transitions. My personal new year occurs in the fall. It doesn’t happen overnight, which is helpful because I’ve been told I require time to process things. Similarly, summer doesn’t relent easily. Sparkling fall colors slowly cascade down the northern hemisphere, and leave cool winds and dimming leaves dropping in their wake. My own mind dances along in that period of transition, and uses that framework to distill my personal reflections into clearer thoughts.

Summer employment concludes about five weeks after my birthday. Birthdays mark some people’s personal new year but for me they kickstart the process. Did I do what I set out to accomplish this year? How do I feel about those things? Are they still important? What do I want the next year to look like?

Around this time of year I’m finalizing my winter plans so those questions get forced to the back burner. There are logistical hassles I expect to encounter that will prevent me from giving those questions the reflection they deserve. My winter profession is snowboard instruction so after deciding if I’ll return to my home mountain or explore somewhere new I still have the headache of procuring winter housing. But soon the stresses fade and the adventure begins. I have two and a half months in which I literally do not have employment available to me, and that is precisely the payoff I have been working for all year. This year I summitted Kilimanjaro, went on safari in Tanzania, saw my friend’s life in Rwanda, completed my first multi-day whitewater kayaking trip, and visited family and friends in two states. Next fall’s adventure will draw on inspiration from the coming year, but for now I reap the reward from the year’s toil.

As the fall ramble pushes forward it bulldozes a clearing of headspace and those birthday questions revisit me. How do I feel about everything up to this point? Were the pros worth the cons to be here today? What do I value at this point in my life? What do I want to accomplish? What steps will I need to take to accomplish those things? Where will those steps fit in? From these I distill a resolution game plan, and when I move into my winter habitat that plan is set in motion. Any changes to the day to day must be incorporated now or TV and Cheetos will muscle out the opportunity.

The holidays mark the busiest time of my year professionally. From mid-December to early January, there simply isn’t spare time or mental energy to consider if I’d like to, say, learn Spanish—not in any real way at least. If the thought did occur to me I couldn’t entertain it nor begin contemplating where it might fit in my daily/weekly/monthly routine or if maybe French would in fact be the more practical choice to pair with future traveling prospects. An incunabular thought can be scheduled for future germination.

Lift Access To The Top of the World--Retouched

The timing of my personal new year developed naturally and I learned to embrace it. I do, however, check in on my resolutions at the calendar new year and consider my progress. Part of having resolutions is recognizing the difference between a slip up and a lack of commitment. Work craziness is an acceptable excuse until it becomes TV and Cheetos—the go-to excuse that masks lack of commitment. If it really is the latter then its time to reexamine if that resolution is right for you. Sometimes, you shed failed ones to free up room for what is right in your life, because the wrong resolutions can act like TV and Cheetos, as well. The process of checking in continues leisurely throughout the year.

Life is wasted on regrets for the irrelevant and resolutions need not be one of them. Resolutions should put you in pursuit of desires worth working to obtain. If your desire is for TV and Cheetos then go be the best at that. Whatever it is, don’t quit simply because you didn’t get to it on January first. In relation to how the planet functions and how society interacts therein, January first is irrelevant. The placement of the personal new year is intrinsic upon individual values and shaped by forces as deeply rooted as our ancestors’ relationship to the land. The new year cannot be forced in place of natural rhythms; heed their wisdom.

 

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The Overingtons

 

Part. 1: Building the Seasonal Family Dynamic

The family and their new boats

The family and their new boats in New Zealand

For professional nomads, the seasonal lifestyle is not about stringing jobs together, it’s about weaving employment into a lifestyle guided by passion. For some, the idea of raising a child in that lifestyle sounds irresponsible if not impossible—but it doesn’t have to. There is no reason the driving, architectural force of one’s young adulthood should be stymied by parenthood. By adopting that commonality as the cornerstone for their seasonal family’s foundation, couples that meet while working seasonally can remain in the lifestyle that attracted them together and still raise a child responsibly. The unknown path, though intimidating, is not unnavigable. For the Overingtons of Healy, Alaska and Salt Lake City, Utah, it’s been a series of calculated risks.

Bill “Buckwheat” Overington and Louise Lovrich have raised their 12-year old son, Louis, entirely in the seasonal lifestyle. They own a rafting business in Denali National Park that operates in the summer, and the rest of the year find themselves in Salt Lake City where Louise works in pharmacy and Buckwheat drives for the transportation concessionaire at Snowbird ski resort.

Louis on the top of the podium at the IFSA National Freeride Championship

Louis on top of the podium at the IFSA National Freeride Championship

That recipe has produced interesting results. If the fear of raising a kid seasonally is that transferring between schools twice a year will stunt him socially, fill him with loneliness, instill a penchant for over-compensation, and—yaddah yaddah—ultimately leave him homeless and in a ditch, we can probably shelve that one. In reality, what’s emerged from the oven is a well-adjusted kid who looks up to his dad, kayaks with his parents regularly, out-paddles boaters twice his age, and last year became the national freeride ski champion in his age group. He’s confident, smart, and supportive of his peers. Although there’s still time for him to end up homeless in a ditch, the evidence suggests he’ll be fine.

Beyond passion for the outdoors, as business owners the Overingtons’ livelihood depended on blending parenthood into the seasonal lifestyle successfully. “The thing is, most people have never done it themselves and they don’t know anyone else who’s really done it that way either, so in their mind you can’t do it—until someone does it and it seems to work. Then they’re pretty supportive,” Buckwheat explains. Trailblazing requires fortitude, but the Overingtons’ sagaciousness enabled another Salt Lake City family to set up a seasonal lifestyle in Panama. Most of the anticipated roadblocks, both families discovered, were nothing more than untested parenting taboos.

“It’s all about risk, all of these things,” Buckwheat says. “It doesn’t always work out, and it doesn’t always work out the way you expect it to, but if you have the fortitude and the gumption to accept the consequences as they be, whatever it is, you know, you learn from it, you grow from it.”

Navigating the school system presented the first hurdles, and tested the family dynamic they’d constructed. Until this year, Louis began each school year in Healy, Alaska before transferring to Salt Lake City in the fall. “[People] ask us, ‘Does the Utah school allow that?’ It’s like, ‘how can they not?’” Buckwheat laughs.

Louise recalls being warned by the school that Louis would lose enrollment if he accompanied her to New Zealand for six weeks in kindergarden. Louise asked, “Can I just re-enroll him when we show up?” Well, yes, she could. By testing the perimeter, they’ve teased out opportunities that wouldn’t have otherwise existed, and for the first time they’re carving out a more significant slice of their year to devote to New Zealand.

In an effort to integrate Louise’s home landscape deeper into their lives, this year the family has made an opportunity to visit Louise’s parents and explore New Zealand kayaking and mountain biking. After beginning the school year in Healy the “Wheats,” as friends often refer to them, are trying out homeschooling.

Taking a break from skiing

The family taking a break from skiing

So what’s the recipe behind the recipe? What aspects of their seasonal lives became the pillars of their seasonal family? Where were forks in the road where they could have folded? By evaluating the risks they took as individuals, and then as a couple, we can understand how the Overingtons beat odds to become the seasonal family they are today.

Louise

Louise and Louis kayaking at 3mths copy

Louise with a 3-month old Louis

Louise grew up in New Zealand, the daughter of Croatian immigrants. Her parents, WWII survivors, had made aversion to danger the guiding force in their life and that was reflected in their daughter’s upbringing. Louise felt sheltered from many benign experiences. Family beach outings provided an egress but a desire for something more burned inside of her. Although New Zealand would become the adventure sport capital of the world, that exploded after Louise’s time, and like many Kiwis she looked out from her country in search of more world than could fit onto her tiny island. Thus, as a young adult Louise left the country in search of adventure.

After pharmacy school, a ski week in Austria inspired Louise to make plans with a friend to move to Colorado and become ski bums for one winter. At the last minute, however, her friend bailed to get married. This was an important moment for Louise. Her friend married and never again had the chance for that one winter at a ski resort, and it would have been easy for Louise to bow out and follow suit. Louise was intimidated but the departure date was approaching fast so she stuck to the plan, found a restaurant job near Aspen, and fell skis first into a twenty-five year passion for powder. A series of events led to her renewing her visa, living in Durango, and meeting Buckwheat. What was intended as one winter abroad quickly evolved into a lifestyle of adventure.

 

Buckwheat

Punching Two Rocks rapid on the Nenana (Buckwheat guiding far left)

Punching Two Rocks rapid on the Nenana (Buckwheat guiding far left)

By age ten Buckwheat was already riding his motorcycle solo through the woods. Although he claims his mom was “a bit of a scaredy cat,” she was apparently out riding motorcycles at times, as well. Regardless, Buckwheat’s childhood provided more room for scrapes and bruises than Louise’s, and he mitigated the doldrums of suburban Florida by channeling his energy into motocross and football. At twelve, his parents divorced and he and his mom moved to Colorado where winters suddenly impeded on the Floridian’s hobbies. An extracurricular ski class at fifteen, however, gave winter purpose. “Winter was just a pain in the ass up to that point. Skiing opened up a whole new side of life,” he reflects.

Under the guidance of his best friend, Rick, Buckwheat evolved into an aggressive skier. The pair often skipped school for powder days and were gifted enough students that it bore little affect on their academics. Adventures amplified their lives until one fateful night when Rick was killed in a car accident. Rick’s ashes were scattered on Telluride and since then skiing has become more spiritual for Buckwheat, who still thinks of his friend often while on the mountain.

In college, Buckwheat couldn’t afford motorized bikes anymore so he ditched the motor and joined the pioneer mountain biking scene in Durango. An outdoors class at Fort Lewis introduced him to kayaking and soon this trifecta—skiing, mountain biking, and kayaking—vied for his attention and became the guiding framework of his young adult life. Eventually, photography and driving work for a Grand Canyon raft company led Buckwheat to raft guiding on the Animas in Durango. That segue planted a major life seed that years later blossomed into the founding of Denali Outdoor Center, but it’s significance lay dormant at first.

Initially, sports were about adrenaline—even skiing to an extent. Buckwheat’s first overnight river trip on the San Juan, however, developed his spiritual connection to the outdoors. “Finding solitude in the canyons of southern Utah, reading Desert Solitaire, and discovering the tranquility of isolation, truly turned me on to river life,” he explains. “[Adventure sports] became a catalyst for spiritual and physical happiness; connecting me with the power and humility of the experience, and maintaining my physical well-being as they continued to satisfy my desire for the next adrenaline rush.” What began as hobbies escalated into indispensable intimacy. Since then, these pursuits have infiltrated every aspect of his life.

 

Providence

Louise hit the jackpot. Her first ever river trip comprised three weeks on the most coveted section of high volume whitewater in the country and even introduced her to her future husband. They didn’t date immediately, however. Buckwheat would drive Louise twice that year, first as her shuttle driver for the Grand Canyon and then again for public transit in Durango that winter. After the second meeting, Buckwheat invited Louise out for a drink but in an effort to stick to a new personal restriction about not agreeing to every date proposal, she turned down the man she would eventually marry. Providence provided a second chance meeting at the laundromat that evening, however, and afterward they found themselves getting that drink after all.

Many adventures later, Buckwheat would get hired at a rafting company in Denali, but bailed on the idea after doing some research at the library. “We’re looking at the rainfall amounts and stuff and we’re like ‘we don’t want to go there, drive all the way up there and have it be cold and rainy all the time,'” Buckwheat says.

“I just remember that picture of everyone [rafting] in Helly Hansen,” Louise laments. “I was like, uh, looks like it rains a lot there.”

It does, which they discovered firsthand that year when low water on the Animas expanded their migration to Alaska despite themselves. Denali revealed something more desirable than rain, however. The Nenana proved to be a high volume, low traffic, non-permitted river through incendiary landscape. Over the next few years, they built a home, built a business, and made that glacial-fed river their backyard, rain and all.

 

Trailblazing

Otto Lake Sunset

Home sweet home: sunset over Otto Lake at Denali Outdoor Center

The Denali business originated as an idea for an inflatable kayak school with little hope of getting off the ground. Banks continually refused Buckwheat’s proposal until finally he met with a loan officer who happened to recognize him as the now grown son of her husband’s good friend. She took a chance on his risky idea and, thus, the Denali Park Paddling Center was formed in 1993. Eventually, that evolved into the Denali Outdoor Center (DOC), one of the most respected rafting companies in Alaska today.

Until then, Louise was building a pharmacy career but she quit her full-time gig to start DOC. They had hoped DOC would make enough money for Louise to quit pharmacy all together, but it didn’t work out that way. Although the business is successful, it’s difficult to make enough money in four months to fund their preferred lifestyle. “There’s a certain level of income that’s required to meet those needs to raise a family, it’s one of the reasons why we only have one child. We can afford the tickets to New Zealand, we can afford the toys for everybody, and still live the lifestyle. At 2 or 3 kids we might have to reassess and have a different lifestyle.” Buckwheat analyzes. Therefore, both parents maintain employment in the off-season. Louise became a relief pharmacist which allowed her to work when and where she wanted. It also took her over Colorado mountain passes and away from home for several days at a time—an arrangement unsustainable into parenthood.

They searched Alaska and the West for a place that allowed all facets of their lives to synchronize. Louise offered Walmart winter pharmacy work strictly in Salt Lake City and they accepted. “Back then it was easy since they were so short of pharmacists and they took what you could offer. Hence, I created a seasonal job due to the need for pharmacists. I don’t think I could get away with it now.” In Salt Lake City, they could afford a 4-bedroom, 2-and-a-half bath, decent house in a nice neighborhood, ten minutes from the world class skiing of Snowbird-Alta, for $170,000. “To be able to afford a home that we were only going to live in half the year and that we didn’t want to rent out the other half of the year—you can’t do that anywhere else that I’ve found. You couldn’t pull those pieces together, the work, the other shoulder season activities, great mountain biking in spring and fall there, close to the desert, you know, all the elements. International airport, direct flights to Anchorage.”

Louise adds, “Everything gets negated because of the smog.”

Undoubtedly, her comment represents the underlying truth: there isn’t one landscape that currently meets the family’s needs and desires. Thus, the migration persists, something everyone processes differently. Buckwheat accepts it as a necessary discomfort because neither landscape is attractive to him in the opposite season, whereas Louise is reminded that she would prefer to integrate into one, year-round community. For Louis, the seasonal cadence has permeated his entire life so he has no basis for comparison. Despite the obvious inconvenience, the fall drive south—peppered with kayaking and mountain biking adventures—has developed into a beloved, annual, two-week family vacation capable of dissolving the rest of the bullshit. Indeed, the parents especially know how rare it is to share adventure with the whole family.

 

Built-in adventure buddies

First day of skiing 2012

First day of skiing 2012

If the couple that plays together stays together, then the family who extends that gift to their children fortifies their bond that much more. For those who disbelieve that a person can chase their passion and raise a happy family, the Wheats shatter that illusion. Parenthood mellows the terrain temporarily and adventures metabolize at a different pace for a few years, but seeing passion mirrored in the incredulous eyes of one’s own child deepens that activity’s value forever. In the long run, it can even keep adults engaged in the outdoors at a greater intensity for more years than they naturally would otherwise. It certainly has for Buckwheat and Louise.

Louise admits she satiated her addiction to powder and no longer needs to alter her life for it, however engaging in her passion for the outdoors with her family remains paramount. Buckwheat recognizes that parenthood now has him playing on his skis and kayak with the intensity of his young adult years. As a family of three, the Overingtons travel as a self-contained unit—built-in adventure buddies looking out for each other’s safety and sharing the stoke. For professional nomads, that qualifies as living the dream.

To succeed as a parent in the seasonal lifestyle only the rules need change. As with everything, there’s a way to do it responsibly and a way to do it irresponsibly, and this one starts with a change in the narrative. It’s not a rootless existence but migration between seasonal habitats. Pick your playgrounds, create a niche, and the resultant passion will foster a dynamic learning environment for a child. Adventurous couples have the opportunity to break the paradigm and see their passions take on new life in the next generation. If life is a series of calculated risks, then parenthood is the last place to start taking the easy way out.

 

Ready for adventure in New Zealand

Ready for adventure in New Zealand

Continue to Part 2: Raising the Nomadic Kid

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Prosaic in Nature: rejuvenation in transition

The following is adapted from a speech the author gave in Denali National Park, Alaska at a My Seasonal Life showcase—a project by LivingSeasonal.com

 

Exploring the Columbia Gorge in Oregon.

Exploring the Columbia Gorge in Oregon.

This is how it happens. At breakfast, a coworker sits down across from me in the employee dining hall, exhales heavily and says, “Do you want to climb Kilimanjaro with me?” I pause as I swallow my bite of Raisin Bran and—perhaps fueled by my healthy breakfast choice, or delusional from seven hours between work shifts—I respond, “I think so. Give me a week to see if I’m lying.” I resume conversation with my other breakfast buddy and the topic drifts to the possibility of sailing the Virgin Islands with a boat captain friend.

Later that day, I’m in my room with my current and former roommates divulging my new intentions. “I think I might go to Africa this fall,” I clear my throat to consider how ridiculous the next phrase will sound, “and climb Kilimanjaro. Is that weird?” Immediately, one friend responds, “I’m thinking about going to Africa this fall to do some rock climbing!” The other chimes in, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to France and probably touring a great deal of Europe.” So on and so forth as I share my half-baked travel plan over the next few days my friends in this nomadic community share theirs.

Sure enough, no one ever responds, “That’s weird.” No one says, That’s crazy,” because it isn’t. Certainly, no one ever chides, “That’s irresponsible,” although financially they’d be somewhat right. But, fuck it. Africa, ya know?

The author uncertain about a volcano mud bath in Colombia.

The author uncertain about a volcano mud bath in Colombia.

In this community this is normal, even expected, and definitely celebrated. It’s almost easy to lose sight of how adventurous our friends are, because everyone is out there pursuing something badass in the off-season—the time when we’re not working and life really begins. In actuality, there’s nothing really “off” about it.

A good friend once told me, “our friends are better than Travelocity.” He couldn’t be more right. Last year, my friends trekked the Himalayas in Nepal, celebrated Oktoberfest in Germany, explored Colombia, fished from a sea kayak in Hawaii, spent the winter in India, borrowed boats and sailed in the Virgin Islands, taught diving in Indonesia, and mushed the Iditarod and Yukon Quest. The list goes on. All of those adventures—all of that personal expansion and testing of oneself in the unknown—was enabled by embracing seasonal living. Our people place more emphasis on what you do with your time than how you make money.

Keeping things orderly in the Lost City, Colombia

Keeping things orderly in the Lost City, Colombia

As easy as it is to lose sight of how badass our friends are, all we have to do is look to our childhood friends back home for reassurance. They’re getting married and popping out fleets of children. They’re fretting over floral arrangements and the color of bridesmaid’s dresses. Alternatively, our friends living seasonally have the decency to elope, get those pesky vows out of the way, and then save the good part—the reception—for us so we can celebrate their marriage with good food and copious amounts of alcohol. We just value things differently in this lifestyle. Money buys our fun and adventure. It provides for us, too, but our needs span a much different scale than what we once valued, pre-seasonal adventures.

Taking a break on the Matanuska glacier in Alaska

Taking a break on the Matanuska glacier in Alaska

But here’s the downside. The good ones leave. They burn out, move on to new adventures, answer that call to settle down, or become fed up with steadfast corporate idiocy (a funny thing that rears its head even in this lifestyle). Worse yet, some forget how awesome we have it compared to the 9-5ers because the excitement dwindles as adventure becomes prosaic in our world. The reality is that almost everyone bows out eventually. The place, though home for so many of us, is still just a stop along the greater migrational path.

The decision to climb Kilimanjaro really was made that simply. All the subsequent research I did was essentially fodder to support that decision. When else would I plan such a thing for myself? Right now I’m in decent shape with a wide open fall season to decorate any way I choose. Why not select Africa?

Contemplative along the Oregon coastline

Contemplative along the Oregon coastline

The possibilities in this lifestyle are limited only by one’s imagination. The seasonal community is expansive yet tightly knit, so we make new friends but the good ones never leave us entirely. We’ll cross paths on another adventure and crash on each other’s couches down the line. Our friends really are better than Travelocity. Not only can they provide travel advice to everywhere, but they understand why we must continue searching for new horizons.

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Brooke’s Five Tips for Seasonal Success

Brooke ramp

  1. Throw yourself out there and trust the blank slate. It sounds cheesy but the more I trust the universe and the less I panic and try to plan the more it does seem to be good.

  2. Even when the shittiest of shitty things happen later on down the line you look back at it and see the lessons learned. It helps me hold my head up when things are hard to be like, ‘I’m sure there’s a reason this is happening that I might not know now but it’s going to help me become a better person down the road.’

  3. A life like this boils down to your simple needs. There’s definitely been moments where I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck, but I feel like there’s always a way to make it work. I feel like the times that I’ve had plenty of money, like when I had the operations manager job, I would just spend it on people and when I don’t I feel like I get taken care of somehow. Life just happens.

  4. Don’t be scared to just get your toe in the door. I did all the hiring at AWA and everyone wants to start out as guides, and that’s hard because everyone’s looking for people with guiding experience. I found if people could just get in there to work in the office, work in hospitality, or whatever job, you’re gaining great experience while the payoff down the road is really big. If you’re going to a ski town don’t be afraid to be a barista, a server, or anything that is going to get you a ski pass and put you out on the mountain. A lot of summer lodges have room and board so you don’t have to make a ton of money, but then it gets you in and meeting people. You can learn a lot just scrubbing toilets about how to become a raft guide for the next year. You just have to take the risk and go for it.

  5. My goals are ever-evolving. I feel like the older I get the more I trust in that go-with-the-flow approach. I feel like if I just keep living my passion it will keep unfolding.

Don't Walk Dance

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Denali Migration

I guess he got a girlfriend. Until today, every morning around seven he started tapping on the window frame outside my bed, claiming my territory as his. I suppose it was romantic. My little romeo approached my window powerfully and with purpose, his chest puffed out with self-importance—tricks that have been wooing women to sleep with men they shouldn’t for centuries. Maybe he thought my territory was his—after all, I’m nomadic and he lives in this spruce forest year-round. Regardless, we’re incompatible, and furthermore he’s not the pecker I want to be awakened by anyway. But this morning he didn’t come, and I can only assume that the northern three-toed woodpecker found a mate. It’s that time of year.

My Romeo

My Romeo

Spring in Denali National Park is an orgy. A few mammals (e.g. moose, lynx, wolves, and snowshoe hare) and a couple dozen birds have been here all winter, but spring beckons the arrival of migratory species. Dall sheep descend from the hills, herds of caribou cows migrate in to deliver their calves while the bulls fatten up for the next rut, and the silent, crisp winter air is broken by the crescendo of 150 or so bird species who literally septuple the local bird population. Just about every single animal rolling into the party is hungry and horny.

Dall sheep rams on Marmot Rock

Dall sheep rams on Marmot Rock

Another species, the transient, crashes the party, as well. Their rut begins almost immediately. This species parties intensely from day one to display to potential mates early in the season and often performs its mating call at local watering holes well into the night as adamantly as a Swainson’s thrush. Transients are known for maintaining a rigorous partying schedule all summer, suggesting that beer is the sustenance needed to carry them to their winter resting grounds. Much like the Bohemian waxwing, the transient has been known to over-indulge on fermented berries and get a little too tipsy—but this is just the transient’s mating ritual. For those who remain in this revolving migration, the lure is more enticing than frivolous sex. After all, a person can get laid anywhere, but there is something unique to this landscape and community that invites transients to stay and evolve.

 

Community

This landscape brings people together, and without it this community wouldn’t exist. We are all drawn here looking for that thing that we need to nourish and sustain us the other seven months of the year. Birds come for berries, insects, extended daylight, and sex. Transients are not that much different.

For half the year we live alternate identities as global trekkers, dog mushers, snowboard instructors, and dive masters, and around early May this big granite magnet called Denali swoops us back into its orbit. We migrate north (a handful migrate south), dust off cobwebs regarding work and friendships, squeeze our personas back into the mixing pot, and try to pick up where we left off while still remaining true to whatever growth we’ve experienced over the last seven months. Year after year, Denali is the migration station that brings us all together.

On paper, though, how does society classify a man who has lived in Alaska 35 summers  and yet has no physical address? Though he works relentlessly all summer, every September his temporary community packs up faster than a circus act and he, too, must answer the call of migration. If a man travels the globe more than half the year but returns perennially to the same landscape, can you call those nesting grounds his home? In the words of Tolkien, “Not all who wander are lost.” Perhaps then, it is our definition of home that needs to shift to include something more than what is indicated on a driver’s license. After all, it’s about community.

All of us come here running from or toward something—e.g. family, work, or adventure. By throwing caution to the wind we find ourselves immersed in a support system of people who applaud us for doing so. Whatever hackneyed idea you conceive—diving in Bali, trekking in Nepal, trimming weed in Oregon—people applaud you and, moreover, you likely have met someone eager to offer advice about their own experience doing that very thing. The Denali community fosters the adventurous spirit.

The Denali migration is complex. There must be the newbies with cookie-cutter naivety about Alaska as well as the displaced elders with some vague ties to the Lower 48. That is how the populace grows. It culls the ones who cannot or would rather not thrive in this environment and helps those who wish to stay to develop into the most badass version of their selves.

And that’s what we find up here, those of us that stay. We find our people.

 

Nourished by landscape

The question is, how does the transient fit into the picture with the rest of the species, both local and migratory? Extended daylight and nutritionally rich landscape attract a myriad of species to this breeding ground, but for a relatively short season. The transient is no exception to that, but in retrospect, it’s almost silly that anyone makes the effort to be here at all.

“The most amazing thing about the birds in Denali, as Carol McIntyre points out, is how far they come for such a short summer. Defying all odds and logic, birds fly here from six continents, including Africa. Altogether there are about 150 species that regularly come to Denali. Some just stop and rest, but many stay and raise their young. What is even more amazing, are those birds that stay all year, making it through an unbelievably cold and harsh Denali winter.”

The ratio of people who stay in the Denali area year-round versus those who migrate on is likely similar to the birds. We gather from around the globe to nourish ourselves in this habitat even though spring sometimes doesn’t emerge until late May, it often rains for a portion of every day in July, and by mid-August it’s already full-blown autumn. Therefore, true summer might comprise about a month. Though it is difficult to integrate into this habitat, it is here we find sustenance.

Stony Hill 144

Denali landscape

Backpackers roam mostly trail-less wilderness and let the challenges of river crossings, scree slopes, and curiosity dictate each footfall. The park beckons exploration with enticing beauty, yet the boreal forest is essentially a big swamp, and the tundra a spongy moon-scape. Both bog down the pace of eager hikers who must learn to reduce the scale of their imagination to fit the reality of this place.

Yet none of us would want it any other way. To make it easier—to put in more trails and campgrounds—would cheapen the purity of that experience. To struggle up a riverbank and then watch a grizzly bear bound effortlessly up a steeper embankment is to be humbled by evolutionary adaptation. A grizzly bear has pigeon-toed paws with massive claws, a powerful shoulder hump for digging up roots, and the ability to run 35 mph across the aforementioned landscape. The opposable thumb has nothing on that. It is not until one reels in expectation, learns to move at the pace of the glaciers, and adapt to the conditions of the day that a human lives in concert with this habitat.

Sow and cubs

Sow and cubs

Over time, the initial infatuation matures. Slowly the flighty transient develops an integrated yet nomadic relationship with the landscape. Awestruck feelings about grizzly bear sightings are augmented by knowledge of how Athabascans spear-hunted them, the rituals involved in orchestrating the hunt, and what an honor it meant in that culture. The amazement of seeing spring cubs transforms into excitement that the sow took on enough fat to allow the blastocyst (the thing that is conceived during the spring orgy and ultimately becomes the embryo) to gestate in the fall (delayed implantation). If a sow isn’t fat and healthy enough, the blastocyst doesn’t attach itself to the uterine wall and is instead absorbed back into her body. The nomad is dependent on the land for sustenance even if just in the metaphysical sense.

Returning workers develop geeky interests in less glamorous life forms, as well.I swore I’d never say this, but nine summers later, I’m starting to give a shit about birds. They are the migrators who truly work for their summer in Denali. By examining their compulsory journey we find insight into our own seemingly inexplicable migration. A great one to study is the arctic tern.

During winter, the arctic tern migrates south from Alaska and Greenland to the Weddell Sea in Antarctica. This is effectively the longest migrational path of any species, matched by only a few humans. Since the tern can live for over 30 years, The Arctic Tern Migration Project, sums up a lifetime of this audacious trip as, “…equivalent to around 3 return journeys to the Moon! Not bad for a bird with a mass of a little over 100 grams,” (for ultimate geekiness, check out the project’s Google Earth model of the arctic tern’s migration route to and from a larger breeding ground in Greenland).

Since these little dudes are flying almost incessantly, their young must join in the migration at 20-26 days old, ready to adapt to every conceivable weather condition and biome of the globe. This raises important questions such as “what flight characteristics make this bird aerodynamically efficient from such a young age,” “how can it sustain itself metabolically,” and seriously, “why the fuck?” That’s a lot of pressure for a such a little guy, who otherwise can easily be dismissed as just another white bird. Voracious drive toward sunlight, nourishment, and proliferation—it’s crazy what hormones incite.

As transients develop dependence on this landscape, each tidbit we absorb nourishes our insatiable hunger of understanding. We must continue to nourish ourselves anyway, or like the grizzly blastocycst we will not survive in this lifestyle. The more we learn, the more we appreciate the vast intricacies of this habitat, and thereby concede that we can never know it all. Like the arctic tern, we defy logic and keep returning anyway.

Just don’t tell anyone I’m starting to appreciate birds.

Nesting great horned owls

Nesting great horned owls

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