Hut Trip Basics

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

You did it. You signed up for your first hut trip. Whether you’re heading into an old Forest Service cabin for a night or two, or taking a helicopter into the middle of Alberta, you’re in for a good time.

You’ve gone through the packing list three times and you’re ready to go. Your skis are waxed, you’ve got extra batteries for your gadgets, and you’ve been wearing those little down booties all over the house because, well, they’re the best. But are you ready? Do you know what to expect? If you’ve never been on a hut trip before, probably not.

Here’s a few pointers:

The Skiing Will be Terrible – Which, obviously I hope it’s not. But chances are, that for much of the time you’re out there the avalanche danger will be high, or visibility will be poor, or the snow will be crummy. I hope every turn you make is the stuff of Instagram heroics, but you’ll have a better time if you measure your expectations and don’t plan on blower face shots all day every day. And in the end this won’t really bother you, because of the next point:

This Is Not a Ski Trip – Again, this is clearly not the case. You just got your skis tuned, after all. But if it was really a ski trip, you’d be sleeping in a tent and cut your toothbrush in half and packed the unabridged Moby Dick to help you through the storm cycles. This is better than a ski trip. This is a hut trip.

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A few minutes from the front door.

And yeah, you’re going to ski your face off. But when you hike from the front door, you can get a solid 6-8 hours of touring in and still have pretty much the entire day to screw off. Relish that. Bring board games and strange cheeses, good whiskey and bad beer. The hut is your bastion of gaiety against a twisted world. A long weekend in Valhalla. Savor it.

Bring Worse Beer – This is a common trap that even seasoned hut trippers fall into. In an effort to save space and be efficient with weight, folks always seem to bring big ‘ol 11% double IPAs and the like. Those big beers are great, sure, but not what you’re actually going to want while you sit in the hot tub for 5 hours after skiing all day. Bring Schlitz, or Modelos and lime,  or hell – even a wine cooler or two. Your friends will mock you on the approach and beg you for a Rainier on day two.

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Hut trip essentials.

Dinner is Competitive – A communal meal around a roaring fire is the most basic, beautiful, truly human experience. It was the first thing we did to separate ourselves from the rest of God’s critters, and meal time in a yurt is a direct connection with hundreds of thousands of years of human ancestry.

It’s also an opportunity to vanquish your friends and loved ones. Dinnertime in a hut is, whether anyone will admit it or not, competitive. It must be filling, delicious, and copious. Canned tomato sauce and spaghetti will not be tolerated. You will be judged by your efforts – be sure to bring enough butter.

Beware the Groupthink – Hut time on a hut trip is for telling jokes and eating butter. Ski time is real. You’re going to be secluded in the middle of nowhere, probably with no cell reception, perhaps a helicopter ride away from the nearest help. Do try not to get hurt.

It's easy to do.
It’s easy to do.

The good times and cohesion of mealtime at base camp is great, but it’s better to keep it there. Don’t be afraid to peel off in 3’s and 4’s to go find your own adventures on the skintrack. Even people who do this for a living get into trouble when group sizes swell and the stoke gets too high. High fives are for the hot tub – you have to make it there alive.

Book the Next One Now – Hut trips are so hot right now. The best ones are booked two years out. So pick a date and get it on the calendar, it’s the best thing you’ll do all winter.

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Laugh It Up

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

For the last year or so, we have, as a nation, been collecting our old car tires and shop rags, and sticking them out back, sort of figuring we’ll deal with them later, at the next Hazardous Waste Disposal Day, or something, if we don’t already have plans. I guess we missed the last couple of HazWaste days. The pile was getting pretty big. The neighbors were complaining.

Then right around January 19th or so, someone flipped a cigarette over there, and the rest, they say, is history*. Our national tire fire as been burning at a pretty good clip since then.

I lack the space, attention and emotional fortitude to provide a summary of the unprecedented shitstorm that we’ve seen over the last month (these folks do a pretty good job), but we’ve got a few highlights. In the last 24 hours:

I wonder if there’s something to the idea of a career politician after all. You know, like, someone who knows how the government works. The President has consistently been baffled by the separation of powers, the scale of the United States Government, and his own job description.

Even if it’s the end of the world, it’s a helluva time to be in comedy.

Saturday Night Live is relevant for the first time since we lost Chris Farley. Late night talk show hosts aren’t quite sure how to handle all the material. Unique page views on this very blog have crept from “dozens” to “scores.” Even bathroom graffiti has moved away from racist epithets and ex-girlfriends’ phone numbers to something a bit more mainstream:

The times, they are a-changing

I’m not afraid to admit that this is pretty fun to watch. President Trump is failing at everything he was obviously going to fail at, and it’s terrific. The system built by our founding fathers to resist tyranny is facing its greatest test to date, and it’s not even breaking a sweat. The liberal elite smugness is rattling around the echo chamber and we’re all catching a bit of a contact high.

But then, I say this from a place of security: as an armed straight white male in a homogeneous western state. It’s pretty comfortable over here. And it’s easy to forget that as much fun as it is to laugh and gawk at this dumpster-fire-as-administration, this shit is very real for much of the country.

See because in the last week or so here’s what else we’ve seen:

It’s easy to laugh at the big stuff (like impending nuclear war) because it’s hard to imagine, and still fairly unlikely. But it’s easy to ignore what’s happening right now because it’s not on our block, and that is unforgivable.

So yeah, laugh it up. I’m going to. Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer is objectively hilarious, and imagining Trump’s ire at being portrayed by Leslie Jones illustrates the height of political satire. But you’d better stay mad, too. Mid-terms are right around the corner, and it’s easy to forget that even clowns are scary.

 

*Assuming that “history” is still a thing after a few years of this whole DeVos nightmare.

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Film Festival for the Coming Apocalypse

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

There has been a lot of talk about recommended reading over the last few weeks. “You should re-read 1984,” they say. “The President should read the Constitution, or the Bible, or one of his Executive Orders, or something. Anything, really,” they say.

But let’s be real. This is 2017. Reading? Really? Books? Sorry to say it, but the nerds lost. Books are out; I hear they’ll be burning them in D.C. this spring. Besides, the secret police are almost certainly staking out your local booksellers as we speak. Suddenly a stroll down to Shakespeare and Co. is a very dangerous thing to do.

No, ladies and gentlemen, for a cultural experience in today’s America, I suggest a film festival of classics new and old to show us where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re headed. And so with no further ado, I would like to present A Film Festival for the Coming Apocalypse – showing all day at The Roxy Theater on the date of our next State of the Union Address.

Film Festival for the Coming Apocalypse

Background Viewing – It is suggested that before the show you are familiar with the Star Wars and Hunger Games Franchises. Be sure to consider parallels between hegemonic American foreign policy and power distribution in the films, as well as the irony of rooting so passionately against the Empire/Capitol from the reclining, overstuffed Cineplex seats with a 300oz. Coca-Cola Classic and $37 buttered popcorn on your lap!

(1) The Interview – (2014) 1hr 52min – The Interview is a searing indictment of the state of art in the cultural landscape that was, apparently, ready to elect Donald Trump as President. Disregard, for a moment, the lazy writing and casual racism – this movie is objectively un-funny. It made this list at once to illustrate how low the lowest common denominator has fallen, but also to remind us that its unflattering presentation of Kim Jong Un likely precipitated one of the largest cyber attacks on American interests in history – at once an inspiration for artists to come and a stark warning about lampooning thin-skinned autocrats.

(2) Idiocracy – (2006) 1hr 24min – Mike Judge was eerily prescient in his pessimistic forecast of humanity in the 26th century. The United States is run by a professional wrestler, crops are watered with Gatorade, the population is rife with under-educated populist anger, and oh dear God I have to look away. President Camacho’s State of the Union Address is just a bit too close to home.

(3) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb – (1964) 1hr 35min – The world has no idea that it’s on the cusp of nuclear obliteration. Kubrick paints a picture of blundering, insecure world leaders, fumbling through the motions of diplomacy as military leaders push us to the brink of war. The President is advised by a Nazi, and a paranoid schizophrenic hijacks due process. At least the movie is funny.

(4) Network – (1976) 2hr 2min – “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.” A TV personality loses his mind on screen and taps into public anger from coast to coast. The network company exploits it for ratings. The rest, they say, is history.

(5) Red Dawn – (1984) 1hr 54min – The premise is pretty clear: America is invaded by the Soviet Union and a ragtag group of high schoolers stage a rebellion. I’m not sure what else has to be said here.

(6) V for Vendetta – (2005) 2hr 12min – A classic good vs evil story of an uprising against a Fascist state and the perseverance of the human spirit. It begins in a world with a censored state-run media, corrupt secret police, and perpetual martial law. (Particularly topical is the scene in which a late night sketch comic is disappeared after ridiculing the Chancellor [has anyone heard from Melissa McCarthy this week?]). Major themes include the great power of the written word, the ultimate frailty of an autocratic state, and Godwin’s Law.

(7) Mad Max: Fury Road – (2015) 2hrs – I  mean, given today’s rampant drought and desertification, the public’s apparent preference for autocracy over democracy, and the increasingly corporate ownership of global water supplies, this one is less “distopian sci-fi” and more “documentary” than most of us are probably willing to admit.

(8) Inglorious Basterds – (2009) 2hr 33min – Because while individual films in this festival may have optimistic endings, the trend doesn’t look good. Sometimes you just gotta kill some Nazis.

 

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My Public Land

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 1 Comment

A colleague posed the question once what right we have, as writers and photographers, to publish our experiences in the mountains. I told him that there is no question, really: that our experiences are our own to do with as we please.

But then I think the question that he asked was not the question that he meant. I suppose now that he was probing the pangs of guilt he felt for somehow spoiling a secret that wasn’t his to share, say, the relative position of cats and bags with respect to top-secret fishing holes, hunting camps, and powder stashes.

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Public lands are, to be sure, ours to enjoy and to share. The notion of a private fishing spot  or family hunting camp are categorically at odds with America’s best idea. We don’t need to ask permission to go skiing, or hiking, or hunting, and that’s what separates the American West as a bastion of democratic ideals: I own 640 million acres of public land. (Hey! So do you!)

An essential part of the backcountry landscape is its capacity for solitude. If every single American was spread evenly across our public land, we would have a hard time seeing the next nearest human. Time in the mountains gives us the opportunity to feel small and vulnerable and disconnected from what feels increasingly like an irrevocably chaotic modern world, and as we spend time in these places we forge personal relationships with them. Seeing your favorite backcountry haunt on some college sophomore’s Instagram feed is infuriating. Violating.

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But like that Woodie Gurthrie song goes, we don’t own that land alone. Sharing photographs, stories, and maps celebrates the places that make us whole and inspire others to get out, and it risks ruining the mystery for those to come. We walk a line between inspiration and exploitation; these places are ours to enjoy but not to diminish.

Whether publicizing these rare places diminishes them is up for debate. I doubt that anyone who’s visited Yellowstone or Zion National Parks in recent years would argue that their wilderness experience was unsullied, and a recent proposal to build a gondola to the bottom of the Grand Canyon rightly faced furious dissent. But people have to know something to care about it, and we are at risk now of losing our public land.

Make no mistake that western public land is under attack. The Republican National Committee adopted as a tenet of its platform to “urge the transfer of [Federal] lands … to all willing states.” A bill is before Congress now (HR 621) to compel the sale of Federal lands across the west. The American Lands Council is hard at work to bypass voters and decentralize public land management.

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Public land transfers cannot be undone, and their protection relies on the attention and care of every American. In the face of real economic and political uncertainty, exposure to wild places wanes as people work to stay at work and keep food on the table. In times of prosperity, free time and disposable income not everyone thinks of a frigid 12-hour slog through the mountains as “fun,” but appreciates the value inherent to such places being free.

So sure, tweeting the coordinates of the last place you caught a 25 lb. brown trout is probably going to get you some dirty looks at the bar. But never feel shame for promoting the wild places you love. They need the attention.

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Call Me Chicken Little

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Here we go, I guess. We’re just four days in, and it appears that all those nutty, childish, reactionary things that you’ve spent the last two months terrified of but that your racist uncle assured you were “just campaign trail antics” really are the cornerstone of our 45th President’s administration. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but the past 72 hours have been nothing short of surreal. The sky is falling, call me Chicken Little if you must.

Since his inauguration a few days ago we’ve see President Trump throw a fit over parade size and actually acknowledge that his press secretary peddled “alternate facts,” which, wtf? We’ve seen him repeat the lie that his unprecedented loss of the popular vote was a result of unprecedented voter fraud. We’ve seen him straighten his tie with Scotch Tape.

While some Republican leaders fear that he is blowing his only chance to build consensus with the benefit of the doubt that comes with a nascent administration, he has found time to effect disastrous policy change (if stopping short of governing).

In the past 72 hours the current administration has hamstrug government efficacy (excepting, of course, the Military-Industrial Complex) through a blanket hiring freeze. It has apparently deemed the man who less than a year ago described President Obama as “The Antichrist” now, after testifying that climate change is a real thing, too moderate for a cabinet position. It has killed the EPA’s contracts grant program, which includes not only research and monitoring but environmental cleanup and redevelopment.

At the same time, an overwhelming majority of appointments (let alone confirmations) are vacant. A significant population of Obama staffers are still on board to make sure that someone flips the OPEN/CLOSED sign twice a day, which, by the way, includes James Comey, which can be any combination of:

a) An inability of the administration to come up with anyone different

b) A tacit approval of his mishandling of various investigations over the course of the last year

c) A move to retain some kind of leverage over the several pending investigations on connections between our government and foreign adversaries

Which, I mean, take your pick, I guess.

It’s not that the Trump administration hasn’t been busy, it just hasn’t been busy doing its job.

What we’re seeing is the good stuff. The easy stuff. The “let-me-stick-my-thumb-in-your-eye-you-haters-stuff.” We’re seeing quick, satisfying serotonin dumps in lieu of anything like strategy. We’re seeing a spoiled kid have dessert before broccoli. Between Kim Jong Un and Joffrey Baratheon you’d think we’d seen enough of the whole Boy King thing.

We’re seeing the same approach to governance that we saw during the campaign. The candidate Trump  consistently eschewed preparation in favor of freewheeling showmanship. He never built a ground game or any kind of organizational infrastructure.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “He won, after all.” And you’re right. He did win*. He was elected by the country whose individuals carry an average of $16,000 in credit card debt and nearly $30,000 in auto loans. A country ravaged by obesity. A nation of people who consistently demonstrate that they cannot invest in the long term at the expense of the short.

This is where we are. We live with a barely functioning government of white supremacists that is actively divesting from our quality of life. So I’m proud to see that protests dwarfed the inauguration. I’m proud that the Women’s March was one of the largest (the largest?) demonstration in US history. I’m proud of that guy who punched Richard Spencer in the face.

God that's good.
God that’s good.

My instinct is to stockpile guns and MREs and wait for Red Dawn to play out, because this feels about as close to the end of the world as I can remember. But that’s only because I can’t remember when there were a bunch of nuclear warheads in Cuba pointed right at our faces. This country has seen some shit, and it’s still more or less in one piece. So stay mad and eat your broccoli, it’s just two years to midterms.

 

*kind of.

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