What doesn't change

In the Idaho backcountry, nestled close to a stand of trees and far away from running water and electricity, there is a small mountain hut. Every January for the last five years, I’ve skinned to it on backcountry skis, and with a group yearning for an escape of mountainous solitude and untouched powder, we’ve called it home. Since my first visit, a global pandemic has come and gone, a racial reckoning, an election and then an insurrection, Uncharted merged with Common Future, I took a sabbatical, joined another company, transitioned out, met Lisa and we dated, got engaged, and then married. I moved homes, reset my career ambitions, and let go of so many things so that I could pick up so many more.

And in that time, the hut has remained unchanged. The pots and pans, loose in the handle and scarred from vigorous attempts at cleaning, remain as faithful as ever. The benches around the small table remain sturdy, the framed photographs pinned to the walls haven’t been swapped out, and the old wood-fired sauna, just twenty paces from the hut, can still get so hot it’s hard to remember how cold you’ve been all day. In a life that is fluid and evolving, it can be startling to encounter something that has remained the same. Such a thing becomes itself a kind of kairological measuring stick: tracing all that has changed in our lives by focusing our attention on all that hasn’t.