Your Regularly Scheduled Seasonal Updates

It's that time of year again: leaves are turning, nights are getting cooler, and I am once again couch-surfing from friends to family and back again in gainful unemployment. Shoulder season is both beautiful and awkward. It's an incredible opportunity to visit people I've neglected for far too long, explore new places without thought to time constraints, and catch up on the world in general. Yet after a couple months of frenetic activity followed by weeks of unrestrained freedom I seem to reach the same conclusion every time: I haven't the foggiest idea what to do with myself.

The summer could be summed up by that much beloved South Asian phrase "same same but different". I didn't even bother keeping track of how many times I went from Moccasin Creek to West Glacier but I can describe every inch, every boulder, every eddy of the Middle Fork of the Flathead River in such excruciating detail that it could be considered a form of torture. Such familiarity is tempered by the fact that every trip was somehow different - the social dynamic of the people on board, Montana's fickle weather, the water level that shapes the Middle Fork's personality. I've come away from my first season of river guiding with shoulders of steel, a greater appreciation for moving water, and a killer Chaco tan.

I did get the chance to lead a six day backpacking trip in September that brought together all sorts of extremes. Our group of seven guests represented a broad spectrum of experience, age, and geographic distribution, while the environment responded with everything from sideways snow to sweltering sun, thick forests to bare rocky passes. Somehow it all balanced out to a beautiful equilibrium that left us all with huge grins on our faces. To get an idea of it all you can check out one gentleman's pictures here. Thanks, Jamsheed, for putting those together! There are more out there and I'll post them as I'm able.

Six days spent schlepping a sixty pound pack turned out to be excellent training for running a half-marathon. In order to avoid the typical paddler's physique (gorilla shoulders/chicken legs) I started plodding in the spring, but quickly realized that unless I had a tangible goal in mind there was no way my lazy butt would continue that regiment. So I signed up for the Two Bear half-marathon in Whitefish, put some money down, and started training. A month into it I was ready to run the stupid thing, already, and be done with all this silliness. Who runs 13.1 miles, anyway? 146 people, that's who, and another hundred ran the full marathon, including a gentleman who was 83. September 13 was a beautiful sunny day and I managed to finish in under two hours with a time of 1:57, far exceeding my goal of simply finishing. I was 6th out of 21 in my age range (20-29), and 42nd overall. As Nathan likes to put it, I smoked 104 people. I guess hiking up all those mountain passes was good for something.

Currently I'm doing a west coast tour of the greater Seattle area, including the Olympic Penninsula, soon to be followed by a week down in Portland with my newly empty-nested folks. I've been stocking up on ethnic cuisine, coffee, and city culture before I head back to Montana in October. Given my previous record, the next update probably won't come until the spring, although I may make an exception to upload some pictures. Enjoy!

Home is Where You Hang Your Chacos

After a full six months of internet silence, I've decided to fire up the blog once more. Here's the condensed version: after another season teaching snowboarding at Whitefish Mountain Resort, at Big Mountain, in Whitefish, Montana, I spent two weeks in Oregon with my boyfriend Nathan and our friends Jason and Abby: snowboarding, touring Portland, and enjoying the coast. (You can check out those photos here if you so desire).

Safely back in Montana, I'm now shacked up in West Glacier to try my hand at raft guiding. Nathan has been kind enough to lend me his 12' 1958 Siesta camper for the summer. It's got a propane stove, electric lights, and the most awesome moose-print cushions you've ever seen. Montana Raft, my current employers, have a camp ground available to employees and there are all sorts of set-ups out here: traditional campers, old buses, 20-person tents, not to mention ingenious tarp shelters and a steadily growing herd of dogs.

Here's my new home, complete with camo tarp

We'll see how the house plants fare. I may let them out to roam when it gets warmer.
The kitchen is cozy but functional, and I'm so excited to have a gas stove

My sister made that beautiful blanket on the bed for a college art class

Now that I've renewed my Wilderness First Responder and been on the river a couple times, the next hurdle will be Swift Water Rescue. The weather is calling for temperatures in the 80s, which is a good thing since there's gong to be a lot of time spent in 35 degree water. Yeeha!

Halloween in November

The last time I knocked on a door while wearing a costume I was 12 years old and they were giving me candy. There's usually something wrong if you're 24 and running around at night doing the same thing. But Tuesday night, that's exactly what I was doing, complete with a full body bear suit. Granted, I wasn't exactly in my right mind, due to a marathon journey from southern Vietnam through Bangkok and back to Portland. As such I hadn't really slept in three days, and even now my brain is still somewhere over Hong Kong.

That is still no excuse for standing on my own doorstep dressed like Smokey's little brother. Eventually my dad answered the doorbell and I lumbered in, peering through the mesh eye holes and trying to string together coherent sentences in a disguised voice. My mother sized up this costumed intruder in gleeful disbelief. As Bernie the Bear launched into his singing telegram, serenading my mother with a version of "Happy Birthday", she happened to glance down at the dancing feet. The suit didn't quite cover my toes and my mother somehow recognized them, as only a mother can. I removed the mask at the end of my song and squeezed my mom as she leaped into my arms, screaming with joy for a good 10 minutes, rendered ecstatically speechless by the appearance of her wandering daughter, garbed in a bear suit, showing up a week early, and on her birthday no less.

Thanks to my dad's amazing brainstorm I made a quality entrance back to the United States, and that means that yes, I'm back. I'll respond to emails, answer the phone to share stories, and probably show up on your doorstep if you're in the Portland area. It has been an amazing adventure to say the least. I'm still getting used to wandering down the grocery aisles full of strange and familiar products, and I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not in Asia any more as I drive around town.

Thank you all for reading my rants of the last six months - it's been a fun experiment. If you want to hear more I can deliver it all in person. For those of you in Montana, I'll see you soon. For those of you elsewhere, best of luck on wherever your adventures take you.