Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Gooooooood morning! And Happy Valentine’s Day! And, even more exciting, welcome to the bonus edition of Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall. I felt super duper inspired to write this week and as a result I have a newsletter for you a week early. Please clap. Rather than sit on it until next Wednesday, I’m going pedal to the metal and ripping it.

We’re switching things up today with an oldie-but-goodie making an appearance below, and as a result, we’re light on the ski content, but I pinky promise I’ll make it up next week.

Backcountry Chronicles

Last week, I was digging through my Google Drive looking for an old file and stumbled across a piece I wrote shortly after getting laid off from my full time job. Writing has always been my favorite, most natural way of expressing my feelings (the sheer number of journals I’ve filled over the last 5 years can confirm that), and in the spirit of perpetually questioning and improving our own lives, I thought I’d share it here. One of my favorite parts of taking up new hobbies (like, say, backcountry skiing) is expanding my own sense of self and iterating on my identity. Over the last 3 years, I’ve felt a visceral shift from my identity being what I do for work and where I live — to what makes me happy, the things I’m lucky enough to get to do every day, and the people I love and surround myself with. I won’t give anymore spoilers; read on!

The first glimmers of morning light inch their way into my room and abruptly land right on my eyelids. I’m wide awake—not like I wasn’t before, though. Anxiety set her alarm for 3AM and promptly made sure I woke up. For what: I’m not sure, but she sure made it seem important. 

I lay in bed, trying my best to muster up the whole gratitude brain: I’m so thankful to be awake! Another day! More sunlight! I live in Colorado! Despite my best efforts, the unnamed alter ego of gratitude takes control: you’re unemployed! Your severance has an expiration date! Why aren’t you better with money? You should have more money in savings. You’ve been making art for 3 years, and guess what? It’s not good. You need to make 50 pieces of art a day and make $300K doing it. It’s all tied neatly in a pretty bow with the final thought that rattles around my brain like a desktop screensaver on 10x the normal speed: what if I never make it? It’s completely ego driven, I know that, but I’m still in my 20’s, so that’s still the part of my brain that seems to rule things around here. 

I’ve been working for over 5 years in a career I largely don’t enjoy, besides the people I get to talk to every day. I spend more time in Excel than 19 year old me would’ve ever wished for herself and 1 out of 4 emails I send starts with a cheery “confirming receipt!” that would be said through gritted teeth if I wasn’t fully remote. 

Like most millennials, I suck it up and give it my all because it pays well and I love the people I’m surrounded by (at least virtually - physically, I’m surrounded by my basement walls and no natural light, which probably doesn’t help anything). I convince myself 9/10 days that I do enjoy what I’m doing, but when I randomly wake up at 5AM one morning and instinctively check Slack to see that I no longer have access, the truth hits me in full force like a New Jersey Transit train: I’m miserable. 

The 24 hours that ensue are nothing short of chaos. By 7AM, I’m convinced this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me and the possibilities are endless, but before I can even journal about it, 7:45AM rears her ugly head and I’m on the phone with my mom, fully in tears, because I’m terrified that whatever beautiful future lays ahead of me will take longer than my 10 week severance to come to fruition. I’m up too high and down too low, and thinking straight is clearly outside of my skill set for the day. 

So, the omnipresent question reaches out of the depths of my mind: what if I never make it? What if I realize I’m utterly unhirable, run out of money, and have to move back in with my parents? Or worse, what if I have to take another job in ad sales?

When I moved to Denver a year ago, I made one rule for myself: say yes to everything. Invitations to grab drinks with friends of friends of friends, last minute extra tickets to concerts, ski days, yoga classes; you name it, I was there. After 3 months, I was exhausted, but I had never felt better about a decision. I planted the seeds of my new life anywhere I could, and after a mere 3 months, I could see the flowers. I had a massive group of friends that I absolutely adored, a yoga studio where I was on a first name basis with all of the teachers, and enough miles logged on I-70 that I could proudly point out specific mountains, air cannons, passes, and advise friends on traffic patterns. 

There was one particular detail of my life that I was especially proud of: my closet. The bottom row included baskets with all of my ski gear: boots, goggles, wool socks, base layers, mittens, and beanies. My bibs and jacket hung proudly to the far left, and a built-in shelf above all of that housed my hiking gear. By the end of my first summer, my daypack was already sun-stained and my camelbak spout desperately needed a good cleaning. The pair of hokas and 5 year old Merrell hiking boots I moved with were now happily neighbors in my boot bench with another, more intense pair of Merrells, Salomon trail runners, and a year old pair of Birkenstocks that looked like they’d already lived 7 lifetimes. 

Over the last year as I planted more seeds in Colorado and my roots got deeper in the community and a life I loved beyond words, work became less and less of my identity. Anyone who has spent a cumulative total of 2 seconds in New York City can tell you the first question upon meeting someone is “So, what do you do?”. When I lived in New York, I’d proudly explain my job as if I was explaining a trek up Mt. Everest. Work was at least 75% of my identity, and the other 25% was yet to be discovered. 

So as I sit on my bed now, staring blankly at 5:30AM at my ceiling, my eyes eventually make their way to my closet and for the first time in what feels like a decade, a rational thought pops up: you still have your life. 

My job wasn’t the primary focus of my life, or my identity, and hadn’t been for a while. Somewhere in between the ski trips, sour beers, and sunrise hikes, that part of my life slipped in the background; so quietly that I never even realized she was gone until I turned around and realized I was all alone with my new life. 

Would I still have a job if work was still 75% of my life? Probably. I’d been performing at work, but definitely not the capacity that I was capable of — but in that realization, the twisted truth revealed itself—this was so, so much easier because nothing was really taken from me.

Artiste Break

This is my last shameless plug! I promise! But here’s one of the many items I’ll be selling this weekend at Infinite Monkey Theorem in RiNo. Come snag a Loyal To The Soil hat, or a Nordica Print, or be one of the first to see a brand new K2 print. Or don’t get any of my stuff and come check out the work of my amazing friend Alexandra who I’ll be splitting my booth with.

To Go Snacks

⛷️ There’s so much praise on the internet for The Fifty, so this Ski Mag article Why Cody Townsend Should Quit The Fifty really piqued my interest. There’s a lot of valid points in here and a lot of really well written words. Give it a rip.

🎧 After an outrageous number of hours spent driving through the mountains over the last two weeks, it’s time for me to fess up and share my go to roadtrip album: Lavender Girl. Nothing hits quite like Fever straight into Snowshoes.

📚 I was trying to remember some of the details about the Upper Basin vs. Lower Basin states of the Colorado River that I read in Down River by Heather Hansman and stumbled across this article from the USGS in my Googling. It’s a phenomenal breakdown of the history of the river and how we got to where we are.

Don’t forget to eat lots of chocolate today and buy yourself some lilies. See you next week!

- McCall 🌻

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