Field Notes

It's May 23 with snow on the ground, and there is a quiet.

I wake up to feel Acre rustle down by my feet and jump off the bed and go to the door. He softly scratches. I open my eyes and it’s already light out. I look to the door and he is staring at me. Did I hear his scratch or what? I look over at the clock and it’s early. 6 am. But I slide my feet to the cold floor to let him out. Sitting a second before standing I look out the window. Snow. A good bit of it too, hanging heavily on everything green and all the rooftops that cover this small mountain valley. This is the mountain weather I’ve come to love over my decades of living here. The mountains are not meant for people that want soft weather. This is not a judgement in any way, just a fact. The mountains don’t care what you want. May will often see snow. June will sometimes bring it too. July and August may as well. And the rest of the months will definitely see snow.

Saturday night we went camping. Driving out to one of our places in the woods, the sky was severe blue, the air warm and light. We put the windows down and drove slower. The smell of spring is a mix of pine, dust, and sagebrush. We spent a quiet night with just the three of us, our kids having stayed at home for other things. It’s still a little odd camping without them, a thing that hasn’t happened more than two or three times in the last 19 years but seems like it’s the impending future. Acre is a little nervous about the whole situation and I can’t tell if he’s restless because the kids aren’t here and he’d really prefer to have his whole herd together where he can neatly see them all at once. That or if there is a grizzly bear near by which also seems highly possible. We found huge prints here just last spring camping this time of year. We never figured it out, but it could well have been one or the other.

We put the fly on the tent for some photos I’m shooting for Marmot. I prefer sleeping in tents without the fly and on a night like this with starry skies I’d choose it every time even when the weather turns cold but the fly looks good in photos and around 1 or 2 I’ll wake up and crawl out into the darkness with my camera and shoot a few shots with the tent and the milky way if I’m lucky. I’ve shot this tent before at night, lit from the inside, and it looks good, but something about the shape of the rain fly looks even more pleasing.

The night passes slowly and quietly in the woods. The smell of burning wood mixed with spring forests. The sound of water. The mountain air. An owl nearby and some bird I don’t recognize staying up later than I’d expect.

As our campfire began to settle into the coals we head to bed. The temperature is dropping. I packed the lighter of our sleeping bags thinking our heavier ones were in the truck already should we need them, but they weren’t, and that was a minor mistake. One that may make for a less than optimally warm night but we have a few wool blankets in the truck we put over our bags and it’s relatively cozy. After I turn the light that hangs from our tent ceiling I fight the sleep that wants in my eyes. I lay just listening to the wind in the trees that has just picked up and the creek that isn’t far from us. And that bird. What is he doing up at this hour? The creek rushing with spring water. I don’t want to be asleep. I just want to listen and absorb this sound and these smells, this place, put it all in my mind and hold it as long as I can. I’ll take it back to town with me. I’ll revisit it during my work week. At night at home with our bedroom door open to the outside I’ll get small refills of it, though its not as purees this, it’s still the smells and sights and mostly sounds of the mountains even if slightly intruded by other humans.

But then a new sounds begins. It starts with one tap on the rain fly, followed by another, then another. I open my eyes and arch my head back to look out the open door of the rainfly and see the stars have all faded into a darker sky. I watch as one last open patch of stars disappears into the newly and rapidly forming clouds, and the rain picks up on the fly. I had checked the weather forecast before leaving and it said no such thing. (Liars!)

But rain on a tent makes for some of the best sleeping on earth. I lay back knowing if it keeps up I’ll need to get up to close the fly altogether, but I absorb this new sound for a few minutes on it’s own. Rain on a tent that functions is one of life’s great pleasures. (On the other hand, rain that gets in a tent that doesn’t function properly can be a certain form of hell. - Thank you Marmot for building good tents!)

The sound of the rain increases. Eventually I crawl out of the sleeping bag, zip the rainfly closed, and crawl back in. These moments, the “arm out of the sleeping bag” - part of you warm, part of you cold, the juxtaposition and contrast of the two forces. I live for these moments. Where hot and cold collide. Where comfort and discomfort find a happy medium. But then I zip all the way in and settle into pure bliss of sleeping comfortably on the ground surrounded by the sounds of falling water. Ella and Acre seem to be fast asleep. I don’t blame them. I’m fighting sleep just to stay awake and enjoy it, but eventually I let go and fall fast asleep with a symphony of sounds I love. Rain. Wind. Moving water. My dog snoring (he has a peaceful little snore.)

I wake up a few times in the night momentarily and lay just listening. It rains all night, but then sometime in the dark hours the sharp tack of the rain sound shifts to something softer, quieter. I’m too tired and half asleep to think about what it is, but I noticed the shift. Then just as light cracked I woke up and noticed exactly what it was, given away by the splotchy forms across the rain fly. Our tent is covered in snow. I dozed in and out a bit longer but finally was too eager to get a look to stay in my sleeping bag. I crawled out as quietly as possible, pulled my socks in and slid them into my sandals (not the best option, but again, I packed as if this was a summer night even though I know better) and walked to where we’d set our chairs under a large pine that was still relatively protected to look around. Snow covered everything. A heavy wet, spring snow. And it’s absolutely beautiful in an unexpected way.

We sometimes forget that mountains can’t be predicted. It is one of the very traits I love most about mountains. In a day and age when we think, we are told anyways, we have access to all the latest, greatest and “accurate” information (which is bull shit) mountains are here to remind us we are still just humans and we don’t come close to understanding how this all works. We see patterns. We have microscopes. We have telescopes. We have ai generative technology. But all of it is lost in the real mountains. We still can’t even see anywhere close to all of it, the big picture of how this all works.

And that is where the true beauty of the natural world lies. In not knowing and in understanding that while it may have been explored by others, the discovery is still there for each and every one of us. Be it mountains, a desert, farmland, woodland forest, ocean or coast, if we think we know it from a digital screen, we know nothing, literally nothing of it at all. If we think we know it because we’ve seen pictures of it, we still don’t. The real world has to be experienced to be known, and even then, even after 30 years in these mountains I know little more than I knew back then. Every venture out is as rich as my first forays into these mountains.

Because they are wild. Because we can’t control them, and we can’t predict them. We can’t capture them. Humans have an obsessive drive to be able to predict everything and the mountains just laugh at us. Deserts laugh. Jungles laugh. Even our suburban farm lands laugh at us. We think because we’ve developed it that the natural events that have shaped this planet from before time will suddenly cease in awe of our infrastructure and development. We seem surprised by hurricanes and tornadoes, ice storms and floods. We seem shocked that it would decide to snow when it’s almost June. But the world will never be tamed, no matter how much we with our technological developments wish it so. It’s a battle that dates our earliest memory as individuals and as societies and cultures. We can not predict or control what the natural world will do tomorrow, regardless of how much Klause Schwabb wishes it so.

We assume we have an all seeing eye. We presume our historical theories based on a few scientific methodologies are gospel. We assume AI and computer modelings can predict and that if we tweak this or that we can change the very weather and climate of earth. It’s all actually quite humorous when you step away from the dialogue and just listen. Look around. The hubris of humanity is actually hilarious. I join with the mountains laughing at us. Laughing at myself.

I was lying in bed (in my house) last night, completely unaware that snow was coming, listening to the creek and the wind echoing across the valley. It was pouring rain and the sound on the roof and leaves is so nice to listen to. It’s akin to slow jazz (for those of you that hate jazz, insert another analogy… but for me slow jazz hits all the spots… Cannonball Adderly, thank you!)

I was laying on my back wondering what I was going to do with this week’s Substack. I felt a little at odds with writing it because my brain has been relatively quiet this week. Exceptionally quiet in fact. I’ve been sitting back going through work things and outside of work things without much mental agenda. I haven’t necessarily had a lot on my mind or even in my mind. And for someone with a typically hyper active internal dialogue, this is unusual, almost frightening, but peaceful. It’s been a week of doing. It’s been a week of watching. Listening to the world pass over and around me. Walks to the creek. Sitting in the creek. A couple runs up mountain sides I hadn’t visited since late fall, trying to get my legs back in shape for going further.

Sometimes I forget it’s ok to not think about much at all. To just go along and watch. Observe. Look for things. Look at things. This has been the nature of this past week. Watching mountain weather is more than enough. Noticing the creek has risen above the rocks I usually can step on. Noticing the new born robins nested on the porch overhang have grown and flown off, and now dance around the wet yard plucking their own worms. Snow fell first in the high mountains over the weekend and now has moved down into the valleys. It’s dripping. Everything is dripping, and the snow will likely be gone by tomorrow. Maybe even later today. The smells are wet and heavy with lush spring. The dampness of the creek lingers through the whole valley. Humans shuffling about wondering when their warm weather will come. We’ll get about two and half months of it then it will laugh again.

This week is nothing more than a meager ode to mountains. Mountains and the landscapes we live in. For all the time I spend thinking, mulling, working, trying to do, trying to improve, trying to grow, trying to make things happen, this week has been none of it. This week has been watching. Observing. One of the quietest weeks in my mind in a long time, and I like it. I’m not even sure why. I like when my brain is doing what it normally does too, as I’ve spent a lifetime getting to know that fast pace. It’s just the weather maybe. I’m used to a fairly fast paced mind, so this quiet is a nice change, usually a space I only find when I push into long runs in the mountains or sitting in the creek.

But something in the air. The snow. The creek sounds. The overcast and damped colors of spring. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. It’s surely to be in contrast. There will moments of comfort and discomfort. The way life is intended to be. And most of all it’s surely to be unexpected. Expect the unexpected.