whoa!

my goodness.
it's been a while.

I just got off the phone with my dear friend melodie who informed me that it's been a month to the day since my last blog post! eek. melodie and I have been friends since my starbucks days and her high school homeschool math days, which happened to all take place at the same store at flintridge and academy down in colorado springs.

our conversation this evening started with a text about a jenny owens young concert. melodie and I once drove up to denver for a jenny owens young show at a small venue only to sneak in at the last minute with the assistance of melodie's art teacher from junior high who happened to be taking tickets at the door of the sold out show. jenny then proceeded to not play our favorite song. melodie got to see her again tonight, in seattle this time.

so here, miss melodie is what's been going on in the last month or so:

I packaged up some 50 cards to take over to Main Street Books here in Lander-town. I frequent their store for my espresso fix (typical beverage: americano with room, I add one raw sugar), it's less than a block away from my office, and slightly less expensive than the Folklore (which is a whole half a block further away...). But just for the record I do prefer Folklore for sitting, chatting, reading, and mate chai lattes.

main street agreed to buy a dozen cards, and see how they sell! I'm so excited to see if it's profitable. I think a little more attention at a display on my end could help, but I also wonder if their customers will like 'em? we'll see. I have a few other stores in town to hit, but wanted to start at main street, since I'm in there so often.

a few weeks ago I went in after work one evening to buy a book for my dad for father's day. and I walked out with half a german choclate cake that jerry from the cooking crow restaurant had just dropped by. jim was certain he'd get into trouble at home if he brought home another dessert after a pie the day before. bummer, guess it was up to me to bring it home to my roomies! it was so good. jerry makes the best baked goods. I just had a banana chocolate chip cookie there this week (catalog crushing time!) and it was pretty much amazing.

speaking of cake, my grandmother turned 92! very cool. definitely worth the 7 hour drive to help her celebrate :)

that evening, Benton and I drove her home. Oh, the oddity of throwing her walker in the back of his 4Runner...
And then, back in Lander there was BrewFest! a bunch of local/regional breweries show up, there's voting, drinking, lawn games, blankets in the park, etc. an all-around good day. it ended with me running to paige's house in the rain, throwing my jeans in the dryer before having dinner with jim and doris and two random visiting climber guys they met the day before in town.

I work at an outdoor school. And I confess, this was my first backpacking trip. Ever. I think my friends were surprised to hear this. Knowing I can hike. I know how to pack a pack and wear layers and put up a tent. I could even read a map if I had to! but carrying my gear on my back, hiking, and setting up camp is foreign to me. Or, was. Dan and Paige and Lola and I went to the Cirque of the Towers. It's this gorgeous glacier-carved area relatively close to where we live here in Wyoming. After half an hour on the highway, and about another hour on a dirt road, you're at the trailhead. From there, it's about 9 miles in, to this:Which is of course, stunning. Even more so in person. After 9 miles. The first day we hiked 7, and ended up camping above Big Sandy Lake because we couldn't find Jackass Pass. Yes, that's the name ;) It was all covered in snow, so we decided a day-trip into the Cirque made more sense, with a dog, and knowing much of our day would be finding the trail, post holing (read: sinking into snow up to your thighs) or scrambling over boulders.

Paige & Lola:
Paige, Dan, & me:

Also in the last month, this girl moved into (and out of) my house:

Pearson sublet Christi's room for a few weeks, and has since got me running a bit, more than I thought possible. She's a crazy runner girl. She did a half marathon two weeks after moving here from sea level. and almost beat her best time ever. crazy. and awesome.

This girl came to visit! Overdressed as always!
Cara hired me, so I'm indebted to her for introducing me to Lander and all such wonderfulness it holds, including the oldest paid rodeo in America! Right here, folks.

And for the 4th, there's always the parade. I like watching people more than the parade most of the time.
In Lander, we have a tradition on the 4th of July where laws against open containers and fireworks are thus banned between 10am and midnight. This results in seeming chaos, but people are actually pretty smart about it all. I'm impressed, Lander. way to be responsible. The evening sky looks like a war zone, and there was at least a few thousand dollars worth of fireworks at the party I went to. we climb a sketchy rope ladder up to a roof where you can see fireworks in all directions, as friends down below shoot of fireworks over your head and ashes fall on your face...

The following weekend was the International Climbers Festival! I designed the programs this year, which were nothing award-winning, but extremely appreciated by everyone involved. very rewarding in that sense. I was just glad to give people something that was legible and informative! I need to post a before/after story with photos of the previous years' programs.

my favorite ICF competition is the crate-stacking comp! harness, belay, climbing shoes on, and you have to stack milk crates on top of one another while standing on them. so fun to watch. a perfect lunch break at city park.

I think this guy got something like 22 or 23 crates high before falling off.

Alas. A brief introduction into the visual life of Lander, and the last month of my life. I don't post photos very often. But I like them. so i will try to bring you more, dear readers.


disclaimer: I'm going to try to work on being more honest here, more visual, and more frequent. please hold me accountable to do so, if you so wish.

Wyoming. Summer.

Wyoming. Summer. These may be the two most beautiful words in the American language. Maybe it’s because I spent a big chunk of my childhood in Utah, but it’s only in the Rocky Mountains that summer seems real to me. Here, summer has size, heft, you don’t ignore it. In Wyoming, in August, you wake to a world that smells of alfalfa and stream water, and feel the heat build as morning proceeds toward noon. You want to splash in a creek, run in sprinklers. Around 2, a flotilla of clouds, battleship gray, bulky, martial, bring a wind that ruffles the aspen leaves and, building, shakes the limbs of the cottonwoods. Smell of ozone, crack of thunder, zigzag scars of lightning, the mountains jolting purple, then blue then black. Now rain, Biblical, roof-pounding, expensive-waterproof-jacket-defeating rain. And then peace, the clouds sail to the east, the afternoon eases, guilelessly blue, into dusk and the first evening star appears.

By a Sunset editor named Peter Fish.
Read the whole article online here.

homework

yes, I have homework. if you can believe it.

I'm in a seminar at work designed for in-town staff. Field staff tend to jump from expedition to expedition, with briefings and debriefings, instructor-team building, and they actually teach students the leadership curriculum in a wilderness setting. So they're constantly evaluating and being evaluated and giving feedback.

In-town staff tend to not usually get that experience.

And the 7 leadership skills are just as applicable in-town as they are on an expedition. It just looks a little different.

So I'm in this seminar, Friday afternoons for the next few weeks, and we're going over the 7 leadership skills. Last week we went over Self-Awareness. We particularly learned about emotional responses, the amygdala, how our brain stores information like that, and why we may sometimes have highly emotional responses or misinterpretations of situations at hand.

Homework assignment #1: pay attention to your highly emotional responses, and track your thought process. ask: what am I feeling? and why? does it track back to hard evidence, or perceived/assumed truth about someone, something, or some experience? have I stored other emotional responses that I inappropriately apply to new situations?

We also learned about [Listening] Communication. And how to do that well. When I look at it as a selfless act, it makes so much more sense.

Homework assignment #2: practice listening skills. don't jump to giving advice when it's not asked for, or turning the topic to yourself. listen, actively, focusing on the other person's story. and wait for them to say "Exactly." It is at this point when you've truly heard them, and they know it.

The best part about all this leadership-talk is that it seems so natural. And it's not just focused on the leader as the head of the pack. It's about life-skills, about how to interact positively with other people, how to live in community and accomplish goals. And it's refreshing that it doesn't contradict in any way what I believe as a follower of Jesus—it coordinates quite nicely, actually. And challenges perceptions of what the core truth coordinating it all really is.

butterflies

I have 10,000 images in my computer. at least. and sometimes it gets quite overwhelming to consider sorting them all. here's one that cheered me up the other day, it's from a semester in the amazon course that we run in brazil.

and this is a collection of catalog covers at the alaska branch. this collection omits the 09 catalog, which I designed last year. (the large poster below outlines the 5-year plan of strategic goals) I'm currently smack in the middle of the 2010 catalog! we're picking a printer, I'm getting lots of feedback on the layout drafts, and yes: sorting a few thousand photos...

cut & paste

you know when you're wrapping a present and you have several fingers worth of tape ready to be affixed to the package? sometimes I want that sort of dexterity when I'm cutting and pasting elements digitally. too much to ask? {does it already exist?}

sea kayaking in patagonia...

IMGP0833, originally uploaded by markayak.

these are some photos from the sea kayaking course I was originally signed up to take in February :( then I got into that nasty car accident, and didn't feel comfortable going on the trip. 12+ hours on planes, combined with being in a super remote place, sea kayaking for 14 days, where I'd have to be evacuated by helicopter if anything went wrong, where I wouldn't want to be the weak team member holding everyone back because "my back hurts" whine whine whine. not exactly what I'd like to put myself or anyone else through while my spine's still not correctly aligned.

anyway, there are some beautiful pics. check 'em out.

I came across them while looking for sea kayaking photos for the 2010 catalog. for some reason there aren't very many in the 6,000+ photos hidden away in my database.

Then the skies open up and pour out soaking showers on everyone.

Take a long, hard look. See how great he is—infinite,
greater than anything you could ever imagine or figure out!

He pulls water up out of the sea,
distills it, and fills up his rain-cloud cisterns.
Then the skies open up
and pour out soaking showers on everyone.
Does anyone have the slightest idea how this happens?
How he arranges the clouds, how he speaks in thunder?
Just look at that lightning, his sky-filling light show
illumining the dark depths of the sea!
These are the symbols of his sovereignty,
his generosity, his loving care.
He hurls arrows of light,
taking sure and accurate aim.
The High God roars in the thunder,
angry against evil.

Whenever this happens, my heart stops— I'm stunned, I can't catch my breath.
Listen to it! Listen to his thunder,
the rolling, rumbling thunder of his voice.
He lets loose his lightnings from horizon to horizon,
lighting up the earth from pole to pole.
In their wake, the thunder echoes his voice,
powerful and majestic.
He lets out all the stops, he holds nothing back.
No one can mistake that voice—
His word thundering so wondrously,
his mighty acts staggering our understanding.
He orders the snow, 'Blanket the earth!'
and the rain, 'Soak the whole countryside!'
No one can escape the weather—it's there.
And no one can escape from God.
Wild animals take shelter,
crawling into their dens,
When blizzards roar out of the north
and freezing rain crusts the land.
It's God's breath that forms the ice,
it's God's breath that turns lakes and rivers solid.
And yes, it's God who fills clouds with rainwater
and hurls lightning from them every which way.
He puts them through their paces—first this way, then that—
commands them to do what he says all over the world.
Whether for discipline or grace or extravagant love,
he makes sure they make their mark.

Job, are you listening? Have you noticed all this?
Stop in your tracks! Take in God's miracle-wonders!
Do you have any idea how God does it all,
how he makes bright lightning from dark storms,
How he piles up the cumulus clouds—
all these miracle-wonders of a perfect Mind?
Why, you don't even know how to keep cool
on a sweltering hot day,
So how could you even dream
of making a dent in that hot-tin-roof sky?

Taken from The Message, Job 36 & 37