The mostly photos report on Squamish

My final year at my beloved and beleaguered high school, the Academy at Adventure Quest, I lived out of a tiny, bright orange, one person tent. It was really no more than a bivy sack with a single curved pole that kept it suspended above my head by a few inches. Most nights I'd drag my sleeping bag outside and sleep under the stars, but when the weather was bad I'd lie on my back in the tent,  staring up at the orange nylon, listening to my discman and eating squares of Black Forest chocolate. I was an extremely content in there.

We spent our final semester in New Zealand. There were only eight of us kids by that point, the school limping towards towards the cliff of its unsettling demise. We were six boys and two girls, and by this point in the year, the boys had turned mean.

One week we did a trek in the Southern Alps. It rained all day, every day. We camped the second night on a hilltop overlooking a massive blue and white glacier. A fierce storm blew in that evening, kicking up wild winds so strong they ripped my English teacher's tent in half. She staked the shredded corners to the ground and to her ankles, and lay splayed on the ground for the duration of the night, a human anchor.

My little tent was stuck to the earth by five tin stakes. Each time the wind blew them out of the ground, I'd hop out and try and shove them back in, but it was no use. The rain fly flapped loudly, like a lose sail. Inside the tent, the fabric pressed so tightly against my face I could feel it against my nose and mouth. It seemed as if the whole thing was going to lift off the ground and blow into the glacier, taking me with it.

That night, I was not content sleeping alone in my tent. I was tired and almost frightened and everything was soaking wet. I remember that the splendor of the storm, the adventurous thrill that should have consumed me at the moment, was lost in a dismal sort of loneliness. The howling winds made it sound like I was the only one on the planet.

What a completely different situation it would be if I had a girlfriend lying next to me, and the two of us were trying to hold down the tent, and if we went sailing over the cliff into the ice, at least we'd be shrieking together. Sleep was out of the question, so I tried to write in my journal. With all the melodrama of the sixteen year old girl I was, I wrote "I'd give my right eye to have a friend with me right now."

I was thinking about that night last week, when Amber and I were falling asleep at the climber's camp beneath the grand wall in Squamish, BC. Our two dogs were curled up at opposite ends of the tent. The climbing that day had been phenomenal, perfect cracks and clean faces, but I'd been fighting off thoughts of Andrew the entire time. The sight of the big walls he'd told me so much about made my stomach flip with the memories of our multi pitch days together. That part of me, the part still tethered to him in my mind, is a real fucking bother.

But finally, after a very lively evening, I lay in the tent next to Amber and the memory of that night in New Zealand came bubbling up. We'd been talking for about an hour in the dark, and I felt a sudden stab of affection for her, of pure, almost giddy gratitude. The connection between old boyfriends (and all the rejection and unworthiness that comes with them) and climbing is dissolving, and once again the sport is starting to belong to me and my friends and the girls I would have, apparently, traded my eyes for twelve years ago.

::::

We went to Squamish! Four people, three dogs, three crash pads and one car. We left on Thursday night at 8:00pm, were hopelessly lost in Vancouver by midnight on the dot, passed out at the camp site by two in the morning.

Four days gave us just a taste of the unending sport and trad routes of that little town on the road to Whistler.  We even spent a half day engaged in the insufferable sport of bouldering. I'm really not into it, it's too hard and tedious for me, but my friends are obsessed, I don't know, they're crazy. But I will say they look good doing it.

This never happened.

Amber Jackson Photo

Things got real interesting when we roped up, as we didn't have a guide book, and when we did find a guide book we didn't know how to read it. We put up some ridiculous difficult routes. By accident.

Amber leading the 5.11d we thought was a 5.9

Sunshine taking a stab at the crux

The result

Me leading a 5.10d we thought was a 5.8 

Amber lent me her tights.

Like any climbing trip, the rewards...

I've been climbing for seventeen years now, in nine countries, and Squamish was some of the best rock I've ever put my hands on. 

As for everything else. Bolt by bolt it gets easier. That long night when I was 16 did not end up with me being swept alone into the blue glacier, and neither will this one. 

All in a week

This week was almost entirely work, typing, computer screens and running. Here are the few precious moments I was not at my desk: 

1. grey sunset beach picnic 2. sundress weather 3. one lap of the loop trail and two rounds of margaritas with Mackenzie 4. Seth at the summit of Rattlesnake Ridge 5. evening stories in a hazy field 6. misadventures in raw eating 7. Friday evening in the woods 8. writing for 25 cents a word with 25 cent refills at Fiore 9. three to six miles a day on this one perfect trail 10. white wine, Jake in a jacket 

If you enjoy the All in a Week photos, follow my instagram feed @melinadream

My life is a raw, three layer disaster

I decided to become a raw vegan. It's the thing these days. It will give me glowing skin and tons of energy and make me a round the clock delight.

This is the right lifestyle for me and I thought it would last, and I was very excited.

I was messing around online, lost somewhere on Facebook, which incidentally has become a form of consensual torture, when I came across a recipe for raw, vegan peanut butter and jelly bars.

They looked fantastic. For three nights I lay awake in my bed fantasizing about them. On the fourth day I decided to go for it.

They say you ought to do one thing every day that scares you, and I've decided that for me, once a week is good enough, and this would be my thing.

So I made a shopping list, and I even remembered to bring it, which made me feel very put together and on top of things. At Whole Foods I bought what amounted to a savagely expensive deconstructed coconut. I bought coconut oil, coconut butter, coconut meat, coconut flakes, coconut nectar, coconut water, coconut milk, and on top of that I bought just a whole coconut. Later on I had to google how to slaughter it.

I hadn't been paying too much attention when I'd jotted down the ingredients in my kitchen that morning, but now that I was on the front lines I started to feel a little dazed. Besides the dizzying panoply of coconut, the bars also called for 34 whole dates. That felt like a lot. But I bought them.

I bought everything, reasoning that since I'd gone raw, I'd need all that stuff in the pantry anyway. Absolutely the only thing in my cart was ingredients for the dessert, and as I edged towards the check out line I could detect disaster in the air. The ingredients added up to 85 dollars, so the check out man said "your total is 85 dollars!" Cheerfully, as if it was okay to spend that much on a single afternoon of baking. Not even baking.

I've become good at playing very cool in the grip of catastrophe, so I slid my card with a little "sure sure no problem" smile, but inside my head I was a ten year old flying over the handlebars of her bike, feet kicking madly in the air, arms akimbo.

I'm not sure how it began but everything has gone completely off of the tracks.

It was far too late to back out. I went home and I constructed the thing, and it turns out that the one recipe used nearly everything I bought, with nothing but a few cups of raw cacao and some coconut oil leftover. But I did end up with massive, massive amount of raw peanut butter and jelly bars, so that's good, until I ate a piece and discovered I'd just created the world's most calorically dense substance on the planet, and I wouldn't need to eat again for five weeks.

So I just stood there, and stared down at the pan in awe and bewilderment. What have I done? These bars are worth 85 dollars. This is my cell phone bill. This is 3/4 of the plane ticket to Santa Fe that I didn't buy. This is three pieces of a trad rack I could be quietly accumulating so that one day I can be in the Patagonia catalog and die a fulfilled woman. This is my life in a raw, three tiered disaster.

This is essentially a well disguised coconut.

Pride and common decency kept me from scraping it into the compost, lethargy kept me from utilizing the freezer; I had no choice but to take it on the road. My dessert and I, a traveling sideshow.  I brought it from house to house, I fed it to my friends and I watched their reactions. They were decidedly mixed, ranging from the forced and determinately cheerful, all the way to the neutral, the bluntly apprehensive and those who vocalized regret upon first bite.

And in the end, I did end up in my kitchen, alone in wool socks, scraping it all into the compost bin, gritting my teeth and repeating to myself that we all make mistakes, we all mistakes, we all make mistakes.

Hold on tight

Here is a visual representation of one single second inside my brain, on any given day:

Here is one second of that same brain while climbing:

These days if I could just sleep on the rock, that would save me a lot of trouble.

All in a week

1. a late night picnic with Connor before he is snatched away by Alaska 2. Sunshine in Canada, meal planning 3. Amber and Chai head for home on the last day 4. the freelance life with Seth 5. she has the tiniest shadow 6. a last minute back yard BBQ 7. wearing dia de las meurtos tights on cinco de mayo 8. chalking up 9. ella fix in the park 10. the Squamish crew- all I'd said was 'Smile!' 

If you enjoy the All in a Week photos, follow my instagram feed @melinadream