I am going to preface this with two notes:
1. Nothing in particular triggered me to write this (i,e, no nothing bad happened) i was just out walking in the mountains and thinking/listening and was inspired to write this
2. This post is very different from the rest. No trip report, no crazy adventures recounted here, no mountain stoke, and i am not trying to grandstand from a point of privilege, just some thoughts i had alone on the skintrack that might make someone else think. Or maybe they will make everyone think i am crazy.
I might not say this often (I am sure anyone who has spent time with me out sin the wild can infer this though) but there are two things that i strongly believe in:
1. There are no bad days
2. If you want something, you have to work for it
There are no bad days. Real quick here i am going to get technical, something that annoys a lot of the people i tend to spend time with and say: the day is an inanimate idea, it is neutral so it can never be good nor can it be bad because it can't decide, it is just what WE make of it. There are no bad days, it is just a matter of perspective.
Dawn patrol skiing before work is a great way to start the day. It doesnt matter what happens for the rest of the day because i got to watch a stunning sunrise and ski some of the best snow and terrain around!
The impetus to write this came from a solo tour up Patsy Marley. The wind was gusting at 45+ and transporting small amounts of snow - just enough to get in your eyes and feel like needles on exposed skin, clouds were descending and it was nighttime. Snow was safe but just because it had been so long since it snowed that everything had settled and definitely been skied out. In salt lake, this would be considered a bad day, a day not worth going out because we are so lucky to have consistently good snow conditions. As an Arizonan though, even this week old corral reef of a snow surface that was jacked by the wind was better than what we had in Az, there was snow at least. I consider myself lucky that i am able to go out and walk in the mountains in a safe manner after work, even if it is by myself on "bad snow", rather than drive 4+ hours to get in a small amount of skiing on simultaneously warm and icy snow that is almost always thinly covering rocks. There are no bad days.
Even when the wind is blowing so hard you cant stand upright, there is so much snow in the air that you feel like you are drowning with every breath, and mother nature is seemingly hell bent on wiping any trace of your existence off the face of this earth; there are no bad days. Days like this offer important formative experiences, they try who we are, try bonds between friends. The result is something that is much stronger, much deeper, more involved, more of a basal human connection than what existed before. Life and the memories that come from these days are far more vivid than a day spent on the couch cocooned in a controlled climate and comfortable. They might not be comfortable days, sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh about how fucked up the situation is before figuring out what to do, but we definitely learn and grow from them. There are no bad days.
Lonely and windy day out in the Wind River Range. Conditions weren't ideal but smiles were had
Weather is shit, sure... definitely not a standard vacation, but even so we are all smiles! Clayton enjoying some fresh snow
Early in 2017 my girlfriend and best friend of 8 years (more than a quarter of my life until that point and someone i was soon expecting to get married to) suddenly and unexpectedly ended our relationship without giving any reason. I was absolutely devastated in a way that i had never experienced. Even that day, one of my worst, was not a bad day. Even the days that followed, which found me sitting alone in my car in a remote area of the Wasatch range thinking about life, what i was doing with it and if i even wanted to live anymore, it wasn't a bad day. Don't get me wrong, it was very very far from a great day, i was in a very dark place, but i learned a lot from this experience. I was forced to open up more to friends and family, something i am notoriously bad at. Something i am working on changing a bit through this medium. I had the mentality that no one cared for me but learned that this was not the case. I was forced to look at my life, evaluate what was me and what had been formed as a part of that failed relationship. I was forced to evaluate what i wanted out of life in a way that i didn't have to before. There are no bad days. There are days that try us to our core, that push us harder and farther than we expected we could be pushed, sometimes we don't come back from them, but there are no bad days. It is all in how we look at them.
20+ hours, many thousands of vertical feet, and only completing about 2/3rds of the route that we wanted to do, but it was still a good day, thanks Vlad!
I could go on with other experiences and how they changed me or what i learned from them, but instead i will bring it back to the beginning. I thoroughly believe there aren't any bad days. Here in SLC it is pretty easy to get on the 'gram or facebook and see all the rad things that everyone is doing and be overwhelmed. For anyone it is easy to get overwhelmed by work and life. Things aren't always as extreme as what i have said above. Life can be a bit bleh, but there are no bad days. The day is what you make of it. For me, that means getting out whenever possible, even if the weather isn't cooperating and the windchill is in the negative numbers, the snow is icy and windjacked, or it is raining. Even if i have no one to go with, i try to get out whenever possible because moving through the mountains and desert landscapes of the west bring me joy. Sure it means i spend a lot of time alone out there, but it means i have a lot of time to think about whatever i need to. In the case of that night on Patsy alone and in the wind, it meant collating my thoughts and galvanizing myself into being a bit more vulnerable and writing this.
If you are stuck in the doldrums at work or in school, the psych is low, or you are just kind of blase floating through life, go and do something to make today a good day. Go for a run, go climb a mountain, read a book, make yourself a fancy coffee, do something small every day to make it a good day, focus on the positive and make sure you are doing it for you, not to impress whoever else. But on those days where everything seems to be working against you and you can't get a win, rather than see a hopeless abyss, try and look at it from the other side. How much you will grow and learn from this experience, even if that means never doing whatever it was again. Plus, it might make for a good story! There are no bad days.
If you are really in a bad place. Please reach out. To me, to a friend, to your mom, your dad, a sibling, someone. Go for a run, a hike, grab a coffee, play a video-game, read a book, do something to help yourself out. Things wont change by themselves. To leave everyone with a quote that isn't mine but that i really like: "we are the stories we tell ourselves, make it a good one!" Have a good day!
