Rob Zombie assists on the sweet ski-glissade descent.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Jared Campbell trail-running/climbing/skiing Mt Olympus, UT
I haven't been out on the trails much lately, but when my mind wanders I see visions of grandeur that look something like this. La Sportiva runner Jared Campbell crushes the west slabs of Salt Lake's Mt Olympus. Running like this makes laps on Atalaya Mountain seem like a recovery run.
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this is insane!
ReplyDeleteThere. See? See? I'm not the only one who thinks so. See? Herman does too. Did you notice that?
ReplyDeleteInsanely fast, yes. The background song playing on the ascent is insanely bad, yes. I saw this linkup and thought - this is badass. It's not so much about a workout, or speed, or hill-training, or mileage. It's pretty much about spending an hour of your day doing badass things and then enjoying your beer when you get back to the truck.
ReplyDeleteI probably should look into getting a new or at least updated vocabulary, but where I come from, when something of the type 'running up and down mountains' or 'riding mountain bikes down mountains' or 'flying through the air on skis' or experiencing something no one else does because you're up on a mountain in the darkness, when things like that are characterized as insane or mad or crazy, that's an entirely good thing.
ReplyDelete'Where I come from' is not a geographic place but a state of mind, an orientation, one where you have learned to overcome fear. For me it was part of my political radicalization, breaking free of the propaganda, the nationalism that we call patriotism, the idea that I had to live my life a certain way, to own certain things, to conform.
I've done my share of standing up on the seat of motorcycles, jumping railroad tracks on motorcycles, being the last one out there when the interstate ices over, and they both come from the same place in the psyche, as far as I'm concerned.
As you well know, it's not overcoming fear so much as living with it, facing it down. The trick to going beyond where you've been before, like doing a daredevil stunt, is to remain calm, to ignore the fear, to not panic and tense up so that you can stay relaxed so that you can still control your body. The fear is still there and its probably what keeps you alive but you ignore it and sometimes it becomes smaller. And so when you constantly take it close to the edge, you will sometimes go over the edge, but that self control, that ability to remain calm, is what allows you to bring it back.
Me and you and your buddies may or may not meet on the barricades when the Revolution comes, but I think that because we have been willing to do what others haven't, to go beyond that, we have achieved a degree of freedom many people don't even know about. An idea of what you're capable of mentally, even if it's simply looking at the United States as just another country among many or imagining a world without Capitalism, where things are fair.
Yes, the challenges of life can free one's mind. And venturing to places you know you shouldn't be or pushing yourself to accomplishments you once considered unattainable is liberating to the point of changing one's take on life. The range of the human mind is endless, and limits imposed by false perception quickly fall away under rigorous testing. Seeing other fellows, like Jared here, take that idea and turn it into art is jaw-dropping and an amazing realization of what is possible.
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