It doesn't have to be a big adventure: Thoughts inspired by 180 Degrees South

Scotty Kennett heading to the ridge of K12 in 80 mph wind gusts a few weeks ago.

Watching the movie 180 Degrees South has got me thinking about a lot of things, and I am grateful for the clear and simple message in the title, which Doug Thompkins spoke eloquently about at the end of the film, "If you are running towards a cliff, and if you are going to take one more step forward, and that step will send you off the cliff, does it not make sense to turn 180 Degrees and take one step forward?"

I love the idea of respecting what has come before and returning to a simpler way of life, living closer to the land as being a step forward. I know its true, I feel it in my own life, the more stuff I get rid of, the less money I have, the fewer toys my kids have, the more we live outside together the more full and rich my life and heart feel. The day we killed our TV was so liberating. And the kids are proud of it. "We don't have a TV," they announce to their horrified friends.

But while this central message is resonating with me, its the smaller things that make the idea grow that are sticking with me.

I love that Jeff, the main character in this true story, took six months off of his life to go follow in the footsteps of his hero, Yvon Chouinard. He talks in the movie about it being a once in a lifetime chance.

I think about moments like that, once in a lifetime chances that we all have. Every day. I the choice to go out for a walk even though its raining. The choice to take the canoe out on the lake even though you have to be at work in two hours, the choice to take a chance and let the story write itself.

Chouinard said last night that Adventure usually begins when everything goes wrong, and to some extent, I think he's right. But I also think Adventrure begins when you are willing not to know the outcome, the story, or the point of what you are doing.

We all have levels of adventure that are fitting to where we are in life. Our age, our fitness level, our financial situation, our family situation, we let all of these things dictate whether we could "Be that person". But I think that's a cop out.


Billie the Bronco... I lived in this truck for six months on a climbing trip through the western US, drove it from Bozeman to Aspen for two years, and put all but 5000 of the 247,000 miles it had on it before it finally retired this April. It was home, ski rack, kitchen and freedom for me.

I think its about being willing to do something that is in the realm of risk that opens the door to adventure. For my mom last week, hiking six miles to Crater Lake was a big adventure. For me, getting in the car by myself and driving to Jackson Hole and sitting down to talk to Bill Briggs was an adventure. The level of risk that I felt getting out of the car and going into the restaurant was huge.

Three years ago, putting on a camel back and hiking up the 1.5 mile loop on Kirk Hill in Bozeman was an adventure, I was going by myself, I was taking risk, I was pushing the limits of what I knew I was capable. Two weeks ago, skiing from Ophir to Telluirde off a very steep summit was an adventure. My fitness and skill had changed.

I guess what I am saying is that taking the impetus from Jeff's willingness to leave his life and immerse himself in risk of the unknown, his willingness to find his hero in Chouinard and approach him and say, "Hey I want to do this." is something that we can all do in our lives every day.

For Bodhi, adventure is skiing down our driveway or hiking to the culvert, floating his shoes down the drainage ditch.

I think the secret is to open the door to adventure in tiny ways at every opportunity. And when you can't find adventure that challenges you, look around for someone who needs some of their own adventure and join theirs.

Seeing challenge through the eyes of my 8 year old is a huge gift. Walking up the road on the ranch where we live and up to the big culvert to eat our peanut butter sandwiches inside of it is an adventure. To his little legs, and even more so to the legs of his 6 year old brother, it feels like an epic adventure. They have no idea that we are 20 minutes from home. They have no idea that its not really a mountain we've just climbed, but just a little shoulder on a hill down the valley from Pyramid Peak. To them, its risk, challenge, and the reward of peanut butter and banana when they reach their objective.

I'm grateful for this task I've set myself of listening to the stories of folks who have come before me in skiing, its laid a loose path for me to wander down, and opened opportunity for me to be brave enough to make new friends, sleep on strange couches, eat a lot more granola than I ever wanted to, and see my life through a series of mini adventures. I may never get to Patagonia, although I hope there is a big trip in my future someday, but if there isn't, all the moments linked together, from the culvert on the ranch, to walking around Jackson with Bill, to summiting K12, to slack-lining with my kids and my friends Kurt and Dennis in the park make it rich.

On the road again. I'm not the subject of a movie, or changing the world, but I'm excited to see where I'm going.

I often wish, as I am driving along, that I had someone to share it with, that there would be some adventuresome soul out there who doesn't care about long term income, but just wants to live and love and feel, who works hard and feels the same way that I do about being outside and meeting other people in the world. But then I am reminded that where I am right now in my journey is where I am meant to be.

This is a time where I get to spend some time by myself, taking the risk of getting in the car solo and seeing how the story ends. Pretty soon, my boys will be old enough to get in the car with me and the story will change again.

180 Degrees South: Adventures with Yvon Chouinard, or: Stalking Your Hero Leads to Personal Growth and Restraining Orders

Last night, I went out and saw a great new movie called 180 Degrees South. Its the story of a man, Jeff Johnson, who found some footage of Yvon Couinard and his friend Doug Thompkins on their 1968 trip to Patagonia.

Jeff became intrigued with the idea of following in mentor's footsteps, and following the same route that Yvon and Doug had taken on their trip. As luck would have it, Yvon and Doug ended up joining Jeff on part of his remarkable, yet simple journey, and the story that gets told is beautiful.

I was struck by so much of the movie, I would say that the central theme which it gets across very well is a message to all of us to walk with our feet on the earth and open our eyes to look carefully at what is truly happening around us. Taking a small adventure, of any kind, leads to growth and change of your person, of your ideals, and hopefully then of the way you interact with the land, and your priorities. Its a grass roots revolution.

Couinard and Christian Beckwith both spoke last night before the film, and they had similar messages: (to paraphrase:) "I can't change the whole world. What I'm doing isn't going to stop the oil flow or end the Korean crisis. But it can affect a small amount of change at my own door." and that has a ripple effect which may eventually change the way we look at building dams and drilling into the sea bed.

While the message was clear, and the story intriguingly enough that they didn't have to sell it hard, we willingly went on the journey with Jeff and his friends, longing to be out there with him experiencing that kind of growth ourselves, the thing that struck me was what was happening with Yvon.

I'd never met him before last night, and mostly, I listened to him talking with Bill Briggs, another climber and mountaineer in his 70s.

People keep asking me why I'm here, why am I in Jackson this weekend, and the answer seems so silly, I traveled up here to take a walk with Bill Briggs and to take a hike with Pepi Stiegler. That's really all there is to it. I drove for 20 hours and took a week off work on the off chance that those guys might be free to tell me stories and go for a spin around town. I feel like there aught to be more to it, when I answer the question, I usually say, "Well, I'm a writer, and I'm spending a little time with Bill and writing about him." But that implies something other than what is real, which is that I want to meet the person inside the icon and say thank you, and let my story unfold, touched by theirs.

So I'm standing next to Chouinard and Briggs having a glass of wine, and watching as Yvon shows his hands to Bill. The knuckles look like climber's knuckles, so many of those I've taped over the years in my athletes, swolen and thick, the tendons just on the verge of an angry flare up. "I can't climb anymore, it hurts too much." Yvon says to Bill.

"I know, the body. It gives out after a while." Says Bill, who has dealt with a fused hip since 1971.

"Mostly, I fly-fish now." says Chouinard. I look at him and try to see how he feels about this. I know he is a legendary climber. I haven't read that much about him, so while I know he is an icon in the climbing community, and that he is the founder of Patagonia, I feel like I am looking just at a guy who loved to climb, who defined a lot of his life by it, and who cant' do it any more.

The only difference that I see between Chouinard and my friend Louie or my friend Dennis is exposure. They are people who love to climb, who work to make enough money for the next climbing trip, who define their lives by moments in the mountains.

We went in to the movie and I watched Jeff make his journey in the footsteps of his hero, I learned about conservation in patagonia, I learned about three hundred Gaouchos opposing the Chilean government on the building of dams.

And I watched Chouniard openly accept the people around him who had dreams. I watched him encourage Jeff, I watched him teach Makohe, an easter Island native to walk with an ice axe. I watched him realize that he still longed to climb, and I watched him make his last ascent. There was beauty in the way he spread the dream of climbing, there was never an idea that Jeff shouldn't be making this trip because he hadn't paid his dues on ice, there was never the idea that adventure of this magnitude is reserved for the icons of our time.

There was no ideas imposed on why or what it would mean, it was just a group of people, respecting those who had come before, building a new dream, quietly discovering themselves and their friendships. Watching Jeff become was interesting, and full of lessons. Watching Yvon was beautiful.

The story wasn't about him, but the expression on his face after having just talked to him moments before about moving away from climbing and accepting that things were different now made it impossible for me not to follow him with my heart in the film.

They climbed their last peak, Jeff accompanying Doug and Yvon, and when they ask Yvon what he wants to call the route, he says, "Nothing, lets just get it done." What do you do when you are walking to the finish? They climbed it, they summited. Bittersweet is the wrong word, it doesn't begin to describe saying goodbye to the thing you love on purpose.

Wall.E is the best medicine

Took Bodhi to see wall e He's feeling much better!

UPDATE: wow, I'm impressed, I took that shot with my camera phone in the theater! If you haven't seen this movie yet, go see it. I am so so so very grateful to John Lasseter for making this movie! It is really well done, timely, beautiful...it doesn't feel pedantic or preachy. Its just kind of... true. I especially like that WalMart owns the world, and that the president of WalMart is kind of the President of the World. Hmmm... more on this later. I'm beat! Bodhi, of course, is all better!

Bodhi Dreams of Skiing Steeps

I was sharing the movie Steep with my family last night, and Bodhi brought in his white board and started drawing steep mountains and himself skiing in them. Then he started drawing himself parachuting off the cliffs, and crashing down the hill. It was awesome to see. My favorite part is when he looks at the mountain and says, "Maybe one day I should climb up that and ski down it." Heaven.

We watched Aspen Extreme and it RULED!

Okay, I have to admit that I saw this movie in the early 90s when it came out. I remember selling the neon Scott Schmidt full suit outfit when I worked at The North Face in Palo Alto. I am a big dork. We've established that.

I do remember the woman who played Brice was the penultimate sno-bunny with the super tight pants and the super poofy teeny jacket that started at your boobs and had a huge furry collar. Man, I wanted one of those outfits. If I make enough money in tips this year, I am so gonna get one of those and wear it to the next Academy. That would ROCK!

Anyhow, I also remember that it did'nt even occur to me that you don't try out to be an instructor at Aspen by going down some massive mogul hill and busting hellecoptors, and then were on the cover of Powder! magazine.

Right. There's that dorky part again. But you know whats funny? It was still a pretty good movie. In SPITE of myself, I found myself totally hooked on the story again.

And then there's that uncanny resemblance of T. J. Burke and Andy Docken...







If you haven't seen it, you must. I for one think we should make it an annual fundraiser for some local ski kids, put on cooperatively by Bridger and Big Sky at the Ellen once a year just before ski season, have a big early themed 90's party after the screening. What a blast.

Bonnie? Troy? what do you think???

**** UPDATE ****
Katie Fry, demo teams manager and sister to Megan Harvey, demo team member and author of the ATM, was the stunt skier for Brice! How cool is that??