The one about the mountains

It could have been the mist rolling through the valley, or the way the rising sun licked the tops of the mountains, or maybe even the way the snowflakes felt like warmth on my skin. I’m not sure what it was, and I’m still trying to figure it out, but there was a magic to the mountains.

I can’t pretend that the mountains have been ‘calling me’ forever. I recently graduated university, and the feeling of being lost sat at the forefront of my brain, and my to-do list. I left grad school applications for days, unable to finish my essay on Why I Was Applying to the Rest of My Life. I called up some connections from LinkedIn, made some effort to find a forever job in my hometown of Toronto and fought with my family over my lack of motivation as I watched the umpteenth episode of God-knows-what.

My dad always says to ‘just do something’. Those three very non-poetic and overtly simple words played in my head as I went to work in a restaurant serving people. Days were spent convincing myself that this what exactly what I wanted and that I was young enough (which I am) to take some time to sort out what I’d like to do with my time (which I still haven’t done).

So if ‘doing something’ meant taking a trip to Alberta, renting a van for a week, and driving around with my friend Jamie, then that was exactly what I was doing.

After a blissful two weeks in Alberta and BC, I returned to a locked down Ontario full of friends and family I couldn’t see and bars I couldn’t visit. I didn’t feel like pull to the Bow Valley as some would have expected me to, however I found a peace; a peace in the people, and a peace in nature.

I, in an attempt to be young and willful, decided that Canmore was the place I wanted to move to, and I wanted to move there now (I also met a boy so the urgency was moderately justified). It took me two months to come to the conclusion that it was genuinely something I wanted to do and that by way of doing something, it was worth doing.

The first few days in the valley were easy. All we did was walk around the town and walk through shops and eat – we ate so much food and we drank so much wine. Not only was the air nicer and the views prettier, but the people were fitter and sprinted past you quicker than you could say “Hi I’m new here and have no friends would you like to go get a drink?”.

It wasn’t difficult to love it out here. The mountains were, and still are, beautiful. Over and over, drive after drive, they took my breath away. I’d FaceTime my mom in the middle of a hike just to show her the view. As I stood next to them, I’d feel a sense of relief – a relief that my problems were small, because these mountains were big.

One of the best, and most special things about the mountains and the terrain in the Bow Valley was that it was always changing. Sometimes I’d wake up to an inversion at sunrise, where the sun sprinkles the top of the clouds with oranges and yellows and pinks so bright it feels like it is the sun itself in the middle of the mountains. Other times the snowflakes would be so big and bright, falling so slow it was almost as if you could see every groove and sparkle as they fluttered past you towards the ground. The awe I used to feel when I saw skyscrapers and light shows and busy sidewalks were now replaced with the towering mountains and the elk on the side of the highway – the nighttime stars on my evening walk was the best light show I had ever seen.

My skyline had changed in the last 6 months and so had I. The funny thing about graduating school and not being sure of where your career is going is that the feeling of insecurity feels impermeable, as though you can control the rest of your life even if your post-graduation plans don’t workout. It is the exact opposite though – the feeling of insecurity permeated every other part of my life in the Bow Valley, from making new friends to feeling happy with my boyfriend to being active to trying new sports. Where I was once a busy girl with good grades, two jobs, and a booming social life (if I do say so myself), I felt helpless and meak.

It felt like I was dropping in to the scariest ski run of my life. The tips of my skis hanging over the edge, heart beating fast, palms sweating through my crappy old mitts; nobody at the bottom to catch me if I fall, nobody at the top to reassure me that I was okay. It felt like people, expert skiers who could navigate the rocky terrain seamlessly, were lined up at the top waiting for their turn to drop in. I had no doubt that they would be watching me fail, and doing nothing to stop the inevitable.

But once I made it down that run, not seamlessly or gracefully or even easily (think: a newborn baby deer), I looked around. It turns out that nobody was watching – nobody cared how foolish I looked or how scared I appeared to be. It was only at the bottom did I realize I could continue to live in the beautiful blissful little mountain cabin that is my mind and pretend that it is outside and the people I don’t yet know and the people standing on the top of the mountain that are scary– that it is up to everyone else to make my life the award-winning romantic comedy that I want it to be.

But that would be way too easy, and not enough fun.

This time, I am dropping in, to a double black run on the backside of Revelstoke. I am scared, but it’s no longer the kind of scared that makes me quiver in my ski boots. There are people there this time, both at the bottom ready to catch me and at the top, cheering me on. There are people who may not know me but who do not care if I look like a newborn animal sliding down a hill, and people who do not care if I put myself out there and ask for their friendship.

I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay here. I try to give myself a timeline to ease the anxiety of having no plan, but it’s hard when you’re living for Now Molly and not Five years from now Molly. For now, I’m going to keep dropping in on double blacks; both literally and figuratively, and I’m sure that I’ll figure it out once I get to the bottom.