Category: vermont

Labor of Love: An App is Born

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HackVT is a 24hr coding competition “where friends and complete strangers will work to build a killer app for the state of Vermont.” From Friday to Saturday, a whole bunch of programmers packed into the old mill, fired up their computers, and got to work. Most teams were stacked with coders working furiously through the night. Our team went about things a little differently. Actually, a lot differently. Only one of us, Justin, knows how to program. Brad and Craig are graphic designers. And then there’s me: a writer. Together, we swore off sleep and built a beautiful app.

I can’t say much about it yet, but I can share that it’s an app for people like you and me; people who love exploring the outdoors. This is the about page, which shows off a bit of the heritage-inspired design and the open, conversational brand voice.

When I finally got home, I pawed slowly through our swag bag, browsing through the brochures and the single copy of Ski Vermont Magazine. The first page I turned to was the letter from the editor, titled “Do What You Love.” Even in my delirious, sleep-deprived state this felt significant, as if the stars were aligning just to tell us we are doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.

For each one of us, this app is a labor of love. Justin is dedicated to building iOS apps that work as beautifully as they look and are as useful as they are intuitive. Brad and Craig live and breathe the kind of design that makes you fall in love at first sight. I believe strongly in the power of the humbly written word to inspire and support people I have never and will never meet.

Rome wasn't built in a day, but this was.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but this was.

All of that love must have shined through, because even though our presentation went terribly wrong (the app worked, the presentation tech did not), our team walked away with an Honorable Mention.

I’m looking forward to seeing the official photo of our shocked, delirious, sleep-deprived faces grinning like fools.

While we have the skeleton in place, here’s still a lot of work to be done before the app goes live. Rest assured, I’ll be sharing more about the app as we continue to fix bugs, add content, and streamline features. We aim to have it available in the app store by Spring 2014. Until then, enjoy this teaser screen. Let’s go explore.

I’m sorry, our government did what?

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When I woke up this morning, I had no idea the government had shut down. When my roommate came back from class, he flicked through the channels looking for any coverage of what this could possibly mean. (To no avail at the time. It was no-man’s-land-o’clock for real news coverage.)

I was distracted by other things. I had Work to do, and Work I did, dropping into my writer’s trance for the better part of the day. From 1 to 4, I barely blinked let alone thought about Congress.

But then an email pinged into my inbox. It was from Gina, my boss/editor at the Outdoor Women’s Alliance, for whom I intern. She was looking for an article on the closing of the National Parks due to the government shut down. I almost said no, I’m sorry, I can’t do it today. But then I started reading. Articles from CNN, Fox News, and independent laypeople. I got mad.

So I wrote this: Error 404: National Parks Not Found. Because it’s ridiculous that our government has allowed a shutdown while we are still struggling our collective way out of a crippling recession. Because the only reason I have health insurance right now is because of the changes brought about by Obamacare. Because it’s more than just the National Parks. It’s the people who work there. It’s NASA and the non-military satellites we watch streak through the night sky.

800,000 people sent home from work today. 800,000 people who do not know when they will be going back to work. 401 National Parks closed. How many communities rely on the tourist dollars that pump into parks like Baxter State and Yellowstone?

Geez, guys. Get your shit together. I’m pretty sure you were elected to run our country, not shut it down.

This does, however, make me proud to be a Vermonter. My representatives fought the shutdown. The men and women I elected. That’s pretty damn cool.

Enjoy Error 404. For those immediately effected by the shutdown, my heart is with you. For those not yet effected (because we all will be), take a moment to consider the government. Contact your representatives. Let them know what you think about this. This is our country. We run our country.

Finally: Photographic proof I attempted the Vermont Spartan Beast

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It took three days to get the mud out of my hair.
It took three days to get the mud out of my hair.

It’s picture day! Only way better. Because it’s muddy.

I only got one good professional photograph this year, but this one shot brings back all the good from my attempt to take on the Beast. (You can read more about the experience here.)

It hurt. So much. There are still bruises on my legs. But I don’t regret a single moment. I pushed myself, then I knew when to back down. Since I didn’t make the whole Beast this year, I’ll just be one year older when I do.

And I am a-okay with that.

 

Tales from the Spartan Beast

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Seven miles of the Spartan Beast, and I am content. I am proud of this. Proud of how far I ran, hiked, crawled, climbed, pulled, and burpee’d. I took each challenge with a touch of a smile – until I began to shiver too hard and felt the warm disappearing from my fingers. At mile seven, I looked at the next obstacle and shook my head. Beyond it lay water features, 55ºF, misting rain, blowing wind, and seven more miles.

“No. This is enough.”

One bath and two showers later and I still feel like there’s grit in my hair.

I am fascinated by how pain moves through the body. Yesterday morning, the soreness existed on my peripheries. The sides of my legs, the edges of my arms. It was as if the Spartan’s main result was clarifying the edges of me, the boundaries of my being.

By the afternoon, the aches had moved to my centers. The front of my thighs, the muscles that follow the lowest reaches of my ribcage. Deep in my biceps. Reminding me of where my center lives.

I want to come back to take on the Spartan Beast next year. Why?

Why go through the pain of it? The shaking, shuddering fear? The moments of pure pain? Why..?

Because of the laughter shared between strangers on a long slog straight uphill. Because it defines the edges of my body. Because it highlights the center of my soul.

Oh – for those in the know… the code I had to memorize was Romeo 653-6120.

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What keeps you pushing yourself to the next level, the next challenge?

Such Great Heights

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Saturday morning I took to the trails again, this time up Mt Abraham. It was a really lovely hike on a pleasant, lonely trail…. but I don’t want to talk about how nice it was. How it was centering and invigorating. No.

I want to talk about fear.

The summit of Mt Abe is a balding dome. It’s a bit of a steep scramble, and fairly exposed. It’s not a big deal. It’s really not. But during the final push, using my hiking boots to smear up the rocks, I turned around to take in the view. And immediately regretted it. My stomach tried to hide behind my large intestines and my knees said Nope, nope, nope.

Heights didn’t use to frighten me so much. I never liked sitting on the edges of cliffs or climbing in the rafters of my parents’ garage, but this uneasiness seemed entirely reasonable. The Grand Canyon is, after all, a very tall cliff, and my dad would not have appreciated my falling on his favorite car.

I was also afraid of a lot of things when I was a little one. The dark. The alligator under my bed. Spiders. Clowns. Again, all reasonable things. Most importantly, these are fears I’ve gotten over. I stopped believing in the alligator under my bed. I watched spiders spin their webs until my breathing regulated. I sat in dark rooms until my eyes adjusted, and I could see for myself that no monsters waited for me.

Not so with my fear of heights. In fact, I think it’s getting worse.

I used to be a religious rock climber, hitting the wall several times a week! I scrambled up trees when I was bored! Yet, I feel light headed on an exposed slab of otherwise completely stable rock. (To be honest, even chairlifts have started to freak me out. If I ever ride with the safety bar down, you’ll notice I will keep one arm over the chair to keep myself in place.)

I’m not sure how to work on this, either. Picking up rock climbing again would surely help, but indoor gyms don’t trigger the same panic reaction that outdoor heights illicit.

As with any fear, beating this one will take time and practice. Have you dealt with something like this before? How did you keep it from getting in the way of enjoying the view, so to speak? Let me know in the comments. Maybe it’ll give me an idea as to how to face this fear of mine!

Perceptions are altitude dependent

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There is a point on every trail when I ask myself why on earth I keep going out on hikes. Usually, it happens when sweat beads into my eyes and along my jaw line.  It’s when my knee and/or ankles hurt, and I’m looking uphill thinking, “This totally sucks.”

Hiking is hard.

But it’s also awesome.

Yesterday, at the summit of Mt Hunger, I ate a half-mooshed banana and set about orienting my compass and myself. See, I have a terrible sense of direction. I have only a rudimentary sense of where points are in relationship to one another, and I navigate best by associating locations with landmarks. Mountains make awfully good landmarks.

In video games, there’s an effect called the Fog of War. The effect prevents you from seeing places on the playable map that you haven’t yet explored. Assassin’s Creed does a particularly good job of dealing with the Fog; the best way to reveal sections of the map is to climb a tall building and have a look around.

View of Stowe from Mt Hunger
That’s Stowe in the distance.

Mt Mansfield to the northwest. The Presidentials to the east. Camel’s Hump, southwest. Somewhere to the hazy, foggy west, Lake Champlain.

One of my favorite quotes is from Sally Shivan’s essay “Airborne.”

Once again, perceptions can be altitude dependent.

It’s true. From the top of a mountain, faced with the panoramic view of humanity nestled in the folds of nature, it’s impossible to not experience a subtle shift in point of view. From up there, I placed the roads and towns and mountains in my life in context. There is home. There is Stowe. I am here. This is about when I forget that hiking sucks and remember that it’s awesome.

Then, I hopped, skipped, and jogged my way back down the mountain. At one point I tripped and fell. A few minutes later, I rinsed my bleeding knee in the mountain spring. It seems I’ll never learn to not run down mountains, just as I’ll never learn to not hike up them.

How do your perceptions shift when you’re in your sport? Tell me in the comments!

Summer in the City

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It’s really summer now. Heat, humidity, and thunderstorms that light up the sky.

Summer in Burlington is a beautiful time. Suddenly, Church Street comes alive, packed with tourists and locals rubbing elbows and sampling the fresh tastes of summer in Vermont.

Yeah, it's a really tough life.
Yeah, it’s a really tough life.

The song Summer in the City comes to mind.

In keeping with tradition, here is my little list of things for which I’m completely grateful.

  • Blowing bubbles
  • Cheeseburgers cooked on charcoal grills
  • Sunburnt cheeks and noses
  • The wind cooling me down even as the bike and I push further and faster
  • Dresses worn with bare feet

Happy summer, y’all. (And don’t worry… Winter’s on its way…)

Permission to slack

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While I was off cycling the midwest, I spent some quality time thinking about this blog. Now that I have a handle on what I want to write about and how I want to write it, I feel comfortable creating a kind of mission statement.

Like any mission statement, this is both a statement of purpose and a statement of intent reflecting the values that I bring to the words I write here… You’ll find the most updated text through the About link to zee left (as well as a brief auto-bio of yours truly), but I want to place it here, too. Front and center.

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Slackcountry Living is a ski blog that isn’t about the biggest cliff, the deepest pow, or spinning dinner rolls like Jonny Mo. (Although, fingers crossed that these topics come up. But trust me; I won’t be the one doing the dinner-rolling.)

It’s about getting out and enjoying what you got, be it tight trees or breakaway gates, fluffy white or hard ice. When it’s too warm for riding, it’s about the joy of getting outside and living where there are no doors.

No matter the season, this blog is about slacking off – but not in the sense of shirking responsibility or looking for the easy way out. Instead, slacking off means not taking everything so seriously. You don’t need the latest gear or gnarliest terrain to love what you do. All you need is you.

Relax. It’s just skiing.

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Why this mission statement?

Because I want to support the athletes riding with crooked poles, ski boots with duct tape on the toes, and hand-me-down clothes. I want to shout out to the kids heading outdoors even though their friends would rather go to the mall or play video games or whatever it is kids do these days. Because that’s who I am, too.

We have better things to do than be snooty to someone who can’t afford the latest, lightest binding.

“We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

(Charles Bukowski)

Slap me if I start getting pretentious, okay? Otherwise – enjoy. Love your wilderness.

Double chair Stowe

Snake Mountain

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The nice thing about rainy days… is that if you time it right… you might just get the trail all to yourself.

A morning jaunt up Snake Mountain. A lunchtime nap on the summit. And a muddy, splashing hike back to the car.

What a view!

Liquid lunch and a view.
Yeah – I lost my raincoat, so I have to use my ski jacket.

 

Camp days

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Where I grew up, “camp” was the word most people used to describe summer camps; places where they left their children for weeks or months at a time. In my family, camp meant a little red house on the banks of Lake Seymour. It’s too home-like to be a cottage, too rustic for a summer house. This place lies smack dab in the middle of cottage and home. It’s camp.

I just finished Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, which has me daydreaming of far-off shores, but also reminded me of why I love it here – a little red house resting quietly on a lake in the Northeast Kingdom.Seymour Lake

At night, I sleep on the back porch with every window thrown open and the brook raging in my ears. The trees are our curtains. In the morning, I brew weak coffee in the percolator and drink it all day long. I sweep the front deck and set out the chair cushions. The lake is at our doorstep. She has her moods – rowdy in the morning and calm at night, or vice versa. She is wide enough that motorboats don’t cause a ruckus and deep enough that she never really gets warm. Even in July, her crystal-clear waters make you gasp. It’s best to just dive in.

Our main view is of the pointed hill across the lake. (It’s name is Elon, but I always think of it as Élan.) Behind it, the pointed peaks of Mount Westmore. Stretching like a snout from the hill into the water is Wolf Point. It certainly looks like a long canine muzzle, complete with a defined patch of conifers for a nose. I sometimes wish it didn’t look so much like a nose… I find myself staring at it when I really could be looking at other things –

Like the loons diving into the water, or the conical silhouettes of conifers against their round, deciduous neighbors.

After an evening run along VT Route 111, I cool my muscles the fastest way I can think of – by walking into the water. The water level is high this week, so it takes just a few steps to reach my thigh. I dive in. I don’t fully know how to describe the shock of submerging oneself in truly cold water. It’s as if your cells go into panic mode as your mind narrows to encompass one simple word (COLD) and one simple purpose (GET OUT YOU CRAZY GIRL). I don’t stay in for long; just a minute or two. But before I leave the water, I smile and touch my wet fingers to my lips. Thank you, I love you.

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If you’re looking for me this week, I’m not around. I’m just spending a few days by the lake and nights on the porch of a little red camp. The brook will sing me to sleep.