{"id":294,"date":"2005-05-02T16:33:09","date_gmt":"2005-05-02T23:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointsunknown.net\/blog\/?p=294"},"modified":"2016-04-15T20:38:43","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T03:38:43","slug":"the-secret-life-of-mountain-guides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pointsunknown.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/the-secret-life-of-mountain-guides\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret life of Mountain Guides"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The author and his wife.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes its easy to look back and see where it all went wrong. The one wrong move, the wrong words said, and where you were able to observe, almost visually, your life pivoting on its strange axis to lead you off in the entirely wrong direction.<\/p>\n

When you wake up in your tent half way up a mountain, wind howling, thinking about every girl you\u2019ve ever met, shared a moment with, even shared a night with, its hard to see exactly what compelled you to leave them there at the bar, at the party, in the bedroom questioning you with be-mine eyes and walk out the door, onto another airplane, into a taxi, to a cheap hotel and finally into yet another bout of suffering at the will of nature.<\/p>\n

You used to tell yourself in the half joking half serious way you construct your life that all this gallivanting around the world from mountain to mountain and ocean to ocean was just a cunning ruse; a good way to meet girls. Like most good ideas that you have, though the theory was sound, the implementation proved horribly ineffective. Sure the sunburnt smile and stories of suffering on mountains across the world rarely fails to garner you a little attention. And on some even luckier occasions that attention comes from some cute twenty something who holds her stare until she\u2019s certain you\u2019ve noticed and brushes slowly past you on her way across the room.<\/p>\n

Later you\u2019ll find a quiet place to talk. She\u2019ll listen to your animated stories and smile radiantly. She\u2019ll tell you of her dreams to travel far away; she\u2019ll talk about her family, her friends, and her ties to her solid sense of place. You\u2019ll explain that you never stay in the same spot for more then six months and you\u2019ll impress her with your knowledge and experience. And you\u2019ll go on like this for days or weeks or even months and perhaps share a few short outings hiking in the hills or paddling across the sound or even a weekend trip to a backcountry hot springs or a popular climbing crag.<\/p>\n

Lying in bed together you\u2019ll plan trips to Thailand and New Zealand. You\u2019ll talk about the future; a very hard thing for you to do. You\u2019ll say you \u201cdon\u2019t know what the future holds but at least we\u2019ll be together.\u201d She\u2019ll love you even more for that feeling that she has finally tamed the wild adventurer. She\u2019ll believe it. You might believe it too.<\/p>\n

Until all too soon she will realize that your soul is bound to the wind in the mountains that you climb and when you say \u201cI am going back to work next week\u201d it doesn\u2019t mean a nine to five day trip into the city but a month or two in a romanticized land that she\u2019s dreamed about.<\/p>\n

She\u2019ll be angry with you that she\u2019s uninvited and unable to share in the reality of the adventure stories you\u2019ve been telling her. She\u2019ll leave you then, before you can even consider other possibilities and rebound with a legal assistant who likes to go hiking on the weekends and looks great in the fall line-up from Patagonia. She\u2019ll be able to impress him with that tough \u2013 independent outdoorsy girl attitude she inherited from being with you. Or worse and in your desperate attempt to gain and maintain companionship you did invite her along and told her all she had to do is quite her job, sell her car, move out of her apartment leaving her life of comfort and relative stability to join you on a globe trotting adventure that would connect your souls for the rest of your shared lives.<\/p>\n

When you tell her this your eyes will dance with the fire of your own enthusiasm, but this revelation of your life long dream will be more than she can handle and you will be \u201casking way too much.\u201d She\u2019ll be scared, you will be vulnerable and you\u2019ll end up worse then in the uninvited case, perhaps never to speak to her again.<\/p>\n

You will once again board that plane sad and alone as you stare at happy vacationing couples on their way to spectacular beach locations or the adventurous couples that took two weeks off of there jobs in Chicago to strengthen their bond and share in a peak experience in the wilds of the world. Fully guided of course. You\u2019ll snicker at the former and secretly despise the latter.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the tent half way up the mountain you\u2019ll be joking with the boys about freedom and never getting tied down. You\u2019ll talk of the manic, craziness of women that you are glad you don\u2019t have to deal with.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll say things like \u201cwomen just keep you from the summit\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019ve got so much life ahead of you to worry about that now.\u201d They\u2019ll say \u201cThere\u2019s no rush, guys, when they get old, get that sophisticated and mature look like Sean Connery. Women are the same way. When they get older they look like Sean Connery.\u201d And you\u2019ll think of the alternative; locked up in a box with a computer screen and a telephone. Where time off means a reprieve in front of the TV, to hang out with your kids and your wife; A house with a white picket fence and all the banks and the bills that go with that kind of responsibility. For a second you\u2019ll believe it, that you\u2019re better off alone.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll talk of the girls that said, \u201cI love you\u201d only to leave you when you’re homeless and unemployed. The ones you almost stayed for and the ones you wish you would have. You\u2019ll say \u201cthank god I don\u2019t have to deal with that kind of drama anymore.\u201d Your climbing buddies will say, \u201cWomen are just head games and heartache and the ones that play the game too long end up alone at forty herding cats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later, lying in your sleeping bag you\u2019ll try to recall just what made you take that month long assignment in Tanzania guiding flat-landers up to the roof of Africa and the one you left behind to be there. Sleeping on it, you find the answer at 19,000ft as the sun rises over the Serengeti painting the sky in the most brilliant red and orange. You\u2019ll see then all to clearly when your life pivoted on its strange axis to lead you, once again, off on an adventure. You\u2019ll realize then, that it was not the wrong way at all, but that you do have so much life ahead of you and so much more to give.<\/p>\n