Carolyn Brager

4 February 2017

Honors 345 A

Midterm Paper

If you were to climb to the tops of the rolling hills that surround my California suburban

neighborhood, behind every house you would see a drought-stricken lawn, a garden patch, or an

architectured patio. For a child, these backyards are places of mystery, where there might be

monsters behind the bushes, but sometimes you kicked a ball too far so you had to go meet them.

These backyard spaces are where fluttering sheets on clotheslines become intricate forts,

stepping stones become islands amidst oceans of lava, and trees form portals to worlds where

that resident​ ​child is a wizard. These backyards are where imaginary friends go to be born,

simpler times go to be forgotten, and the occasional goldfish goes to be buried.

My backyard lacked the grass, the garden, and the patio, but it was a backyard

nonetheless. Instead, it stretched down an expanding slope past a broken fence into a dense

forest. A winding creek weaved through the trees below, quickly becoming a turbulent river after

a big rain. Blackberry bushes grew in thickets up to my waist. Redwoods rose from a soft dark

carpet of soil all around me. This expanse was not a conventional suburban yard, but a limitless

playground made of earth.

When a spontaneous trip to climb Alaska’s Crows Pass this past summer turned into a

humbling experience of the wild’s true indifference, I shut my eyes in the middle of the storm

and thought of this backyard.

 Our trip was supposed to be a casual out-and-back, a spontaneous overnight hike to

capture some refreshing elevation after spending the last month backpacking the floors of

Alaskan valleys. By the time the storm rolled in, we had made it more than halfway, closer to

where we planned to camp than if we turned around and headed back down to the road.

In front of me, I had my two closest friends. Together, the three of us shared a constant

craving to question what pulled our hearts to the mountains. We were three friends who shared

an undefinable passion to understand how the terrain of the earth begs us to forego the norm. Our

connection to each other was hard to explain, a connection that was different because it was

made in the wild, where high altitude provokes vulnerability, days of isolation catalyze

unexpected conversations, and untamed challenge can bring people together in unparalleled

ways.

Known to be one of the most epic alpine hikes in Alaska, Crows Pass stretches twenty

four unsettling miles, surrounded by glaciers, gorges, and wildflowers in every direction. After

having finished the rainy ascent through the protected meadows and winding mountainside, we

finally reached the ridge of the pass. Here we realized how strong the storm had become, when

the wind began to exploit the exposure of the cliffs.

The grey skies spit forth icy rain-- rain that danced wildly with the wind, swirling in

patterns that defied gravity, falling in sheets upwards and sideways, finding a way to sneak

underneath our layers of artificial protection naively promised to keep us dry. Blasts of frozen air

started to wrap us up in fingers that clawed at every inch of our bodies. With no other options,

we continued on, helplessly battered by the shifting blasts of tiny knives. The sleek synthetic rain

gear plastered against our bodies flapped violently, begging to join the dance of the rain and the
drum beat of the wind. When a gust would catch me off guard and grow too strong to walk

straight through, I would brace myself in a wide stance, my feet spread and staggered with my

shoulders leaning aggressively to resist the opposing push.

As I stayed like this for a fleeting moment with my eyes shut tight, I contemplated the

essence of the wind itself. Alone, it moves silently, but on a path, it stumbles against obstacles,

filling the spaces between with deafening sound. Alone, it exists invisibly. Yet in the presence of

a trespasser, it can have profound power-- physical, tangible power. It can make otherwise

bearable cold cut to the core. It can make tears feel wildly hot. With my eyes shut tight, I fought

the fear that was beginning to seep in by imagining the safest, happiest place I could think of: a

summer day in my backyard.

As I pulled on my sneakers about to slip out the back door, I would hesitate, deciding

whether or not I should tell someone where I was going. ​Will mom be worried if she can’t find

me, if she calls my name and doesn’t get a response?​ With the door open but without waiting for

an answer, I would shout out to the quiet house, like I always did: “I’ll be in the woods!”.

I would run because, well, I knew where I was going and I would get there faster that

way. On this day, the circular patio of bricks I would pass first wasn’t the alien landing pad it

was yesterday. Today, it was just a pad of bricks because, today, I was headed to the woods.

Pushing open the broken gate that wobbled in its frame, today it wasn’t the ladder I could use to

climb up into the tree that held the crow’s nest of my pirate ship. Today, it was just a gate I slid

through with the expected agility of an 8 year old tomboy.

 Now through the gate, I found myself in the thickest part of the woods. Taking the natural

dirt steps two-a-time, I quickly reached the base of the narrow trail I’d been building since my

first creek adventure years ago. My small hands traced logs and leaves with so much delicacy

and tenderness that I was convinced they seemed to turn towards me, craving my affection. My

youthful vitality and carefree spirit fueled the natural processes of the roots I danced on, river

stones I balanced on, and branches I played beneath. I swore my heartbeat had a way of

energizing the singing birds.

These woods knew I had been raised a wild child in a relatively not-so-wild world. I

grew up in a house with a tree inside of it, belonged to a family of burners, spent my childhood

summers covered in dirt, and my winters covered in snow. I was taught that if something is not

understood, it is not valued; if it is not valued, it is not loved; if it is not loved, it is not protected,

and if it is not protected, it is lost. As a child, I understood that these woods and this stream were

not mine, but that I belonged to them. I valued those woods because, for me, they were the place

I went to seek relief from the routine, noise, haste and crowds that too often confined me. I loved

those woods where boundaries were set free by room for boundless imagination, and childhood

constraints were replaced by a brief sense of freedom and independence. For all they had had me,

I knew these woods were mine to protect.

Shaken back to reality by a fleeting moment of gentle wind, I opened my eyes and was

flooded with the view of the pass in front of me. All of our eyes, all round, flashed fear, grit, and

adrenaline all at the same time. Despite the harrowing storm and inevitable helplessness, all of

our eyes shared an inexplicable twinkle of adventure. These eyes shared a subtle yet
unmistakable twinge of energy fueled by the fulfillment of our hearts’ desire for challenge

unavailable in the tamed world. Our nurtured instincts-- instincts for routine and a lifestyle of the

immediate, the shallow, and the easy-- had been abandoned and replaced with instincts given by

the wild and only valid in the wild. Time, relationships, and comfort had been set aside with

great sacrifice and satisfaction for the pursuit of far away ranges. But nevertheless, all of our

eyes were wide and round, unable to look away from the uncomfortably close, precipitous cliff

that dropped into the depths of a valley too far away to see the bottom.

The Raven glacier fell into the canyon behind us with massive cascades spilling down

from black mountains to a a black valley floor. The ancient ice sat still, too vast and towering to

fathom the thought of it ever having moved. Like the ocean, it seemed like it should have

reflected the storm clouds and let the sky replace it’s crystal blues with menacing greys. But its

timeworn dense crystalline structure resisted this expectation and remained brilliantly turquoise

despite the chaos it slept beneath.

For us, the challenge we had sought out in Alaska was not engineered. Whether it began

in a special untamed backyard, or it was discovered much later in life, we had all at some point

learned that we were born into this world; it was not given to us. The wild may be lost to most, to

many unknowingly, but for us it was in our souls. We ran to the wild to find a paradoxical

connection between community and isolation, meaning and emptiness, hardship and reward.

These values could not be found in the cities for us. And for us, our hearts will always live in the

mountains.