Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness

by Carolyn Highland

Overview

Sometimes you don't know what's waiting for you up above, up unrelenting switchbacks and precarious scree fields and snow fields in July. You cant see it from below, you cant know it until you've reached it, you cant fully understand how it will feel until you get there. And you cant get there if you stop when it gets hard. You can t get there if you let your fatigue and your weariness and your apathy get the better of you. The only way to get there, to get to that 360-degree view of mountains beyond mountains stacked on top of one another till they knock up against the horizon, is to keep moving. To keep pushing, to keep taking steps forward and telling yourself you can do it. Telling yourself you have to. Because often we struggle the most to get to the greatest things. Your feet may hurt, your legs may be tired, you may want to be anywhere but where you are, doing what you re doing, but none of those things should deter you from getting up every morning and climbing upward into all the glorious unimaginable beauty that awaits.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771604499
Publisher:	Heritage Group Distribution
Publication date:	09/04/2020
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	392,524
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Carolyn Highland is a writer and teacher with over 50 published essays in print and online, in publications such as Backcountry Magazine, The Ski Journal, A Worthy Expedition: The History of NOLS, Misadventures Magazine, The Leader, and the websites of Teton Gravity Research and the Outdoor Women’s Alliance, among others. She is a regular contributing writer to the Deuter blog and the NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) blog. Her writing has also been used in course readers on expeditions through NOLS, the Prescott College Outdoor Program, the Second Nature Wilderness Program, and NatureBridge. Carolyn received a BA in creative non-fiction writing from Northwestern University in 2012. Her essay “Parentage” won the Helen G. Scott Prize for Best Personal Essay from Northwestern’s English department that same year. She lives in Truckee, California, USA.

Table of Contents

Out Here 9

Waking Up in the Wilderness 13

Strength 19

What Would You Do with Your Days? 33

Know Before You Go 37

Warmth 47

Flowing through the Footholds 55

Leaving Room for Magic 63

When a Hard Left Is Right 71

Legends of the Fall 81

Reach 85

The Things We Carry 89

Or 95

Triangulation 107

In the Thick of It 113

A Love Letter to Winter 121

How Can I Support You? 133

Becoming 137

Tolerance for Uncertainty and Adversity 145

Everything Counts 151

For the Love of the Tour 159

Going Alone 163

Lean In 169

Will You Do It Later, or Will You Do It Now? 175

I Am Number One 181

You're Right 189

The Tiny Miraculous 201

Acknowledgements 209

About the Author 213