AdventuresNW
“I need you to calculate the layline,” the skipper shouts at me through the darkness. I thumb through our historic track in Navionics and try to piece together a heading. There’s a bright light off in the distance that I assume is the windward mark in Neah Bay. The goal is to turn at exactly the right time. Too soon, and we fall short of the mark. Too late and we overstand the mark. I gather my bearings and run some basic trigonometry as we glide through the moonless night like a ghost ship.
For me, the sublime is a communion with the world. It’s a stripping away of all the excess, and a presence with wild and untamed nature.
It’s 2 AM, and we’re 16 hours into the Swiftsure International Yacht Race. I’ve been sailing my whole life, but I’ve only recently translated that experience into racing. Interestingly, my decades of apprenticeship in mountain craft are proving to be quite valuable, whether I’m untangling a giant snarl of lines, sleeping weird hours, eating dehydrated food, or figuring out where to turn in the middle of the night. I’m in good company as well. There’s an unusual level of crossover between sailors and mountain athletes, which makes no sense to me. On the surface, sailing looks nothing like mountain adventure. The sports seem diametrically opposed in almost every way.
So what gives? Since forever, adventure athletes have been labeled adrenaline junkies, thrill-seekers, daredevils, etc. But if you ask anyone who has suffered these stereotypes, they’ll likely tell you that it has nothing to do with risk, or at least risk is a secondary motivation. In fact, the more I go to the mountains, the less risk I need to feel the same high.
Feelings are often difficult to communicate, and we exhaust ourselves trying to describe the experience of summiting a mountain or sailing over the horizon. But if there is a word, then it should be “sublime“. There is a sublimity that transcends these disparate experiences of the natural world. For me, the sublime is a communion with the world. It’s a stripping away of all the excess, and a presence with wild and untamed nature. It’s the ability to take elemental forces such as wind and wave, filter them through a sail, a keel, a tiller, and hold them by my fingertips. It’s awesome.
And so, I guess it makes total sense that I continue to find the same kinds of people everywhere in life. We’re all looking for the same thing. It’s not so much the sublime, wild, and untamed nature around us that we are seeking, as it is the subliminal, wild, and untamed nature within each of us. Sea, sky, glacier, river, mountain, prairie, forest, desert, whatever. We’re all just thespians and artists crashing into the world. Pick your canvas and paint your masterpiece.
John Minier is the owner and lead guide at Baker Mountain Guides. Originally from Alaska, he has a deep appreciation for wild and mountainous places. Since 2004, he has worked across the western U.S. as a rock guide, alpine guide, ski guide, and avalanche instructor.
