Two weeks ago I was in New Hampshire. Again. I’d never been to the state until this February, and now I’ve gone on three trips to the North Country. It pulled at me the first time, and I knew it had something to do with the dreams of my younger self. Blanketed evergreens and hidden lakes. Winding roads and maple syrup. This is the land I wanted in my youth. It is the life I tried to create my first go around.
    Picture this: I sleep in half-finished cabins with caulk and insulation peaking out from the gap between the ceiling trusses and the subfloor, with warped bathroom baseboards and iron-stained sinks from where the water drip never stops. I visit houses with plans for garages, gardens, and chicken coops. I talk with people about to buy land and make their dream house their new life. And I get sucked in and think I should do the same. But then I realize that I’ve done it already.
    When I was in eighth grade, I petitioned all four of my parents to go to Farm School. This would be high school--with cattle milking and hay hucking thrown in. It was in Iowa, there would be outhouses, and I could wear Carharts every day. I was convinced I was the next Laura Ingals Wilder/Annie Oakley… until my parents got in my way and sent me to a college-prep Episcopalian school instead.
    As an emancipated woman of 19, I walked away from my upbringing and forged my own version of Farm School. I went for the whole kit: a strawbale house I built, my own version of Manly (my ex-husband, 12 years my senior), even an elderly town doctor. I topped it off by working at Williams Sanoma one holiday season so I could get a price break on the ever important matching crème brulee set and Le Cruset 14-quart roaster. I composted, collected gutter run-off for landscaping, and had a professional window-washing squeegee so as never to spoil the mountain views.
    And then I walked away from all of it.

    New Hampshire is lush this time of year. The vastness of it all pulls at me. Reminds me of what I used to want. Makes me want it again. On the phone, outside of a shop on the main street of North Conway, NH, I told my friend Victoria that maybe I would just chuck it all, move to the northeast, and start a lettuce farm.     
    “Okay, then what?” She said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Let’s put it another way,” she clarified, “how long, exactly, after you started your lettuce farm will you have written a book about lettuce and be on a lettuce tour?”
    
    For the first three years after I graduated from college, I casually omitted I’d even attended an institution of higher learning. Back in college, I’d completed every assignment I’d ever had a week before it was due, and then suddenly I was living in the world of the chilled out mountain people—I was trying to be one of the chilled out mountain people—and I was not going to blow my cover. I was going to make it work.
    Across the mountains from where I was in Estes Park, was Telluride, Colorado. Telluride has the highest rate of divorce in the state—usually due to couples who move there looking to get away from it all and then realize that once away from it all what they really wanted was to be away from each other. Do we all have this fascination with being more remote? Think that it will save us?
    

    I leave New Hampshire and get on a connecting plane in Baltimore. I am surrounded by successful investment bankers with Armani suits. and just like that, I want my own peony crepe ensemble and everything that goes with it. I do not make sense, even to myself. And maybe I am not enough in either of these worlds because I am trying to be in both of these worlds.
    When I started dating again, post-marriage, I had a friend give me advice I’m still not sure I understand. Just because someone likes you, he said, you don’t have to like them. If I can picture myself in a half-finished cabin with an Oscar De La Renta dress in the closet, am I supposed to make that my goal? What if I can picture everything? Then what? The best I can figure out is that it’s time to acknowledge the person on the would-be lettuce tour. That certain things are bound to come with me wherever I go. Besides, a lettuce book is not such a bad idea, really. Most everyone eats it, right?

This week I am going to start doing something differnt and introduce back insallments of my column Whipped. I hope to alternate between column installments and other comments. You can also see this in a PDF version here

Finding Your Better Half : The search for the perfect (rope) mate (April 2004)
 
You wake up to your alarm at 6:30 a.m. Your dog hears the buzzer and jumps in bed to make his wet nose your second reminder. You have a date today — this morning, in fact. At 7:45 you are meeting a new climbing partner at the local coffee shop and you don’t want to be late. You spring out of bed and briefly debate whether to take a shower. Will your new belay slave/rope gun be more impressed with yesterday’s odor or today’s Irish Spring? You opt for a two-minute oral-hygiene attack instead. By 6:43 you are standing outside in your flip-flops staring into the trunk of your car. You’ve offered to bring the rack and wonder: Should you go light, to encourage questions about your virtually unknown alpine career, or should you load up with doubles of every cam and the offsets in between — maybe he is a potential wall partner?
    You decide on an eclectic mix: your new set of RPs commingled with various bootied nuts, and one cam of each size, including a couple of rigid Friends to show your climbing breadth. You clip your draws onto a sling and smile as the sun reflects off the biners into your eyes.
    Today is the day.
    Arriving at the coffee shop right on time you spot your partner on the patio. You make eye contact and feel the vibe begin. Both of you are wearing the same Verve pants — same length (you don’t do capris, and neither, thank God, does he), but different color. You both order double nonfat lattés and skip the baked goods. By the time you load the gear into your car you’re chatting effortlessly about the new crag pack you both have.
    The approach goes quickly today and you arrive at the base of your first objective before 9 a.m. You offer your partner the first lead and he starts racking up immediately. While flaking the rope you compliment yourself on your generosity. As he scampers up the initial moves you make a list of all the climbs you will do today, allowing yourself to dream of surpassing the ten-pitch ceiling. That’s when the rope stops moving through your hands.
    You crane your head up and see that Elvis has joined your partner on the pitch — they are dancing together forty feet up, your partner’s left leg beating in time to some long- forgotten tune. You don’t let yourself believe that he can be pumped already, but your daydream of cruising pitch after pitch begins to fade. You hear a whimper from above and watch the biner full of new RPs come tumbling down the face. Should you offer words of encouragement? You decide you do not know them well enough for words of encouragement, and mentally review your rescue skills.
    Two hours later you are both back on the ground. Your partner apologizes for the ninth time and you nod your head again and say that it’s all right. You accept his thanks for lowering him from the midway anchor because he could not seem to see through his tears. You promise again that you did not mind only climbing the first quarter of the route, and that you were not too scared down-leading. \
    As you throw your rack in your pack you gaze wistfully at the party on the route to the left. They have perfected hand signals and rope tugs and don’t even have to talk. They move as one up the cliff, having climbed over 500 feet to your forty.
 
On the drive home from the crag you curse your stupidity. You found this partner at the local mountain shop and had a plan to climb after chatting for less than ten minutes. Never again, you tell yourself. Next time you will do your homework.
    The next week you go to a slideshow at the same shop. In line for the bathroom you strike up a conversation with a fellow climber. You casually ask about her experience and feel your heart rate rise with every climb she lists. She seems to have been everywhere. You ask her to go climb. She accepts. You’ll meet at eight o’clock. You arrive at the parking lot late — it’s 8:03.Your new partner is leaning against her truck waiting. She is already racked up. You choose not to hold this against her. You shift your attention to her attire, and quickly see that you have very different tastes. She seems to like capris. In fact, her pants would more accurately be called knickers. When she bends down to hide the key in the wheel well of her pickup, you glimpse neoprene-wrapped knees. Her elbows sport matching braces. She’d offered to bring the rack and you had agreed, thinking yourself congenial, but as you eye her gear you promise yourself never to be so careless again. You count seven draws, two of them frayed in the middle. All oft he biners are ovals. The five hexes, the bulk of the protection options, are slung with what looks to be secondhand rap webbing, its color long lost in an extended battle with the sun. You wonder if your partner also has wooden pitons stashed in her pockets, and console yourself with your contribution to the climb, a two-week-old sixty-meter bi-color dry-treated rope.
    Your partner climbs the first pitch in thirteen minutes. She places two pieces of gear. When you get to the anchor you see that it consists of a hex cammed in a horizontal crack and a jammed knot. When your partner starts to hand you the so-called rack for your lead you tell her to go ahead. You wedge yourself against the rock to avoid weighting the anchor. After following three pitches you broach the subject of modern climbing gear. Your partner harrumphs. When she asks what you are doing next weekend you say you are washing your dog.

The next week you scout the climbing gym every day. You arrive at a different time each visit, and decide that the kind of partner you want is most likely to be found during the 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift. You mark off every Tuesday and Thursday night on your calendar. After a month of scoping out the prospects you settle on the criteria for partners: They dress in the current styles, they lead efficiently up all the moderate gym routes, they backstep and foot switch effortlessly. One Thursday you are feeling lucky and identify a candidate to whom to pop the question. You leave that night with a phone number and a tentative plan for Sunday.
    Sunday morning dawns crystal clear. You both arrive at the same time, both driving fuel-efficient Honda Civics, yours blue, his gold. You slide your pack on and within seconds you are on the trail discussing best and worst Honda mechanics in town. You admire your partner’s approach shoes and notice how well he smears and edges on the talus leading to the climb.
    Your partner lets you have the first lead and you think that this is the way to start the day. You offer to carry a CamelBak up the route and he agrees to this plan. You have never before had a partner who will drink from the same nozzle on the first climb. Your lead goes well (you’re sure your partner doesn’t see you pull on the cam behind the roof). The sun is just warming the ledge as you set up the first belay. Minutes later your partner arrives. As you hand him the rack you watch as he arranges gear on his harness, making a mental note of the style: left shoulder gear sling, carabiner gates in, draws on both sides of the harness, gates out. You decide to make this your style, too, shaving precious seconds at the belay changes. By the end of the day you are discussing hand signals.
    After two weekends of climbing you and your new partner have logged over twenty pitches. At the bar you discuss stepping it up. Your partner wants to push his leading grade; you pretend you want the same. The next weekend you arrive with extra TCUs and hope he will not mind the additional gear. Your partner warms up and by 9:30 is ready to take it to the next level. Nestled in for a comfortable belay, you are surprised when the rope barely stops moving through your hands. You try to be an attentive belayer, tie in, and lace your shoes all at the same time. You almost make it, but end up making your partner wait at the anchor while you run and pee.
    Thirty feet of moderate climbing bolsters your ego. By the time you reach the second piece, however, you start to worry. The lieback corner he raced up seems to lack footholds. As you pull into the first move you tentatively place your left toe onto the granite. It skids back down to meet your right. You try again. The belay tight- ens as you achieve a desperate smear with your left foot, dyno for a finger lock — and skid back down the corner. Looking up you make eye contact with your partner at the belay. He gives you what you hope is a smile.
    A half an hour, two aid moves, and one stuck nut later you join your partner on the belay ledge. He has already threaded his end of the rope through the rap rings. You meekly untie your own end and watch it snap to the ground. As you rappel you search for a plausible excuse but your partner is already a step ahead. He’s forgotten
about an appointment, he says. You wonder who has appointments on Saturday, but do not ask.
    At 1:30 p.m. you pull up to the gear shop. You make your way over to the clothing department and check out the newest capris. Suddenly they don’t look so bad. You take them to the register and strike up a conversation with the person ringing up your sale. You leave your name and number on the back of a piece of register tape and drive home hoping she will call.

I got an email from a friend last week that lives in Addis Ababa. “Saw your book at the Hilton,” she wrote, “next to Time Magazine’s Africa Addition. Does this mean you’ve finally arrived?”
    Nope. But my book has.
After almost three months, Vertical Ethiopia finally landed in Addis for distribution. The first print run happened all at the same time (that’s what makes it a print run) and on February 14th, half of the books were loaded onto a plane from Dubai to Amsterdam to New York to Chicago, where some got on a truck to me in Denver and the rest on to my distributor in Houston. I had them in hand on the 21st. The other half was going to go by sea to Addis. Addis is less than 1600 miles from Dubai. It took the books eighty days to travel that distance, the majority of which time they were hanging out in Djibouti, waiting to be cleared for import and export. It took that long. It should not have. But that’s what happens these days in that part of the world sometimes.  
    The plan behind this project was to work on a book that would communicate about Ethiopia both to foreigners and to locals. Now the locals can finally see the result. My book is all over Addis, in Bookstores, hotels, and hopefully soon, a few coffee shops. The Ethiopian Birr price on the back is finally coming in handy.
    On the other side of the Atlantic, I had a television interview a few weeks ago for NECN in Boston. Over three million people in six states got to see me talk about Ethiopia. And for those who missed it, it was posted online. Check it out HERE. But be warned. You will first have to watch a Porsche Add.
    The clip comes on fast and loud and before you know it the sleek 90K car is zipping into your visual field. And then they cut to Ethiopia. It’s perfect. It’s Porsche’s in Ethiopia—almost.
When I was living in Addis, the arrival of any new car was announced through the community faster than news of a food shortage or political event. Taxi drivers, waiters, government officials and foreigners would all say the same thing.
    “Did you see the new BMW? That makes eight.”
    “Nine.” Another person would clarify, “The black 750 as number 8.”
    “I thought it was the yellow three series…”
    And so conversation would continue until all of the BMW’s in Ethiopia were accounted for. And then they would start with the Audis.
In Ethiopia, the government still taxes vehicles at 100%.  Before my team came to Ethiopia to climb I told them how much it would be to rent our vehicles. “But that’s expensive,” one teammate said, “Isn’t it supposed to be cheap in Ethiopia?”
No, it isn’t. Not when the system imposes those taxes. Not when it takes 3 months for a book to get from Dubai to Addis—even when the book was produced in Addis in the first place.
    In the US, we get everything immediately. I had a television interview and fifteen minutes later it was up on line. My friends recently climbed a big peak in Alaska and it was on another website before they’d even flown out of the mountains. It’s fast and now. So fast and now that maybe the irony of a Porsche add before a piece on Ethiopia goes unnoticed. I didn’t see it the first time I watched it. But I did see the emails from my friends in Ethiopia when they saw my book. I’m trying to catch more things in my life. Really. But then again, I still didn’t notice the new beemer in Addis last March. It was a five-series, I think.

When I was in sixth grade, I thought being an adult meant you were done. Done with anything tough or complex in friendship, life, love—any of it. My best friend had recently been stolen by an evil girl, the boy I had been going with moved to another school and seemed to have lost my number, and I suddenly sucked at French. My parents, all four of them, in contrast seemed fine. Normal. Done.
    Twenty years later, I get together with long time friends and we look at each other and can’t figure out how we got here. Weather we read “The Second Shift” and are now working it, weather we promised we’d never get divorced and just left our spouses, or if we swore to stave off panty hose and now carry two extra pair in an oversized leather purse. “This,” we say, “This is it?”
    I think back to my time as a kid and my interpretation of my parents as having it easy. What’s clear now is that they just didn’t let me in on the underbelly of their lives: the custody negotiations, promotion pass-ups, potential bankruptcy, fights to stay in the same city with their children, or missed hours of sleep to get in a run or bike ride. My parents just did it all, and didn’t tell me about what if felt like when the all felt like too much.
    Maybe they should have.
    Sure, I appreciate their tenacity. I owe the same in me to them. But, if my mom had turned to me when I was 12 and said, “watch out, it doesn’t get any easier,” might I have been better off?
    Life is about choices, constantly. I’ve given eight shows in five cities in six days and with each stop I meet yet another person who is trying to understand if they have made the right decision to be a teacher/ leave the peace corps/don a suit/have a child. It’s memory lane, accelerated. From out of the crowd comes a friend from kindergarten, summer camp, or college. All long displaced, but suddenly more real than my day-to-day life at home. We stare at each other and want to secretly steal part of each other’s lives.
    In between all of these encounters, I am zipping around the country perusing every airlines version of the sky mall magazine. I’m contemplating THE PERSONAL BETWEEN THE SHEETS BED FAN even though I don’t have the other person to warrant needing an independent bed cooling system.  The 150 COUNTRY TRAVEL ADAPTER is a must. So, to, is the PORTABLE PET CHECK IN SCREEN AND WATER MONITOR. (This, surely, would make the reunions with my poodle smoother when I come home.) But when I get to the MARSHMALLOW SHOOTER, and when I think it might come in handy, I know something in the system has broken down.
    Am I trying to prove to myself that I to can do it all without looking like I am doing anything? To whom is this message going out? My poodle over the portable screen? Maybe the beauty of growing older is being able to look at our friends, long lost or current and say, yeah, this is tough, but this is what makes it interesting. That clear, easy track I foresaw as adulthood never existed. Admitting to uncertainly encourages the same in others. I’m odd in that I like this clustering of thoughts and ambitions and realities. I seem to think that only when a friend and I can both say, “what the hell are we doing?”, that the real conversation starts.
    Human life is not prescriptive. That might seem obvious. But I think I am only understanding it now. I think that had to do with making sweeping choices when I was young—job, house, marriage—because if I just set myself on a track I could keep going. But you can never really keep going, or at least I cannot without serious psychological drugs that I am unwilling to take. So instead I get this—a life up tumbling through the skies at 35,000 feet wondering is I should buy bamboo lawn furniture covers for lawn furniture I don’t event have.  And then wondering who does do this, if I should, when I would know if I should, how to know, if knowing would be easier if I moved to Manhattan, if I would understand the word better if I had them, if I would understand myself better, if… and then I land back on the ground.

I got married young. Back then, I would have never admitted I was young—back then I was 21 and had it figured out. Back then is nothing like now. Now it’s ten years later, I’m single, I’m dating, I’m changing my career, and nothing is figured out.
    Does anyone have it figured out?
    The driving conversation we all seem to be having it what we are missing. What we lost of ourselves along the way. Take math. I used to love it. I used to calculate parabolic equations with abandon and be able to write papers on Shakespeare as well. We all did, in high school. That was when you could do everything, and were supposed to do everything. But that came college, majors, specializations, adulthood. Does that mean I can’t do math anymore? I hope not. But I miss it. I miss the simplicity of looking at a formula and getting to an answer. I miss the quantification of it. But I had to let it go to pursue other things. Because at some point you can’t seem to take it all with you.
    I’m traveling around the country right now talking to people from South Beach to Portland about what they wish they’d held onto. It’s adventure, math, broomball, international awareness, travel, stability. We meet each other across tables and see what we left in the opposite reflection across the shellac.
    I’ve been in my line of work for over a decade, but I don’t feel old enough to have done anything for a decade. (And we’re not even going to talk about the fact that I was with a man who is no longer a part of my life for a similar decade). It seems that it is right at this moment that we all look around and say, “What the hell have I done to my life without my knowing it. What have I given up?” And it seems if we don’t claim it now that we might never get it back.     
    It’s that icky feeling we get when we realize that it’s not all going to be slick. I think I wanted slick, back at 21 when I walked down a dirt aisle on a mountain overlook to join my adult life in the form of marriage. I wanted everything to be packaged as one thing, because without knowing it, I had decided that this would make it all easier. If life had one direction, than I could live it without always wondering what else was out there, what else I should be doing, what else I should know.
    After my parents told me I could do anything (see Free Time below) they would often have to tell me, five days later post meltdown, that I was not supposed to try and do everything all at once. I feel I want to say the same to myself, and others, right now.
    What if things are not lost, but are merely temporarily displaced?    What if they adventure drive that you had at 23, when you hitchhiked through Malaysia, is still there, but taking a break? What if it doesn’t all have to be firing at the same time?
    Right before I got married young I wanted to save the world. I would go to bookstores every four months and stock up on political titles I thought would be good to have read. I plodded through Kissinger’s Diplomacy at age 18. It was not pretty. I abandoned this path, or so it seemed. Because I didn’t absorb any of it, because I had to make room for my other life. But yesterday I spent four hours online looking at the political structure of Ethiopia and how it relates to US foreign policy. The words that would not have stuck three years ago suddenly held traction in my mind. And this made me realize that perhaps I could trust that the things I want, and the things I wanted, might merge again.