Why am I like this?

Ice, perserverance, and outrunning it all

I climb toward the frozen lake. The trail has disappeared; all that remains is a steep field of featureless snow and mute trees. I am all alone. There are only two sets of wandering footprints, left days ago by restless souls just like me.

I am aware that this is a supremely bad idea. Though I carry a Garmin, have left a plan, a fall here on slippery snow has high consequences. There is no real reason I need to get to the lake this early in the season. Nobody would care if I turned back.

Except me, of course. My pace slows to a mile an hour as I place each step carefully. I am traversing slanted, mounded snow, one of the easiest ways to fall. I steal a glance back to safety, far below.

I could have turned around there. I probably should have turned around there. Yet here I am, climbing toward winter.

In my memoir workshop a few days before, we talked about narrative arc—how you need to end at a different place than where you began. Otherwise, your story is just a journal. Interesting, perhaps. Thrilling, maybe. But not a true memoir.

One of the participants described the adventure she was writing about. Though it sounded scary to me, it wasn't to her; nothing bad happened, and she was wondering how to create a narrative arc out of the journey. We talked a little about how there doesn't have to be trauma or crisis; some of the best memoirs are about how experience changes you internally. You are, in fact, a different person from trailhead to terminus.

She thought about this and said something to the effect of, “Maybe it's figuring out why am I like this?”

This hit me like the metaphorical ton of bricks. I've been wondering this my whole life. Why am I like this? Why do I feel compelled to push on through climbs like these, backpack long trails, escape to the outdoors? Why do I feel such dissatisfaction with staying home? Why do I push back against the statements that I have little time, that soon, inevitably, I will have to slow down and accept that I can't do the things I want (and seem to need) to do?

I emerge at the lake. It's completely frozen. Snow holds it in a vice grip. In summer, this place is chaos, hammered by amateur hour, people defiantly building campfires, camping too close to water, pooping inappropriately. Now, there's still hope for renewal.

Why am I like this? The answers are probably there if I search beneath the surface. I keep a lot frozen, like this lake. It's not bad to be like this, though my obsession with disappearing into the woods does cause occasional conflict and I likely take unexplainable risks.

What I want is this: an unending quilt of experiences to sustain me if I ever need to stop. The knowledge that I did everything I could, even when it was hard and scary and uncomfortable. That there were friends that didn't get it and exes that didn't want it but that's all right, because occasionally I met the eyes of others who were also like this.