How does Susan Munroe Mountain?

The Canyons Resort out here in Utah is offering one lucky blogger the ultimate mountain gig: money, fame, gear, and sweet hook-ups, all for blogging four times a week on the subject of The Canyons and their awesomeness.  Applicants had to submit a two-minute video on the subject of “mountaining”, a verb they coined to mean pursuing goals and pushing limits.

I wasn’t going to apply.  Yes, I have a blog, but I figured, they’re looking for a personality.  Someone flashy and trendy and cool.  I, uh, I am not cool.  But then Chris started bugging me to apply.  Other friends asked me if I’d heard about the job.  A woman I’d met once, on a motorcycle camping trip, called me to say that she’d heard about the gig on the radio and thought that I would be perfect for it.  Really?  I’m just…me.  I don’t even have any flashy video software.  I took a class in college on video production, but that was several years ago, and I’m a little bit out of touch.

Finally, I began to think of the application as a creative exercise.  A way to stretch my brain a bit.  Chris has all sorts of tricks to exercise his brain to stave off Alzheimer’s: shaving his face in the shower where he can’t see the mirror, deliberately using his non-dominant hand for different tasks.  Recently I’ve noticed how very right-handed I am, and have been trying to train the other half of my brain to do things like brush my teeth, zip my pants, and stir cookie batter.  So.  I made a video.  And it was fun.  I got to rifle through old pictures and video clips and try to cram my over-the-top world view into two neat minutes.  I had to think about my goals and why they made me a good candidate for the Canyons’ job.  I started thinking that maybe I did have a shot.  A few strong words of encouragement from Dad helped, too (thanks, Daddy!).

In the end, I didn’t make it.  I went on the Canyons’ website the other day and saw the videos of the three finalists.  “Oh,” Chris said when he watched their applications.  Theirs were much better than mine.  In the end, though, I wasn’t terribly disappointed.  I got something out of the process: a little mental exercise, a fun project, and a good ego boost.  And now, you all get a little something out of it, too: you get to see the video!