Marc Durant
I was born in 1978 in Massachusetts and grew up in the woods and mountains of New England. After college I bounced around to Maryland and New Hampshire before moving to Colorado in 2007. My parents instilled me with a deep love of the outdoors and of books.
I read "In the Shining Mountains" for the first time in a Mexican restaurant in Boulder in 2012, where I was drinking margaritas and getting up the courage to quit my job. By random chance I picked this book off the $1 paperback shelf of a neighboring book store. It swept me off my feet and instantly became my favorite of all time.
Although I never knew Dave, the reality that he wrote about mirrors my own feelings about life and the mountains in Colorado. I know the narrator of his book the way I know myself - the anger and frustration, the joy and freedom, the continual struggle to find a place.
For most of my time in Colorado I have worked full time or even more. At times I have gone months without the mountains being any more than a distant unseen backdrop on the daily grind. In 2019, I will get back to the outdoors by repeating each of the three big hikes that Dave outlines in his book - looking for echos of him just as he looked for echos of the old trappers. I don't know what I will find, but I will never feel closure until I take this journey.