Written by: Mary Beth Skylis
I almost always forget people’s names. Just as soon as a new one enters my brain, it exits. As a bartender, I took to calling everyone “honey” because I knew it would just be a matter of time before I used the wrong name. It’s not that people aren’t meaningful. It’s that there are so many of them, that it can be difficult to keep track of them all. And they come and go at such a quick pace that it’s impossible to navigate which names you should cling to, and which ones aren’t worth the storage space in your brain.
But places carry a different kind of consequence for me. Most of my travels have been extremely intentional. And, when I recall moments from my life, I can dial into even the most obscure details. For example, I spent Cinco de Mayo in the town of Pearisburg, Virginia along the Appalachian Trail in 2015. We stayed at a small motel on the east side of the town, where the administrators provided a laundry service for just $3 per load.
Pearisburg isn’t a particularly noteworthy town in the context of the planet. It’s small, ramshackled, and you can easily walk across the whole thing in 20 minutes. But for a moment in time, it was comforting, full of laughter, and easy to stomach.
From the inside of a local Mexican restaurant, Sweet Eyes, my trail brother, ordered the largest Margarita I’ve ever seen. We ate our fill of chips, salsa, and burritos, and waddled back to our room with full bellies. The next day, we awoke with hangovers. And, despite wanting to stay, we managed to climb out of our beds, pack our gear, and hike next to the landfill to return to the Appalachian Trail. A determined looking bear scrounged through the garbage as we passed him by.
Memory is a funny thing.
It escapes me in moments of truth. And then it provides me with volumes of inconsequential detail about places like Pearisburg, Virginia.
Dirtbag Documentary
And I don’t think I’m the only one who views places with this kind of fixation. In Dirtbag: The Legend of Fred Beckey, filmmaker, Dave O’Leske, tells the story about one of America’s most accomplished climbers. Fred Beckey put up more rock climbing routes than most people ever see in their lives. He lived a simple life, choosing to funnel all of his resources into rocks, where he re-wrote the narrative surrounding what was possible.
For the most part, Beckey and I couldn’t be more different. He was obsessed with rock climbing at the expense of his relationships. I use climbing as a tool to build relationships. He lived off of mustard packets and mystery powders. I really don’t want to have to dumpster dive. Such a comparison seems silly, at best, and egotistical, at worst. But I bring him up because of his relentless memory.
As depicted in the film, he appeared to recall obscure pitches of climbs that no one else will ever repeat, how long he’d owned a pair of shoes, and how the weather turned out on a climb he conquered nearly a decade ago. Although these recollections can seem trivial in their own right, they stand astute against the backdrop of forgetfulness. And I think the outdoors impact me that way, too.
Beckey may have clung to the fine details in the rock because they eviscerated confusion, leaving him with only the most grounding of feelings. I look to places like Pearisburg as catalogs of the contents of my own mind because of the sentiments that are attached to the location. And perhaps it’s just that – maybe memories are tied to meaning, or the feelings that we create as a consequence of our journeys.
Questions for You:
- Do you tend to be forgetful?
- What’s one of your clearest memories?
- Why do you think it stands out so clearly?
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