Repost from Chicks Climbing Blog. "Defining Adventure"

This is a repost from a blog entry I did for Chicks With Picks last Winter.  The words continue to ring true for me as I get ready to make another move.

by: Sarah Goldman
My words hung, suspended in air above the table. I could see each member of my fire department duty shift processing what I had just said. “I am resigning, effective immediately. I’ve accepted a contract firefighting position in Iraq.“ The only thing louder than the silence in the room was my heart thumping in my chest and my throat. I watched the words sink in; I could see the judgments forming. It was the same each time I had told someone about my decision and upcoming adventure.

What makes me, a woman on the brink of my 30s with a solid secure job and the freedom to find as many climbing days as the calendar allows, chuck it all and travel 8000 miles away to a seemingly endless, unpopular war with zero opportunity to climb, enjoy a microbrew, or sport a nose piercing? Change? Risk? Adventure? Opportunity? Hope? The pursuit of a wild dream? All of the above?

As I think more about these words and the spirit behind them, I realize these are the reasons so many of us are drawn to climb. As climbers and adventurers, we look at a massive granite spire and think, “what if?” It is in the same spirit that we eye a job opening in Boulder from home in Cincinnati and think “why not now?” I left stability in Virginia and came to Iraq because I was due for an adventure and even more ready for change.

I’ve known it was time to shake things up since my first Chicks With Picks experience nearly 2 years ago. My life, while exceptionally comfortable and one no doubt worthy of envy, had left me feeling cornered, firmly entrenched in a rut and just plain bored. I liked my job as a firefighter, but I knew that it wasn’t going to be my life’s work. I’d spent the past 20 years in Virginia and finally accepted its highest point tops out at barely 5000 feet, so I knew a change of scenery was needed. I suppose I was happy enough, but passionate? Excited? Energized? Not so much.

There are many who don’t understand why I would walk away from what I had, but these often seem to be the same people who don’t understand why we clip bolts, plug gear and stick hard ice. For the most part these same people value, consistency over spontaneity, financial stability over chance, and resorts over road trips. Adventurers are people of courage, people of faith. Faith that things work out, that the universe will provide. They are doers and decision makers. Most often they are not shy and they are not timid. They act when others choose to idle. They choose the risk, when others choose security. Adventure is both a state of being and a state of doing. It is in some, and definitely not in others.

I applied for the position in Iraq and kept expecting for it to somehow not work out. When the doors kept opening and the reality set in that this decision was now going to be up to me, and not the universe to make, I knew, being me, I had to take the chance. Just as any of you cant deny an offer to scope a new crag, or try a new route. I got the call while sitting on a park bench in Calgary, after three amazing weeks in Alberta. My life in Virginia was literally and figuratively thousands of miles away.

I have been in Iraq now for nearly 3 months. The time both crawls and flies depending on my mood. I live in a firehouse on an Army Forward Operating Base with around 25 other firefighters. Each day is the same. Morning meeting, eat, train, eat, work out, eat, call home, dream, repeat. The work is not hard, and I feel fortunate that through my adventure I have the opportunity to support and protect thousands of men and women in the military. Whatever your views on this war, these men and women are sacrificing on our behalf and that cannot be overlooked or underappreciated.

Unlike the members of the military, who do not have an option, I don’t plan to be here long; as I mentioned, being a firefighter is not my life work. I‘ll be here until next summer, or maybe a bit longer. For me, this is a year of transition. It is my first move. Due to responsibilities back home, changing my life couldn’t happen overnight, and I’ll venture to say for anyone over the age of 21 this is probably the case. If it, the adventurist spirit, is in you, which, if you have found your way to this blog it most likely is, and you feel the stink of stagnation into your life, then act. Consider your wildest dreams; consider the life you wish you were having. I don’t know what is next for me, but I take comfort in knowing what is not. I plan to pursue my wildest dream, or dreams as it may turn out to be. As we say in climbing, make the first move, and the next will appear.

Perhaps one of the greatest compliments I have ever been given came from the Head Chick when I told her I had skipped the states and would be working in Iraq. She called me a true adventurer. Thank you Kim, and all of the Chicks touting picks. I didn’t get here alone and Ill enjoy the help finding my way home. Leave the anchors set, I’ll be back soon.

Check out the rest of the blog and all its awesomeness at:

http://www.chickswithpicks.net/alumnae-news/defining-adventure/