Some notes on the artist Denali Schmidt
When I first met Denali, I found him to be a handsome young man with a polite spark hiding behind long locks of hair held in a bandana across his forehead.  His appearance told of the outdoors and a history as a ski bum or of dangling from rock walls. He talked delicately about the Sierras and the quiet of the winter woods just after snowfall, holding the words in his mouth as if they were precious gems.  He spoke about the mountains with an admiration and respect that could only be acquired with time and experience—they were no passing pleasure, but an entire life.
Denali had come to CCA after a few years of ski patrolling and community college to study painting. He was the kind of painter who walked around in public covered in colorful splatters and knew what paint tasted like because he often chewed at the end of his brush. He loved painting—it jived with the beauty he had found in nature and his gestures came from deep down inside. The type of gut driven expression made sense with the grunt of the climb—the drive came from a similar place.
Once, when I was first getting to know Denali, we were having dinner with a mutual friend and somehow mid conversation he whirled off on a tangent about life beyond our planet. I will never forget him saying, “what if we really are alone in the universe, the only life that exists?” His blue eyes wide and distant, “Or even the only life that exists for millions of light-years?” Concluding how precious and special that would make our planet and the human race and how we must really take our time here seriously and do the most with what we’ve been given. “But I’m just a romantic,” he shrugged it off and came back to the reality of our normal dinner conversation. I remember staring at him, taking in the depths of what he had unveiled and pondered what equivalent depths were hidden inside him as he ate his pizza unaware. This is the moment I began my fascination with Denali’s fascinations.
As I got to know him better I began to understand the necessity of his rugged facade to protect a soft and vulnerable interior. He had an overly developed peacemaking nature and was easily swayed by the opinions of others. In the painting department at CCA, with both design conversations and the contemporary art world swirling around him, I watched as he grasped at ideas like moths. Catching each one with fascination and pleasure only to realize it was not quite right and regretting the effort wasted on such defenseless creatures. It was a struggle to watch someone who had experienced so much and breathed so much life into his experiences—speeding down slopes, catching waves at daybreak and clinging to the face of immense peaks—could be struggling with such menial and self reflective issues as that of the art world. Â
In his final semester he was still spinning with these frustrations, searching for something he did not know he was searching for, when a friend, a best friend, died paragliding, reaching for those same heights he had reached for throughout his adventurous young life. All the gears stopped for a moment and then click, it happened. He stepped back from everything and saw it for what it really was, continuing on with the clarity that comes in the brief period after mourning, a recognition of what really matters. I saw it sparkle in his eyes—maybe it was Zach in those eyes—he spoke eloquently, confidently, after years of confusion he suddenly seemed to know, not necessarily exactly what he wanted to do or to be, but knew that the path was right there at his feet all along. No matter where he stepped he  would treat it as if it was the last step he would take.
As I write this, three months later, Denali is climbing K2 in Pakistan, arguably the most difficult mountain that can be climbed, second in height only to Everest but far more challenging. And even way up there in that unimaginable place he speaks of the intense beauty of the stars, the softness of the misty snow fall, the familiarity of cragged rock, and, most astonishingly, his art. He speaks of all the things he wants to do and never of the things he does not want to do. He sees things no one else can see, an artist on the side of a peak. Simultaneously a dreamer and a doer, way up there in the pale blue sky.