West To East

The View of Mt. Washington 87 steps from my front door

I’m practicing owning up to my origins. Colorado used to just roll off my tongue. New Hampshire? It’s clunky, it’s two words, and it takes explaining.

Contrary to what many presume from my quick speech and intense personality, I am not an easterner and never have been. Until now. In January Peter and I packed up the van and headed east. I’ve flirted with living in New Hampshire for the past three years (read more in my Go East Article in Alpinist Magazine). Now we’re going steady.

Based on my recent sociological studies—mainly consisting of telling the people I meet while traveling out west that I live out east—a move to New Hampshire suggests a potentially unstable personality disorder.

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Imagine Ethiopia 2011: You Can “Go” From Home

As one of the leaders of Imagine Ethiopia 2011 I wanted to share a progress update to inspire and potentially involve you in our next steps. Read on for more.

Earlier this year, Vancouver-based charitable organization, imagine1day, launched their second annual Imagine Ethiopia trip: a two-week adventure that takes participants on a daily exploration of the best that Ethiopia has to offer.

imagine1day is a growing global community of people making passionate contributions to ensure that all Ethiopians have access to quality education funded free of foreign aid by 2030. They ran their first trip to Ethiopia last year to great success.

This year’s trip is fast approaching. The Imagine Ethiopia team is set to arrive in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital) on October 23 and they are busy. Not busy packing bags – busy with Creatribution. In the lead up to the trip, this year’s participants have chosen to take on raising $100 000 (the funds required to finance a three-year, self-generating education project with imagine1day) before they depart. You can support them here and US donors can support them through GO Campaign, our stateside partner, here.

What is Creatribution? Rather than bore you with an explanation of the concept, here is a glimpse at some of Imagine Ethiopia 2011’s participants and what they are doing to ensure that $100K is in the suitcase bound for Addis this October:

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Osito And A Frog Named Turtle, An Additive Adventure Entry

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs

Baby Turtle, Phase 2. Photo By Peter DoucetteI grasped the hours-old turtle with her white underbelly between my thumb and forefinger. She put up with it. She tried out the cool air and wind-milled her flippers in opposite and unsynchronized directions. She bobbled her head in an effort to see through still unopened eye slits covered in sand. I was in charge of her until I slid her back into the two-foot-deep hole with her dozens of brothers and sisters. She was covered in sand, and left to grow up—hopefully strong enough to leave the hole and join the ocean.

Right about now, I could talk about ocean health and green turtles and all the amazing things they do. But this is not a story about a turtle; this is a story about a poodle. A poodle that I tried to convince to be like a turtle, via a frog....

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Community On Ice, An Additive Adventure Entry

Peter Doucette on Mummy IVIn Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs

...We chatted for a while. I tried to convince him ice climbing was a good idea—fun even—and he told me he liked to scuba dive. I told him I was afraid of dark water. He said he was afraid of frozen water. We accepted each other’s differences right up until he asked me where I ice climbed.

“This year?” I said, “Bozeman, MT, Ouray, CO, Cody, WY, Munising, MI, North Conway, NH…” I rattled off my winter schedule. “I go for ice, and for the ice festivals,” I said.

He nodded and thought for a while, as if mentally mapping out the locations in his head. “Is that really necessary?” he asked....

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The Big Switch, An Additive Adventure Entry

Filing picks down for dry-tooling in the Boulder Rock Club: Ice Climbing Prep 2010.

In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs

It’s November 26^th. It’s 5 degrees in the mountains. It’s time to go ice climbing. To be fair, it’s been like this for a few weeks now. But it’s finally time for me to notice. I’m t-minus twenty-four hours from swinging into blue ice. It sounds glorious and exciting… and a bit terrifying. The question is: terrifying good, or terrifying bad?

It would probably be better not to talk about this—online, in a public forum, or even inside my head. It might be more effective to simply forge ahead and forget/ignore this anxiety. But that’s not how I operate. And besides, it takes so much blasted time to switch sports that you—if you are me—are going to have to get close to the deep dark thoughts just by virtue of the minutes spent preparing.

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