Some dates just collect a life like sediment in a river bed, layer after layer, each one telling you where the water was flowing that year. July 17th is clearly one of mine. It started in 2002 with a business trip for Sikorsky Aircraft, all military briefings and Barstow maps, a version of me I barely recognize now. By 2003 the focus had already shifted toward bikes, hikes, and the Tour de France eating up my free time on a big day that was really just an ordinary one, stitched together with exercise.
Then Montana takes over the story completely. There's the Thompson Park XC MTB Race recap written over breakfast potatoes, the sprawling Missoula, Bozeman, Bitterroot saga of thunderstorms and single-track, and Night Training laps done by headlamp before a big race in Canmore. Jazz shows a rare rest day before I went and destroyed myself on the Butte 100, which I apparently survived enough to write Im back, back in the bozone groove the following year. Then came The explaination, a fireside confession about carbs, telomeres, and stubborn ambition, muttered to a very unconvinced hiking partner.
Later years slow the pace but not the wonder: fiddling with a new camera for the Coffee Project, catching River Moments in Gardiner before the flood, uncovering a Secret Bloom along the Lolo Trail, and finally watching the Salish Sea Sparkle Show fizz under a winter sun. Twenty-three years of the same restless curiosity, just pointed at different trailheads.