Lost? The mountains will show you the way

The first recorded ascent of Forbidden Peak was made in 1940 by a party that included the prolific Fred Beckey when he was only a teenager. Long before Beckey though, the area’s Indigenous people of the Lake Chelan and Upper Skagit groups navigated these same complex landscapes, creating trade routes between the Skagit and the Okanogan. They knew to stick to ridgelines where the travel was easier and where they could avoid avalanche paths. 

People have been finding their way for time immemorial. Polynesian wayfinders navigate the open ocean using the sun, the stars, the moon, and the patterns and currents of the water. They’ve made 2,400-mile journeys across the Pacific from Hawai’i Island to Tahiti using nature’s cues, not instruments.

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In M.R. O’Connor’s Wayfinding, she tells the story of an Inuit hunter who had put out fox traps over an area of 12 square miles. He was able to find these fox traps buried underneath the snow by remembering exactly where they were—25 years after he’d placed them. The idea of being lost, or not knowing where to go, might be “culturally contingent,” says O’Connor:

“In northern Australia, I met a Jawoyn elder in her eighties…At one point I asked her what she did when she became lost in the bush. She laughed. She took my notebook and illustrated how the termite hills always pointed north-south, how the stars showed the way at night, and how all of the rocks, trees, gorges, and escarpments were created by her ancestors who traveled the world in the Dreamtime…it would be nearly impossible to become disoriented because everywhere was home.”

Finding our way is deeply tied to what it means to be a human. In Finding North, George Michelsen Foy writes: “human identity equals memory; memory equals navigation; human identity, therefore, equals navigation.”

To me, this reinforced an idea that felt true, but I haven’t really heard anyone voice before: There is inherent value in navigating the world around you.

Perhaps to make sense of your place in the world, you need to get a better idea of the world itself. There are many reasons why people enjoy walking around in the mountains, but I like the notion that there’s a relationship between navigating the mountains and exploring your own identity.

We don’t need to know if the entirety of our route is clear, perhaps only that we’re taking the next right tiny step toward something (anything!).

It’s as scientific as it is personal. The place in the brain that’s responsible for navigation and mapping is the hippocampus. It’s also where long-term memory lives, and is one of the first things affected by diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia. Without it, we lose what it means to be ourselves in this world. 

Memory and navigation are thus deeply intertwined. London cab drivers, for example, still have to memorize 25,000 streets in order to get their license (known as “The Knowledge” which was first introduced as a prerequisite in 1865). Scans of their brains showed that the cabbies had an increase in synapses and gray matter in the hippocampus compared to average brains. In other words, they had especially effective brains. 

When we outsourced navigation to tools and gadgets, from compasses to smartphones, did we begin to abandon an internal process that’s integral to what it means to be a human? What does navigating the world beneath our feet have to do with our ability to navigate difficult moments in our lives?

In Fred Beckey’s Challenge of the North Cascades he writes, “An adventurous goal helps one discover those essential human qualities—curiosities, patience, fear, alertness, willpower, and bodily energy.” These experiences that feel difficult can wake us up in a way nothing else does.

I can relate to that. On a climbing trip in the Himalaya in 2018, I remember when I first saw Ama Dablam—an intimidating 22,349-foot peak with a steep, snowy summit pyramid. We crested a hill and there it was: steeper and taller than it had looked in pictures. The first thing I thought was, there’s no fucking way. What I meant was: I know there’s a way (a few, in fact), but there’s not going to be a way for me. Over time, I’ve learned that I actually like when things seem hard or impossible, or there’s some kind of puzzle to solve. While climbing, you can quickly get up close with your fear.  In figuring out a way up and over, you also find your way through. 

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This translates nicely into daily life. Can you solve a big problem by taking tiny steps in the right direction? Are you willing to try before you decide you can’t? Ultimately, finding your way requires some kind of forward motion. Not necessarily linear progress, but action, effort and inertia. We don’t need to know if the entirety of our route is clear, perhaps only that we’re taking the next right tiny step toward something (anything!).

While people have been finding their way forever, and most of the paths we travel today have been traveled by others before us, we still are tasked with having to find our own way. And we’ll be better for it if we do.

More often than you’d expect, the things that look impossible from far away look a lot more possible if you’re willing to get up close—if you’re willing to go take a better look. On day two of the Forbidden Peak ski tour, our first step was getting out of our nice, warm tent and walking up toward the ridge. The Sharkfin Col, a notch in the ridgeline, allows access to the ridge itself, and then down to the Boston Glacier on the other side. The couloir we ascended was a moderate snow climb that steepened briefly. No problem at all. 

Next up: continuing on.