2/23/24 Day 2.1
Ten people stayed at the hut last night, a group of off duty scouts all of which are in highschool and 2 fathers, another older father son couple and one solo construction manager. The father son group had the healthiest relationship I have ever seen. The son is a software engineer at a startup that is rapidly growing. The father, now retired, worked high level security for Raytheon and other government contractors.
He said that he worked there for 30 years. Me, only having only grown taller from pubescents and never learning, asked if he had ever got to see behind the curtain. Laughing he said "Yeah to much, you wouldn't believe what they are working on." an eerie thing to say while giggling.
2/24/24 Day 2.2
You know that country song I fell in love with the farmer's daughter? I think I have fallen in love with the Disney patent lawyer's daughter. She is a computer scientist who works with Amazon in their warehouses and graduated college in 2022. Between the three of us we had a deep conversation with five people from the Harvard Business School. They are an interesting group of people all doing their masters at Harvard. There are so many Master's degrees and PhDs I did not expect to meet such an eclectic group of people in such a short period of time. One of the women in the Harvard group could be an Emma Stone impersonator, truly uncanny.
However, returning to the Computer Scientist. I am fully aware that I spoke about another person with attractive qualities in my last post, but I am merely a Sapian subject to butterflies just as all. To suppress an emotion and expression of humanity I believe, would do an injustice to who I am and my thoughts. Suspending your monogamous, pre conceived notions, allow me to elaborate. After all she offered to come with me to the well to fetch water so I think we have to get married according to New Hampshire law.
At first, she struck me as a timid person, the breath of which was enshrouded. But her words told a different story than her voice. She spoke brightly of her past and future, using complex linguistic patterns that her persona did not emanate. She seemed very fluent in backcountry skills and recreation and was surprised to hear that she started hiking and backpacking recently in college. She went to a very small engineering school where the whole student body at any given time was under 500. But she used MITs gear loaning syestem to explore the White Mountains. She and her father each had their own butt sleds that they borrowed using the same system.
On Saturday while the hut was buzzing with conversations between 33 people, her father caught the conversation of one of the Harvard students. They spoke back and forth about the biotech industry in California and how they both had a background in engineering. The father mentioned how he is writing the syllabus for an Intro to Law class that he thinks engineers should take. They agreed to exchange emails and share the proposed syllabus in exchange for a similar class syllabus that the Harvard Student has taken.
I could not help but think; is this what smart people do? Make no mistake, I do not romanticize Ivy League schools or their graduates, but I do respect them and their institutions. In that moment of being a fly on the wall, I was enamored by the contrast in the various worlds that I have seen.
Staying, the night before, were two women, an Electrical Engineer and an Optometrist. While talking with them, I went for conversational suicide and asked if they liked their jobs. In between laughs they said "No; you'll understand one day." Realizing how that sounded they suffixed this statement with doubt. But their words were hollow. For the rest of the stint, I made sure this mentality was the exception, and it turned out that It was. I got the notion that between the two of them, they lived in a bubble of 'working to survive' which they perceived to be normal.
Attempting to break out of the conversation I turned to the other person sitting at the table and asked her if she was an Optomitrist that hated her job. She said "no..."
"What do you do?"
"Im in video production." Her responses where curt, but I did not read an ounce of malice.
Pulling teeth I was able to extract that she was an independent video producer. Her profession peaked my interest and I wrote down her website in my phone and asked what she has been doing recently, and came to find out that she just returned from a 1,200km expedition through Mongolia.
I asked her how she got into video production and she said that It kinda fell into her lap. While living in Alaska her friend invited her to float to the Arctic Ocean, she was introduced to video production and story on the way. Enamored by our similarity in interests and experiences I attempted to relate by talking about my video production experience in the Arctic, at witch point the curt responses and teeth pulling secede.
We spoke vibrantly about the Arctic's different tributaries and rivers, and our now smiling faces were exacerbated by the others listening to our rambling. I could have asked a thousand questions but was pulled away by my caretaking duties. The only other time that we spoke was just before I turned the lights out as she filled her Nalgene.
I asked "What advice would you give yourself if you are just starting?"
"Like, what would I tell myself 10 years ago?" I nodded
"Go For It."
She was gone by the time I woke in the morning.
2/26/24 Day 2.4
Another eclectic group of people at the hut last night, two groups each with two people. The first ones in were these two women. One of which was a high school ecology teacher. And the other was an advertising writer for Niagara Falls. The other two where skiers who came in after dark both in their 20s one was an engineer at a start up. And one was an engineer and ski patrol guy for Brenton Woods.
2/27/24 Day2.5
Living at Pinkham Notch was the first time that I came across eternal mountain morons. Those that have never settled. Eternal wanderers. Most of them are without partners and seek quick pleasure in various forms. Some do adrenaline pumping mountaineering, some smoke, some drink and some seem just straight up miserable.
They sit in contrast in my head to the many of people with advanced degrees that come through the hut. These people seem to have a lot more going on in their life, and often times have a partner. They have spent the last decade of their life studying a very small portion of the world while those eternal mountain morons have spent the last decade becoming what some would call Renaissance people, knowing all and mastering none.
Make no mistake, those that I’ve met with advanced degrees do not seem happier, soberer, or better humans and have forewarned me of how they got to this point in their life. Talking to that nialistic couple on Friday and Saturday about how they feel they are slaves, working to survive and only trully liveing in their free time, was conserning. Conserning for them and also for my future. They warned me about getting my graduates degree and said that I would learn; learn their misery one day. Oh how I hope they’re wrong.
Perhaps I will find Joy in simplicity and give up on my dreams. Perhaps I will know success and acomlishment but still be unable to find Joy . Maybe the nihilistic pessimists of the world are right. Those who knows the 'truth' of reality; that there is no point to existence no matter who you are or what you do, our imagined realities give us the illusion of deeper meaning without concreting themselves in our DNA; or our soul where joy, happiness, sadness, loneliness and love come from.
Comments