CARROT QUINN

dispatches from the wild

Skip to content

Home
About Me
FAQ/contact
L2H 2019
MRT 2019
Alaska 2018
KCHBR 2017
WRHR 2016
Hayduke Route 2016
CDT 2015
L2H 2014
PCT 2014
PCT 2013
Gear
Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: the book
Some of my best stuff
Thru-Hike Coaching
Support my writing
FMT

Search

Search for:

mt. st. helens

Mount Saint Helens Take Two: Perfect Weather + Crampons Adjusted Correctly = a good time is had by all

January 31, 2015 / carrot quinn

Mount Saint Helens Summit via the Worm Flows route 12 miles round-trip 5,699 feet elevation gain I'd only been back in Southern Oregon for a few days when I looked at mountain-forecast.com and saw that there was going to be one perfect day of bluebird weather on the Saint Helens summit- on friday. “I have … Continue reading Mount Saint Helens Take Two: Perfect Weather + Crampons Adjusted Correctly = a good time is had by all

Hard Lessons on Mount Saint Helens

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015 / carrot quinn / 10 Comments

Ascent of Mount Saint Helens in winter via the Worm Flows route 12 miles round-trip 5,699 feet elevation gain I got into Portland around midday on Friday and dropped my bags on the floor of my friend Seamus' empty house. He and his partner were both at work but the cats were there, mewing … Continue reading Hard Lessons on Mount Saint Helens

Enter your email address to recieve a notification with every post. No spam.

Join 6,969 other followers

I like to do the instagram

Tomorrow our tech overlords will unveil the post human future but before their plan can be put into place a nuclear winter will take us but spare the wolves Beavers will make the rivers wild again Farms will turn back into wetlands Look at the way the light is marigold this time of day; The sparkles on the swimming hole, this water is cold snowmelt from the ponderosa forest high above, where it's quiet We've brought guacamole, avocados were 50 cents at the store, there's sand in everything My friend's face is so open, she's been crying because her heart was broken Tomorrow death will come but today, Our hearts can still break ✨ Alternate caption: the future is gay swimming holes ✨ Alternate alternate caption: my friends r my muses

I thought this trip to Alaska would be lonely, isolating and full of grief. By chance I ended up staying at a house in Anchorage suffused w history and peopled with some of the kindest and most genuine and generous ppl I have ever had the chance to meet. The trip that was supposed to be hard and sad was instead full of laughter, warmth, connection and companionship, and now Anchorage, a town I never thought I could love, truly feels like one of my homes. ✨ Did I find my mother, though? I wish there was an easy answer to this question. I met more people who know her and know her habits, but the truth is that it is incredibly difficult to figure out how to support someone who does not want to be found, contacted or supported. It's a long process, and a complicated one. I'm back in Tucson now but I'm returning to Anchorage in the spring to spend a longer chunk of time there, to keep chipping away at this thing. ✨ (I didnt get photos of so many of the brilliant ppl I had a chance to spend time with, these few will have to suffice) ✨ 📍This is Dena'ina land

I did winter fatbiking today on a frozen lake! -6F! It was fun. That is all. 🤗

Foods I have eaten since being in Alaska: muktuk, caribou organ scrapple, moose stew, caribou bratwurst, smoked salmon, coffee blended w coconut oil and butter, dumpstered chocolate (that's it, that's the whole post)

My mother is a paranoid schizophrenic who does not want to be found. When I do get information on her whereabouts it's because someone at a shelter or homeless cafe is breaking the rules; a volunteer tells me he's been seeing her around for a year, she went off her meds and was extra cantankerous but now she's back on them. He tells me to return at 6pm but when I stand in the cold and knock on the locked door that evening another worker cracks it and tells me, with a serene face, that she can't give me any information because of confidentiality, nor will she be able to give me any information at any time in the future, nor will I ever be allowed to come inside. ✨ I know why these rules exist, and I respect them. I respect my mothers' autonomy. She's survived 22 winters homeless in Alaska, she knows how to survive another. ✨ It's cold in Anchorage right now. The temps have been below zero almost every night that I've been here. I visit a winter homeless camp, where tarps have been piled on top of each other in the shape of a low cabin and empty propane tanks are stacked in the snow. A cheery man in a light jacket tells me he hasn't seen my mother. So many people are homeless in Anchorage, even in the winter. It is beyond hardcore. Every year, many people die. I imagine my mother, who other homeless folks have described as "a frail little lady with white hair who often uses a walker", sleeping outside when it's fifteen below zero. ✨ I tell myself I'm going to find that man who broke the rules for me, and become his friend. Or someone like him. I don't need to have a relationship with my mother, if she doesn't want that. I know how bad she feels when she has to interact with people, and I don't want to make her feel worse. But I don't want her to die in a snowbank, either. I'm going to find someone who knows her, who sees her on the reg, and through that person, find a way to help her. I stuff my hands in my pockets and shuffle down the snowy sidewalk. I can feel my eyelashes freezing. I imagine my mother off her meds, hurling verbal abuse at the people serving her dinner, and chuckle to myself.

As an adult coming back to Alaska in the summers I never wanted to spend much time in Anchorage; I hardly knew anyone here, there were ghosts everywhere, the city made me too sad. I thought this winter trip wld feel like that- lonely, isolating, haunted. ✨ But by some trick of serendipity I ended up in a house of rly good ppl whose long histories are, amazingly, intertwined with mine (all of us being west coast punks of a certain age) and instead of feeling alone I'm being reminded that actually, I've been connecting w ppl/cultivating relationships w ppl my whole life, weaving my history with others year by year, and my aloneness is an illusion that I create but don't want to anymore- I want to tear it down like cobwebs, and keep tearing it down when it grows back. ✨ I thought I wld feel extra super alone on this trip but instead the ppl here feel like home, they are the kindest, most interesting smart and generous ppl, and the fact that this is happening in the place that is also my hometown is almost too much, like it makes me mad at the universe. We spin our wheels and we spin our wheels and we never get anywhere, but we end up where we're meant to be all the same, right? ✨ I dunno, I'm starting to believe that home is a real thing, maybe the most pedestrian thing, unglamorous, easy to overlook but waiting, brilliant, covered in hoar frost ✨ 📍This is Dana'ina land

u can also find me on my public facebook page

u can also find me on my public facebook page

Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart: the book

recent posts

My online course on thru-hiking the PCT starts Saturday! January 2, 2020
Another sample video from my PCT Thru-Hiking Course December 29, 2019
My course on thru-hiking the PCT is almost here- here’s the syllabus! December 24, 2019
L2H day 9: road walk December 15, 2019
L2H day 8: Tumanguya December 11, 2019

Search for:

archive

archive

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 6,969 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

Post to

Cancel