The Unbearable Lightness of Circumnavigation

Perhaps it is the realization that my twenties are drawing to an end and I feel my youth slipping away, but awhile ago I made the conscious decision to lead a more examined life.  In the past I have abandoned the process of introspection, reacting instead on an ever-present feeling of urgency.  Acting without thinking, as if a certain opportunity would disappear never to present itself again.  My life thus far has been about throwing myself at various objectives: mountains, education, relationships, often without putting an adequate amount of thought into what I have really been doing and why.  I have very few regrets about the decisions that I’ve made, but only good can come from being more thoughtful and applying reason to action, right?

When the e-mail from Luke Will popped onto my computer screen suggesting that we circumnavigate Oregon’s Crater Lake on skis, I immediately responded (without thinking I might add) that it sounded like a great idea.  After some more thought I made a list of reasons to cirumnavigate something.  It included such gems as “because it’s there,” and, “creating arbitrary goals to feel a sense of accomplishment is the most human thing we can do,” as well as, “why not?”  I left the introspection at that.

Weeks passed until it was time to leave and when the day arrived Luke and I loaded up the minivan and drove quickly south through the surprisingly sun-drenched Willamette Valley.   Winding our way into the Cascades, closely following the banks of the North Umpqua River, we arrived at the park in a blinding snowstorm.

The individual events of the next five days don’t matter much.  We skied and skied, we camped, we ate, we skied some more.  We cursed the winds that knocked us over.  We saw brilliant stars and shivered in our soaked sleeping bags.  We forgot the whiskey.

I laid awake one night lost in thought and that’s when it dawned on me how unreasonable trying to find a reason for everything really is.  There is little evidence in my life that leads me to believe that our existence on this awesome planet is anything more than an evolutionary fluke.  Whether we spend all our time in the pursuit of money, trying to find meaning through adventure, or any of the myriad other things people do, does it make any difference?  Are they all merely pleasure seeking activities we participate in so we don’t have to face the reality of human existence?

Thirty-two miles later I concluded that circumnavigating something is about celebrating the absurd nature of life itself.  It is about the feeling of pilfered Taco Bell hot sauce hitting sunburned lips after a quad burning day.  It is about ripping off your skins and bombing downhill as fast as you can, the added momentum supplied by your heavy pack carrying you farther and faster.  It is about the taste of twenty four ounces of celebratory Pabst Blue Ribbon beer hitting your stomach and feeling better than you ever imagined.  It is about letting go and not worrying about the why.

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