The Colorado Trail Finish, Part Two

I’ve just published part two of my trip videos from The Colorado Trail finish this season. I hope you’ll enjoy watching it. There were some audio challenges, since I didn’t take a mic on the trail, and my voice is occasionally not very clear, but if you turn on closed captioning by clicking on the “cc” box in the lower right of the video frame, it mostly gets it right.

I wasn’t sure when I started my YouTube channel that I would enjoy making videos, and I certainly am guilty of rolling my eyes at the term “content creator,” but as I edit these videos of my time on trail, I get goosebumps (particularly during the drone footage with dramatic musical soundtrack). Gawd, the combination of images and music— and word, too, in various contexts— is so, so powerful. I love this stuff. Yeah, I’m an amateur. Probably even lesser than an amateur. But I haven’t had this much fun creating in a long time.

I cannot express how much I need wild places. I watch these videos and tears well up in my eyes. The experiences are irreplaceable and cannot be taken from me. I did this. I put a pack with everything I need to survive on my back and headed into remote mountain wilderness, climbing the sides of mountain after mountain and stumbling down into valley after valley. Up. Down. Up. Down. View after view after inconceivable view. I saw these things with my own eyes. I felt the cold hail pellets hit my skin and watched them bounce off the ground. I sat at the edge of a deep gulch, cut into the earth over time by the unimaginable force of water, and flew a drone (nervously) over a space that my feet cannot touch. I watch the inexpressible beauty of this space on a screen as I try—and fail—again and again to put into words how much I love and need these wild places.

I’ve felt this way since I was young. About music. And words. And film. It’s all so powerful. Inspiring. Romantic.

But I’ve learned a few things since I was young. Romanticizing things (and people) is dangerous work, and wilderness is not romantic. It’s harsh and unpredictable, and while very much alive, it does not have the capacity to premeditate our success or demise. It simply is. Our success or demise depends only on us—our action or inaction, our ability or inability to understand the more-than-human. And that’s precisely why I love it and need it. Why we all need it. To remind us that we are not invincible. Neither are we flawed beyond hope.