A hike on the Divide (Confessions from an over-curated life)

It's all about the angle. This isn't as dicey as it looks.
Even my dogs made it to the summit of Mount Yale.

I am not the alpinist I want you to think I am. I am not as well-traveled, adventurous, or skilled in the arts of outdoorsmanship as I seem either. I never made eagle scout, and don’t know how to snare, skin, or roast a rabbit over an open fire. If you dropped me off in the woods with nothing but a knife I would pass out within a few hours from inability to maintain proper blood sugar levels. Helicopters would be looking for me in the morning.

Uncompahgre Peak, 14,321' Another walk-up with
a non-technical approach. Also done with dogs.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a thing or two about staying out of trouble in the wild. I can use a map and compass when the trails give out. I watch the clouds on the horizon. I bring more food and water than I think I’ll need. I put my phone in Airplane mode so it doesn’t roam the battery to death looking for a signal. I can start a fire without matches (by using a lighter). But none of this amounts to specialized knowledge. I am, by any definition, an amateur. An ardent and experienced one, but an amateur nonetheless. The perpetual stream of photos I post on Facebook of me on mountain tops and in other carefully cropped natural wonders results from a concerted effort to craft an image of myself that is more outdoorsy than I can ever live up to. I admit this without shame since I’m in such excellent company when it comes to the over-curated self-image. Like most everyone on social media, I am simply letting you know what what my passions are, and I’m trying to persuade you to share them. Also I’d happy if you thought I was just a tiny bit badass.

The relentless yet casual-seeming effort we put into the creation and maintenance of our virtual personas is something most folks don’t want to admit doing, yet we can all spot the behavior among our friends. Sure, not everyone bothers to be that fussy with their online appearance, and some are altogether careless about what they post, but even that becomes an expression of how they want to be perceived. Most of us seem happy with a slightly hyperbolic version of ourselves where we are more mindful or funny or politically engaged or skilled at spontaneously whipping up an amazing-looking meal from food we just happened to grow in our organic gardens. All of our passions and proclivities are in high relief, enthusiastically courting affirmation. We don’t just love science anymore, we F***ing Love Science.

All of this is good fun, but it’s helpful to recognize the gap between our constructed selves and the raw, un-enhanced, unplanned and often uninteresting version that is closer to who we likely are. Who hasn’t had the unexpected letdown of bumping into a good Facebook friend in the grocery store only to have an awkward conversation that made you question how well you really know each other. “Well, see you on Facebook,” we’d say in parting. And truly, we’ll be relieved to get back into that formatted social setting where the choreography of interaction is more familiar and witty.

Similarly, though we ought to know ourselves better, the gap between our public and private selves can be disappointingly wide. This morning I took a hike up in the mountains, and found myself spending much of the time in that gap.

When I hike alone I find the barrier between my thought-life and the world outside me to be surprisingly permeable. Those fancy Harvard-educated transcendentalist poets of the nineteenth century had a lot to say about the merging of the self with the natural world. Guys like Emerson and Thoreau spent a lot of time wandering around the New England countryside by themselves trying to define an authentic spirituality that was rooted in both nature and human individuality. Their efforts were in stark reaction to the industrial revolution and the turmoil it caused as American society reorganized itself around practices of efficiency, top-down organizational structure, mass production, and a life indoors. In that ethos, nature was primarily regarded as a resource to be exploited without regulation. Perhaps the words of those writers wouldn’t seem so romantic and effete today if we weren’t still largely under the spell of growth and efficiency as it was defined two hundred years ago. Nevertheless, even today, time spent utterly alone in nature - particularly on top of a mountain - will open you up to ideas of about “the sublime” whether you’re much into the topic or not. It just happens. And even if you aren’t exactly spiritual, you may find yourself having a numinous experience. If so, just go with it. You can decide what you believe about it later. 

Those are the kind of things I think about when I’m alone in nature. Sometimes. But this morning as I ascended the trail to the Continental Divide above Berthoud Pass in Colorado, I was really thinking about my body and how much it hurt. The trail is rated “easy,” but in Colorado that just means you don’t have to use your hands to help you climb. As the trees gave way to tundra, I could really feel the effects of my relative un-fitness, and the unwelcome heft of my over-wintered frame. I took a quick inventory of the specialized aches and pains my middle-aged anatomy had accumulated. Nothing new to speak of, thankfully. The sharp tightness in my lungs was because I wasn’t yet accustomed to the thin air. I would get there, as I had done in past seasons, but not on the first day. I reminded myself that this was a training hike, and that meant a little discomfort. But the secret pleasure of this particular workout, I knew from past visits, is that after about an hour of steady ascent you top out on the Divide and for hundreds of miles to the north and south it’s pure Sound of Music heavenliness, and relatively easy going. At that point I can forget about my body for a little while.

The final pitch just below the Divide is a steep one. The trail zigizags sharply up the last couple hundred vertical feet through blankets of tiny arctic wildflowers. On the trail above me I heard voices and looked up in time to see two guys and a dog disappear onto the ridge. Later, I met up with them sheltered on the lee side of a rock outcropping enjoying a fairly elaborate meal. They had real home-cooked breakfast items spread out in front of them in various Tupperware and tinfoil arrangements and were as relaxed as anyone I’ve ever seen on top of a mountain. I wasn’t completely surprised by the food. I’d seen it before. I once climbed a fourteener with a friend who pulled half a rotisserie chicken from her backpack when we reached the peak. Why make yourself miserable with energy bars and trail mix? If you’re going to do all that work to get to the summit, you might as well reward yourself right then and there.

Two guys and a dog

The guys had their mouths full but they waved me over. We greeted one another with the enthusiastic and congratulatory pleasantries that strangers exchange when their paths converge on top of the world. This trail sees dozens of hikers on any summer Sunday, but right now we were the only three souls for thousands of vertical feet and dozens of miles in any direction - a heady realization we were happy to relish. After a few moments I left them to their peace and pressed on toward a high saddle about a mile to the south where I figured I’d have a solo brunch of my own.

A little ways from the spot I’d chosen to take a break, I began to feel light-headed and depleted of energy. These are generally not good signs, especially at altitude, so I quickly ducked down off the ridge to get out of the wind and set to work getting my body chemistry back on track. I found myself spreading out my remaining food like those guys had done, but mine didn’t look like a sumptuous brunch. Just a bag of jerky, a little box of chocolate milk, an individually wrapped string cheese, and a small bag of dry dogfood left over from a hike I did last week - with dogs. I shifted some rocks to get more comfortable and poked a straw into my milk box.  I stretched my legs out onto the edge of an immense snow cornice still clinging to the lip of an ancient glacial cirque. The view before me was mind-bendingly beautiful. If I leaned way out I could see an arrangement of little ponds hundreds of feet below where the melt-water collected. A blanket of mixed conifers fanned out below the ponds and darkened the valley beyond. In the distance I could see a hairpin turn on the highway I came up, a bright ribbon of asphalt cleaving open the wilderness. I felt lucky. It took some effort, but I was doing something I love.

Brunch with a view

I’ve always been suspicious of the “Do What You Love” (DWYL) messages that seem to cycle through social media every couple of weeks in the form of inspirational jpgs. The sentiment often masks elitist assumptions about access and privilege. If we all get to do what we love, who will clean the toilets? Shouldn’t there be corresponding value for the jobs that are necessary but ugly, boring or dangerous? Furthermore, I feel like DWYL needs a big fat asterisk that adds the clause “but ONLY do it because you love it, not because you expect it to earn you a decent living, since it probably won’t.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for combining your passion and your career, but you better have a solid plan B for when becoming the next Steve Jobs doesn’t work out. DWYL are great words to live by if you can manage to de-couple them from a personalized capitalist agenda. Using financial success to validate effort spent on one’s passion is a precarious and misleading system of reward. Lean on your passion too hard for financial gain and it may collapse under the weight of your expectations, and become just another unlovable thing in your life.

I sat there for a while and let the nutrients work their way into my blood and soak into my muscles. My goal, Stanley Mountain, was about a half hour further to the south. I still had time to “bag” it before I’d need to head back to treeline and beat the afternoon storms. But hadn’t I changed my goal twice already on this hike? At first I told myself I’d be happy to reach the Divide. When that proved easier than expected I chose this group of rocks. And now I was considering Stanley? What narrative was I trying to create and for whom? No one was here. No one knew I was even doing this. I already had all the photos I’d need to make a satisfactory status update on Facebook. I thought about the breakfast the two strangers were enjoying a ways back. Wasn’t that a solidly respectable goal? I decided it would be mine as well, and I used my remaining time to enjoy my uninspiring food as best I could, and just sit there and practice being still and quiet.

A lot of folks are happy to repeat the popular mantra “The journey is the destination” as some sort of affirmation about how they want to live. Lying back on top of that cliff I was convinced that for me, at that moment, I would benefit more from staying put than either journey or destination could offer. So I did. And as usually happens under such conditions, I was overcome with awe at my surroundings and my good fortune to be there. Every time I try to describe this effect I sound like a like a pot head. I used to say it felt like the top of my skull had come unhinged and raw beauty was being poured directly onto my brain, or like my head was a funnel open to the sky and some sort of divine blessing was flowing down into me. Flaky, like I said, but plenty of better writers than me have tried to describe it, only to veer off into some idiosyncratic mysticism of their own creation. What I know for sure is that access to this experience is rooted in the letting go of ego (easier to do when you are completely alone) and being receptive to a beauty so present it seems to almost have dimension and mass. Yet in much the same way that smoke or clouds can imitate solid shapes, it is fleeting and incomprehensible. I can never decide whether this experience is fundamentally aesthetic or spiritual or just some sort of physical rush from all the negative ions up there. There’s no reason to think it isn’t all three, wrapped up together like some sort of gift package, because more than anything it feels like a gift. Whatever it is, I’m always thankful for it and vow to try and bring a remnant of it back with me, somehow.

Back down at the parking lot, I sat in my car with the doors open and checked the photos on my smart phone. The selfies all sucked, as usual, but I had a handful of interesting shots that hinted at the experiences I had up on the roof of America. Just then my phone’s battery ran out and the screen went black. Whatever magic was trapped in my camera’s memory, if any, would have to wait until I got home to recover it. I sat there for a minute considering whether there was maybe a story I could fashion from my day. Probably not. Nothing actually happened, except for some guys eating eggs and waffles up on the Divide. Yet just that act of wondering triggered a process, both creative and destructive, as I set to work trimming away non-essential details from the narrative framework of my day. Maybe there was something there, maybe not. Already I was editing my own memory. This is just how it goes if you want stories.

I started the car and coasted most of the 78 miles back to my home, back to the part of my day that I traded in return for a little DWYL time. From here on out the afternoon would be ordinary, un-photogenic and even a little boring. I was perfectly okay with that. I had done something I loved and asked nothing more from it. For the time being at least, there was nothing more to want, except maybe to hear that pleasant little Facebook chime when people comment on my photos. There’s always that to look forward to.

Stanley Mountain, 12,521'

Natural Selection

The Judgement of Paris, Anton Raphael Mengs

“Please make sure to mute your phones, or turn them off altogether. They can be incredibly distracting to the presenters.”

We shouldn’t have needed to be reminded of this. We were all adults. All professionals. I looked around the conference room as the others fumbled their devices into the mute mode. Most of us positioned our phones close by, angled in such a way that we could steal little glances at them, to monitor the flow of "messaging” that demands our near-constant attention - none of it remotely related to the reason we were gathered together in this all-purpose meeting room.

So here we were finally, landscape architects, park planners, local government representatives, arts organizers and administrators, a handful of designated citizen-advisors, and me, the one artist on the panel. We were assembled for the purpose of reviewing final proposals for a public art installation in one of Denver’s neighborhood parks. This was the culmination of a five month selection process. By the end our meeting we would recommend one of three artist-finalists for a project that boasted a budget well into the six figures. It was heady business, at least for me, and I was thrilled to be on this selection committee. When I was asked to join this panel, I was given a packet detailing the qualifying guidelines for the various positions. Among other things, the description for “Artist” said the panelist should have strong peer-recognition. I know it’s a cheap thrill to let yourself feel like a so-and-so over something like this, but given that the practice of being an artist involves long hermetic stretches of self-doubt and no feedback whatsoever, to suddenly have a piece of paper in front of you that confirms your status among peers, well, it felt good. It just did.

A few minutes into one of the presentations my iPhone screen blinked on and I squinted down at it without moving my head, so as not to distract the speaker. I read the first line of an incoming email that began, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you that your artwork was not chosen…” The message was from an art publication I’ve been submitting to every year for the past seven years. I’ve never gotten in. Each year the juror changes, as does the work I submit, yet after seven tries I still can’t seem to match my work to the juror. I have no idea how close I’ve come, whether I’ve been eliminated in the first round by a grad school intern, or whether some fancy curator agonized over my exclusion in the final moments. The process of jurying is necessarily opaque.

I reached out and powered off my screen. Prickly heat ran up the back of my neck as I felt a quick flush of humiliation. A dark pit opened up and beckoned me inside, but I’ve had plenty of practice avoiding that pit, so I took three deep breaths and returned my attention to the meeting. Total elapsed time of my crushing “fail” was about 45 seconds. I doubt anyone noticed my mini-crisis. Other rejections have hurt more. This one I’m getting used to.

The presenter in front of the room was struggling with momentum. His proposal was likable, but wasn’t blowing anyone away, and you could feel it. This was his big moment and he wasn’t selling us. I felt a pang of guilt for harboring a vote that would not go in his favor. He was probably the nicest of the presenters we saw that day, and I pictured myself having a beer with him. His work was solid, but it didn’t generate the right kind of excitement among the twelve people in the room. And so it was that nearly half a year after the process began, a process which saw nearly 200 qualified applicants narrowed down to this final three, this artist would be eliminated in the last few minutes of our final meeting.

Rejection isn’t a thing. Or it doesn’t need to be. This is what I told myself the other day as I juried an open-call show at a local gallery. The idea I was trying out was that I would select the work that I found strongly compelling, rather than singling out things to reject. That was my intention anyway. And while the net effect would be the same either way, I wanted to curate from a perspective of positivity. Probably I did this because I knew feelings were going to be hurt, and I wanted an out. These are the sorts of ethical gymnastics you practice when you are the one doing the exclusion. This is why rejection letters, like the one I deleted the other day without reading, always take a passive stance. Most say something like “regretfully, your art wasn’t included” rather than “regretfully, your art was excluded.” This is all they can do to soften the news.

For my part, I wanted to be as blind to bias as possible in my selection process. I went out of my way not to see the names of the applicants. But there is nothing you can do when the work is well known to you, except to try to adhere strictly to an aesthetic or thematic framework. Curating a themed exhibit isn’t simply about picking what you like, it’s about building a cohesive story of some sort. That was the challenge I was excited about, anyway. Naively, I figured I could pull it off and somehow avoid any ugly emotional fallout from my choices. This error was unpleasantly clear to me as I held a small artwork in my hands and regarded it closely, knowing it was done by a friend, and that it wasn’t right for this show.

Expulsion from Eden, Michelangelo

According to evolutionary psychologists, the intense feelings that accompany rejection are useful for our survival. In the days of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the thinking goes, rejection was akin to a death sentence, since to be ostracized from the tribe meant we would have to fend for ourselves in the wild. Interestingly, it is also known that the pain of rejection activates the same neurological areas in the brain that are associated with physical pain, therefore: “Evolutionary psychologists assume the brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism. Because it was so important to get our attention—those who experienced rejection as more painful (i.e., because rejection mimicked physical pain in their brain) gained an evolutionary advantage—they were more likely to correct their behavior and consequently, more likely to remain in the tribe." citation

Some of my creative friends and colleagues flat out refuse to jury local art shows. For them, there is too much potential for wounded friendships and ill-will as a result. I know one Denver gallery owner who still gets creepy emails from a guy whose work he rejected more than five years ago. And as for the applicants, juried shows threaten the possibility of soul-crushing self doubt. Even the toughest of us have survived the initial shock of non-inclusion, only to be thrown into a tailspin later when we see the artwork that was selected. Most of my artist friends who are well established in their careers pooh-pooh the very thought of entering work into a juried show. Why subject yourself to the whims of someone you don’t fully respect, who has nowhere near your level of experience, or whose gallery isn’t critically regarded? And yet these same artists routinely risk exclusion by applying for fellowships, residencies, or public art commissions. It seems that no matter what level of success we achieve, we continually subject ourselves to the possibility that someone whose favor we seek will simply give us a big thumbs down.

So if rejection is so bad for us, in terms of the survival of our species, then why do we engage it so regularly? From that person you'd like to mate with who rebuffs your best attempt at charm to the roomful of muckety-mucks at your job who give a collective “meh” to your best thinking, each of us exposes ourselves to negation fairly frequently. There’s no avoiding it if you want to achieve a level of self-respect, not to mention success. No risk, no reward, as the saying goes.

As for juried shows, I’ll continue to accept invitations to curate. I’m trying to get better at it, and I’m convinced that the local art scene can benefit from more thoughtful, rigorous and challenging exhibitions that are self-produced. Juried shows are also a good venue to showcase emerging talent and can help those artists establish an exhibition record. I can’t think of a better way to get traction in an art community that relies so heavily on DIY methods for career growth.

And the art publication I keep failing to impress? I’m already working on a new body of work I intend to finish in time for next year’s entry deadline. Eighth time’s the charm. Don’t they say that somewhere? China, maybe? In any case, should I find my work vetoed yet again, I already have a plan. Take three deep breaths. Slowly, and as deep as I can make them.