A new distraction

As most of my friends will surely attest, staying in touch has never been, nor will ever likely be, my strong suit.  Days, weeks--even months and years--may go by before I find the time to send a reply or to even check in, and still, these attempts are often thwarted at the last minute by my complete lack of technological know-how; I am, after all, a Luddite-at-heart and I am easily frustrated with how needlessly complicated the world has become.  Fortunately for me, most of the people in my life have adapted well, and have, by necessity, learned not to expect to hear from me regularly and most importantly, to not take it personally--after all, it's not meant to be malicious, I'm just so easily "distracted."  But the other day--it occurred to me while skiing, actually--I realized just how remarkable my circumstances are, and that despite my best efforts to curb the amount of time I spend on-line, a blog may very well be the easiest and the most efficient way for the world, instead, to keep track of me...  And so it is that I submit my first post, and though you may already have some sense of what it is I do with my time--and why I'm so "distracted"--here's to hoping I can keep this up!
The inspiration for this blog came to me during a ski tour.  Skinning uphill, for some, may be the very definition of the word monotony, but I find it extremely cathartic; similar to say, the experience of mowing a lawn, it's an opportunity to sort of zone out--the solitude of the mountain setting and the rhythm of one's footsteps and breathing allow the mind to drift into thought...  How strange it is that there I was, alive in a time when even just three generations ago my ancestors were probably toiling, somewhere in the Old World--in Japan or in China--most likely living out lives not too different--nearly the same--from those of the generation that directly preceded their own?  And yet, within the brief time-span of a mere two lifetimes, I stand here, at the foot of mountains on the opposite side of this planet, no longer consumed by the demands of subsistence life, but rather, by filling my days with pursuits that, arguably, serve no practial purposes--climbing, skiing.  Imagine what the conversation would sound like if we could ski tour or share a rope with our great-great-great grandparents--how the circumstances of our lives would likely have no place in the context of theirs.  What a priveleged time to be alive, and how small the world seems now...  The opportunity to communicate has never been so easy, so reliable and so fast--I suppose I owe it to myself and to everyone in my life to embrace this new distraction.