Schreiner’s Media Landscape

I live on what’s called the East Bench of the Wasatch Front. That’s a fancy name for the foothills. There are lots of benefits to our location but perhaps the biggest one is our access to semi-wild, undeveloped and beautiful mountainous terrain. I literally walk across the street and I’m hiking and climbing among 6-8,000 ft. peaks.

Getting motivated to walk steeply uphill and down for two or three hours can be difficult. I’ve found it a little easier lately because the weather’s been a little warmer and drier. Also, because I’ve spent way too much time indoors working the past few months and not enough outdoors.

It’s been nearly three years since I moved to Salt Lake but since Day One, I’ve promised myself to scale all the peaks within eyesight of the house. I did the easy ones fast and first. But I haven’t mustered the time and dedication to start hitting the tough ones. Yesterday, that changed.

Inspired by an afternoon out on the deck and subsequent victory over a persistent computer problem Sunday, I strapped on the Millet boots and went for two of the peaks beyond my previous achievements. With temperatures in the 50s and overcast, getting up was fast and easy- it took less than two hours up and back. The picture is me about 2,000 feet above the valley floor (you can barely make out downtown Salt Lake in the upper right corner).

I had only one potentially dangerous encounter- nothing to do with the terrain, of course. On the way up, a woman with three dogs, one of them a disturbingly friendly and unleashed pit bull. As I struggled up the hill, it swooped down to me. Having covered numerous pit bull attack stories and seen a number of them here in Utah, I know not to look the dog in the eye, speak too loudly and basically show no fear. I did all of those things and the young female sniffed me a few times then ran back to its owner. Ugly hospital incident and serious buzz kill averted.

Went past the military radio installation on top of the peak that was my most recent conquest and fifteen minutes later, I had achieved my objective. It provided a beautiful overlook of Carrigan Canyon (pic below) where Utah’s richest people live in the state’s biggest and ugliest houses. You can still hike back there, bypassing the electronic gates that now prevent non-resident vehicle traffic from entering this spectacular area.

After returning home, I solved yet another nagging problem with my editing program involving the interface between my Boris FX effects program and my editing software Premiere Pro CS3. I also took a phone call about a possible documentary and gave the potential sponsors some good suggestions on how to afford me. It’s amazing how invigorating natural, outdoors experiences and stimuli can be. I had forgotten. And I think all of us have.

If we spent more time outside simply walking, we’d feel better, be more creative and happier. And just maybe we’d understand why keeping our communites and planet as clean as possible is more important than anything.