Written by Chris Beach. One short letter each Wednesday, following a real build as it happens, and what it takes to get money set aside for good moving again.
Freshet, letter 1: basecamp
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Fall of 2001. Ninety days in the Cascades and the Olympics on a NOLS semester course. The moment I remember most is not a summit. It is a morning at camp. My pack was loaded. The route was on the map. The weather was fine. And nothing moved. I had everything I needed. That turned out to be its own kind of problem. I have thought about that morning a lot this year. For ten months I have been working out what comes next, and I kept coming back to the same thing. Money already given. Already set aside to do good. Most of it sitting. The people holding it are not careless. They are standing where I was standing that morning, with the pack already packed. So I am building something for that, and in December it goes public. Right now I am at basecamp. Ten months behind me. Ten years in front. I am going to write this climb down while it happens, one letter a week, called Freshet. A freshet is the rise in a river when the snow finally melts. If you want it, reply here and I will add you. I do not know yet how it ends. That is the point. - Chris |
Freshet Letter
Written by Chris Beach. One short letter each Wednesday, following a real build as it happens, and what it takes to get money set aside for good moving again.
Friends, If you've ever hiked, you know this feeling. You walk and walk under the trees. You can only see a few steps ahead. Then a small trail breaks off toward something, and you don't really know what it will look like. You follow it anyway. Then you step into the opening, and it happens. The trees fall away. You can see where you've been and where you're going. For a moment, you just stand there. Maybe for you it was a lake at the end of a long walk. A ridge on a family trip. A bench at...
Friends, At the very start of the climb, before the trail went into the trees, we could see the top. It was the peak we looked up to, the one we were walking toward. When we finally came up over the last rise of the ridge with heavy packs and ice axes in hand, there it was. Snow, rock, and nothing above it but sky. For about four seconds I believed I had made it. This is great, I thought. Then I looked further out. Past the ridge was a second peak, higher than the one I was standing on. It...
Friends, A week ago I sent the first of these letters to a handful of people. Since then, many of you have asked to come along. Some of you I work with every day. Some of you I've known for years. Some of you I met over coffee and we talked longer than either of us planned. Thank you for being here. The climb I've been writing about, ninety days in the Cascades and the Olympics in the fall of 2001, wasn't something I did alone. It was a group course, and the days I remember most are the ones...