He Grew a Beard As Soon As He Could To Cover the Scars on His Face

The calm before the storm has arrived. As I sit here in Bongo Billy’s Café in Salida, I am reflecting on the week that was and the summer that will be. I spent the past week with the rest of the Wilderness Trek Staff on Mount Antora and rafting on the Arkansas River. This was my 3rd time to summit Mt. Antora, but the first time that I have arrived at the top from the north approach.

If you want to see pictures from Staff Week you can find them here.

It is always a bit unnerving to step from the busyness that typifies the world that we inhabit into the surreal calm of the wilderness. Out there the only things that matter are the big things: thought, breath, sight, hearing, and belief. It has been my pleasure in the past week to spend ample time focusing on each of these tasks.

I am not sure of when I will receive my first group for the summer. It will either be tomorrow or Sunday, but I know that I am very excited to have been blessed with another summer to spend in this beautiful place that has changed me in such profound ways. I am sure that some of you reading this could probably share similar stories of how an experience at Trek, or the wilderness in general, has had a striking impact on the way that you see yourself and the way that you see God. It is my joy this summer to be in that kind of environment and I cannot wait to see what is coming down the road.

If you would like to write me this summer, my address here in Salida is:

Justin Scott
c/o Wilderness Expeditions
7870 W. Hwy 50
Salida, CO 81201

I would love to here from any of you that would like to write but I understand if you choose to communicate via phones or email.

Current Reading: Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden.

I was able to finish Hell or High Water this past week during my time on the trail and I was amazed to read Peter Heller’s account of traveling through some of the most raw and unforgiving wilderness that still exists in our world.

One of the most interesting elements of the story is the unnatural calm that the paddlers possessed in the face of water that would cause the rest of us to give up the ghost. Perhaps that is what makes someone a paragon of their craft: the ability to do the ordinary in extraordinary situations. The Spartans taught boys from a young age to hold rank in the phalanx in the midst of all hell breaking loose and NFL kickers are taught to put a leather ball between a pair of poles with tens of thousands of people screaming for their heads.

The true expert is able to maintain calm in these knee-buckling situations because that is all they know. The process of paddling through walls of water was nothing out of the ordinary for the men on the expedition down the Tsangpo and that is the only reason they were able to survive.