Hand Drawn (& Hiked) by McCall

Morning, folks! I’m coming at you live from Pitkin County, Colorado. At the time I’m writing this, it’s less than 24 hours from the official Mount Sopris expedition and I’m so unbelievably excited that I’m attempting to channel my energy into writing. This will either be my best or my worst work ever.

PS: I wasn’t really vibing with the massive logo at the top of this newsletter. Miss it? Hated it? Hit reply and lemme know.

Mini Musings

This week, I’m talking about life and death. One of my best friends from college was from Aspen and passed away last year, so whenever I drive out this way I feel a million and one emotions — each time a touch different.

The first time I drove back out here after the funeral was, of course, marked by intense grief. I found myself thinking about how unfair it all was. I was going to Aspen for a ski trip and kept thinking about how in any other universe, I’d be texting my friend telling him I was coming for the weekend, invite him to ski with us, and undoubtedly grab a drink and catch up. But here I was — stuck in this foreign, unjust universe where amazing people pass away all too soon and we’re all left with our hearts in our hands.

In the months since, each trip out feels a little different. I spent three weeks out here in February dog-sitting for a family friend and the word I kept coming back to was ephemerality. The longer I sat with my feelings, the more confused I found myself by how much my grief felt so entrenched in ephemerality. To me, it was analogous to the feeling of being in Jackson Hole or Los Angeles and thinking “I wish I could’ve seen this place 20 years ago.” The existential nag of those towns always feels like you just missed it.

Everywhere I went I felt like I just missed him. I’d go on walks and wonder if my friend walked that same street, drove that same highway, or ate at that restaurant. As if I could say some combination of magic words and click my heels twice and I’d be transported back in time to a time when he was around.

On the drive over Independence Pass and into Aspen I naturally found myself feeling nostalgic for our friendship, for the simpler times of college, and grieving the loss all over again. I pulled over to sit with my thoughts for a while and let it all come up (and took the photo above from that exact spot). What struck me more than anything this time around was how — even in a time of feeling so much sadness and grief — I felt so alive. My emotions were so vivid and authentic, and my focus was crystal clear. I felt such intense gratitude for the mountains, sunset, and my life.

The highest highs are born out of the lowest lows, and life and death are no exception. They’re not oppositional to one another — they fuel each other, perpetually making the other more profound. Life has meaning because of death.

While I wrote this in a coffee shop, I watched a group of three friends (all about my age) come in and surprise their friend who was working behind the counter. They all had the biggest smiles on their faces and immediately wrapped each other in massive bear hugs. A piece of me felt so sad for a second and longed for that kind of run-in with my friend, but it was immediately coupled with sheer joy. Joy that they’re all here to experience that kind of love, joy that I was there to witness it, and the reminder to love my friends.

There’s joy in sadness, there’s movement in stillness, there’s death in life, and there’s no grief without love.

Artiste In The Making

Plugging an old piece in this week’s section. While I was thinking about this drawing, I thought of one of my favorite quotes from the book The Curse Of The Boyfriend Sweater. It’s a book about heartbreak and crafting, with the title coming from the adage in knitting that you should never knit a sweater for your boyfriend because the relationship will never last as long as it takes you to make the sweater.

Caveat: I recently lent the book to a friend, so I’m paraphrasing here. The author says her favorite part of crafting is gifting your creations to friends. The best gifts are the most thoughtful ones, and creating something for a friend is almost a way of saying "I love you so much that I spent 40 hours bent over this sketchpad drawing one of your favorite places in the world; all because I knew how happy it would make you.”

That’s how I felt making the above drawing after my friend passed away. At the time, I had no idea how to channel, or let myself feel, the immense grief, so I did it in the only way I knew how: through art.

I spent hours and hours bent over my kitchen table trying to capture every single detail of his home. It stirred up so many emotions, but most importantly, it brought me back to all the insanely happy times I had in that house. I remembered the basement my friends and I would all cram in to watch football games before we went out, the couch one of us would inevitably pass out on, and the back porch we’d all sit and talk about life on.

It was my way of saying “I love you so much that I spent 15 hours thinking about you and all the happy times we shared.”

The Wild, Wild West

Here’s a question: how do you put one of the most indescribable experiences of your life into words?

Not only did we hike Mount Sopris on Saturday, we summited both (!!) peaks. It took just over 9.5 hours, 14.2 miles round trip, and 5,127 feet of vertical gain. Hands down the hardest hike of my life and also hands down the best hike of my life.

My hiking partner and I (HI, EM!) got into our respective zones once the serious ascending started and both had equally meditative experiences. I normally get a pretty serious adrenaline rush on the final summit push, but I took a mini fall that scared the living sh*t out of me and expended 105% of my adrenaline for the day. When the final push came around, I was acutely aware of how much energy I was exerting. And I felt every. single. step.

But you know what I felt at the end of that push? Pure gratitude. For so many things. For one, I was grateful for how strong my body was to get me up that mountain despite all the challenges.

On the drive home, all I could think about was how wild it is that I’m able to live this life. To be able to feel at home in the mountains. To breathe mountain air and have so many happy memories surrounding it.

Three years ago, I went on a hike in Carbondale and took a photo of Mount Sopris from afar, while thinking “what kind of maniac would hike that thing?”

What I would give to back in time and tell 2020 McCall that the answer was “you, in three years”.

What I’m Noodling On

• The Women’s World Cup is less than one month away and we’ve got a roster, folks! Here’s my favorite quote from the first of many press days

• One of my favorite local designers in Denver dropped her July 4th line and it’s everything

• I dare you watch these Between Two Ferns bloopers and not smile

Til next week!

- McCall

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