Love and Grief in the Cascades

A formative photojournalism assignment in my sophomore year of college brought me to the Seattle home of renowned fine art photographer Chris Jordan. One of Jordan’s most well-known works, ‘Midway’, depicts the decaying carcasses of albatross fledglings on Midway Atoll in the central Pacific. The flesh returns to the earth, and what remains are bones and a colorful pile of plastic. Lighters, bottle caps, whatever else. An inedible last meal (or more likely, long series of meals) and a haunting portrait of the anthropocene. A tragedy. During an interview that day, we talked about grief and sadness and mourning, and Jordan said something about grief that has stuck with since - something like:

'Grief is the realization of love for something that is no longer with us.’

I know I butchered that quote (sorry Chris, if you read this), but understanding that love and grief are two sides of the same coin has influenced my emotional development since.

Since 2019, I hadn’t spent much time in my home state of Washington that was uninhibited, minimally scheduled, and on my own terms. A good friend’s wedding brought me back to the state this June, and I set aside the rest of the month for reconnecting with the place that shaped me.

I’m not sure yet where the needle will fall on this blog’s spectrum between personal and professional. In the interest of skewing it towards the latter, I’m keeping a lot of things private, but this might be a bit more personal than some other posts. Sometimes you gotta think out loud.

We go about our days, indulging in our little habits and keeping up with our little tasks. Days go by in the monotony of adulthood and nothing seems to change, until we return to somewhere in our past and the paradigm shift slaps us across the face.

That’s what returning to Index felt like. I walked through the cedars along the north fork of the powerful Skykomish and turned around, expecting to see friends who simply aren’t there anymore. I bathed in the river and felt like I was 20, felt like it was time to drive back to Bellingham when I came back up for air, felt the weight of a past life no longer there, and the friends and family members that are no longer here either.

It was grounding and healing to revisit those lives and mourn them. I am who I am because of the Cascades, and I was reminded that I can always return and reconnect with that younger self. Though the stereotype of a young person finding themselves and going soul searching tends to happen as a teenager, or turning 18, or graduating college, I feel I’m going through it now more than ever, at 27. A quarter life crisis perhaps, or simply a Saturn return. A bit too much time in isolation at my home in Dolores, CO (a fantastic place to live, but occasionally a bit too quiet even for an introvert like myself) maybe, a yearning for an unknown something, a trait that a former therapist had often pointed out I carry.

After a few years in Colorado I saw the fairy gardens and micro ecosystems of a Cascadian rainforest with a whole new set of eyes. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so giddy to find a slug. So much water, so much life, so much granite. I cried more than once.

A few low-res cell phone snaps of what joy looks like.

I was excited to spend time in the alpine of the North Cascades while I was home, as those mountains, since being carried on my parents back through them as a baby, are a deeper home still, but I found most of what I needed on this journey in the lowlands. The sense of community that the Index climbing scene provides is, to me, incomparable.

What is the lesson in this stream of consciousness? Why did I post this? I’m not really sure, because when I started typing, I intended this to be a trip report for a ski descent that happened a couple days later, after leaving Index. I guess a few things just needed to be said first.

As they do say: Index provides.