Devils and Dust

[The Reverend Floater]

Note: This came off a lot more retardedly introspective and heavy than I intended. I don’t mean to air my dirty laundry nor offend anyone. I just started writing tonight because I’ve got another decision to make. I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Devils and Dust, which I highly recommend. Anyhow, here’s the mess:


I got my finger on the trigger
But I don't know who to trust
When I look into your eyes
There's just devils and dust
We're a long, long way from home, Bobbie
Home's a long, long way from us
I feel a dirty wind blowing
Devils and dust

I am now 28 years old. Every morning I wake up at 7:25am, I open my eyes and turn off the alarm. Bella jumps up on the bed, giving me the flying paw, telling me to hurry up. I stare at my breath rising in my own bedroom, dreading the trot to the hot shower. With determination I abandon my bed, throw off my down booties, fleece top and hat. Our house is 38 degrees this morning. Heating a shit hole in -12 temperatures is not a cost effective venture. Not at this point in my life.

I got God on my side
I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust

How did I get here? I like to blame the posters. The small Salomon one with the stereotypical ski bum leaning against a decrepit shack, mountains in the background, skis and boots next to the door. Tagline reading "priorities" or something to that effect. I come from a very normal, comfortable home in the hills outside of Portland. Nice clothes, good education, respectable.

I got God on my side
I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
And fill it with devils and dust


I walk to work if I have time, dogs chasing each other down the bike path now groomed for skate skiing. The Boulder Range looms behind me, Pioneers to my left. I corall the dogs just in time to cross the two streets to my work at the end of the bike path. I spend the day on the phone, working on the computer, making someone else a lot of money and me just enough to stay here and live some semblence of a civilized life. The window in my office is a frontal view of the ski resort. All day I watch dots zig zag down the groomers, SUV's speeding back to their condos and clouds that slam into the mountain, stuck like cotton balls on velcro trees.

Well I dreamed of you last night
In a field of blood and stone
The blood began to dry
The smell began to rise
Well I dreamed of you last night
In a field of mud and bone
Your blood began to dry
The smell began to rise

Where did this self destructive projection begin? When did I decide it was what I had to do? Maybe it was the K2 poster? "Upon this Rock I Build My Church," it read, with Scot Schmidt airing over some rocks. I used to stare at that thing for eternity, dying to know what that sort of commitment, heart and dedication felt like. Did he ever doubt what he was doing? There seemed to be no doubt in that sort of assault, just like the Salomon guy wore an expression that said "yes...this is it." No room nor time for introspection, just pure focus and dedication. Entirely.

Now every woman and every man
They want to take a righteous stand
Find the love that God wills
And the faith that He commands
I've got my finger on the trigger
And tonight faith just ain't enough
When I look inside my heart
There's just devils and dust

I want to wake up one morning cold but full. I want to be ready to move on, to embrace the seemingly mindless pattern of doldrums that I fear so much. I want this holier-than-all-of-you thing to just go away so that I can do it and make people happy or at least make them stop worrying about me and when I’m going to move home and do something with myself. I keep waiting for that day when I can say “I did it and I’m ready for something else” and not be lying to myself. Because that’s what I’m most afraid of, after all, is cheating myself out of life.

Well I've got God on my side
And I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a dangerous thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust

I want to throw it all away and experience absolutely pure commitment. Fuck the job, fuck the choice—total and utter focus. This unsettling need is quite possibly eating my life and swallowing so many parallel opportunities that I can’t keep up. Start working nights washing dishes and tuning boards. Start spending every day in the field, pushing, clawing and scratching my way to fulfillment. In some cockle of my being I know the only possible hope is to summit some peak I haven’t even dreamed of and know that it’s done and I can rest and move on. Every big tour, every major powder day, I half expect it to end. I keep looking at myself and whispering, “are you done yet?” No. It’s always a quiet but bottomless no.

It'll take your God filled soul

Fill it with devils and dust

[release]

Follow your passion but be prepared for sacrifices. It is difficult to have it all.

[Art Shirk]

That was worth the read. Thanks for the post, well done.

[Schmear]

Have you looked for similar work in Portland, Denver, SLC, or Seattle? Might be better paying. You'd still be close to mountains.

Maybe you need a Zima.

(Cool post, by the way.)

[ill-advised strategy]

don't work at night. working at night just means your ski time is in a fog.

If I were you I'd find a cougar and marry up.

there is just some bad mojo tonight.

serenity now!!

[Yossarian]

I empathize deeply, as you well know.

But for what it's worth, I don't think people like us ever feel like it's finished, that we've been sated, that we've scratched the itch, and now we can move on. I think it's a lifelong blessing and curse, I think we have to fight for compromise throughout. What you describe is, in many ways, one of the easier two of the three paths, All, Nothing, and Some. Nothing leaves us empty; Some seems like so much purgatory, and it is; yet the reality is that All rarely leads no better resolution than any of the others.

You really think that if you went all in, you'd wake up and feel finished someday? I don't, which is probably why I haven't yet. But just like you, I find my shade of Some (which is admittedly a little closer to None than yours, but still in the Some spectrum) still leaving me craving for All. Such is the nature of the beast.

For me, I don't think there's a way out of this place...

So you must choose what appears best for you at the time a choice presents itself, each time, again and again. I'm sorry R, I don't believe it ends. Ever. So follow your gut, and when you do and it feels wrong, don't be afraid to follow your skintrack back out. But don't second guess yourself too quickly, sometimes determination and committment ARE needed to see it through, and the reward is topping out, even when you know you're going to have to come back down again.

If your path leads you home to Portland and out of the hills for a while, so be it. And if not, so be it, perhaps things will work out in a different way at a differrent time. The tapestry of life is too complicated to try to deduce the pattern in the threads. Accept this, and you'll find a greater degree of peace.

These things that seem so big, they are usually not as big as we make them. Life is, hopefully and thankfully, long. Risk nothing, and gain nothing - fail to choose, and fail to live. Don't let life happen to you, choose actively one way or another. Choose to go, choose to stay, but don't choose to not choose, that's just wimping out.

Good luck. It turns out that it really is the journey that matters and not the destination. Seek out challenge -> opportunity -> growth, and you will find satisfaction if not fulfillment. You've seen my tat? This is what it means. You cannot fully understand who you are until you face adversity/uncertainty and discover how you respond. You climb the mountain thinking that the goal is to get on top, but really you do it to find out what's inside. The outlines make the right shapes, but the color is all on the inside.

Climb the mountain.

My $.03, from your lesser half brother from another fadda and mutha.

[snow_slider]

Heh, heh....you said "cockle "....

Dude, if you are doing all this to garner more days on skis and skiing is what sooths your soul, then anything else you would do right now would only make you regret not skiing as much as you were.

The grass really isn't any greener.

[Tap]

a few quotes from Ranier Maria Rilke, poet.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions"


"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things"


"The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens."


Dare to be and dare to do, my friend. Trust yourself.

[Sutter]

To accomplish great things requires grrest commitment throughout great sacrifice. If it was so easy, it would not feel so good!! Much support and respect for what you're going through and what you're accomplishing.

[13]

Rev, I've been there. I left Alta for the same feeling.

S. A. Kierkegaard -- Edifying Discourses; "For Self Examination."

Imagine a person who has been and who remains addicted to a passion. Then comes a moment -- and such moments come for everyone, perhaps many times, alas, perhaps many times in vain! Then comes a moment when he has come to a halt, as it were. A resolution of improvement awakens. Imagine, then, that he said to himself one morning (let us suppose him to be a gambler, for example), 'I vow solemnly and sacredly that I will never again have anything to do with gambling, never again -- tonight will be the last time.' Oh, my friend, he is lost! I would sooner venture to maintain the opposite position, however strange it might sound: that if there were a gambler who said to himself at such a moment, 'All right, you will be allowed to gamble every single day for the rest of your life, but tonight you must refrain from it' -- that if he did this, my friend, he would surely be saved! Because the resolution that the first gambler made was a trick played on him by desire; the resolution made by the second gambler tricks desire; the one is tricked by desire, the other tricks desire . . . . Because if it is compelled to wait, desire loses the desire.

[slippy]

Rev, I've been there. I left Alta for the same feeling.

S. A. Kierkegaard -- Edifying Discourses; "For Self Examination."

13, you left Alta because you thought that enjoying 'the mountain lifestyle' is a passion that you needed to be saved from?!? Or you were forced to quit and had to use this college textbook phrase to help you forget what you are missing?

Rev, sounds like you got some Catholic guilt present from an early age. Time to leave that stuff behind you and enjoy the life you want. Have fun and regret nothing. Being in the mountains is what some people are born for, denying it is not going 'save' you.

I might recommend getting a better job, which may or may not involve moving to a different mountain town. Working 9-5 at a real job and not being able to afford heat doesn't sound right.

I don't mean to sound too preachy, just trying to help from this end of the cable.

[The Reverend Floater]

Thanks, y'all. Yoss--I was actually thinking about your situation, too, when I wrote this. We both have the same challenges.

Slipp daddy--I don't pay for heat so that I can go to Targhee on a moment's notice, travel to SA or wherever. I get paid okay. I just live in a very expensive place.

Thanks, all.

[slippy]

Yeah, I really don't know the challenge you face exactly but I hope it all works out. Turn the heat down 5 degrees tonight for a Bridger trip.

[Woodsy]

Ross, yoss, and y'all,

some is hard, some is a comprimise that like a one ski quiver seems to do everything ok and nothing well.
Poor Yeti worked 14 hours last night because it dumped and he had to get up before they supposedly close the canyon.
I very much appreciate what he did, because I know he cant even ski the feet of new snow we got
I couldnt help because I was investigating new opportunites 1/2 a world away.
Seems whenever I am at work, I should be skiing, and when I am skiing I worry about work. I have canceled trips, blown off visitors, and worse because I am tied to this supposed "dream job"
I did the night thing. worked 3-11 skiied every day.
still wanted more, not ever sure what that more was, so i got a more serious job.
That wasnt it.
working 50+ a week in a ski town blows goats.
so I thought more must mean snow, i could ski less if my days were better, no?
Utah has been good but I left a good job in the city to work too much on the mountain.
Now it seems I will be off to a big city, promoting a big city even, exciting and new. Following my heart in more ways than one...

skiing will be a vacation activity and I want that, i want to go and ski, turn off my cell phone, relax. ski vacation, go new places.
be able to seperate my life from my work life. realize that I don't need to be living the dream others have for me, i have some damn good dreams of my own.
WHo knows maybe babylon will turn me into the cynic many think it will, maybe I will disappearr like Armchair.
I doubt it, just a new chapter in the continuing story of wack job woodsy.

Look into yourself and see what you want, the answer is there. It may be terrifying, but it is there.
Funny thing I have learned recently about the advice people give you, it is often a tangled mix of what they would do ( or wish they would do or would have done) and what they want you to do.
Very few people can take off their tainted views to honestly tell you based on what they know what is best for you.
Even then, few know you well enough to do so.

You are a good man Rev, one of the best. Whatever you choose wil be a great idea.

one more piece of advice worth what you paid for it. Told to me by one of the best men I have ever known, my dad.
Take your time and make a decision, then work to make it the right decision.

[13]

13, you left Alta because you thought that enjoying 'the mountain lifestyle' is a passion that you needed to be saved from?!? Or you were forced to quit and had to use this college textbook phrase to help you forget what you are missing?

Heh, neither. See woodsy's post above.

There are quite a few in Alta that came to "live the dream" and now they look forward to the end of ski season so they can escape the "dream." The common link to them seems to be that they've been in the industry or in town for 10+ years.

[slippy]

To me the concept is completely unrelatable. I've had many friends move away from here, maybe that's what they were feeling at the time. While some were forced to job-wise and/or money-wise, which I understand, the others I couldn't figure out. I know I'm meant to live my life in the mountains, and maybe that's all I know.

Woodsy is right, what is best for me is only best for me. I guess have different goals and different needs, like everyone else. The city life would kill me. Sorry to interrupt.