Executive Directors shouldn’t be sweeping yurts. But Zach Brown does. Sawdust, spruce needles, and the detritus of countless Xtra-tuff boots fly before our brooms and billow out the door. Zach and Laura’s non-profit is already ten years old. Hundreds of students have already rolled through Gustavus and the Hobbit Hole. They are pebbles in a growing pool, ripples spreading across the globe in the name of climate justice and the dream of a world overflowing with clean water and a habitable climate.

Polishing a yurt and nailing rafters a few days before Tidelines Institute’s ten-year celebration bash is all part of a Friday afternoon for this guy. Never mind, he just got back from teaching a week-long course and has a sniffly one-year-old son at home.

I met this dude on a basketball court, politely flustered at his intensity on defense and speed that he pushed the ball up the floor. But that’s just how he operates. It doesn’t matter if it’s an open gym, thinning carrots, or a lecture on climate change. You’re going to get his best.

He pauses, broom in hand. “How you holding up, dude?”

I shrug. “Good days and bad. More good than bad.”

He strikes a Lebowski grin, “strikes and gutter balls?”

You can keep your love languages like “words of affirmation” or “quality time.” Zach and I speak in movie quotes. The highest form of affection.

“Well, you know,” I fire back, “sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes…”

“You’re an injured fawn,” he continues, not missing a beat as he pivots from The Big Lebowski to Old School. “Nursed back to health and ready to be released back into the wild.”

“Speaking of deer… where are we going this August?”

There’s the gleam. Reserved for venison and adventures. “Ahhhh, well, I’ve got some ideas.”

Damn right, he does. Last August, we pitched a tent amongst the devil’s club near a tiny beach 40 miles west of Gustavus, falling asleep to fantasies of climbing into the alpine for big-antlered bucks. We awoke at 4 am to the type of rain that promises fog so thick you can’t see the glove in front of your hand. We stared at the roof for a few long minutes.

“Well,” Zach said, breaking the silence. “Guess I’ll go take a look.”

“This is no time for bravery. I’ll let ya.”

He pauses, hand on the rain fly. “Is that Cool Hand Luke?”

“Butch Cassidy.”

“Close enough.” He disappears, and I’m sorely tempted to fall back asleep, but he returns a few minutes later.

“What’s the verdict?” I ask.

“Well…” he’s already pulling on his wool pants. “What are we gonna do? Go back to sleep?”

We bushwhacked through 1500 feet of ferns, blueberry, cedar, and the aforementioned devil’s club before popping into paradise. Huddled against limestone rock and shoving Snickers bars in our mouths, we grinned like kids who’d broken into a candy store.

“Look at all the deer.” I breathed.

Zach’s binoculars were glued to his eyes, counting fuzzy brown specks as the fog rolled through. “There’s twenty on that ridge alone!”

I was hooked. In the same way I once dreamed of returning to British Columbia’s cedar-clad shores, I now dream of quiet mornings in the alpine, looking for the deer that fuel my soul and fill my body.

It was never about pulling the trigger. It was about last night’s rain soaking our knees, reflections in a mountain lake, deer cabbage sprouting past our shins, and fog lifting off Lisanski Strait. It’s the long hike home with heavy shoulders and the clinking of the best damn beers we’ve ever tasted when we reach sea level. It’s lengthy boat rides and late nights cramming cubes of venison into mason jars while The Fellowship of the Ring plays in the background. It’s squeezing around a laptop and pouring over ridgelines with Zapruder film intensity to plan the next alpine adventure.

I’m under no illusions. I’ve done the math. A huge percentage of my calories are brought to me via barge and airplane. There’s no “butter tree,” and I can’t grow chocolate chips no matter how many “seeds” I plant. But having a connection to my home and some of my food matters a lot.

The carrots and potatoes in the garden, the venison in the woods and mountains, the coho undulating silvery bodies up the streams. These creatures and opportunities, and the friends I share it with, have kept me tethered to this place, their braids winding tighter and tighter with every pound of potatoes and vibrating fishing pole on a September morning.

The relationships are evolving. When I look at those ridgelines, I feel the first vestiges of age in my knees. I now hobble the day after I play basketball and recently pinched a nerve in my neck while doing sit-ups. I have found gray hair in my comb and make groaning noises when I get off the couch. No, I’m not old, but I look at those ridgelines differently, reminded that there’s a finite number of Augusts in which we’ll be able to scamper up them and descend with 100-pound packs. God willing, that won’t be for decades. We don’t intend on wasting any of them.

“What if we spent a few days up there?” Zach asks, closing the door to the yurt and gazing at the cabin we’re building for the next wave of students.

“I was thinking the same thing. Getting into the alpine is so much work. I want to savor it.”

“We can roam the ridges, and on the third day, we each find a deer to bring home…” he pauses, “That means we’re lugging two deer and our camping gear down the mountain.”

“So we don’t bring the stove.”

“Peanut butter and jelly for every meal?”

“Exactly.” I slap him on the shoulder. “Thanks for asking about me,” I say, “August can’t get here soon enough.”

Our time together has been too sparse over the last year. It seems one of us is always running off somewhere. The Hobbit Hole, California, British Columbia, Sitka, Patagonia, another paddle trip, another fundraising obligation.

When we met, Zach didn’t own the Hobbit Hole. His non-profit was just a small kernel, one of those pebbles spreading across the lake. I look across the campus at the garden already overflowing with food, the clucking chickens in their neat little pen, and the new building that, at least to me, appeared overnight. What he and Laura have built in such a short time boggles my mind.

As life has waxed, waned, and changed, we still have, for better or worse, our alpine dreams.

I tighten my tool belt and clamber up the ladder. These barge rafters won’t install themselves. I wrestle one into position and yell up to Zach, who’s gripping the 2×6 jammed against the ridge board.

“Talk to me, Goose!”

I can hear his grin as much as hear it. “We’re going ballistic, Mav! Go get’em!” The nail gun echoes, a hammer bangs, and somewhere on a quiet mountain, a ridgeline waits to be explored.