Gap Life

"Do you have a job yet?"

It's my senior year of college. My friends are agonizing over med school interviews, case competitions, and the GRE. I tell my parents I'm taking a gap year. "To find myself!" I tell my advisor as she pushes stacks of research internship applications across her desk. I throw the applications in the recycling on my way out of Cupples Hall and walk home to my off-campus apartment. I set aside my resume of campus involvement, nonprofit work, and internships, and compile a sparse list of my customer service experience. I email in job applications at Yosemite, Glacier, Sequoia, Grand Teton.

"So what are you doing after graduation?"

I duck to avoid the square caps raining down on me. "Do you think anyone's ever been decapitated at their own graduation?" A week later, I'm in my car, alone, driving from St. Louis, Missouri, to Moose, Wyoming.

"Ring ring hello, yes this is the mountains calling."

The closer I got to graduation, the further I was from being able to see myself in an office, or a hospital, or, for that matter, a city. I loved the outdoors; hiking, climbing, and camping had become a major part of my life, and I couldn't imagine giving that up for the long days in a cold, fluorescent laboratory that an internship in my field promised. I wanted punishing climbs up steep slopes; early morning campfires on the side of a mountain; long, slow days floating down a river. I decided to set aside what was expected of me.

I accepted a job working at a bike shop in Grand Teton National Park, 5 hours from anything you could feasibly call a major city. I began working 4 days a week for minimum wage, living in dorm housing that made my college dorms look like 5 star hotels, and spending my days and afternoons off hiking, camping, and swimming in freezing mountain lakes.

"Does anyone actually know how to say cairn?"

My first night there, I called my mom in tears, feeling utterly alone and convinced I could never make friends with these new people.

And somehow... I just never got around to leaving.

My first summer in these mountains (MY mountains, as I not-so-secretly think of them), I accomplished things I never could have imagined myself doing, not only physically, but in terms of personal growth. I summitted my first (and second, and third) real mountain. I led my first pitch on trad gear. I learned when to push forward, and when to turn back, and to always bring a headlamp and twice as much water as you think you'll need. 

"When the going gets tough, the tough channel a beached whale."

After that summer, I gained a new feeling that I could make anything happen for myself that I could imagine. When I signed up to stay for the winter, I was warned the cold nights and short days would trap me inside and drive me crazy. Instead, I taught myself to snowboard, and became addicted to the freezing wind burning my eyes and the soft snow burrowing into my thrift-store boots. 

In between seasons, I traveled alone for the first time, then the second time, to magical and inspiring places like Tonsai, Ubud, Sevilla, Noordwijk, and Edinburgh, where I met stunningly beautiful humans and learned how not to plan. 

"Where you go?" "The moon!"

That's not to say that every day is a perfect flurry of exhilaration and self-reflection; there are days when work sucks, or when I get in a fight with a friend, or I just want to stay in bed and not talk to anyone. But those days are a part of any life, and those days pass, if you let them. When you put it aside and take yourself for a hike, it's amazing what can disappear into the smell of wet pine trees.

As much as I can't imagine a life without my mountains, my time here will pass. And maybe I'll move to a city and plant myself in an office chair. Or maybe I'll spend my last paycheck on a one-way plane ticket.