Benchmarks

Benchmarks are known places. That's not the usage many HR departments prefer, but I'm talking about those unobtrusive metal disks one comes across occasionally. There's one in my home town, where the B&M Railroad tracks cross Main Street, another in the sidewalk of Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and there's one next to the Founders' Cairn here at Camp Denali. They're placed by different agencies: USGS, Bureau of Land Management, Federal Highway Administration, others, and are known points of reference used in surveying, mapping, and, apparently, are part of the GPS network as well.

What fascinates me is actually stumbling across them--especially in the wilderness. A few weeks ago, I trooped off the road to a small knoll above the south end of Wonder Lake It looked promising as a perch for picnicking. As I settled in, I looked at my feet and saw the disk in the picture above. As I lunched, I thought about sitting there in the middle of miles of nothing but wilderness, weather, and wind, and tried to visualize the chain of people who'd come to this spot for orientation, who'd surveyed from other spots during the mapping of Mt. McKinley. The web of these tiny disks that dot the landscape don't necessarily change the wilderness experience for me, but they do change how I feel about its isolation. They remind me that I'm one of the number of people privileged enough to have seen the grandeur of Denali National Park. One of the books I purchased yielded a quotation, and the paraphrase says that one should wait until older age to see this place because if one sees it as a younger person, all other landscapes will pale in the face of Denali's magnificence.

The summer has yielded some benchmarks of my own--simply known points in my summer's journey. I've learned that I can do fairly intense physical work at three weeks shy of 68, and--if my mid-season evaluation is anything to go by--that I can do it well. I can hike ten miles and not be panting for a nap at the end (OK, it was on a road, so it was more like a walk, but it was ten miles and the last mile went up 500 feet). And I can live out a long season away from my urban comforts. These were all large questions in my mind before I set out last May: would I be able to do the work? what about the hikes, would my stamina improv?; how badly would I miss my apartment, restaurants, friends and family?

No need to worry about these questions any more. The known points are that I can live out here 90 miles off the grid, I can move around to see what the place offers, and while, yes, I miss my friends and family, I've met a new group of friends who more than nicely fill the gap.

It's nice to know that I can still discover new benchmarks in my life. Good reference points for future exploration!