Caleb here – I wrote this piece over the last year, and submitted it to the American Avalanche Association’s publication, The Avalanche Review. It was published in the most recent TAR released in early February. It goes out to members throughout the year, and I originally wrote it for that audience. But after a winter with more than its share of loss in the mountains, it feels important to share it more broadly.
I don’t have a clean answer for grief, trauma, or the emotional waves that follow hard seasons. What I can offer is a perspective shaped by guiding, teaching, Search and Rescue, and years spent in places that are both beautiful and unforgiving. This piece is about post-traumatic growth, about what happens after we’re shaken, and about not letting the hardest experiences slowly erode who we’re capable of being.
If you’ve been carrying some weight from this season or past one’s, I hope there’s something in here that resonates.
The Mountain That Moves Within Us
Last winter, a friend of mine, who was then an editor for an outdoor publication, suggested I write something about post-traumatic growth. It is a subject I have thought a lot about in my life since being a teenager. I never had the words to explain what I was feeling until I heard the term. Post-traumatic growth is the idea that positive change within us can come from hardship or traumatic events. I am generally not much of a writer, and the thought of trying to take this on while bearing a bit of my soul was a little terrifying. I told her I would think about it. So here we are, almost a year later, and it’s still on my mind.
I have written down thoughts throughout the year and tried to find the right words.
It is not an easy topic to write about when your life revolves around places that can be both beautiful and brutal. Over the years, I’ve lost friends, acquaintances, and family in various ways, along with having had personal health struggles. I have spent over thirteen years in Search and Rescue, responding to calls that end with high-fives or silence and tears. Regardless, those moments stick with you. They do not go away, and they all affect you. They change how you look at the world, how you guide, how you teach, how you express emotions, and how you make decisions.
I think of myself as a bit of a nerd on some topics. One is a physics concept called granular convection, also known as the “Brazil nut effect”. Basically, when you shake a jar full of mixed-sized particles, such as rice and peanut M&Ms, the bigger pieces rise to the top. I realized it is also a good metaphor for how we as individuals grow. Life shakes us. The mountains shake us. Accidents, close calls, and loss all stir things up. Some parts of us settle, while others rise. It is uncomfortable, messy, hard to predict, and intensely personal for each of us. After enough shaking, what is solid tends to end up closer to the surface.
The snowpack works much in the same way. Layers settle, shift, collapse, strengthen, or sometimes weaken. Avalanches are not the mountain’s way of lashing out. They are simply the mountain adjusting to stress. People do that too. We all carry weak layers inside us: fatigue, ego, fear, overconfidence, the desire for acceptance, and so on. When the right stress lines up, things can fracture. But over time, those layers can also heal and strengthen.
Being an avalanche educator, and spending years instructing and attending courses, has taught me that snow science and human behavior are more alike than most people would think. The snowpack tells a story: one of pressure, tension, heavy or weak storms, and balance. So do we.
Thinking about post-traumatic growth, I have realized it is not about being grateful for tragedy, or whatever the stressor was. It is about what we do afterward; the quiet changes within us that follow. For me, it has become the way I slow down when things feel uncertain, how I listen a little longer before committing to a line, double-check myself and the group, and evaluate the margins between myself and consequence.
I see it in others, too. Students, partners, SAR teammates, co-guides, and others. People who have been through tough experiences often return with a grounded awareness. Growth in the mountains does not always mean climbing harder or skiing steeper. Sometimes it simply means being more deliberate, more humble, more human, more open.
Guiding, teaching, and Search and Rescue all carry a certain weight with me. Every decision matters. Every person beside me is someone’s family, partner, or friend. I used to think that weight was something to bare. Now I think of it as something that keeps me connected to my team, to my students, to friends, and the people waiting at home for them.
It is important to know the mountains do not promise outcomes. Experience does not guarantee them either. What we can offer is presence, awareness, and preparation, and a humble approach to all things. Those are the things that matter when consequences get real.
So What?
As winter edges closer and the first snowfall has arrived, I think more about what the mountains have taught me. I have realized that growth does not usually come from the easy seasons. It comes from the shake-ups, from what shifts inside us after. Granular convection, avalanches, and post-traumatic growth are much about the same thing: movement, pressure, reorganization, and the question of what comes next. The world shakes, and we change. It is not always clean or easy, but it is real.
Post-traumatic growth is not about leaving hard things behind; it is about letting them become part of who we are. It is about letting the lessons live in our awareness, in how we approach risk, and how we show up for each other.
Maybe that is what the mountains have been teaching me all along. Movement, even when it feels chaotic, is what brings the solid parts of ourselves to light. The storms, the setbacks, and all the moments that shake us are all part of the process. Growth, in the mountains and in life, does not always show up as summits, steep lines, or high-fives. Sometimes it is quieter: the awareness that comes after being shaken, the patience to pause, and the humility to learn from beauty and struggle. The mountains move with every storm, and so do we with every decision, every moment of uncertainty, and the weight of our daily lives. It all helps us find the solid layers within ourselves, the parts that rise when everything else shifts.
Perhaps that is what it is all about: trusting what stays strong, even when the world around us does not.
Because when it is all said and done, it is the peanut M&Ms that rise to the top.
Written By Caleb Burns