Weathered and Shorn

"I am shorn of my infamy" - Jean Genet

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Liza's escape from Ukraine from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

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Ira reunites with her family from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

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Holy Cow from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

Budulai and Bartosz check out the cow they plan to buy for the camp at Dumbrava Alba.

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Smokehouse refugee relief in Moldova from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

Vlad, the co-owner of the recently closed Smokehouse, as well as Taproom 27, reflects on the refugee aid they are doing in Moldova a month after the Russians invaded Ukraine in late February 2022. Though the relief center is now closed, a month and a half into their work, they were still wondering when help from international aid organizations was going to come.

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Russian troops knocking from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

Andy shared a disturbing video taken from one of the apartment buildings in the Alekseevka district of Kharkiv, where Russian troops posing as Ukrainian police officers had been active. The security footage showed four men in black uniforms, each armed with Russian AKM assault rifles, entering the apartment corridor. The pointman of the group is seen knocking aggressively on the apartment door closest to the camera. They communicate in clear Russian, when one of the armed men asks if they should move ahead, while one of the men in the rear can be seen answering his phone.

The pointman grows impatient as the door remains shut, and knocks harder, but to no avail. The pointman eventually walks back, turning down another hall near the entrance where they came in, and one of his cohorts stands by the apartment door closest to the camera. After a few moments, the second man knocks on the door, hoping to get an answer. Though it cannot be determined from the footage what these men are after, it is clear that this apartment room is of significant interest to them. After an unsuccessful attempt by the second man to get into the apartment, he stands idly by until suddenly something off camera catches his attention. He quickly flips the safety off his AKM assault rifle and racks the charging handle, shouting “Police! Stay where you are!” and quickly moves off camera. One of the other men can be heard saying “it’s a man, young,” and the second man says “Police, open up!”, presumably attempting to get into one of the neighboring apartment rooms.

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Destroyed Russian tanks - Outskirts of Kharkiv from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

Due to Russia’s overwhelming air superiority, which vastly outnumbers Ukraine’s modest air force, the Ukrainian military stood ready to deploy anti-aircraft defense systems and other weapons that could be used to repel Russian air attacks. Furthermore, Ukraine was ready to deploy the advanced weapon systems provided to them by their North American and European Allies. With the advance of Russian ground troops and armored vehicles, the Ukrainian armed forces held their ground and managed to destroy several tanks and armored vehicles around Kharkiv.

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Civilian victims around Kharkiv.MP4 from Clary Estes on Vimeo.

Civilian Victims Around Kharkiv • Exit Kharkiv-Tsikuny, Bobrovka. There were Russian tanks, they fired at civilians, cars. They killed my mom, a soldier, the second was wounded. I barely got out, please share as much as possible! • I filmed this video after my mom died, I was sitting behind an iron rack while there was shelling. I was sure they’d kill me too. • Please maximum repost!! This video was filmed after my mom died, there’s shelling. I wrote it for my dad because I was almost sure I’d be killed.

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Highlights from Nice and Eze . . . #eze #ezevillage #Nice #nicefrance #nicecotedazur #France #france🇫🇷 #France (at Eze Village, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVHOOPuldCi/?utm_medium=tumblr

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I feel like an absolute dork in this video, but here’s proof I went paragliding in Chamonix. . . . #chamonix #chamonixmontblanc #chamonixmontblanc🇫🇷 #france #france🇫🇷 #parapente #paragliding #paraglinding #getoutside #goexplore #fly #flylady (at Chamonix, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CVBXO05Bfkp/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Proof that I was actually in Paris for a bit. Photo courtesy of @witchministries during a super fun day drinking sesh. . . . #Paris #parisfrance #nofilter #daydrinking (at Paris, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUcRVyks4AF/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Few little glimpses of Chamonix . . . #chamonix #chamonixmontblanc #chamonixvalley #chamonixmontblanc🇫🇷 #nature #France #france🇫🇷 #hike #hikersofinstagram #hikemoreworryless #hikertrash #hiker #travel #travelgram (at Chamonix, France) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUYVBexsUoP/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 21 on the JMT and we hiked the last 15 miles of our JMT journey. We started our day earlier than we had any other day. KT and I had woken up simultaneously at 5:10am. As I turned over, trying to be quiet so as not to wake KT up I heard her say, "Good morning." The morning light had already begun leaking into the sky around us. We were too high up to hide from it. We packed out camp for the last time and were filled with an energy that was unique to the entire trip. I was about to check 2 items off of my bucket list: hiking the entire JMT and climbing my first 14'er. Our climb from Guitar Lake was about 5 miles total. But unlike previous days, the last 2 miles of the climb we were able to do without the weight of our packs. As we left them at the pack station we felt as if we could fly up the mountain. We had forgotten what it was like to not carry 30lbs. KT and I joked as we climbed and talked about our ever evolving trail names. KT, who had been Rock Dancer, then Ardey, had transformed into Starfish, so named for her tendency to make a starfish shape with her body when we rested after a long day of hiking or after she jumped in a lake. My trail name had transformed from Belle to Bill, then to Pika, so named for my love of the little furry Pika rodents that ran up and down the mountains. And finally, we landed on Pika Belle, which KT had said in jest, but had laughed so hard at it that she deemed that that was my JMT trail name. As we approached the summit I paused and waited for KT to catch up. I turned around and grabbed her hand. We were going to walk to the top together, ending our trip as we started, as a team. Reaching the top I was flooded with emotion. On top of the world, we had finished. I cried and cried and cried, letting out every joy, every fear, every frustration, every lesson, and every tired, hungry night where I laid down dreaming of what I would eat when I was off trail. This was it. We had finished... and it was only another 10 miles down to Whitney Portal where burgers and beer waited, as well as a night of celebrating in Lone Pine. . . . #jmt #jmt2021 #hike #hiking #hiker #hikecalifornia #mountwhitney #mylife #bucketlist #adventures (at Whitney Portal, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTgINCAlQES/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 20 on the JMT and we hiked about 10 miles leaving Wright's Creek to arrive at our final stop before the end of our trip, Guitar Lake, so named as it is shaped somewhat like a guitar. However, if I were to give my 2 cents I would say it was shaped more like a decanter. It was an easy and slow day and we leap frogged with a number of trail friends from Muir Trail Ranch that we had caught up with in the last few days. They bestowed our last days with a sense of comradery that made the trip seem light and fun. We barely noticed the miles that we walked and the hundreds of miles that were now behind us. We arrived at Guitar Lake early and claimed a spot that had been made into a kind of fort. A small rock wall came up behind us to provide a bit of shade and settler from the wind and hikers before us had built a small rock enclosure at the corner of the wall, perhaps in defense against hungry marmates. The long afternoon gave me the chance to swim one last time in a particularly cold alpine lake and lay in the sun to reflect on the trip one last time while I was still living inside of it. KT reflected that the trip was a kind of reset and reaffirmation for her, but for me, the trip felt more like a recalibration - a change in the angle how I perceive myself and my abilities. Over the last 3 weeks I'd begun to feel my strengths more than my weaknesses. I was reminded that the only way forward was forward, one step at a time, up or down, over rocks or soft ground, but ever forward. Pain came and went, but so did revery and beauty. It was all temporary. Echoes of "I can't believe tomorrow is our last day." rang throughout the high valley from the lips of every southbound hiker, bouncing off the cathedral spires of surrounding rock. Yet to compare these mountains and rocks to cathedrals seems an insult to their beauty. There are no superlatives to express them. . . . #jmt #jmt2021 #johnmuir #johnmuirtrail #johnmuirtrail2021 #hike #hiking #hiker #hikecalifornia #hikinglife #hikingculture #hikingadventures #hikersofinstagram #hikemoreworryless #hikertrash #hikerlife #hikerbabes #hikeyourownhike #hikergirl #California #californiaadventure #californiadreaming (at Sequoia National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTdXAIKpzeH/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 19 on the JMT and we hiked about 13 miles. This is the moment in my regaling of the trip that I realize just how much time makes switchbacks upon itself when you walk day after day on the trail, both in the experience and the memory. While the days are not so far apart as a crow flies, the distance we'd had to travel to move from one day to the next was so great. As I look back to remember I see an accordion of events, lessons, tears, successes, and... somehow, I see the memories repeat themselves. But as the accordion stretches out I begin to remember. We left Bear Creek to arrive at Wright's creek, one of the ever diminishing places with water along the southern portion of the John Muir Trail. We began the day by climbing four miles over Forester Pass. The pass was epic to say the least and it was not until I reached its pinnacle that I realized the true extent of its ambition. The top of the pass, at just over 13,000ft, is a knife's edge in the sky. Forester Pass was originally discovered by a group of United States Forest Service workers and was subsequently named in their honor. Later, the pass was made passable by a group of CCC volunteers in the 1930s who blasted a chink in Forester's knife edge resulting in the injury of four men. Taming the wilderness has its costs. Thanks to human ingenuity, or perhaps hubris, we, and many like us, crossed the impassable pass that day. As we headed down into another dry landscape we began to notice something new: smoke. The billows of haze were a hint at the fiery torrent that was to come and which has now engulfed the area (again), and closed every single national forest in the state of California. We smelled camp fires that didn't exist. The mountains burned, but we kept walking. As we reached Wright's Creek we set up camp, reality dawned on me... we were almost finished. I'd been so ready to finish for so long, but now the thought made me weep. . . . #jmt #jmt2021 #hike #hiking #hikecalifornia #Californian #hikingadventures #hiker #hikersofinstagram #hikerbabes #hikerlife #hikingculture #hikinglife #hikemoreworryless #hikergirl #californiaadventure #californiafires #mountain #mountainlife #getoutside (at Sequoia National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTbHo27HzAU/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 18 on the JMT we hiked about 10 miles from Rae Lakes to the banks of Bear Creek just 4 miles short of Forester Pass. I woke up with icicles sprinkled all over the top of my sleeping bag and the chill I had felt the night before began to make sense. The humidity of Rae Lakes coupled with the altitude made this the coldest night of sleeping on the trip. I had grabbed my filthy hiking clothes and stuffed them into my sack (breaking my rule of no dirty hiking clothes in the bag) in an attempt to stay warm. Glen Pass was one of the hardest passes on the entire trail, if not the hardest. A steep. rocky, relentless climb up, Glen had us moving slower than usual even for our already slowed pass going up steep passes. It seemed endless. However, to me, the challenge made the pass appealing. I don't know what it is about relentless climbs up, but more and more with each hike, they are what I live for. I have heard that mountaineers tired of being asked the question, 'Why do you climb mountains?' eventually start responding with, 'Because it is there.' The same could be said for crossing over endless passes across high places. Glen Pass was no exception, though we climbed it less because it was there and more because the only way out was up - and so we climbed and climbed and climbed. As we reached the top we saw the land around the pass was tight like a fishbowl and all we could see was rock. Again, we felt like we were on another planet. We submitted with a family who were out for 4-5 days. The fathers name was Glen, like the pass, and today was his birthday. As we headed down the pass towards Vidette Meadows the landscape began to dry up. It would be a feature we would become familiar with for the rest of the trip. The gnarled conifers and juniper pines twisted out of the ground like corkscrews and the sun baked heat sang like a kettle. We eventually reached the temporarily dampened valley and crossed the path of a cowboy who we knew had delivered a watermelon, among other supplies, to a family just ahead of us. When I lamented the fact that we had missed the watermelon he responded, 'It was sweet, but not as sweet as y'all.' . . . #jmt #jmt2021 #hike #hiking (at Kings Canyon National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTYmxJCH3xX/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 17 on the JMT and we hiked about 14 miles over Pinchot Pass, eventually ending up at Rae Lakes. The theme of the day was whiskey, or rather, the potential of whiskey. At Muir Trail Ranch (MTR), we had met a group of North Bounders who wove us a yarn about hidden whiskey in the woods. This group of hikers jovially told us about how a year prior they had attempted the JMT only to fail due to having brought 50 pounds of gear... each. For a bit of reference, the heaviest pack any thru hiker could really stand tops out at about 35 pounds. My pack probably topped out at about 30 pounds at its heaviest when we were carrying 10 days worth of food and resulted in numb toes and shoulders from the prolonged strain. So they returned to try again, a bit wiser and packed considerably more lightly, with one exception... a bottle of whiskey. Not many thru hikers would add the weight of whiskey, but this crew did - that is until the day they forgot it at the suspension bridge that crossed at the lowest point of the valley between Pinchot Pass and Glen Pass. In the hot springs KT signed at me to listen and pay attention, 'Whiskey!' she whispered. The group of hikers had forgotten their whiskey at the campsite near the suspension bridge and KT was resolved to find it. The days hence she kept chanting, 'Whiskey! Whiskey! Whiskey!' The fabled whiskey was hidden under a log, they'd said. When we arrived at the bridge,KT went searching. Alas... there was no whiskey to be found. It was the case of the missing whiskey. I began wondering what had happened to it. Perhaps a group of lucky hikers found it. Perhaps a lone ranger ran across it and took it to their ranger station to make their eveninga a bit warmer. Or perhaps a bear got hold of it. It was, as it turned out, honey whiskey, and there were tales of a bear in the area so brash in his antics that he would walk right up to hikers as they made dinner and steal food out of their open bear cans. As we walked up the valley to Rae Lakes, I laughed at the idea of a drunk bear in the middle of Kings Canyon National Park brazenly carting off dehydrated meals in lieu of hunting for a day. 'Good for you, bear.' I thought. . . . #jmt (at Kings Canyon National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTSnFUehX0x/?utm_medium=tumblr

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Day 16 on the JMT and we hiked about 10 miles from Palisade Lakes over Mather Pass and to Marjorie Lake at the base of Pinchot Pass. As we arrived at Marjorie Lake we were starving. In fact, we had been starving for a few days now. I implored KT to take another look at the food supply and it ended up (albeit rather hilariously in hindsight) that we had been hoarding food in anxiety that we wouldn't have enough to finish. Suffice it to say that we had way more than enough. We laughed at the realization and ate a particularly large dinner that night. I was happy to go to bed with a full stomach. As I slept through the night I woke intermittently, as is pretty natural for me when I am camping. I typically take my more wakeful hours to stare at the night sky (should I have my vestibule off, which I did that day). The Milky Way was out and bright and the occasional satellite would surf across the dark sky. The high altitude silence was only interrupted by the occasional passenger plane. As I heard the unnatural rumble in the distance I would wonder, 'Is that thunder? Or a plane?' And upon finding that it was a plane I would think, 'Gordon Hempton was right.' Hempton is a sound ecologist and someone committed to the preservation of silence in natural places. He wrote a book on the subject called, 'One Square Inch of Silence.' Many people, even many hikers, do not consider the effects of noise on a natural landscape (In fact, I still believe there is a special place in hell for people who play music on a boombox as they hike through nature). The introduction of noise in nature has gone so far as to change bird songs and behaviors on land and aquatic behavior in water. I was so thoroughly away from it all and yet the modern world found ways of reminding me that it was still there waiting. In this case, by the occasional, but persistent traversal of aircrafts. . . . #jmt #jmt2021 #johnmuir #johnmuirtrail #johnmuirtrail2021 #hike #hiker #hikecalifornia #hiking #hikinglife #hikergirls #hikerbabe #getoutside #California #nature #hikingculture #mountain #mountainlife #mountainview (at Kings Canyon National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTN5ao4JRkP/?utm_medium=tumblr