Lost and Found:

[Odin]

*************************

[Odin]

[valleygirl]

*******

[TahoePowShredder]

wow man. you take this stuff pretty deep.

Whatever happened to getting on your sticks to just have a good ol time and experience the beauty of the mountains?

[the Cock]

Whatever happened to getting on your sticks to just have a good ol time and experience the beauty of the mountains?

They still do that... in a place called Tahoe. Now Shut the Fuck Up!!

[GBB]

great read Odin, you really know how to turn a phrase.

[bcrider]

Too many big words to read but I do appreciate the pics! Stoked on the first one, curious about the second.

[Phill]

*************************

WTF man?

I am really glad I read that before you edited it.

[TahoePowShredder]

They still do that... in a place called Tahoe. Now Shut the Fuck Up!!

how about......GO FUCK YOURSELF you fuckin cockmuncher!

[Rooster]

how about......GO FUCK YOURSELF you fuckin cockmuncher!

[bcrider]

Hi Odin,

I hope my smart ass comment didn't lead you to delete your post. I apologize if it did.

[Steven S. Dallas]

Are you teasing us? Hottate better check hisself.

[Mofro261]

First I ************************it.
And this had **********************.
Almost enough to invoke the ***************** emoticon.
Good ******************.

[Phill]

Shouldn't this be retitled Found and Lost

[Odin]

THIS POST WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 24 hrs

(with apologies to TGR)

I was folded in the lap of the mountains, my human form shivering. In the lights that surrounded me beamed the cold hard glinting dead lights of stars. I was alone and travelling with the baggage of bad memories, a heavy load to carry. Deep in the recesses of snow and ice, I was finding the kind of redemption that comes with suffering and pilgramage.

A swift strike of the shovel was setting right the roof and the floor. I laid out candles and sleeping bag, stove and pot. Earlier in the day there was 1000 feet of untracked, unspoilt slopes. I had been standing below airplanes and trying to climb up to them. Skinning over the nob and the lip of the draw, up the shoulder to the gentle ramp that looked over trees and snow and canyon. In the gentle caress of the wind I could smell the pines. Feeling that at this time the slope and the feeling were mine, but that somehow they were only mine on a lease or rental basis.

You never feel more temporary than in the mountains.

So shivering we come back to the land of pain. In my cave I sat while the world grew colder and cruel outside. I let the moon and the stars circle around overhead as I cooked oatmeal over my stove and tried to imagine being the only person alive in the land.

I tried to imagine that all of my vices and sins were dropping away and that somehow in the abstract purity of the mountain I was coming back to the best of me, the part of me that was sorely missing.

The nightime clarified that for me. The nightime scared me into the places where the thoughts weren't of some kind of transcendental connection with the mountain but the actual dangerous connection with the mountain. I was cold and getting colder, I was freezing in my little cave. The cold came through the sleeping bag first, followed by the water. In committing a cardinal sin I had opened myself up to a dangerous dropping of body temperature. Skiing all day and then digging a cave, followed by huddling into a sleeping bag leaves sweat upon the skin.

I couldn't feel my feet anymore. I tried to keep warm in all the ways that old mountaineers tell you. I lit candles, outside it grew colder, I lit the stove, outside it grew colder. I slept in fitfull stretches and awoke in cold, damp, shivering suffering.

There comes a point in a trip where the pain outweighs the pleasure. Where the sure gotten goods no longer seem that important. I had finally reached that point, where the thing that I loved was slowly and surely killing me.

So I had to leave. I had to leave before I fell asleep cold and shivering again. Stepping through the modest door I had created, the outside shimmered in a gossimer lit scene. The moon was high and casting an eery glow over snow and tree. The peak that overlooked me glared down upon my eager and stupid attempt at it's snowy top.

I was fortunate and foolish to see the scene in front of me.

Now I had to jam my frozen feet into the ski boots, and pack up the candles, the stove, and the shovel. I needed to move, fast. I skied to the entrance to the couloir that fed the slopes where I was. The shining moon was left behind the walls of the canyon, and light turned to dark. I realized very quickly that there was no possible way that I could see my way coming down, but seeing as how staying up there wasn't an option, I started making quick jump turns down.

The slot narrowed further and further as the tips and tails of my skis touched rock and then slipped on ice. I started hitting the wierd depressions and drop offs on the way down. I couldn't see more than 2 feet in front of me and at times my eyes pixilated and screamed as they stared out into the inky black darkness. Somewhere down there was my way out, to my car and salvation.
I had to side step through the narrowest portion, as my fear got the better of me. Not being able to see, not being able to understand what I was going to slip on next created a boogeyman of terrible fantasy. I hesitantly tried a jump turn that I wasn't committed to and caught my skis underneath me. I started sliding, and self arrested before hitting some rocks.

I was through the worst of it.

The more I went down the lighter it became, until finally I hit a copse of trees that furthered into the forrest. I wound my way through tall spruce trees, over frozen streams and small hillocks of snow. I lost the trail and found it again. I was back.

[Mime]

*************************

*********

[Phill]

Shit Found then Lost then Found again only with the promise of another loss

edit to say I am really tempted to quote it. But im not going to