Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
Subscription Form

Get notified of the best News

Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 0 Likes
Twitter 0 Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
22K Followers
0 Likes
0 Followers
1K Followers
Mountain Life
Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
  • The Great Outdoors

The Compression of the Turn

  • April 11, 2020
  • Ben Osborne
Total
0
Shares
0
0
0
0
0
0
Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0

Compression Of The Turn Illustration

words :: Jon Turk 

illustration :: Dave Barnes

None of the primitive roads, tracks or horse trails in this part of the world show up on any maps. The people are nomadic, so even neighbours don’t know, exactly, where their friends and relatives are camped at any point in time. So, I am “lost” every day, all day, until “lost” has no meaning, because there is no “found.”  

A herder invites us into her small yurt on the steppe. We stoop to enter the low doorway, walk clockwise around the smoky fire pit and sit in the place customarily reserved for guests throughout Central Asia.  

An old woman seated in the shadows looks up and peers at us intently, her eyes still bright behind deep wrinkles and thinning hair, and asks, “Are you Russian?”

“No.”

“Well,” she looks at us even more closely, “you don’t look Japanese. So, what are you?”

“American,” I answer.

She shakes her head. “I never heard of those people.” And the old woman, no longer interested in our stories, retreats physically and emotionally into a reality I can only imagine.

. . .

Another time; another place: I sit on a small platform on the hillside, back up against a rock, and watch the ice flowing and churning, grinding and smashing in the strait below. A football field-sized floe, two metres thick, smacks into the rocky shoreline and, under intense pressure, rises vertically, groaning like an old man. The edges shatter against the cliff and sparkling crystals shower into space, reflecting rainbows that dance in the sun. It would be suicide to venture out there but here on the hillside, Boomer and I are safe… for now. The high Arctic sun is warmer than you might expect and with no wind, we joyfully soak up whatever photons come our way. Safe, but the innocuous expression “for now” is time dependent. Because if the ice doesn’t relax—soon—to open a viable passage that we can kayak through, winter will come and we will die.  

. . .

For almost 50 years I have regularly and routinely traveled great distances across the globe, seeking the most remote cultures and landscapes on Earth. These adventures have formed me; they sit as a warm soft presence on my soul, and guide me into old age with their accumulated memories and wisdoms.  

I am 74 now and, as I tell anyone who will listen, the paint is peeling and my fenders are rusting. Specifically: I can’t see well, I’m half deaf, my teeth are falling out and I pee too often. But my motor still runs okay and I don’t burn too much oil. Frequently, people ask me, “Where is your next big adventure, Jon?” And I answer, “Right here, in my backyard.”

Because time and time again, I’ve shrugged it all off, loaded carabiners into my carry-on to avoid overweight charges and hopped on that plane—to Katmandhu, Lima, Urumqi, Nairobi, or Resolute.

I don’t have the endurance, desire, or willpower to push my body to the extremes I have experienced in the past. Sure, I could continue to travel internationally—there are lots of opportunities for old people to wander about—but I don’t do that anymore. There are two other issues, besides age, that dictate my current choice of lifestyle.   

The first is the carbon footprint thing. A person who flies roundtrip from Vancouver to Kathmandu is personally responsible for spewing 3.05 metric tons of carbon into the upper atmosphere. By comparison, the average Canadian uses 15.12 metric tons in a year. So, in those two days of flying you are using 20 per cent of your yearly allocation for a Canadian.

But wait a minute: the average European uses only 6.4 metric tons, so your flight emits nearly half the yearly carbon footprint of a relatively affluent person in London or Paris. And, moving down the line, that 3.05 metric tons for a nice jaunt across the ocean is more than the annual consumption for the residents of 107 less developed countries. 

I’ve been an environmental science writer since 1970 and for the past almost 50 years, I’ve known that our profligate use of fossil fuels is rocketing our planet toward cataclysmic climate change. So, time to ‘fess up: I’m guilty. Because time and time again, I’ve shrugged it all off, loaded carabiners into my carry-on to avoid overweight charges and hopped on that plane—to Kathmandu, Lima, Urumqi, Nairobi or Resolute. And those years of globe-trotting adventure have been wonderful… But I can’t do it anymore.  

It dates me as an old hippie and I’ve sworn to avoid clichés, but the timeless words of a classic Dylan song have been on auto-play in my head for 55 years even as times have, in fact, changed and focused the message of those lines at a new and perhaps even more urgent target:

There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’

It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin’

I can no longer look into the eyes of that old woman in the yurt, thank her granddaughter for a cup of tea and a bowl of noodles and figuratively tell them, “Sorry. My transcontinental flight, complete with seat-side movies and airplane-cuisine dinner and breakfast, is contributing to the global warming that is withering your grassland and killing your sheep and goats. Sorry if you don’t have enough to eat. But it sure is cool to visit your remote homestead.”

But now, here’s another “aha” moment in addition to the socially responsible Green-Think that is so mandatory in today’s world. There’s no big altruistic sacrifice here. I’m really happy playing in my backyard, or near-backyard. Duh… If you can imagine all the ranges, rivers, seas and deserts, from the Rockies to the Pacific, from northern British Columbia to the Mexico border, you will be imagining some of the most wild and beautiful landscapes anywhere on the planet. And even if I narrow the scope and draw a circle with a 500-kilometre radius from my home in Fernie, BC, or a 100-kilometre radius, or a 25-kilometre radius, there is a lifetime of high-quality wilderness recreation available. As an added bonus within these imaginary arcs, the natives are generally friendly. No days on the computer applying for visas, no sleep-deprived layovers in Frankfurt followed by cramped nine-hour sit-a-thons, no shakedowns and hold-ups in a railroad station in Almaty, Kazakhstan, no horrific Third World bus rides.  

So, these days, all my recreation energy is concentrated on riding my mountain bike, skiing cool lines, backpacking—and every now and then, rock climbing or kayaking. Because what I really love, and have loved all these years, is the beauty and solitude of wild places. And yes, I also love the inexorable pull of gravity, the compression of the turn, that feeling as your skis arc and your quads burn, snow flying in your face. It’s in our DNA, I am certain, as part of our Paleolithic survival strategy, to cherish the act of movement itself, that allows us to escape a lion or chase a gazelle. The DNA doesn’t care that today the movement is expressed as ripping a tight couloir just ahead of your sluff or dropping a tight rocky turn on a single-track, when the hairs inside your ears are swaying gently to the centripetal forces you have created for yourself—like trees in the wind. Free of charge, close to home, always untamed… Ladies and gentlemen—the compression of the turn. —ML

 

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0
Ben Osborne

Previous Article
Latest From Hydroflask Man Biking
  • THE GEAR SHED

Cool your Trail: The Latest from Hydro Flask

  • April 10, 2020
  • Ned Morgan
View Post
Next Article
Best Of 2019 Imagery Two People Biking
  • Mountain Biking

Supporting Your Local Trail Network is Now More Important Than Ever

  • April 14, 2020
  • Ben Osborne
View Post
You May Also Like
Todd-Lawson-Inside-the-Belly-of-an-Elephant
View Post
  • The Great Outdoors

The Biggest Buzz in Books: Inside the Belly of an Elephant

  • Sarah Bulford
  • November 15, 2023
View Post
  • The Great Outdoors

RAB Contest Terms and Conditions

  • Sarah Bulford
  • September 1, 2023
tent header image
View Post
  • CAMPING GEAR
  • THE GEAR SHED
  • The Great Outdoors

Gear Shed: MEC Volt 2-Person Tent

  • Editor
  • May 10, 2023
View Post
  • The Great Outdoors

Reel Deal Contest Terms and Conditions

  • Sarah Bulford
  • January 1, 2023
https cdn.evbuc .com images 275882689 230795493085 1 original
View Post
  • On The Trail
  • The Great Outdoors

Helly Hansen Presents: Adventure Planning 101 with Squamish SAR

  • Sarah Bulford
  • May 16, 2022
IL W20 1230 MK 7764
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • The Great Outdoors

Blower Pow and Disappearing Pants

  • Sarah Bulford
  • April 26, 2022
Untitled design 79
View Post
  • In This Issue
  • The Great Outdoors

ML Launches Mushroom Life

  • Sarah Bulford
  • April 1, 2022
210106sp drone sunrise0186
View Post
  • Leslie Anthony
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Stay & Play
  • The Great Outdoors

Spring at Sun Peaks

  • Sarah Bulford
  • March 8, 2022

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Featured Posts
  • Pemberton-Shaped-by-Wild-film 1
    ‘Shaped By Wild’ Film General Release + Q&A
    • November 30, 2023
  • Pemberton-Mountain-Life-Mount-Currie 2
    Stories on the Mountain
    • November 28, 2023
  • Devils-Glen-climbing 3
    Gallery: ML Photographers’ Best of Ontario
    • November 27, 2023
  • MEC-Bromont-Jacket-down-recycled-Mountain-Life 4
    Manteau en duvet recyclé Bromont de MEC : au chaud pour braver les pistes les plus givrées
    • November 22, 2023
  • wff-2023-diving-in-a-drop-stills-0-2021474 5
    Mountain Culture and Outdoor Adventure Spotlighted at Whistler Film Festival ’23
    • November 24, 2023
RECENT POSTS
  • Hilaree-Nelson-nickkalisz_NIC4424
    W2W Hilaree Nelson Scholarship Helps Advance Women in Snowsports
    • November 23, 2023
  • Gift-Shed-Mountain-Life
    The ML Gift Shed ’23
    • November 21, 2023
  • Ancient-spearpoint-Indigenous-Ontario
    The Telltale Plink!
    • November 20, 2023
Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 0 Likes
Twitter 0 Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
INSTAGRAM
avatar
mountainlifemedia
Mountain Life
5K Following
26K Followers
13 0
15 0
Follow

Subscribe

Subscribe now to our newsletter

13 0
15 0
Mountain Life
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Advertising

Input your search keywords and press Enter.