Just get back home from surviving another winter expedition. I spent most of my 9 days in the California back country. Comparing my travel plan from the previous few years, this is more like a flashback of my 10 years history on and off with California, the most significant place sharping up who I am nowadays.

I first started my peak-bagging and photographing from 10 years ago when I arrive California, from east coast, for the first time in my life. I remembered back then I was a young cocky college graduate that I just thought people in these outdoor businesses are merely athletic and/or have no better idea what else they can do.

But slowly I’ve learned that Ed Viesturs, the mountaineering icon in US history, was a vet. Galen Rowell, one of the most significant photographers for modern day photography in US, was in Berkeley Physics. Even Aron Ralston was a CMU graduate and an Intel engineer for a while.

In addition, through years in the field I met many interesting characters. One of my mountain guides is a PhD candidate from University of Washington, who has already earned his senior status in RMI as a mountain guide, working on his PhD dissertation about a real time operating system theory (we were dorky enough to discuss how to render computer graphics in a deterministic period up on the Rainier while severely oxygen deprived), I talked to an AP photographer at Yosemite once who had a Chemical Engineering PhD from Cal Tech. In Utah I met this young kid who got a PhD from Florida, the same school I graduated from, took really amazing photos and run faster than me. (In other word, he is better than me in every aspect)

A few days ago, I bought a book as a New Year gift to one of my hiking partners who is going to enroll in law school. The book is from a woman who gave away her law school and scholarship to become a professional climber for Patagonia. That is a really inspiring story, though I am not sure which direction the book would encourage my friend pursuing for her careers.

So if you ask me again, now I just feel so intimidated that so many people in this society are not only stronger than me, but also have stronger will than me as well. They are not naive to ignore the importance for our social hierarchies but proud enough not to give a shit about it and rather to suffer all the harshness in life through it. Most importantly, they know so clearly what they love and really give their whole hearts to it. Their refusal to compromise is beyond admiring.

We are entering 2017. After small achievement for New Year resolution has becoming so insignificant to have a great life. At some point in our life we need a true ambitious resolution to grab that big picture that really matters not to others but to our own. So for me is to find that irreplaceable love and make a strong chapter of it. We only live once, so if we never have a strong love like that, then we never really live.