Death's Maw

*** Warning this post includes a graphic description of circumstances which may be triggering for people who have gone through a near-death encounter ***

Fresh off the highs of completing my first ever backpack in the wild, I felt exuberant. So much had opened up for me as I wrote in my last post. And among all the truths, one that struck me most was that my mind (and my fears in particular) have long held me back from reaching my full potential.

Confident of the truth of my new insight, I felt eager to prove it so, as soon as possible. And so, on July 28th, I set off to Mount Alyeska, 45 minutes south of Anchorage, to climb a mountain. I didn’t have a plan exactly. But did I need one? Afterall, the last 8 days, I’d been climbing in the backcountry over portions of mountainsides that had no paths. 

When I got to the base I found there was indeed a path up the first 2,000 feet up the mountain to a place where a gondola dropped off tourists at a restaurant. Prior to my trip, 2,000 vertical feet would have scared me. But I found that that morning, reaching it was now easy. Especially with only a light daypack on. And after a brief rest and a sandwich in the restaurant, I re-shouldered my pack and headed further up beyond the highest lifts.  

I quickly discovered that beyond the gondola was another matter. Summitting the final 1,500 feet of Mount Alyeska requires bouldering over a pathless goat trail along a narrow ridgeline. On the bright side, the path was clear as the headwall is so steep that there is only one possible way forward. From the bottom of the bowl, the path climbs in a series of undulating ridges to a flattish section of headwall that arcs over 180 degrees to form a near perfect bowl. The peak is around 120 degrees into the arc. 

As I climbed, the ridge was so steep at times I had climb up using all fours. At other times it is so narrow, that I wanted to crawl out of fear of falling. For me, it was physically exhausting, but the bigger challenge was mental. “This is not dangerous; this is not dangerous; people must do this all the time” I kept intoning to myself. And though perhaps true, I didn’t see anyone.

Furthermore, the further I got the more I began to doubt my mantra. Having grown up scrambling across ridges and cliffs in the Midwest and Rockies, I’m used to the solidity of granite and limestone. I wasn’t prepared for the fragility of the shale that made up the spine of the ridge. Here, with even a small amount of pressure I found the rocks were apt to crack and pull apart. On more than one occasion pieces the size of my torso, which had no cracking in them prior to me touching them, cleaved out of the ridge when I tried to lever myself up against them. 

Though probably only a mile, this last section took me almost two hours to traverse. And upon reaching the summit, I felt both exhausted, but also puffed up with pride. “See it wasn’t that dangerous!” I told said to myself. “Mind over matter.”

Propping myself up against a rock, I surveyed out and down the nearly 4,000-foot drop to the ocean below. Then turning my head, I followed the ridgeline I’d taken at the end. My heart dropped. Yes, I’d climbed it. But it looked awful from above. And down is always harder than up. Did I really have to turn around and go down the same way I’d come up? It was in this state that I began to wonder if there might not be another way down. The peak was more than half way around the bowl, and so if I could follow the other side of the bowl around and down that might shave off some of my climb down. But between the intermittent fog and the shape of the ridge, which only allowed me to see part way forward before it began its primary descent, I couldn’t tell. 

Further away, I could see the ridge eventually connected with another ridgeline that I knew had a trail on it based on a conversation I’d overheard at dinner the night before. It was actually that trail which I’d been trying to climb to, but after getting bad advice from a woman midway up the mountain, I had turned to the base of the bowl which I’d just climbed. From the top, it was now obvious to me that she’d sent me to the wrong place. Was there a way to get there from where I was I wondered? I could clearly see the ridges connected, but was it passable?

The longer I sat looking back at where I’d come from the less I wanted to go back. Getting off this goat path and onto an established trail seemed much wiser. “Surely, it wouldn’t be as steep as what I’d just done,” I said to myself. 

And so, after about 30 minutes of sitting at the top, I re-shouldered my pack, and began to head down around the far side of the bowl. “It’s not dangerous; it’s not dangerous” I kept intoning to myself like before. 

But after 10 minutes, now about 150 degrees through the bowl, the ridge line narrowed in a way it hadn’t on the previous side where I had ascended. Whereas on the way up, there had been small patches of vegetation on the far side of the ridge away from the bowl that I could have caught myself on had a slipped off one of the saddles, here the ridge dropped open up on both sides to sheer drops. 

At first, the ridge on top was as wide as my body and so on I could either walk or crawl on all fours safely forward (I did this one than once). 

“Mind over matter, mind over matter”. 

I looked eagerly toward the cell tower which was ever closer, ever larger in my view.

But suddenly I was stuck. I’d reached a portion of the ridge that was too narrow and sharp to crawl over. Here, there were two large boulders that I couldn’t see a way over. Stepping back and looking around them, I saw that on the familiar bowl side (to the right) the angle of the rocks and a lack of a ledge below them made passing impossible. However, on left side (which looked out into another bowl that had been invisible to me until I reached the peak, it looked as though a narrow ledge existed which I’d be able to walk on while holding onto the tops of the rocks for balance. It didn’t seem easy, but it seemed doable given everything I’d already done that day. “Mind over matter; mind over matter. Don’t let your mind control what your body can do.”

Tiptoeing to the edge of the first stone I pressed my body into the rock in the middle of the ridge and reached my left arm around in look of a grip. I found a large edge which I could grasp tightly. I tested the weight and it held. With my right hand I found a crack near where I was standing to provide a counter weight, and once happy with my grips, I inched myself forward. “This isn’t so bad.” I said to myself. 

Once confident in my balance, I stopped and released my right hand, swung it over the rock and sought to find another grip on the first rock’s inside edge now. With my face pressed against the stone I couldn’t quite see the ledges my fingers were touching. After a few seconds I found a ridge and sought to sink the tips of my fingers deeper into it. They seemed to catch. I pressed down, put my weight into the stone, and breathed a sigh of relief. 

But then my hand violently shifted. The ledge I was holding, but couldn’t see, had given away under the pressure of my hand. I felt a jolt run through my right arm, shoulder, and into my back. My body shifted back momentarily, but my instincts countered the movement and, my left side body pressed into the rock as my left hand gripped tighter. 

I was breathing heavily now. But upon realizing that I was perfectly balanced even without either of my hands, I relaxed. I shook my right hand and noticed a small scrape that was bleeding on the inside of my wrist. I rubbed the blood away on my thigh.

In the movies, when someone is standing near a ledge and they look down for the first time, that moment of sudden vertigo is often dramatized by quick zooming in and out of the camera. I didn’t experience that per se, but as I rubbed the blood of my pants leg, my eyes darted past my leg, first down to the ledge on which I was inching along, then lower to the sharply angled slab below it, then to the sheer drop at the edge of the slab, and finally back to my feet again. 

I suddenly realized without a doubt that if I slipped I would certainly die.

I’m not sure where I expected my brain to go in this moment. Would I see my life flash before my eyes? Would a series of deep regrets overwhelm me? 

None of that happened. Instead all I could see and think about were the rocks to which I clung and the ledge on which I stood. Though in my default life I’m often consumed by fear of petty things, the fear of death did not cross my mind again during the following few minutes. There was no space for it. My hands probed for new holds, and my eyes were fixed onto the ledges where I sought stable footing that I might shimmy a bit further onto. I’m not sure how long it took me to move forward. Perhaps it was only a minute, or perhaps it was five. All I remember is the moment my left hand found a generous hold on the edge of the second rock around which I could hold tightly enough to swing my entire body onto the large open space on its backside.

Taking off my pack, and lying down, my body was felt quite rigid, unable to trust even this stable ground now. “I survived!” I exclaimed to myself. “And only a few small scratches to show for the danger…. Perhaps it wasn’t that dangerous after all. And despite that, surely, this was not how I was meant to die.” I thought. “How silly that I felt any fear at all. Death can’t come suddenly. Not for me. I’m still young… Chalk it up to mind over matter,” my brain went on. 

My body slackened a little, and I slumped into my pack and the ground, thankful the worst was now behind me. 

But my feelings of reverie were short-lived. Unable to sit still, I got up, and first looked back, then down to the slab, and finally down further still – toward the spot my body would have careened after falling. But despite craning my neck, the angle was too sharp. I could not see the bottom from where I stood. 

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I cursed myself. All thoughts of self-congratulations were now gone. “What had I taken this risk for? I am not skilled enough to be playing at this. Surely, you’d only been a misstep away from oblivion you idiot. How selfish and arrogant!” 

I sat back down, my heart now racing. And in that state, my mind sought to understand death. So, what if I had fallen and died? What then? What is on the other side of oblivion? Is there a heaven? If not, how can my consciousness simply cease? 

But instead of clarity, I felt only nothingness. Though only inches behind me, death still seemed incomprehensible. 

And so, my mind went in turn. Switching between this fixation on nothingness, exuberance, and self-disgust, until in time all of these feelings drifted away, and all I was left with was my breath and the view before me. I was not off the mountain. I didn’t even see the path off yet. I’d barely descended from the peak. Somehow I still needed to follow the ridge down more a thousand feet before I would return to safer portions of the mountain. 

I let myself rest a bit longer, waiting again for my heart rate to return to something much lower than it was. But as I did so, the fog turned into rain. I reached for my bag and put on my rain jacket. I was dry, but suddenly, between the sitting and rain, I felt chilled. My fingers were numbing.

Looking forward, the cell tower seemed so close. Only a few undulations of the ridge away, and yet I also saw a portion of steepness greater than anything I had climbed before. Perhaps it would appear less so when I got closer? I wanted to press on and investigate. 

With each foot forward on this much wider portion of ridgeline, I felt my anxiety lifting. Though I intermittently was still crawling on all fours, I knew each moment was bringing me closer to the point where surely a “real” path off the mountain must exist. Moreover, having survived just a moment before, I now felt a certain sense of blessed destiny about me. Of course, I should be careful. But again, maybe this wasn’t my time to die. I was safe.

But then my stomach dropped. About 50 feet on I reached another section of ridge too narrow to simply crawl over. Faced again with the sheer drops of the cliffs, I no longer felt so untouchable. Looking forward, I saw that getting over the next section of ridge would require a climb as difficult as the one I had just completed.

I wanted to slam the ground in anger. So close. I was so freaking close to the end. How could I get stopped here. The woman at the bottom said there was a way. She was a lair or an idiot. This was all her fault. I wanted to yell. But then, another voice, countered “No. You are the idiot. Turn back. You may not like them, but you know the steps that will lead you down.” 

I turned and looked back. From where I stood I could see the whole ridgeline I had come down from the peak, as well as the ridge I had climbed up before. It looked horribly jagged and steep, much worse than when I had climbed it. After scanning quickly, my eyes stopped back upon the two rocks. I sized them up again, and shuddered. Turning, I looked forward. Anything but backward I thought. 

But slowly, the truth of my situation began to sink in. No matter which way I went, I would have to risk death. Not a fall onto a mat. Not a jolt into my harness. No, I would be risking slipping over a sheer cliff, where I would be smashed to bits hundreds of feet below. Perhaps it would be quick, or perhaps quite painful. But either way, slip, and I was gone. Forever. My mind whirred. Again, not fully grasping at what this meant. Yes, yes death. But what is that, really?

I looked forward again. Even if I make this next rock, would there be more ahead? I wondered. What if I had to climb more than one, and then still had to turn back?

I sighed. I knew I had to turn back and minimize the number of climbs. Backwards there was one. Forward, there was at least one, maybe more.  

As I approached the twin boulders, my pit of my stomach dropped. And yet, what choice did I have. “Stay calm, stay calm.” I intoned now.

Like before I pressed myself into the rock, breathed deeply, and tried to slow my heart. 

For much of my life, I’ve struggled from an over-active mind, bouncing between thoughts, plans, and stimuli. But in that moment, I found, without looking for it, a stillness even deeper than anything I discovered in the wilderness the week before. In that moment it felt as if time slowed down as I reached out around the rock in search of a first hold. But at first, I couldn’t get a hold of anything. The rock, now quite wet, slipped from my fingers, and the holds which had seemed generous when I was crossing over the other way, now seemed impossible. 

Had I been in the gym at home I would have simply given up. I would have jumped off the wall onto the mat. I would have gone to dinner and forgotten about the wall. But here, in the rain, all alone, and 4,000 feet in the air, without ropes, I couldn’t just go home. I had to get down, and this was the only way forward if I didn’t want it to be a body bag. 

I’m not sure how long I stood there at the precipice, reaching around the stone blindly in hopes of finding a crack from which to balance myself. In that state of suspended animation, it felt as though minutes were passing, but it might have only been seconds. Eventually, after having exhausted all crevices part way across the first rock that I could reach, I found myself squatting and reaching for a low point at the level of my where my standing hips would have been. I pressed into it, and because it was low it was not wet, and it seemed to hold. Slowly, slowly, crouching still, I inched onto the ledge and sought a point of perfect stillness from which I might be able to shift my hands and perhaps get back to standing. Again, I grasped for a new hold with my right hand while my left held on to a bulge of wet stone. 

“Steady, steady.” I said to myself aloud as suddenly the next few moves seemed to open up for me in quick succession. Before I knew it I was standing at the spot between the two stones. So happy was I to find myself now touching the second rock, that I tried to hoist myself up and over in a single motion. It was impossible. But undeterred at the idea of getting above the rock, I saw a groove in the second rock from which I might be able to get myself up and over if only I could step over to it. Not moving my hands, I slowly picked up and dropped like my leg like a ballet dancer to the spot. But, as I was doing so, I realized the stretch was further than I thought. I could make it, but not put any pressure on the leg once extended. “Perhaps, if I used my momentum to swing over as I’d learned this winter as the gym, then I could. Be bold. This is no time for cowardice,” a voice whispered in my mind.

“But no, that would be madness,” another voice said. “Slow and steady.” I knew it was right. And so slowly, I retraced my leg’s arc back to the crack between the rocks. 

Again, I stood there, for what seemed minutes, not moving, trying to calm heart, every beat of which seemed to pound in my ears even as it slowed. Slowly, in time, my fingers, of their own accord began to move again, inching along the top shelf of the second rock, in search of new grips that would neither cleave off or slip out of my grasp from wetness. Finally, I found two such spots for both of my hands, and from that fulcrum, I was able to slip my feet from between the two rocks and back onto the ledge.

Though an inch may seem like nothing when you are on the ground, on the wall it can be the difference between life and death. Now, those inches were enough for me to shift my weight safely to my front foot as I moved it once again to the groove in the second rock. This time I could press down into it. Gripping now tighter than ever before, I pressed my weight into the foot, and then pulled down with both of hands, hoisting myself atop the rock and to safety. 

I’d made it. I was safe. I wouldn’t die. 

What did I expect would happen in this moment? A trumpet from on high? An announcer’s voice? But of course, nothing happened. More silence. In that moment, I suddenly became aware of just how alone I was on the mountaintop. Had I fallen how long would it have been before anyone even knew? 

But even that thought didn’t get a rise of out me. I felt no rush of relief, no adrenaline, no tears. I was exhausted, my chest heaved as I sought to catch my breath.

I had no desire to pump my first in the air in joy, or burst into tears. I just felt tired. So very tired. And I knew I still had a long way to go. 

Caption: a satellite map of the terrain overlaid with my path along the ridge (in red).

After a moment, I picked myself up, and began to retrace my steps, first to the summit, and then down the ridge which I had first ascended. Upon reaching the restaurant, it was almost 5pm, and now my entire pants and parts of my coat were caked in mud. I rode the gondola down in silence. Impervious to the quizzical looks of the clean tourists who’d simply taken the gondola to the look-out and were now headed down. They seemed part of an alien world to me. I didn’t understand them and had no desire to talk to them at all. 

Thinking my ordeal was over, I got into my car and began to drive away, but only made it 2 minutes. On the shoulder of the road was a large object, shaking. There were no cars around. I skidded to a halt and jumped out of my car. Was it an animal? No. I realized it was a woman. Running to her, I saw she was violently convulsing. 

As I reached her, a bus going the other way screeched to a halt, and the driver rushed from the door. I tried to call 911 on my phone but couldn’t get reception. A young man had come off the bus and was looking at us, not moving. I yelled at him to dial 911. He did, but then he ran to me and gave me the phone to speak to the operator. The bus driver was kneeling over the woman holding her head. She came to suddenly. She looked at us with first groggy eyes. Then, they jolted open, and she looked terrified. She tried to sit up. He spoke to her soothingly, and gently held her down. Another woman stopped, an ER doctor. After a moment, she told me to check on her kids in the car. I walked to them. A boy 7, looked at me and said, “Where is mommy. I’m bored.” A girl, even younger popped her head out and giggled. I told them to stay put. The ambulance came. I stood there. Just looking at the ER doctor. Then I stood there looking at the paramedics. Was this real? I felt as though I were elsewhere, watching a movie. The paramedics rolled her onto her side. They carted her into the ambulance and drove away. I still stood there. Someone thanked me for stopping.

~~~

Why has it taken me so long to share this story? Perhaps, because in the wake of yet another set of mass shootings, I feel guilty. If so many people can die when it was not even their fault, why share a story about my stupidity nearly leading to my demise?

Or perhaps, it is because two weeks later, I continue to feel as though I am drifting along in a dream. Surely, I have had many vivid and happy experiences, but often they’ve felt like they were happening elsewhere, or perhaps to someone else. And even when I do feel present for them, it all feels more gossamer.

Or perhaps, even more so, it is because I still don’t know what to make of all that happened.  And so, maybe that is why, two weeks later, I turned back and returned again to the mountain without a clear understanding of why. This time, it was a bright sunny day, and I climbed the first 2,000 feet in an angry daze. Then, rather than turning to the leftmost side of mountain as before, I sought the path toward the middle ridge that I’d hoped to climb down. From the bottom it was easy to find. The path was steep, but clear. There were no sharp edges, until around 3,000 feet where I found ropes drilled into the rock faces. But now, having almost died twice, I didn’t have the heart to go on, even with the ropes as aids. I stopped, and sat for over an hour looking out to sea. 

So often in these posts, I attempt to tie my experiences together in a rhetorical flourish with the insights they’ve helped me glean. But here, even after my second climb, I still feel at a loss. Sure, I know I need to be more careful. Some risks aren’t worth it. Of course. And sure, I know I shouldn’t overestimate my abilities any more than I should be paralyzed by fear. But having looked death in the face, I feel as though I should have come away with some deeper truth or some clarity about the future of my life. Yet, more than anything I only saw the nothingness within its maw. I did not find regret at the mountains I have not climbed. I feel as though I’ve done all I wanted to do. And in that, I don’t know if I should fall into depression or feel as though I’ve reached nirvana. 

Tomorrow, I will disappear again for almost two weeks into the backcountry of the Gates of the Arctic National Park. Though it’s not why I signed up for the trip, I think perhaps it is exactly this which I am needing now. I’ll be completely off the grid as before, but this time much further north and for much longer. There, I hope the stillness of the wild will reveal much to me as it did before.

Until I return, don’t worry dear reader. I will be safer. I have no desire die anytime soon.

Finding Stillness

Midway into the seven-hour drive from Anchorage to McCarthy (the jumping off point for the bush-plane that would land us into the Wrangells backcountry), my guide turned to me and asked, “Wait. You’ve never backpacked in the wilderness before?” 

I gulped. “I mean… I’ve backpacked across Spain for 30 days, but we stayed in hostels.” She didn’t respond, so I went on trying to justify myself “I mean, I hike a lot on hard trails… and I run a lot.” More silence, “…and I’ve car camped!”  

She thought for a bit. “In ten years, I think you may be only the second person I’ve ever guided who hasn’t backpacked before.”

My stomach dropped. We weren’t even in the wilderness yet. Was it too late to turn back? 

But I went on. Surely it couldn’t be that hard, I told myself? I’m young, fit, and have a history of pushing myself through intense pain. All true, but after the first day I wondered if I had made a mistake. That day, after the plane left us, we trekked 9 hours 2500 vertical feet up one mountain, down a scree field on the other side, and then bushwhacked through a long section thick willows in the valley to a clearing near a river. When my guide said, “let’s set up camp here.” I dropped my pack, and literally collapsed in exhaustion. While the others set up their tents, I lay on my back in the grass not moving for 10 minutes as my face and arms were devoured by swarms (literally) of mosquitoes. By day four, I had dark bruises over both of my hips and shoulders from my pack, and blisters that had popped on both of my heels.

While the physical strain of the trip was intense, I soon found that it paled in comparison to the emotional and mental challenges. 

The morning of day 2 I scrawled in my journal, “I’m in deep here… growing sense of dread.” Yet, I knew there was no turning back. We’d been dropped off by a plane. I couldn’t just walk back to the car and wait it out a coffeeshop. I had to go on. But, given how tired I was after day 1, would I be able to make the remaining 7 days? I didn’t know. 

This state of mind was not helpful. In fact, it helped breed other fears. For instance, once I realized there was no turning back, I became consumed thinking about what would happen if I fell. Either, if it was really bad, I’d likely die before a rescue could come. Or if if it wasn’t life threatening, then I would have to endure the rest of the walk in significant additional pain. 

Given this, each step took on an extra level of gravity and danger. This was especially acute as many of the paths we cut down mountains were down steep scree fields that regularly partly gave away with each step you took.

This feeling of dread was compounded by feelings of intense shame and guilt. I am used to keeping up with other people through sheer willpower, but after just one hour in the backcountry, I discovered that no matter how hard I worked, I couldn’t move as fast as my guide or my two traveling companions. Was I fool for signing up for a trip? Was my lack of fitness making everyone else have a bad time? Why was I so weak? 

Then at night, after everyone else had gone to sleep, no matter how tired I was, I could barely rest I was so afraid a bear might attack our camp. Not only did I have trouble sleeping, but for the first few nights, I woke up almost once an hour. 

And yet, despite these challenges. By the end, as we were waiting the plane to pick us up, I didn’t want to leave. I wished that instead of picking us up, Bill (our pilot) would just airdrop more food so we could go on exploring the backcountry another 8 days.

Why this dramatic transformation? What had changed? 

Midway through the trip my guide said to me that she believes consciousness is like navigating a boat on a lake. Often the surface is turbulent. And when waves are crashing it is all we can do to stay afloat and above the waves. But another world exists below the surface too. It is there always, but when we are consumed fighting the storms we have no capacity to see it. 

In the wilderness, physically exhausted, cut off from so many stimuli that fill my life, I found that the lake calmed, and things that had long been at the bottom of the lake began to surface. I experienced this first in my dreams, which were vivid and filled with images and people from years before. But slowly, I found it in my waking awareness too. Specifically, rather than reacting immediately to my negative feelings, I began to notice them, and then choose whether (and how) to act. 

In time, five truths emerged for me from the bottom of the lake, which helped me change my actions, and in turn transform my experience.

First, my mental and physical worlds are inextricable tied. When I let my mind be consumed with fear or shame (as I did the first few days), it took a heavy physical toll. Conversely, when I cultivated a healthy mental life, I felt more vigor. On the hike, this meant that starting midway through the trip each night (no matter how long we had hiked) I set aside time to journal and do a yoga self-practice before I went to sleep. 

Second, even when I have a guide, I feel more life and excitement when I can find ways to learn and experiment too. During the first days of the trip I was so scared of falling on the uneven terrain I literally haunted my poor guide’s steps so closely I stepped on her heels more than once. After realizing this through my journaling, I choose to walk slightly behind and to the side of her. Though I was of course still following her macro directions, I wanted to find my own footing through the brush and across the rocks. At first this slowed me down, but in time I found my own rhythm that was better suited to my stride. Moreover, when I had to find my own step, I looked up more as I needed to keep not only my immediate next step but also my next 100 steps in mind as well. This shift opened up so much for me. Not only did I appreciate more of the natural beauty of our hike (because I was looking up), it also made me feel more engaged in the process of creating the experience. 

Third, when I’m afraid, sometimes I need to lean in. For example, when crossing a rock field, if I stood upright and stopped with each step to find the perfect footing, I expended an enormous amount of effort and moved very slowly. In contrast, when I flowed each step immediately into the next, not only did my momentum increase my speed, but I also felt more balanced and spent significantly less energy. Let gravity help!

Fourth, sometimes you can’t lean into (or outrun) your fears; letting them control you doesn’t help – learn to let them go! For instance, while I couldn’t sleep the first two nights because every rustle of wind filled me with dread of a bear attack, by the third night I realized that even if a bear was in camp there was nothing I could do. I should make sure I left all my food far away in a bar can, and I should keep my bear spray close, but beyond that, my fear was not helpful. So, I started sleeping with ear plugs. If a bear attacked or someone screamed, I’d still hear it, but with earplugs in, I couldn’t hear the smaller sounds that my brain was mistakenly coding as dangerous. This worked beautifully, and I slept well the remainder of the trip. This was equally true of my “shame”. Obsessing on how slow I was relative to the others didn’t help me or them. In fact, it just slowed me down further. I needed to let it go so that I could save my energy for things I actually had control over.

Fifth, don’t seek external stimuli to fight discomfort. Back in real life, it’s been hard for me to avoid reaching out for external stimuli (like looking at my phone, turning on music to fill silence, or switching on a movie) when I feel uncomfortable. Being away from those temptations so long helped me see how truly addicted I’ve become to these “hits”. And so, it’s not surprising that being unplugged was hard the first few days. My mind seemed to thrash about, and I obsessed on negative feelings (as I wrote about above). But, as the experience shifted into four, five, six, seven days, with each day I found my internal world calmed more deeply. I realized what had seemed like stillness was not. And the longer I was cut off from everything except what was in front of me, the more content I felt with what I had. Yet, even on the trip there were temptations to fill silence – by saying things to others just to make noise – here too, I found that if I held my tongue, and only spoke when I had something important to say, then I created more space for my mind to find contentment in the moment.

Taken together, these realizations transformed my attitude, energy, and experience. As I wrote above, I did not want to leave when the plane arrived on the final day. And so, although it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, it was also one of the most beautiful and enlightening. 

I can’t wait to get into the backcountry again. But, even back in the society now, I’m finding that the backcountry has come with me in its own way too. For more than anything, I am now aware of what stillness looks truly feels likes, and I realize that it’s always been within my control to calm the waves in my mind.

Into the Unknown (+ Final Installment of Images of the West)

Greetings from Anchorage, Alaska.

Tomorrow, I’m heading out into the backcountry of Wrangell St. Elias National Park for 9 days. I will be dropped off in the wilderness by a bush plane along with a guide and maybe 2 other people. During that time we need to cross two glaciers and seven peaks to get to our pick-up point. There are no trails. So, we will be cutting our own way to the pick-up point depending on the conditions. As we’ll be carrying all of our food on our backs, our packs will start off at around 60 pounds. And lastly, as if that wasn’t enough, I’ve been warned that this area is full of grizzlies, black bears, wolves, moose, and other wildlife.

You may be asking yourself: “Why is he doing this?” or perhaps, “Is he fearless?”

No, hardly. The self doubt has been cacophonous in my mind the last few weeks. “I am physically up to this?” “What happens if I’m attacked by a bear?” “What if I’m bitten by so many mosquitoes that my whole body is consumed in welts?”, “What if I can’t sleep or get sick because I suck so badly camping?”, or on a grander scale, “Why am I doing this at all? Maybe this sabbatical has gone on long enough. Maybe I should just go back to my old job, make some more money, buy a big house, and then come back in 10 or 15 years once I’ve saved a lot more…”

Oh, hello old self stories. I see you. I hear you. Nice try. You’re just fuel for my fire now.

So, why am I doing this? I’m doing this because these fears are so intense. I’m doing because I know that in order to have the life I want, I need to be a person who moves courageously toward what his heart desires, not someone who just endlessly analyzes what he fears.

Over and over on this sabbatical I’ve experienced that it’s precisely at these moments — when I step into the unknown (despite my fears) — that the most unexpected, wonderful things emerge… Sights, truths, and friendships that change my understanding of myself and the world around me. Conversely, when I play it safe, or when I give up my long held desires out of fear - that is when I get off the rails, and ultimately am filled with regrets.

Tonight, I’m holding onto that truth close as I go to bed.

Tomorrow, I’m doing this, even though I don’t know what it will bring.

In two weeks, I’ll be back, and I’ll let you know.

~~~

P.s. - before I leave, I wanted to share with you the final installment of my top single image from each of the national parks I’ve been to so far. I hope you enjoy

Arches National Park (Utah)

Canyonland National Park (Utah)

Capitol Reef National Park (Utah)

Zion National Park (Utah)

Altrom Point, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (Utah / Arizona)

White Pocket, Coyote Buttes, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument (Arizona)

Death Valley National Park (California)

Joshua Tree National. Park (California)

Channel Islands National Park (California)

Pinnacles National Park (California)

Yosemite National Park (California)

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (California)

Redwood National Park (California)

Crater Lake National Park (Oregon)

Rocky Mountain High

This past week I visited my 19th National Park of the year, Rocky Mountain NP. And although I was there for a family reunion, I was lucky enough to be able to also squeeze in two 15+ mile, 2500+ vertical feet backcountry hikes as well. 

 These climbs turned out to be the two hardest of the trip so far. The difficulty was not only due to their length and elevation gains. The real challenge came from the fact the trails weren’t technically open yet, because snow and high water had washed away bridges and obscured large portions of both trails at the higher elevations. Thus, to get to my goals, I had to traverse barefoot through freezing streams, bushwhack through the forest, post-hole (which means wading through deep snow) for miles, and orienteer using downloaded maps on my phone (there was no cell service) and the compass on my watch. Compared to typical National Park trails which are well maintained and signed, this was quite a departure, and I’ve never had more fun.

Yet, even before I knew about the challenges I’d face at the upper elevations, I felt significant amounts of anxiety about both hikes. I knew these would be grueling days, compounded by the risk of summer storms and wild animals. So, in advance, both nights I had trouble sleeping. Both mornings I debated whether to go at all. And then, for the first hour of both hikes, I felt nauseous, breathed heavily, and felt my legs had turned leaden. 

 And yet, by the end of both days, more than 10 hours later in both cases, those physical symptoms and mental fears had entirely vanished. Though my feet and muscles ached, I felt more energized leaving the trail than I did when I started. 

Why would expending so much energy give me more (not less) life?

One major reason is because a true adventure, with all of its associated uncertainty, challenge, and discovery forces me to step directly into my fears. And on this trip, again and again, I’ve been learning that stepping toward conflict (and my fears), is often source of power, not pain. 

 Why? Because, when I let fears sit in my mind (unchallenged) they take deep root, they bloom, and they spread. And as they spread, they suck up all of the available oxygen and space. It’s not only hard to move, I don’t want to move. This metaphor isn’t only mental, but physical as well. I find that when I am interacting in the world primarily through a fear-based lens I am physically tensed, highly performative, looking for signs of danger in every shadow, resistant to change, and ready to react at a moment’s notice. Moreover, my eyes can only see what I know might hurt me – there is no space to be surprised or changed in transformative ways. 

In contrast, when I step into my fears (interpersonal and physical alike) – I typically realize both that I am more capable than I thought, and that what I feared was much less dangerous than I thought. I don’t say this to minimize the risk of lightning strikes, bear attacks, or dehydration. They are real risks and should be taken seriously. But in all cases, one can prepare for them simply, and still act. For instance, I can train, check the weather forecast, get out on the trail early, turn around at the first sign of thunder clouds, bring bear spray, bring extra water, take extra breaks, etc. 

Both on the trail and in my interpersonal relationships, what I’m discovering is once I’m on the path, and I find that I was actually prepared all along – all the energy I’ve been holding in reserve to prepare for the worst gets released. And with that mental space, and with that physical energy, the world always seems to open up to me in new ways. I suddenly cannot help but see the hummingbird hovering over the stream, the color of the flowers under my feet, or the goodness in the heart of person I’ve long resented. Whereas before I could only put one foot in front of the other, suddenly the idea of creating my own trail to find that next alpine lake on the map fills me with me with exuberance. 

To me, this is one of the greatest gifts of adventure, that when we give ourselves over to it fully, and when we get past our desires to turn around, we are given the opportunity clear away so much which isn’t serving us, and in its place create space for the wonder that was always around us to finally touch us and transform us in ways we can’t yet imagine when we are still locked in mortal combat with our fears. 

Stepping into Conflict

I finally arrived back in the West and my beloved National Parks last night, after having flown from a wedding in New England to a family reunion at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Caption: rehearsal dinner prior to the wedding. The groom is in the middle.

And while I didn’t climb any mountains these last few weeks, the time was nonetheless full of revelations.

For instance, it was gratifying to notice ways I’ve changed since I was last home. It’s one thing to find wisdom “on the mountain top”, but it’s another thing all together to come home and try to live out what you’ve learned “up there.” Previously, I’ve written about my frustrations when I failed to do this. So, in contrast, this mini-triumph felt all the more sweet.

Initially, I noticed changes in how much easier it felt to be present, vulnerable, and happy with other people — especially people who I previously felt hurt by. But in time, I noticed even bigger changes in the ways I was showing up for people I was closest to.

Previously, because of my false (but deeply believed) story that “I don’t deserve to be loved” I was always on edge with others, even my family and ex-girl friends. While I tried to project confidence, at my core I felt such low self-esteem that I didn’t believe that any relationships could withstand contact with the “full version” of me. This led me to hide many parts of myself — including many of my current thoughts, and many of my past and current feelings (especially if they were anger, hurt, or frustration with one of those people). In addition, I sought to avoid direct unpleasant conversations or direct conflict.

Ultimately both of these tendencies manifested by me either withdrawing from situations or conversations (physically, or, if that wasn’t possible, verbally); or staying present, but redirecting everyone’s attention away from me (I was a master at not answering questions). However, if my feelings of hurt were intense enough, and I couldn’t stuff them down any longer - I would let them out; but typically only indirectly.

In contrast, while I was off the road these last few weeks, I found myself stepping into difficult conversations willingly and directly on multiple occasions.

One of the most profound examples of this occurred on Father’s Day.

I love my father, but like all fathers and sons, we have tension in our relationship. Despite recent thawing, overall our relationship had been under serious strain the last few years. But rather than directly address the parts of it that were unsatisfying to me, I often withdraw from him.

In contrast, on Father’s Day (of all days), I interrupted the flow of the day to give voice to my frustrations when he said something that triggered some of my old resentments. While I wish I would have said certain things differently, I began by telling him simply - “I feel frustrated with you when you say that!” While many people probably regularly get into fights with their folks, I never had. In 30+ years, I’ve rarely said anything like that to him before so directly.

Thankfully, after a moment, I realized that simply criticizing him was not a likely to change the relationship, so instead I was able to pivot to talk not only about my complaints, but also about my deeper commitment to the relationship, and also the ways I wanted to show up differently in the future.

Caption: reflections on Crater Lake. Taken earlier this month.

I was scared that my words (often clumsy, and not always the most sensitive) would damage our relationship further. So after I spoke my truth - I waited with baited breath.

But of course, instead of a blow out, the opposite happened. Because he was willing to stay present with me, and in turn take the risk of also giving voice to his frustrations with me, we had one of the best conversations we’ve ever had. Afterward, I felt closer to him than at any point in years — seen by him, understanding him in new ways, and lighter in my being — as if a boulder had been lifted from my shoulders that I had no idea I was carrying all the time.

Of course our relationship still isn’t perfect. And I could have handled the conversation better. But a lot shifted for me by taking the risk of speaking my frustrations aloud - not only in our relationship, but also in terms of my beliefs about myself. Most profoundly, I now know that I don’t have to be held hostage to my old belief I that I need to always hide my negative emotions; nor do I need to let myself be forever controlled by fear of hurting the feelings of people I care about. This exchange (and several others) helped show me that I have the power to be open, honest, direct, and respectful in ways that enhance the relationships that matter to me.

Caption: My father and me on a hike a week after our father’s day conversation. We’ve had many additional hard conversations since then, and each one so far has just kept bringing us closer.

I anticipate that showing up this new way will continue to be a challenge for me in the future. Integrating new ways of being takes time. I know this, but it’s hard not to feel frustrated when I back slide. In fact, even since Father’s Day, I’ve had multiple times when I shied away from conflicts I should have had, or didn’t say no to someone when I knew that would be best for me.

I’m trying to be kind to myself despite that, and instead of just obsessing on my stumbles, also take pride in where I’ve come from.

But more profoundly - in feeling closer to my father, and so many other people as a result of my increased openness, I’m discovering the strength and lightness of being that is available to me when I give up the need to carry my shame, fears, and failures alone.

As I resume my adventure, I know I’m bound to slip and fall (physically and in my relationships) many times yet. But my time home showed me again that I need not fear those falls so much anymore. Instead, I now have further evidence that in openness there is the possibility of transformation, connection, and new reservoirs strength, all of which are deeper (and more nourishing) than anything I can ever find in myself alone.

Caption: My mother and me on an alpine ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park this afternoon. This is my 19th national park so far in 2019.

Images of the Western Parks - Part 2

After a beautiful and unexpected trip home to Minnesota, I’m back on the road again. Since heading out, I’ve been working on a post on what my time home opened up for me. That is still in progress, but in the meantime, I wanted to share with you all the next installment of the project I began in my last post. Specifically, sharing a single photo for each of the parks (and cities) I’ve visited to date (in chronological order).

As always, I love to hear what these images evoke for you.

~~~

(4) Monument Valley (Arizona)

(5) Muley Point (Utah - Glen Canyon National Monument)

(6) Petrified Forest National Forest (Arizona)

(7) Coconino National Forest (Sedona, AZ)

(8) Great Sand Dunes National Park (Colorado)

(9) Rio Grand National Forest (Colorado)

(10) Rio Grande Gorge (Taos, New Mexico)

(11) Sante Fe

(12) Albuquerque

(13) Carson National Forest (New Mexico)

(14) Ghost Ranch (Abiquiu, New Mexico)

Reflecting on My Journey So Far - Images of the West (Part 1)

“It is easy to overestimate how much you can accomplish today. In time, if unchecked, this belief can lead to frustration, doubt, and shame that stifles future risk, and may tempt you to throw away what could have been yours. Do not fear. Reflect. When you look closely, you’re apt to discover how far you’ve come over longer horizons, and how much further you can go still. For even if your steps are small — taken deliberately, humbly, and over many days, they can still take you to faraway lands.”

~~~

In my last post I wrote that I put my journey “on pause” to come home to Minnesota.

That has turned out to be not entirely true. Being here has reminded me that this journey has always been equal parts physical and spiritual. These past three months my explorations inward have been as intense, if not more so, than the hardest trails. And so, I’m realizing that even while I’m here, temporarily off the road, the journey is hardly on hold.

I’ve felt this most acutely in my time reflecting. After all, the scope of what I’ve experienced in the last in 3 months has been immense. A truth that I often forgot while I was traveling and thinking about the place I was, or deciding where to go next.

In total, I hiked in over 30 national parks, monuments, and forests, in addition to driving through or briefly stopping at countless others. These hikes totaled somewhere ~500 trail miles.

These vistas have opened up so much for me - some of which I’ve written about in this blog, but more of which I’m still grappling to understand. And in reflecting back on it all, I’m realizing that so often my internal journey has been inextricably bound to the physical land I’ve walked and the people unexpectedly who’ve shared my path.

As a tool for reflecting on these moments (and also as I search for deeper patterns that transcend the anecdotes that have filled these posts to date) I’ve begun to revisit the images I’ve taken in chronological order. And in so doing, I thought it might be helpful for me, and simultaneously interesting to you, if I shared 1 image from each wild place I’ve been, so you can get a sense of the physical arc of my journey to date. Though I love many of these images, I’m not selecting them to show you my “best” photos. Similarly, I haven’t selected them to show you the most commonly captured vistas (though sometimes they do as well). Instead, each image captures a moment that was imbued with deep meaning for me. A place and time where the inward and outward journey came together and opened up possibilities for me in both realms.

Below, I’ve begun that project with pictures from the first three parks I visited. I will share the rest with you in several separate (and much shorter) picture filled posts.

As I do, I’d love to hear how these images speak to you, and what, if any truths they bring into your mind.

~~~~

(1) Grand Canyon National Park (South Rim, Arizona)

This was the first hike I completed alone (the day prior I hiked parts of Sedona with friends from my Baptiste training). To get here required trekking over a mile in a foot of snow. So, as a consequence, I had the point entirely to myself for hours. While I had many moments of profound connection with others on my journey, my time in the west also gave me a new appreciation for the transformative power of extended silence.

This image also shows my first attempt to create a composition using myself as a model for scale. To do this, I had to use a tripod and a delay timer (something that added significant weight to my pack for all of my hikes). Moreover, I chuckle in looking at this now looking at my back. Until the last week of the trip, I didn’t feel comfortable taking photographs of my face. So, now I have shots of my backside all throughout the west.

(2) Glen Canyon National Monument (Arizona)

In the first mile of this hike I was walking while simultaneously playing with my camera. In so doing I tripped, fell into a deep puddle, went flying forward, and had to use my camera to brace my fall. I still got soaked. As I pulled myself together I discovered that not only was my camera fried, but my phone was acting strangely too. (It didn’t stop me from taking a few photos like this one).

With fear in my heart, and no technology to distract me, I gave up my need to be alone. Instead, when I was peering over a ledge I knew I’d need to boulder down, and was thinking about turning around, I struck up a conversation with this couple. Together we created a plan for getting down. We were soon fast friends, and together we navigated the unmarked terrain of the canyon for hours.

This experience opened up so much for me - teaching me (1) always stay alert. This isn’t a play ground. You can die in the west, even far away from cliff ledges and grizzly bears; and (2) contrary to my fear that traveling alone meant I’d always be alone — nearly everyday I met and connected with at least one new person in a meaningful way. This never happened in my old life. And in so doing, I discovered that life can be so much richer - full of unexpected possibilities, joy, and beauty — when I treated the people I’d just met like my oldest friends.

(3) Antelope Canyon (Page, Arizona)

To visit Antelope Canyon you must have a guide. When the other couple who was supposed to be on my tour didn’t show up, it turned into my private tour. Fantastic - now I could experience the canyon anyway I liked, right? Not exactly. In the first minute of the tour, I could sense my guide wanted to us to move fast. I preferred to linger. But I felt uncomfortable saying that. Instead, afraid of confronting him or hurting his feelings, I changed my walk to match his pace. I had a wonderful time, but in retrospect, I missed countless opportunities to take the pictures I wanted, and experience the rocks in a way that would have been most meaningful to me.

Now months into the journey, I recognize this wasn’t an isolated occurrence (on the road or in my life). Many times after meeting someone (a guide, a stranger, or an old friend) I decided not to speak my truth when I feared doing so might cause some unpleasantness. The costs of this were varied, but large. It not only included me missing on seeing “cool places.” It also led me to carry unnecessary mental anguish, and prevented me from having the kind of authentic relationships I want.

Though it took me a long time to see this pattern, I’m thankful that experiences like my time in Antelope Canyon so vividly brought the problem to fore for me. And as a consequence of that growing recognition, in the final weeks of the trip I was able to give voice to my discomforts directly with several people in ways that brought me greater peace of mind, and also helped us move toward healthier and happier friendships.

Taking A Pause - MN For a Moment

“Two things are certain. First, when you go home, everything will be exactly as it was before you left. And second, you won’t be the same at all.” Baron Baptiste

~~~~

Last week I left the SUV that’s been my traveling companion since March at the Seattle airport in order to fly back to Minnesota. No, I’m not done with this adventure. But, I had a previous engagement back home that I needed to attend, and so I temporarily put my wanderings on hold. 

Caption: my brother and me at the Symphony Ball this past weekend

It was bittersweet to leave the West. No matter how beautiful Minnesota is in the summer, there is no substitute for what it feels like to stand in silence within an old growth grove of Redwoods; to look out into an ancient volcanic crater after hiking hours through the snow; or falling asleep in fields of wildflowers that are perched along a cliff above the Pacific. I miss the rocks, the trees, and the waters of the west like I’d miss members of my family. But more than just the places, I miss what it feels like to be single mindedly focused on a quest. I miss the omnipresent sense of power and purpose that gave – and how every moment it was up to me, and me alone, where I wanted to go next. And in that state of possibility and discovery, I miss the near constant sense of anticipation, excitement, serendipity, and wonder all at once. 

Despite all that, I also feel thankful for the pause. For one thing, it’s been a true joy to reconnect with so many people (friends and acquaintances alike) who I have not spoken to or seen since I left. While some of these meetings were planned, many more were unexpected. For instance, this evening one of my old bosses showed up at the restaurant I was at. I felt a surge of excitement and warmth upon seeing him – far greater than I ever felt while we worked together. In fact, the feelings were so strong that when he went to shake my hand I actually (without thinking) moved passed his outstretched hand and wrapped him in a big embrace. 

Caption: my cousin and me at our favorite climbing gym yesterday

Not only with my boss, but with many people, it’s been gratifying to be told how much I’ve changed. Some of these changes I suspected. Others, like the hugging of my old boss, caught me totally off guard. It’s been helpful for me to both hear others give voice to these changes, and also for me then observe them in myself. In contrast, in my own reflections, it’s easy for me to fixate on (1) how I’m frustrated by the ways I haven’t changed, or (2) what’s my plan for addressing the things that I think still need to be changed. Going forward, I’d like to become more intentional in noting what needs to be done now, AND also appreciate myself when I make changes.

These few days back home have also been giving me an opportunity to begin to reflect more holistically on everything that’s happened this year – a task I’m realizing is literally impossible in just a few days. Saying I visited 18 national parks, hiked 600 miles, and stayed in 59 different campsites or beds during this period gives one some context, but those facts alone do not give any perspective to the scale of the emotional and intellectual landscapes I’ve been concurrently navigating. Nor do they capture the monumental shifts that occurred in the months prior to me heading out on the road.

And amid this all, I’m also trying to find a sense of stillness in order to know what should come next. I’m still discerning that, but in the meantime one thing has become extremely clear to me. I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the way you all have walked beside me in spirit on this first leg of my journey. This blog (which I was terrified to create – and would not have done without encouragement from my brother and mother) has become such a powerful source of purpose and strength for me. Writing these entries has helped me to reflect more deeply. Those reflections have given me clarity and courage to change the direction of my journey repeatedly. Sharing my feelings opening in this forum has helped reinforce for me how life-giving vulnerability can be. And knowing a community of people I care about is reading my words has given me succor so many times on nights when I’m feeling most alone.  

Thank you for walking beside me these first three months. I can’t wait to discover what we’ll find together in the next chapter. 

Where should we go on our next adventure?

When my grandmother smiled at you, you felt as though no matter who you were, or what you’d done, she knew it, and despite it all, there could be nothing more delightful to her than the fact that you were before her.

“Where should we go on our next adventure?” she asked me one night, while giving me one of those smiles. 

So many of my happiest memories of discovery and adventure have been with my Muppa (as I called her). I remember standing by a stream, learning the names of the wildflowers and the dragonflies. I remember staring through our binoculars side-by-side, watching for flashes of indigo, ruby, gold, and purple: buntings, king fishers, wax wings, finches, and my favorite, the hummingbirds. I remember floating down rivers, fly rods in hand (she always caught the most). Or how she pressed herself up against the railing of that boat, giddy with delight every time a Humpback whale breached. 

But that night we were far from the ocean. And the hummingbirds had long since flown south. We were in Minnesota, and it was January. It was dark and I knew it was time to go home. It was time to let her sleep. But I didn’t want to go. 

We were in her apartment. And I was sitting beside her bed. She’d given me her hand to hold, and wisps of white hair to run to the fingers of my other hand through. We’d had a party that night beside her bed. We’d even donned costumes that evoked animals and the outdoors to bring her joy. But when the others began to leave, I lingered beside her bed with my brother, hoping for something I knew could never happen, but in its lack, at least for a few moments more, in whatever form. 

When she asked me, “Where should we go on our next adventure?” her eyes seemed so clear. She’d been on her back the entire night, but as she asked it, I imagined she sat almost upright. 

I squeezed her hand, and thought aloud: “There are so many places we need to see! Should we see the northern lights?” She was still smiling, but her body slumped back once more, her eyes began to cloud. She fell asleep before she could utter a reply.

When I came back in the morning, we smiled at each other again, trying to hold each other’s gaze. She could no longer move, she could no longer speak, but she could still smile. Of course. And that smile was enough to convey to me all I needed to know. 

~~~

“Where should we go on our next adventure?” those were her last words to me. 

In the aftermath of her death, and all that’s happened since, I haven’t wanted to think about her question, let alone look back on that week that she died. I’m thankful I was there, but “live in the moment” I thought. “There is no point in looking back.” “What’s gone is gone.” “Let go.” 

And yet, three weeks ago, it all came back to me while I was standing in line waiting to order a sandwich. The woman behind the counter asked me where I was from. When I told her that I was on this journey, she asked me what set me on the road. Without thinking, I said my grandmother, and I told her about the question Muppa had asked me before she died. As I said it, I felt my eyes moisten, and I feared I was about to cry. “In front of a stranger – how embarrassing!” I thought. I looked down. But when I looked up, I saw the woman’s eyes had grown glassy too. 

That was weeks ago now, which on this trip feels like years. And the place, in the middle of nowhere, is now hundreds of miles to the south. Yet, in my mind I keep returning to it and all that was set in motion, all that has been put astir since that day. Tears that I thought would never come have visited me often these last few weeks. Questions I’ve long put off have weighed heavily on my mind: “When you love someone, but they are gone, what can still be held? What must you let go? And after they are gone, and life’s adventures cannot help but continue to unfold, in what ways (if any) will she still accompany you on the ride?” 

~~~

Of course, these questions relate to more than just my grandmother. But as I’ve grappled with them, I’ve been learning the most as I think through them in terms of her.

And firstly, what I’ve discovered is that even though she is gone in her physical form, I can always hold onto and nurture my positive memories of her. I have done this both when I’m alone and when I’m with others, as I did with the woman behind the counter.

This tending to her memory has kept her close to me. And in that, I find it natural to see the world as it is emerging now through her eyes. I feel this most acutely when I see things I know she would have loved. In those moments, I no longer see the world as I would have before, but instead I stop, and imagine what she would have seen. In that, I feel both nostalgia for what came before (and what she taught me), and also gratitude for these new eyes which are helping me to understand my present in new ways. 

I’ve had this experience so many times on this trip. I’ve felt it when I watched the stars in the desert. I’ve felt it when I met a homeless man in San Francisco and I talked to him for some time. I’ve felt it when my body finally let go, and found a peace beyond understanding within an old growth redwood grove just yesterday. I’ve felt every time I see song birds in flight, their feathers all a-shimmer in the sun.

But I’m finding so much more too. On the road I’m seeing that not only can I remember someone when they are gone, and not only can I still see the nowwith their eyes, but when you deeply know someone, you never lose their voice. 

Though I probably would have viewed it as a sign of mental illness in the past, I still speak to her. I remember the first time I did it. I was driving down an empty highway in the desert after seeing Monument Valley. I felt an overwhelming urge to speak to her, and tell her everything I had seen that day. I remember clearing my throat: “Ahem, uh…. I’m not sure if, uh… this is crazy --but … hello Muppa.” I have no idea if she can hear me from the other side of the void, or if I even believe in the eternal nature of our souls (at least in them in the ways I was taught). Yet, despite that all, I still talk to her, and in those moments I’ve often found her presence, her smile, and her voice as if she were still beside me.

But most profoundly, I’ve discovered I can still find her (and adventure together with her) when I choose to move away from the fears and ways I was, and instead choose to give expression to the values I most admired in her. 

When I smile with all my being at a stranger, a friend, or my family, I am with her. When I leave my phone behind and lose myself in nature, amid the flowers, the birds, and wild creatures, I am with her. When I am in the city, and I see a homeless man, and instead of running away, I speak to him, and buy his fresh cut mountain sage, I am with her. When I take a tour and give the guide a tip of 50%, I am with her. When I meet a stranger in a café and I treat them like my oldest friend, I am with her. When I sit with someone in tears, and do not try to fix him, but merely give him the space to grieve, and assurance that I deeply care - I am with her. When strangers I meet on the side of the road become dear friends, I am with her. When I wake up feeling overwhelmed with sadness, and instead of nurturing it I move toward gratitude for all that I have, and all that I can give, I am with her. When I give up my desire to be alone, and instead love my family, and let them see me as I am (not as I want to be), I am with her.

And so, yes, in so many ways she is forever gone. I must let go of my desire for it to be any other way. And yet, in a deeper way, I am coming to see that the lines between life and death, between those we love and ourselves, are not so clear-cut. Yes, her physical body is gone. But her blood still courses through my veins. Yes, her eyes no longer see. But my eyes can no longer help but see through hers. Yes, her voice can no longer be audibly heard, but I can always find it still. No, she can no longer smile at me or hold me in an embrace, but through the love she gave me, I find her when I do as she did before.

She is gone, irretrievably. But, so too, is she here. And forever on, she will always be here, both as she was and as she is still becoming – alongside, within, and through not only me, but equally so through my brother, my parents, my uncles, my aunts, my cousins, and all the people who she loved.

So, now in this deepening darkness, so far away from Minnesota, I find myself pausing and thinking back to that night five months ago. I see now you, Muppa. I think I finally understand what you meant. And I can’t help but ask aloud, “What adventure should we go on next?

Encountering the Mystic - Big Sur, CA

“Who are those women?” I wondered to myself, “They look like they’d be dating Russian Oligarchs…” It wasn’t just their legginess or bone structure, but they were also speaking a combination of German and some eastern European language that I couldn’t understand. There were three of them, nymph like, in this verdant wonderland, romping, literally romping, through wildflowers that looked as though God had pressed the saturate button too high to be believable anymore. They weren’t dressed scantily, but at 50F, the shorts and spaghetti straps didn’t make sense to someone like me, who in contrast was wearing long underwear, a base layer, and a sweatshirt. 

I was parked along the shoulder of Highway 1 in Big Sur. A thick fog had rolled in and I was doing my best to keep a positive attitude. It felt almost comical to be driving the most beautiful highway in America, a 90-mile 2 lane, cliff hugging, hairpin turning, stretch of road from the Hearst Castle to Monterey in the fog. But, as I wrote about in my last post, I’ve been working on living in the moment, and enjoying the path, not just dreaming about the destination. Stopping to enjoy the wildflowers seemed like a perfect way to live out this new realization.

It was after I’d already been there 10 minutes that the women emerged. No, that doesn’t capture the amount of energy right. (Exploded, perhaps?) One of the women exploded from car into (and over) the flowers, yelling (yes yelling) in a foreign tongue for what I assumed was one of the other women to take her picture. 

My feelings on the subject were mixed. On the one hand, they were beautiful women. And as a man sometimes my brain suggests I defer to a beautiful woman more than perhaps I should.  On the other hand, as a photographer, conservationist, and an old soul – they were destroying the flowers!

My mind formed a win-win solution. Perhaps I could ask if all three of them wanted a photo, and then subtly move them out of the flowers while I did so. The strategy worked, and before I knew it we were deep in conversation and taking photos not just in one place, but many. After a few more moments, we decided to find a restaurant and wait out the fog together there.

By the time we got to a restaurant five miles down the road, the fog had started to lift to the point where it was now sunny overhead, but the coast below was still obscured. We found a table outside, and I rearranged the chairs to put them all under an umbrella’s shade. 

Despite coming in the same car, the three women appeared one by one. The first was Polish, and working in Germany. She had dark, straight shoulder’s length hair, and the face of eastern European model (stern, not overly warm, but clearly possessing a keen intellect behind penetrating eyes). She carried herself like someone who knows she is beautiful, and is used to getting her way. She exuded a barely concealed impatience, but more deeply also a romantic’s heart. After a few moments of awkward conversation, she apologized half-heartedly, turned her back to me, moved her chair out of the shade, closed her eyes, stretched her body long, and sunned herself in silence.  

While she was doing so, the second woman, arrived. She was born and raised in Germany. The most warmly dressed of the three, she had long brown hair, tucked into her ears. She had a warm smile and a steady kind gaze, which she never broke as she spoke to you.  If the first woman carried herself like a model, this woman carried herself like the daughter of an old-world aristocrat. Perhaps the family dacha had been lost, but her mother had still bestowed upon her grace in movement and manners.

And then there was the third. Men have struggled to find words to contain women like her for as long as men have had words – at times she would have been called a sorcerer, a siren, a mystic, a heretic, or a witch. Born in Brazil to a philosopher father who died when she was only 18, I could never piece together how she’d spent the prior 12 years except to say that’d been spent in the company of both the destitute, the super wealthy, and the eccentric – just in the past year it seemed as though she’d lived for a time on a yacht in Oslo, in an artist’s commune in Southern California, and also in the poshest neighborhoods of Munich where she’d met her Model-esque friend. If the Model projected her power through her reserved expressions and subtle movements, this third woman, the Mystic, cast her spells with largeness. She wore new age jewelry you might buy in Sante Fe, clothes perfect for the beach in Rio, hair down below her waist, and a smile that was so sure of itself and its power over you that it made you feel as though you’d entered into a conspiracy with her just by catching her eye. 

Once the Mystic arrived the other two girls deferred to her conversational lead. She was also on a year-long journey, she was writing a screenplay, she imagined someday she’d open a store front to be a part-time fortune teller too. “My brain is always moving, moving. Seeing the connections between people, plants, things, energies. I wish I could turn it off, but it never stops.” Perhaps this does not strike you yet, but I’ve heard this type of line before. I knew inevitably we were moving toward more mystical musings, and so I wasn’t surprised when a few moments later she was telling us with upmost seriousness how in her visions she’s seen that she’s opened up a portal of energy that frightened her. She didn’t know whether, or how, to close it, but she’d been trying to, and she’d felt the doing was inviting great suffering to her, including a near fatal auto accident a year prior. Then, in what seemed a random turn, she said, “I’ve seen where I come from.” 

A rigorous scientific education, and a lifetime spent on the conventional achievement path doesn’t exactly prepare you to sit across from someone who believes she is a mystic. It prepares to dismiss such people and their claims outright. I’ve learned to analyze, to categorize, to probability weight, and to invalidate scientifically unverifiable statements. I assure you that never once during an investment committee meeting at any prior job did subjects of incarnational theology, mystical visions, or alternative dimensions come up, even in jest.

But, the businessman is only one part of me. Before moving to New York, I seriously considered pursuing a PhD in the critical study of religions. Setting aside the truth of religious claims (e.g. a virgin birth, a voice on the mountaintop, reincarnation, or visions in the desert), there are deep interpersonal, emotional, and human truths to learn in listening carefully to the ineffable and infalsifiable beliefs of others; and of all those beliefs, the most interesting to me are the most fantastical, the most mystical. I’ve often wondered: how can someone straddle both this conventional world and the world of unknowing without falling utterly into madness?

And so, I prodded further, eager to understand what she’d seen. Similar to people who have had near death experiences and come back reporting having been outside their body looking down at what transpired below, a common mystical experience I’ve read about is people in trance who report going back in time in their minds and seeing their births. Whether hallucination, insanity, or truth, I don’t particularly care. If the seer believes the vision and it changes how they live now, I want to listen. 

“Did you see your birth?” The mystic paused for the first time. The other girls giggled. “Go on.” The model said in a half-annoyed tone, “You’ll never see him again. Just say it.”  

“Not exactly.”

“Then what exactly?”

“I realized I’m not … from here.”

“Like… earth?”

She giggled, and nodded. She told me she is an Indigo — possessing a human body and an otherworldly soul. I checked her face to see if she was joking, but she wasn’t. She went on to explain that she believes Indigos are born to human parents, but their spirits are not human. Indigos send theirs spirit to earth to be born into human form in order to bring greater consciousness and connections to a hurting world trapped in endless cycles of violence and destruction. “Everything in the universe is connected. We do not see it. But chaos and destruction in one place can bring suffering and disorder even far away to those who never knew the source of their pain.”

“I’m not alone in this,” she went on. “There are many of us, and I’m finding more and more.”

She looked at me, and after a pregnant pause, with a twinkle in her eye she asked, “Don’t you know? You are one too.”

For you, my more conventional readers (which are nearly all of you), at this point, I struggle to even imagine what you are thinking. This woman must be crazy! Why were you still sitting there? What were you thinking? Have you gone crazy too? 

I do not believe we live in a post truth world. There are facts over which we can come to shared conclusions. It is right for us to make decisions in politics and science based on verifiable facts. But there are other realms of knowing for which we will always be dependent on faith alone, and here we must have humility to realize that many of the common beliefs about God, the saints, Allah, and the Buddha are based on more tradition, but no more proof than her belief in aliens. After all, if there were verifiable proof, these questions would no longer be issues of faith but science.

I do not write this to argue for the veracity of her beliefs, but merely to say we cannot have access to or change the truth of visions seen in other’s minds. All we can do is listen, and choose where to put our own faith. In listening to her, there is much that does not resonate with me at all. And yet, on a deeper level, there is much of which she said that I think all Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Atheists could agree too. Namely, (1) we live in a broken world full of suffering; (2) our actions and choices impact others that we will never see; we are never an island; and (3) we can choose to live for ourselves, or we can choose to put ourselves into discomfort in order to embody compassion and generosity for strangers who it may seem have nothing in common with us (aliens, as it were). 

Excitedly, the Mystic offered to draw a tarot card for each of us. I shrugged, and said if she’d like, but I wouldn’t draw it myself. The Model was more intrigued. The Aristocrat had no interest. The Mystic disappeared to fetch her cards from the car. Once she was gone I turned to other girls to see what their reaction was. The Model volunteered, “I believe about 50% of what she says.” (Which 50% I wondered.) The Aristocrat, looking a mixture of amused and concerned, “I just met her once before this trip!” Then a moment later, “I’m more of a have your feet firmly on the ground kind of girl.”

After she pulled the cards the girls were eager to get going again. We agreed that we’d explore more together. And being that there is no cellular service along the Big Sur Coast at all, I didn’t bother to get any of their numbers before we left the restaurant. Instead, we planned to meet further down the road at a specific park. But we left the parking lot at different times, and when we got to the agreed upon park it turned out to be closed. So, we lost each other. Finding them again would be like grasping at fog. 

~~~

As I drove alone to Monterey that night I realized I may never see my birth or faraway alien worlds, but even with my two feet firmly on the earth, Big Sur had given me my own mystical experience — utterly unexpected, absurd, and fleeting... Another reminder that the deepest, most surprising truths often emerge when I give up my need for knowing, and instead sit non-judgmentally with strangers, especially those that seem most otherworldly. And I thought, not for the first time on this trip, life is so much bigger, stranger, connected, and beautiful than I ever realized before.

The Hidden Costs of Grit

Santa Cruz, part of the Channel Islands National Park, is a 22 miles long protected island 20 miles off the Southern California coast. In the spring it is a marvel of undulating ridges, verdant valleys, flowering trees, tall grasses, and wildflowers in bloom. From the cliffs you can see clearly the California Coast straight out, or if you look down, clear, clear waters where schools of bright orange and purple colored fish float between kelp blooms, eating and evading diving Pelicans, gulls, and terns. I’ve been in few places that are more beautiful, quiet, or peaceful than Santa Cruz Island.

And because of that unique beauty, and the fact that visitors are only given 5 hours if they aren’t camping, I really wanted to get the most out of my day on the island even though I was fighting a cold. So, I’d scouted out the hiking options in advance – and per usual – had picked the longest and hardest hike to the top of the tallest peak believing that was my best chance to maximize the number of beautiful things I’d see. My sickness wasn’t severe, and I’ve gutted through much worse in the past. After all, this was a unique opportunity.

Believing I was learning from my past experiences that “more time just sitting in silence in a beautiful place is better,” I rushed as quickly to the top as I could so that I could maximize the amount of time I’d have to sit and enjoy the view there. It was exhausting, and my pack never felt heavier as I was carrying multiple lens, binoculars, a change of clothes, water, and food. Despite this, I enjoyed my hike up, stopping to take some pictures now and then, but never allowing myself to take any sitting breaks. 

When I got to the summit, as I was putting my bag down, I lost my balance. As I went to steady myself, my camera slipped out of my hand, dropping straight down onto a rock, smashing through not only my lens cap but also the glass of both my filter and lens. 

While I felt proud that I didn’t react with anger when it happened (as I would have done in the past), by the afternoon I realized this accident was pointing me toward a deeper truth. One that I’ve been wrestling with repeatedly on this trip, but have been loath to accept.

~~~

When I started this journey, I wrote in this blog about how in 2018 I accomplished more on paper than any year previously in my life, and yet by January I’d never felt more disillusioned with my position on the “achievement path.” In declaring this sabbatical, and refusing to look for work for the remainder of 2019, I believed I was firmly stepping off that path into a great unknown, from which I hoped a new and “better” way of being would emerge. 

And yet, even though I’m not earning (or even trying to earn) a dime this year (which is what I thought constituted the old path), I’m coming to see just how hard it is to leave my old path behind on a spiritual level. As my friend Martin astutely observed to me in an email about a month ago, “It still feels a bit like you continue on an achievement path.”

If I honestly look at these first two months, I realize it continues to be hard for me to let go of my need every day to find things to accomplish, and to let go of fear that I’m not “maximizing my experience” (whatever that might mean). Despite a meditation practice most mornings, I’m finding it hard to just “be” in the day. As proof, in checking my FitBit just now, I see that the first six weeks on the road I’ve averaged fewer than six hours of sleep a night (less than when I was working) and 50 miles of hiking per week. This is all in addition to visiting 12 national parks, taking 300 gigabytes of photos, and writing 18 blog posts.     

I know how precious this opportunity is. Even being a year-long, I can feel time passing, and it’s hard not to slip into a state of agitation about how much there still is to see, to do, and to write. I often stop mid-step to wonder when will I ever be in some of these places again? When will I ever have this much time? In those moments I feel a overwhelming desire to re-buckle down, focus on what’s important, cut out what’s not, and live this moment as fully as I can.

The irony isn’t lost on me that I’ve written about variations of this struggle repeatedly in my prior posts. In them, I’ve noted how I’ve discovered the best thoughts, images, and conversations when I fight this urge – when I slow down, stop, and just sit somewhere. Yet, when I reflect further what I’m coming to see is that those moments were often a result of accidents. Many of them occurred after I fell asleep on mountain side, or was sitting down because I couldn’t move any further.

As I was thinking about this on the boat ride back from the island our boat passed a super pod of dolphins. There were literally hundreds of them on the surface and captain said likely thousands below as well. They were so close to the boat that I could hear them clicking and singing to each other as loudly as if they were being projected over the boat’s speaker system. As we sped up, a great group of them sped up too, taking turns jumping high out of our wake in pure delight. They were playing simply for the sake of playing.

How many times in my life have I done that? I’ve had days of lethargy and gluttony (in fairness not many); but when I have I simply played with total purposeless joy simply because it felt good to do so – completely impervious to the ways others were looking at me, completely disregarding whether what I was doing had any broader social purpose – and not beat myself up with guilt about it later?

I remember on a certain college application I was asked to describe myself in three words. The first word that came to me was “grit.” I’ve been proud of that word my whole life. I even had a large picture of Bernini’s David in my bedroom for years because it so embodied to me the look for sheer determination that I believed was required to accomplish “anything worth accomplishing” in life. And it has taken me incredible places. Grit helped me push through physical pain to run my first marathon at 13 years old; it helped me push through social stigma and the mental challenges of being born with severe learning disabilities in order to graduate with top departmental honors in multiple subjects in high school and college, as well as earning a perfect SAT score. More recently, grit helped me break into a competitive field that I had no training in and then excel in it for years. I was, and still am, proud of these accomplishments.

And yet, grit (and my unhealthy demand that I live it out at all times) has been my harmatia too – a source of blindness that has done much more damage than just breaking a few cameras and spraining a few ankles. It has literally destroyed many of the most important personal and professional relationships in my life. Specifically, by believing grit was always the answer, I inadvertently created a self-centered and self-isolating worldview which led me to patronize other’s struggles (if they are struggling it’s because they aren’t trying hard enough), become blind to my own needs, and fearful of entering into spaces (such as direct interpersonal conflicts) where sheer effort couldn’t get me where I wanted to go.

This journey is showing me is that there are certain doors I want to walk through now where my over-reliance and trust in grit will keep me from ever entering (whether it be true authentic connection with others, full creative expression, comfort with ambiguity and risk, and joyful being). Yes, grit has helped (and likely will continue to help) me in immeasurable ways, but to go on further will require me to learn with equal dexterity how (and when) to play, trust, and surrender too. 

I wish it was as simple as letting go of grit, of jumping off the achievement path, but I see now that is silly too. Grit has been important part of who I am. It has shaped the path which has brought me here. And for that I should be thankful. But it need not be my most important tool any longer. I need to learn how to use it when it helps me, and let it go when it doesn’t. Perhaps, as a first step, I should leave up that Bernini when I get home, and also put up photo of dolphins at play too.

The Tortoise and the Car

Near the Mojave Desert National Reserve, I saw a desert tortoise on the shoulder of the highway. I was driving 70 miles an hour, but in an instant, decided I needed to stop. So, I skidded to a halt on the shoulder and walked back to where I’d seen him. 

The tortoise, who I affectionately named Ted, had been trying to cross the highway. When I reached Ted, he had retreated fully into his shell. So, I sat down and waited for him to emerge again. In time, he slowly poked a centimeter of his head out, waited a few moments, then poked out a bit further. But he never got very far in his mission, because with the roar of each approaching car he’d take refuge in his shell entirely again, and start the process anew. Despite playing this game of hide and seek two or three dozen times, overall he seemed undeterred in his need to cross the road. 

After many minutes of waiting, I realized I needed to move on; and so, in parting, I began to speak to Ted, “I know you want to cross the road. But you will likely die. The cars are too big. They will kill you.” He poked out his head a little bit. I fell back in silence. “It isn’t that they want to kill you. It’s just their nature.”

In my last post I wrote how I’m trying to reframe my complaints. You might have thought – “Well, that’s cute – but surely it isn’t that hard to overcome annoyance with a stranger (even if he is your doppelgänger) when you’re traveling and in a boojie coffee shop. How do you deal with your anger toward someone who really deserves it? I bet you wouldn’t be so Zen if someone callously ran you over and left your pride, your heart, your trust, or your career broken and bloodied?” 

Shamefully, I have to admit, you are right. 

This point came home to me when an old friend called me last week while I was still in Zion. In the course of our conversation he mentioned a mutual connection (let’s call him or her Sam). While a moment before I’d been telling my friend how much peace I was finding on my journey, upon mentioning Sam it was as if he’d blown a dog whistle. My inner animal, which I thought had been subdued, went into frenzy. Without even knowing what I was saying, I launched into one of the vilest, most vituperative tirades of my life – which ended with this choice line, “Sam isn’t even capable of experiencing happiness. I’d wish him an early death, but maybe a long life would be a better punishment – (an additional string of expletives can be imagined by you here)”

So much for non-judgement and inner peace… 

For years, I felt like a desert tortoise around Sam. Without divulging too much (as that wouldn’t help anyone), every time I crossed Sam’s path I anticipated being mistreated in some way (major or minor). So, like that tortoise, I’d wait and cower at the sound of Sam’s approaching footsteps. And ultimately, I felt my fears were justified, as in a metaphorical sense Sam did run me over in multiple of the ways that left me emotionally and psychologically bruised and battered. 

I can analyze my anger at Sam through the prism of the “complaints framework”. I understand the “goodies” it gives me to attack him from afar with my words. I also see how holding onto the anger is hurting me: stealing my peace, causing me to feel ill, and making me look bad in the eyes of my friends.  

And yet, knowing that, it’s still been so hard to let it go. Even many thousands of miles away – I can’t outrun past hurt. Either painful memories emerge back to me in moments of stillness, or someone (usually innocently) will mention the name of someone who hurt me. When either of these things happen, the mere thought can be enough to feel as though I’ve been administered new wounds.

So, how then can I let it go? Part of my journey these past few months has been to try to answer that question. While I don’t have any easy answers – I have found several things are really be helping me (both as it relates to Sam, and to several others as well).

First, stop pretending that “everything is okay.” It isn’t weakness to admit you are in pain. Pain is a real sensation, and to ignore it isn’t a sign of wisdom. It’s willful blindness. Pain, all pain, has something to teach. Since my conversation with my friend, I’ve tried to meditate on Sam, and sit with the feelings of anger and sadness that have often swelled up inside of me when I do. Moreover, what I’m finding again and again on this journey is that the fear of pain is more dangerous than the pain itself. When I sit with pain long enough, it can be excruciating. But it always passes. And when it does, its power to wreak havoc on me is greatly diminished.

Second, get beyond myself and my own pain. In my meditations, at first it was hard not re-live the moments Sam hurt me. But in time, I have been able to move beyond that more and more, and move toward a contemplation of Sam, and how Sam became who he or she is. Surely, as a child Sam was not always so joyless or so cruel. If my scathing line that “(Sam) is not even capable of experiencing happiness” is true, that must be the result of great unresolved suffering in his / her own life. The longer I meditated on Sam, the more I realized the inevitably of his / her actions. I could call Sam a monster, but to what end? Do I yell at a snake to lose its fangs, or a tiger to rip out her claws? I have no power to change Sam’s nature. Sam is like the driver barreling down the highway, looking out to the horizon, not even noticing the tortoises he is running over. My anger and resentment alone will not change Sam. All my anger is doing is trapping me in an endless cycle of suffering. The most I can do is see what is real, protect myself, cultivate compassion for Sam’s suffering, and someday if we ever meet again, try to show Sam the kindness that I wish we would have given me.

Third, cultivate gratitude. Yes, Sam was cruel to me, Sam made my life miserable for years. And yet, am I dead? No. Am I more open to joy and connections than I used to be? Yes. Are my dreams richer and more meaningful today than the ones I used to hold? Yes.

Admittedly my suffering has been minor compared to many friends, who have experienced far worse – some have lived through wars, others have experienced severe physical and sexual violence. In the face of such horror, I don’t know if all suffering can be redeemed. All I can speak to is my own experience, and in that I cannot think of a time when my suffering has not been an invitation to grow. I could wallow in the pain Sam caused me, or I could focus on the ways it helped me develop new eyes for seeing others in pain; compassion for those whose dreams have not played as planned; and gratitude that in pushing me off one path he inadvertently helped me find the one I’m on today. Surely then, rather than curse him, I should thank him for these gifts.

But lastly, before I get too proud of myself, meditating on Sam has been an invitation to look more deeply into my own actions. Sure, I have been the tortoise, but I’ve also been the car just as often. 

This, more than re-living past traumas, has been the most painful consequence of remembering Sam for me. In stillness, I’ve found many, many moments I’m ashamed of. At times I’ve left a trail of wreckage in my wake. Sometimes I did not even notice, other times I believed my own pain was somehow a justification for it.

If I am to heal, it must start with me. I don’t need to wait for other people to change. I too am broken. I too do not deserve forgiveness for things I have done. But despite these truths, I still have the power to forgive, to cultivate compassion, and to thank those who hurt me. I can apologize for the hurt I’ve caused. And I too can prioritize learning to live more mindfully, so that I cause less suffering to others in the future.  

I do not need to wait to do these things. This is all available to me now. And so I should do it now. After all, if not now, when?

Consumed with Complaints

I didn’t like the guy. I didn’t like the look of him. I didn’t like the way he was talking to other people. I even didn’t like way he was sipping his coffee. 

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Springdale, Utah – outside the entrance to Zion National Park. It was raining. And not one of those cute rains that you’ll see couples holding hands in, swinging their arms, and lovingly looking into each other’s eyes while saying things like, “Oh how delightful,” or, “The world is so enchanted.” No, this was one of those rains where couples un-grip each other’s hands to shield their eyes as they squint while scurrying to the nearest cover. 

I was at doorstep of one of the most beautiful parks in America, and I was stuck inside, consumed with anger for Mr. Patagonia wearing, privilege drenched, climber, latte sipping, strategically placed but unopened journal, pen, and thick pretentious looking novel dude –  listening to him say things to the string of women and men that talked to him like: “Oh this book? Yah… It’s long isn’t it? I mean, I don’t read fiction very often, except for Booker Mann Prize winners.” Or: “It’s hard on rainy days when you live in a van -- even a nice one like mine -- but it’s part of the life style,” or “Me and Amanda, well really it was me, but Amanda came along, I guess, anyway, yes, I broke the record last year for the fastest climb ever of something indiscernible in six … no five …  or was it four hours?”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I packed up my stuff, went back to the hotel, curled up in bed, and put on a movie, even though it was 2pm on a weekday. Maybe some “me time” was the cure for this malaise.

Or maybe not. Watching the movie, I couldn’t rest. A thought kept nagging at me. Why had that guy bothered me so much? 

Earlier this year, I learned a new way for thinking about complaints. Rather than analyzing if they are true, I should try to think about what “goodies” they are giving me. The theory is that if it didn’t somehow feel good to complain, I’d be able to let it go. So, I asked myself, what were my complaints about the coffee shop guy getting me? 

That morning, even before I got to the shop, I was feeling a bit lost and wracked with doubt.“Where is this journey headed?”I wondered.“Is this still a good use of my time?” “Have I gotten everything out of this that I should?” “Am I still affirming my values or just running away from life now?” Seeing the coffee shop dude, and complaining about him, helped me avoid grappling with those questions. Instead, I was spending my energy finding points of comparison on how I was better than him. “I may be lost, but at least I’m not that guy!”

But on deeper level, I felt lonely. Yes, traveling alone has opened up so much for me as I’ve written about before. Yes, I love getting emails, texts, and calls from friends and family far away. Yes, I am learning to find sufficiency in myself. But I don’t aspire for just self-sufficiency in my life. I aspire to have a life grounded in confidence in my own worth, AND ALSO defined by lived connection with others. Life is undoubtedly richer when experienced within a loving community. The truth is, as much as I need to do it for myself right now, traveling and sleeping alone day after day can be very lonely.  

So, turning back to my coffee shop man, and seeing him (him of all people!) seemingly making connections so easily while I was feeling alone hurt. Demonizing him was helping me justify my own sense of isolation, and my decision not to be more proactive in combating it. “If that’s who I have to be to connect with others, I don’t want any part of it!” or “If that’s who these people are, I’m better off being alone!”

Once I’d identified why it was so pleasurable to complain about him, I tried to think about what that complaint was costing me.  

First, it was costing me my power. Specifically, it was costing me my power to choose the course of my afternoon and my life. As I mentioned, I’d identified several crucial fears about this journey. Getting answers to those questions will fundamentally change how I choose to spend the next months of my life. And yet, instead of grappling with them, I was letting myself get carried downstream in non-action and judgment of someone who should have had no control over my life.  

Second, it was making me feel physically ill. One of my insights about myself this winter was that when I think negative thoughts about other people, or when I compare myself to other’s success, the costs to me are both psychic and bodily. This time was no different. I realized that despite the rain I’d gone into the shop feeling happy, but I left feeling angry about the rain, physically exhausted, and my head throbbed. 

Third, it was preventing me from having the opportunity to fight my loneliness and potentially connect with anyone else at the coffee shop. I was so busy justifying why I was alone, that I didn’t see that I was playing a big part in that. After all, who is going to come and introduce themselves to the guy in corner judging everyone? Or, how likely am I to take initiative and introduce myself to a stranger who I am thinking negative thoughts about?

My mother used to tell me, “You can learn something from everyone.” I always thought that was one of those annoying mom-isms. But on this journey, again and again I’m learning how true it actually is. 

Here was a man who was on his own journey. Like me, he looked like he’d once been a yuppy but left that world (but not the uniform) behind. Like me, something about the west had deeply resonated with him, and he’d clearly spent months of his life exploring it. He had probably grappled with many of the same questions I was struggling with now. It’s very possible that I would have disagreed with all of his conclusions, but think how much I could have learned hearing him talk about how he made them. Moreover, think of the wealth of knowledge he must have had on places to see, people to meet, experiences to have in this part of the world.

For all I know God (or the Universe, or whatever your worldview is), may have actually put this man in my path. But instead of following the nudging of the universe, I separated myself from him, observed him like a scientific specimen, dissected his faults, and ensured that we never spoke. 

Despite that personal failure, the more I thought about it, the funnier I found the whole situation. For goodness sake, on a superficial level people might have mistaken me for him. I can imagine an exchange between two strangers that observed us both going something like this: “Oh honey, did you see the clean shaven, non-bohemian 30 something dude, wearing a Patagonia jacket, and boldly pronouncing to the world he wasn’t working so he could explore the west and climb mountains during the week…” “Which one, honey? The one in corner in the blue jacket or the one in the other corner in the green jacket?” 

The last step of analyzing complaints is to ask: Now that I know my real need, the need that made complaining so satisfying, can I let the complaint go? Can I take my power back, and take charge of fulfilling my needs directly?

I scrawled in my journal: “Stay with work. Don’t be a victim to loneliness. Take initiative. Don’t judge. Only connect!”

So, I thought, how can I change the course of today? What small act can I do now to take back my power?

A thought came to me immediately, find a yoga class, introduce yourself to some strangers. So, I opened up google and searched for a yoga class. As I scrolled through, my eyes did a double take, there was a studio forty minutes away that was affiliated with Baptiste Yoga (the type of yoga I got certified to teach in). I called the number listed. A woman answered and said there was a class in an hour. 

The studio was beautiful. Nestled into the back of a small mountain ridge, attached to the owner’s home, up an outside staircase, across a patio, and into a sun-drenched, high ceilinged, space for 12. Andrea, the owner, warmly welcomed me with a wave from atop her perch on the patio as I drove in. I was the first person there. But only a moment later, and to my shock, two women from my teaching training appeared!

And not just any two people. One of them, Ronda, had been one of the most impactful people for me in my training in February. We had completed an exercise together where we had to stand in silence and look into each other’s eyes for somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes. (I will spare you the details of why it was so impactful until a later post). But for now, let me just say, I had no idea she lived in Utah, and I never thought I’d see her again. 

Beyond the sheer joy I felt unexpectedly seeing Ronda and Tara again, I loved everything about my afternoon at the yoga studio. The practice was physically demanding, and was an affirmation of community. Andrea’s style of teaching made me feel so connected with everyone else there, despite the fact we were all finding different expressions of each posture. We breathed in unison. She asked us to share our feelings with the whole room at different points. And lest you think this was some exercise in forced positivity, it wasn’t. I was struck when one man at the beginning told everyone he didn’t want to be there, and that he was feeling “somber.” At other times, Andrea let the whole class know when someone had made a breakthrough, and everyone cheered for them. However, my favorite moment was near the end of class when Andrea read a provocative quote and asked everyone (one by one) what they thought it might mean. When she asked me I was upside down in shoulder stand. Given this, I had trouble getting my answer out. So she asked me to repeat myself, twice. Perhaps at another time I would have found this frustrating. But that moment, and in that state, it made me laugh.

By the end of class every face was glowing, even the man who’d come in feeling somber. And after class nearly everyone stayed outside on the patio to talk, laugh, and share their lives. Some people (like me) for over an hour.

The whole experience felt like such an affirmation of my insights from earlier in the day. “Stay with work. Don’t be a victim to loneliness. Take initiative. Don’t judge. Only connect!”

Yes, more of this in my own life, I thought.

As I drove the forty minutes back to my hotel I felt so full – full of energy, full of joy, full of community, and full of life. What a transformation from my drive back to the hotel earlier that day.

And I thought, I’m so thankful that I saw that man in the coffeeshop. Mom was right (even without talking to him) he sure did have a lot to teach me. 

~~~

Post script – if you are enjoying these posts, I’d love to hear what is resonating with you. Just send me a note or post a comment directly onto the website. And if you think someone else would enjoy them, please consider inviting them to read along as well. It’s been such a joy to share this journey with a growing community of old friends, new friends I’m meeting on the road, and strangers who have decided to follow-on too.

To Camp, or Not To Camp, That is the Question

“My new way of being is of openness, confidence, and joy. I give up that I am controlled by fear and that I do not deserve to be loved. That is who I am.” — my Baptiste Yoga mantra 

~~~

When you read my posts and imagine my journey – what do you see? Perhaps me roaming freely in the wild, setting my camp up late after I cannot travel any longer. Can you see my breath on cold nights, the steam as I douse the last embers of my fire, the throbbing pulse of the stars lighting my way to my tent, the stillness of the chaparral as I drift into dreams?

The first day of this trip I went to REI and bought a beautiful brand-new tent. I was proud of it and the adventures I’d have with it. When I went to check-out the woman at the register eagerly asked me, “Where are you headed tonight?” I didn’t know, so I asked her where she thought I should go. She stopped, got lost in a thought, and began to almost smile. “The Great Sand Dunes.” The longer she contemplated the Dunes the happier she seemed to grow: “Oh! There are so many beautiful camp grounds there.” It was spring now on her face. “You must be excited to camp tonight?” I fidgeted. “Well, it’s supposed to be awfully cold…” Sheepishly I went on, “So… I’ll probably just stay in a cheap motel, and then do it later.” She rolled her eyes and shrugged. 

After this embarrassing beginning, my REI bag has been getting ripped to shreds. Not from use exactly. More from each time I shove my suitcase back into my trunk and it catches the corner of the bag after another night at a La Quinta or Best Western. 

So, why haven’t I been camping? Well, I’ve had all sorts of reasons:“It’s been an unseasonably cold spring in the Southwest.” “It’s hard to get the right permits”; “Will other people in camp sites think I’m weird if I’m alone”; “I’m tired today, better get a good night sleep, maybe tomorrow?”; “Do coyotes ever eat campers while they are asleep?”

And so, last night was no different. I’d driven out to Alstrom Point overlooking Lake Powell. To get there requires a 4x4 as the last hour of the drive is a mixture of sand and slip-rock. I went slow and got near the end, but had to stop two miles before the point because that portion required high clearance.

Alstrom Point was a recommendation from Oliver and Harriet (mentioned in the last post). When I arrived and looked down at the waters, I gasped. The water was still, mirror like reflections where I’d expected blue.

Later the winds picked up and rinsed the sandstone from the water’s surface. Now, I was struck by the starkness of the stone above the water. In Minnesota lakes are signs of vitality and life - tall grasses and taller trees. Here, no sign of trees, only stone upon stone.

From my high vantage I could watch the shapes of rain too — from cloud to ground — calligraphy on a parchment sky. 

With the sun at my back, I looked east over the lake, watching the sunset transform the colors of rocks below. There were others photographer’s there too, each one of us perched atop our own rocky outcropping, each one of us madly adjusting our ISOs and shutter speeds with the changing light, gripping our tripods firmly, jumping from stone to stone, looking for new angles, searching for ways to grasp and hold the deepening oranges, purples, and blues before they faded into dusk.

Caption: (New Friends met on the trail 1 of 2) This is Peter, a doctor from Albuquerque, who in his free time leads bespoke photo tours of the Southwest. I asked him when he got into photography, “I got my first camera at 7 and my first SLR at 14. The rest is history.” Peter had ALL the gear, including a whole bag of filters for multiple types of lenses. He also had the most tricked out Jeep I’ve ever seen. He said he spent 5 years working on it. You can check him out at his website: boehringerphotography.com

Caption: (New friends met on the trail 2 of 2) this is my new friend Ken, a chemist from LA. Though he shoots Cannon (forgive him), Ken knows the technical aspect of digital photography inside and out. I learned a lot, and laughed even more, talking with him during both the sunset and sunrise.

As the sandstone cliffs transformed from carmine to vermillion, vermillion to waning hues of gray, I finally turned to look west and saw the sun had disappeared for the night for good. I packed my bag and turned to go. These other photographers had all set up camp near the point, but I still had two miles back to my car in the dark. I hadn’t eaten. It was at least two hours to a motel. I had no reservations, no plan. Where should I go – south to Page or west back to Kanab? 

I thought about camping. But my amorphous fears kept whispering to me reasons why I should drive away. Yet, I said to myself, This isn’t quantum mechanics. Little children camp by themselves. I have a tent. Why don’t I use it?

I once read an ancient Buddhist adage that goes something like this: “If you want understand how you are elsewhere -- observe how you are here.”  

As I walked in the growing darkness, that saying kept looping in my mind. Like a flagellant’s whip, I wielded the phrase skillfully, driving it into my back again and again to cut ever deeper at my pride. With each recitation, each new lash, a new memory of shame would be conjured up. I remembered classes I didn’t take, languages I gave up, jobs I didn’t apply for, friends I didn’t pursue, tasks at work I didn’t do, artistic projects I never started, conversations and conflicts I avoided.

But then another more recent memory came to me. Earlier in the day I’d talked to my friend Kat. We’d been partners for one of the most pivotal self-inquiry exercises during my Baptiste Teacher Training in Sedona. As I was giving voice to my deepest fears about myself - she’d held space for me, saw me, and had great compassion for me. Her love in that moment helped change my life. Since training we’ve been touching base every week to ask each other - “Where is your old story emerging?” and, “Where are you experiencing resistance?” But yesterday she asked me a new question, “How are you living your new truth?”

On this journey it’s become clear to me that without inquiry of the past I cannot break my old patterns, and without breaking my old patterns I cannot grow into the person I want to become. And yet, what I suddenly saw is that self-understanding is only half of the equation (at most). The point of understanding the past is to help let it go – not to meditate on it endlessly, finding ever more ways the patterns were always there. If I want to transform — I must understand so that I can let go, AND act in new ways now.

In her questions she was reminding me to ask myself when I’m struggling – “Do you remember who you ARE? I don’t care who you WERE. How can you affirm your new self in this moment?”

For me, that’s all I needed to drop the whip. What does it matter what I didn’t do before? Just do the thing now. 

I actually started to jog toward my car, a weird feeling of internal warmth, a glow of excitement to set up my camp site, to sleep in the cold.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t sleep particularly well. I kept worrying about phantom footsteps in the dark. I couldn’t find a comfortable position for my body. It was so cold (36F when I woke up) that I slept with 3 layers on as well as a hat and mittens. And despite all that, I did the thing. And when I unzipped the tent at 5:45am to run the 2 miles back to the point for sunrise, I felt stupidly happy about everything. Happy to hear Lark Sparrows sing, happy to see stars, happy to watch them fade into blue. But more than any of those things, I felt so empowered to say yes to whatever emerged before me. I hadn’t realized how much psychic energy this small (unfounded) fear had been holding over me. And now that it’d been released - I felt so freedom, so much joy!

I made it to the point with less than a minute to spare before sunrise. 

An hour later I left the point to do that 2 mile walk yet again. This time, no more darkness. This time, my back bathed in a warm light. This time, with joy and hope in my heart. And with each step I thought, “I AM open, I AM confident, and I AM joyful. How will I live these truths out today?”

~~~

Post script – if you are enjoying these posts, I’d love to hear what is resonating with you. And if you think someone else would enjoy them, please consider sharing them. As I wrote above, part of my life work right now is finding ways to affirm living with openness, confidence, and joy. Sharing myself and my journey through this medium, both with people I love and those I’ve never met, is an expression of that. And more importantly, in this sharing I’m discovering an ever growing sense of grounding, purpose, and life.

Underneath A Juniper Tree

When I woke up there were two turkey vultures circling so closely overhead I could see not only the whiteness of their under-wings and the redness of their beaks, but I could also hear the sound of the wind passing between their feathers. 

“Hey, I’m not dead!” I groggily shouted at them. 

I was propped against a juniper tree, enjoying its shade. I checked my watch. It was 5pm, and I’d been sleeping for an hour. I didn’t know where I was exactly, having wandered about 30 minutes into the chaparral away from the nearest trail to this spot earlier in the afternoon. But the longer I sat there, the happier I felt. So, I just kept sitting, breathing, not moving. In that silence, I watched a Pinyon Jay land on another juniper. Then a second. And soon a flock – iridescent blue, fingered feathers – flitting tree to tree, branch by branch. Like a desert wind they floated into my world unexpectedly and shook me, but as quickly as they appeared, they were gone. Later, a herd of antler-less elk appeared. I wanted to hold my breath to steal a few extra seconds with them. But, one saw me. Looking at me quizzically, he craned his neck, snorted a little, and turned, leading the others away in a half-hearted canter. 

I was alone in the wilderness, and I’d rarely felt so full.

When I started this journey, someone told me he didn’t understand why anyone would travel alone. “I don’t see the point of experiencing something if you have no one to share the memory with. It’s like if a tree falls in a forest and there’s no one to hear...”

I understand where he is coming from. Completely. I’ve felt that way in the past too. I remember traveling alone several years ago and feeling an acute sense of isolation after just two days. After having spoken to literally no one in 24 hours except waiters, I remember eavesdropping on nearby tables at my hotel in case there’d be some moment I could jump in. How embarrassing… 

And yet, this time, it feels so different. Of course, there are moments when I feel acutely lonely. Of course, there are moments when I’m griped with sadness. But my commitment to traveling alone has been opening up so much for me. I think it is because traveling alone has given me the space to redefine my relationships with 1) myself, 2) the natural world, and 3) others.

At first, in the hours of silence, I had to face myself, as I am, not as I want to be seen. As an unconscious people pleaser and a flirt, it’s been easy for me to contort myself into whoever I think the person I am with wants me to be. It’s been easy for me fall into despair if I wasn’t being adored. 

But when I’m alone for hours and hours at a time, out of cell service range, no music in my ears, free of distractions and people to please, that is a much harder trick. This can be excruciating. In the worst moments of shame and fear I can want to desperately find reassurance elsewhere – but miles off the path, amid the chaparral, the hawks and elk aren’t likely to tell me I’m beautiful. There’s no one to comfort me, but me. I must stand with myself, as a I am. In time, if I sit with the discomfort long enough, it always goes away. I’m enough. As are you. I don’t need to pretend, and I don’t need to be afraid of being alone. Nor do you. I am learning I am capable of finding peace with myself when I alone, and it’s been extremely empowering.

From this place of confidence, I’m also beginning to see how much control I have over my emotional well-being too. For instance, while I cannot control when I feel sadness, I can control my reaction to it. I can wallow in it. I can succumb to hopelessness. I can try to let it go. Similarly, I cannot control when I feel happy, but I can cultivate a practice of gratitude, even when I’m feeling sad. In this, I’m finding traveling alone isn’t just making me feel more confident, it’s making me feel more powerful. 

Traveling alone has also taught me to live in the radical now. By illustration – how many times have I been on a hike and midway through my mind wanders or I check my phone? It’s so hot. How long do I have to go? When will I hit those the hills we have to climb? I’m so hungry. I wonder how I’ll ever patch things up with my friend? I have so much work, I need to get back and do it. Do I have service yet? Do I have any new emails or likes to my post? … How often? More than I wish to admit. But stepping back, I see now, it’s not just on the trail, but it was also in my office, in meetings, on phone calls, on my yoga mat, and at dinners with friends I care deeply about… 

In contrast, traveling alone has given me the space to practice observing what is emerging before me right now, and simply staying with that. This is the opposite of how I lived my entire life up to this point – with obsessive planning on how to create happy outcomes elsewhere, later. Or obsessive checking for additional external stimuli elsewhere. When I do those thing I often fail to see the complexity and enchantment that’s always already been at my feet (even amid the awkwardness, hunger, brambles, and the sand storms). I’m seeing now that I’m often surrounded by serendipity, it’s just I didn’t sit still enough through the discomfort to see it; didn’t hold space for it to emerge in its own way. 

When I simply sit still -- confident of myself, free of the need for attachment, holding space for whatever (or whoever) is before me, as I did on the juniper’s trunk -- I’m finding fantastical, irrational, imprudent, overflowing reservoirs of wonder, love, and joy. So much more connection is available in this moment than can ever be planned for tomorrow. The world is so much more beautiful and complex than any dreams I am capable of fathoming on my own. 

Traveling alone is giving me chances every day to practice this. And though I still often fail – more and more I’m finding myself found in rapturous enchantment with strangers and the world alike.

Caption: Moonrise over The Grand Staircase Escalante

Caption - new friends I met on a trail (1 of 3). This couple (Oliver and Harriet) shipped their army style camouflaged camper from Berlin and are touring the US for a full year. Asked why now, Oliver said their daughter is gone for the year on an exchange program. As Oliver said this, Harriet made a fist pump of joy.

Caption - new friends I met on a trail (2 of 3). Gail (on the left) retired 2 years ago and has been exploring the US in her camper ever since. She’s driven 50,000 miles and hiked 9,000 miles since her retirement party. Her friend Elizabeth (right), is visiting her this week. She was wearing Williams headband (my alma mater) not because her son went there, but because the purple cow “reminds her of Swiss chocolate… I hate logos, but I LOVE chocolate”. She noted (half proudly, half-ruefully), that her son had just left his job too. “They must teach you to live a life full of meaning at Williams…”

Caption - new friends I met on a trail (3 of 3). I helped encourage (and hoist) both of them up the entrance into Peek-a-boo canyon after she was about to give up. After she’d made it to the ledge, the woman began to tell me all about her son and how last year when they visited him they went climbing together. He set up routes for her. She said she climbed a 90 feet wall that day. She couldn’t believe it, but her son knew she was capable of it - when her feet touched the ground at the end she burst into tears - but she did it. She paused, no longer shaking, a wide smile across her face: “You remind me of him.”

What to Make of the Ruins? Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon

My tank was almost empty. In the desert of the Navajo Nation Tribal Reservation you can go more than an hour between gas stations, and I didn’t know if I had an hour left in the tank. So when I passed a station attached to a laundry mat I pulled in without a second thought, chuckling to myself when I saw that instead of other cars there were two horses (unsaddled) wandering between the pumps.

Caption: natural formations along the side of the highway in the Zuni Reservation near the the border of New Mexico and Colorado

As I was reaching for my camera to take their picture, I realized I wasn’t alone after all. A group of five men, middle aged (though it was hard to tell), were leaning against a nearby wall. They sized me up, unmoving. Their clothes were ragged, sandy. Are they homeless? Here? In the desert? They aren’t dangerous, are they? I kept repeating those last words like mantra, as the tank filled at what seemed 1/10th the normal speed.

Thunk. The nozzle popped open. My tank was full, and I was still alive. The men still hadn’t moved. I laughed a little bit at my fears as I got back into the car, then leaned over to clean up some of the junk in my passenger’s side seat.

That’s when I heard it, the knock, knock, knock. I wheeled around, and there in my side window was the face of one of the men, nose nearly pressed into the glass. Where are my keys? Did I lock the doors? Is he going to try to get in? Where are the locks on this damned rental car?!

He had a bloated face with sagging jowls, short mussed up hair, and a weeks-worth of gray and dark stubble; his shirt was torn, and it look liked he had either been wallowing in the desert or hadn’t washed it in some time. He was making noise, but I couldn’t understand him. Is it English? Are they words? He rapped on the glass again, pointed back at the others, then slowly he pointed a single solitary finger at me. What did it mean? Was it a threat? 

I found my keys, but still couldn’t find the locks. What if he tries to get into my car? What if I lock it, and it sends him into a rage? Does he have a gun? What if I drive away and that causes more trouble?

Finally, I decided to yell through the glass and pantomime, “I don’t understand you.” “I don’t understand what you’re saying”, then: “I’m going to turn on the car”, and finally: “I’m going to drive away.” He continued to gesture. His face was a kaleidoscope of emotion I couldn’t quite decipher, ever changing in the light – pleading, helpful, hungry, angry, drugged, insane, meek, defeated.

I peeled out of the gas station. No one followed. What had he wanted? Waves of residual fear, relief, and guilt kept me company the next three hours as I drove into the growing darkness. 

Caption: rainstorms over an abandoned desert road in Northern Arizona in the Navajo Nation

Stepping back, I’ve been shocked by the scale and depth of the abject poverty I’ve witnessed in many of the reservations in the Southwest. For instance, in the Navajo Nation, an autonomous region in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah that is larger than Massachusetts, the average income is ~$25,000 per year, ~47% of households live below the poverty line, obesity is the norm, and cancer rates are multiples the national average. Driving through the desert I’ve been aghast to see so many dilapidated shanties and trailers completely disconnected from the grid.

But before my run-in at the gas station, as someone just driving through, I’d just been seeing this world through a photographer’s eye. Having not actually met or talked to any of the people, it was easy for me to abstract the people who live here, turning the dwellings into the subject of my lens – either capturing their “beautiful suffering” – or using it to provide scale for the beauty of the stark natural landscape. But in the aftermath of my encounter, and then subsequently meeting so many Navajo people the last few weeks, I now see the world is a very different way, and it’s felt immoral somehow to snap photos the region’s poverty.

Caption: I stopped here to take a picture of these trees with the Vermillion Cliffs in the background. I didn’t realized until later you could see the shanty in the mid ground. My eye (I’m ashamed to say) glossed over it when I was there.

The absurdity of it all is heightened for me in that these areas are also tourist destinations for much older ruins. But unlike the modern day ruins of the reservation, these ruins are vaunted and protected. People (like me) collectively pay millions of dollars to camp near, photograph, and climb in places like Mesa Verde National Park and Chaco Canyon National Monument.

Caption: the cliff palace at Mesa Verde

Caption: Chetro Ketl at Chaco Canyon

But what is the right response to it? In the face of it all, I’ve felt so powerless. What I’m seeing here breaks my heart and makes me feel ashamed that we have places in America that feel no better than the slums I’ve seen in Tegucigalpa, Zimbabwe or Johannesburg. But what am I supposed to do?

As I’ve been thinking about these questions the last few days, I realized this word “ruin” has been haunting my mind for some time now, well before I came to the southwest. Wallowing in my own self-pity, I felt like my life had become a heap of rubble. I hoped that by going on my journey alone to the west, and surrounding myself with miraculous rock formations and endless desert vistas, I’d find a wellspring of new internal strength in order to rebuild my life. And yet, what I’m finding is the greatest rebuilding has not been when I am alone, but when I am sharing new (and unexpected) moments of connection and love. In Sedona, at my teacher training, it was seeing and being seen in my brokenness by strangers - and still being loved fiercely. In Denver, Santa Fe and Albuquerque it was talking late into the night about tragedies, fears, and hopes with old friends and family who I’d always kept at a surface level before.

And in Taos, it was also meeting another homeless Native American man. This time on the street. His clothes as torn, his hair as disheveled as man at the gas station. It was getting dark and he was carrying a sketchy looking plastic bag. As I passed he raised his voice and asked me to stop. I was afraid, but I tried to bring an intention of love to whatever was about to happen. From his bag he pulled something. Was it a weapon? I burst out laughing. it was a bundle of sage tied together with a string! And mountain sage is one of my favorite smells in the world. I only had $5 in my wallet. Handing it to him, I asked if I could have the sage. He eagerly said yes, and then pulled second bundle of sage from his bag to give me for free.

30 minutes later I ran into him again. This time he opened with a smile and a big wave. I asked him how the sage selling was going, he looked back at me grinning and proudly said, “You wouldn’t believe it, but I’ve actually sold more! You are my lucky charm!” We both laughed aloud together and gave each other a pound, fist to fist.

I know my encounter will not change the economic trajectory of this man or this region. But rather than obsess on all that can’t be done, there is much I can do: be eager to learn what is real, be curious to discover new ways to help, connect authentically with everyone I meet, and be generous (in wallet and spirit!). You may say this doesn’t amount to much, but it’s what I have to give. And if my heart is convicted, and if I can, why should I hold it back? I am no ruin.

Crying Beside The Colorado River

“But he [Depression] just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all.” Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

~~~

When I started telling people I was going on this journey, I got many types of reactions. However, if I were to categorize their reactions into three buckets, it’d probably go something like this:  

1. I’m so excited for you! I can’t wait to hear what you discover 

2. I’m so sorry you’ve had such a hard year; I hope you find what you’re looking for

3. I see, you mean like: Eat, Pray, Love?

“Eat Pay Love! F*** you!” I wanted to say – but I’m from Minnesota, so I probably just smiled. The comment seemed to minimize my entire journey (seemingly such a monumental thing for me) and turn it into the playing out of some tired cliché. In fairness, I’d never read Eat Pay Love. But I felt like when people said it, they did so with an undercurrent of sardonic knowing. Despite that, after getting the comment yet again earlier this week for the Nth time, I gave up and downloaded the audiobook. If you can’t escape something, at least do it ironically.

Five minutes in, and I found myself saying that F word again silently in my mind. It’s really good. The prose is evocative and imaginative. The internal struggles she describes are many of the same ones I’ve been trying to navigate. I needed to hear this story, now. The first portion of the book describes her time in Italy. For her, it was a time of fullness, joy, and discovery, and yet, there were many moments, often unexpected, when her old demons came to visit. In one scene that especially struck me, she describes coming home one day after feeling joy and wonder only to discovering Depression and Loneliness (personified), luridly lingering around, waiting to rough her up like mob muscle or corrupt cops in a film noir. “Wherever you go, there you are,” I thought. 

After Baptiste Level 1 Training, I felt like I’d been transformed. I could see my old self-limiting stories so clearly. I understood why so many relationships in my life had fallen apart. I felt a wellspring of joy that had been dammed off for so long. I felt so empowered to change the course of my life, to change all the broken relationships... 

And yet, this morning, I found myself beside perhaps the most stunning road in America (Utah-128), looking out over the Colorado River and watching the sun reflect off the cliff faces. What more beauty could I hope for? And yet, I couldn’t stop crying. This was a new experience. What kind of a man cries without reason? I berated myself. And In Public? Alone?! 

This trip has been marked by so much opening up, but this morning I could feel myself withdrawing again – falling back into old patterns of hiding, fear, and self-loathing. Is this really a time of transformation or just a hiatus? Maybe what happens on the mountaintop can’t be brought back to valley. Are all my relationships doomed to deteriorate the longer I am with that person? Why can I only express my heart so freely through text, but clam up when I’m face-to-face with people I love? Am I just running away, like a child, without a plan, expecting someone else will find me? My old favorite quote kept reverberating around in my mind, like a prophesy of doom: “It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.”

It’s not that I don’t see that these fears are part of my old stories – it’s that they seem to be still be true! That is the true punch to the gut. It’s same feeling I imagine a prisoner must have, thinking he escaped, seeing the outside, taking that first step into the fresh air, ready to run, only to fall down -- discovering an unbreakable fetter was still around his ankle.   

But no – I know this cynical hopelessness is part of my old story too. Perhaps it is better to imagine these old stories as wolves roaming the mesas of my mind. I have long fed them, and they’ve grow strong. They are part of me, and so I cannot kill them; but I can stop feeding them; and if I do, in time their howls may grow weak; so enfeebled they’ll be as indistinguishable and impermanent as the wind. 

Yes, my life is littered with broken relationships. Yes, my patterns of thought are deeply ingrained. Yes, I don’t know where I am going. Yes, wherever I go there I am. And that’s why I’m on this journey. If I knew how to get there, I’d already be there. If it were easy, it would already be done. 

In the midst of my tears I began to text my brother – half way around the world in Africa – spilling my fears and frustrations to him in a way I never do. He was so kind and loving -- so reassuring.

So often in the past I’ve tried to carry all my striving alone – but salvation can only come in admitting my inadequacy to change alone AND not to wallow alone in that truth, but to trust that there are many others who want to stand beside me in my brokenness.

If I’m able to bring the mountaintop back into the valley, I know this is the path I need to trust. 

Post script - several of you have asked me whether it’s okay to forward my emails to others. The answer is yes. I am fully owning this journey (physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually). I have no shame in admitting my struggles or hesitance in sharing my joys, even to perfect strangers. That integration is part of the work I need to do right now. So, if you think one of my posts would be interesting (or better yet helpful) to someone - please send it to them! It would make me very happy to know my words are finding their way to those that need them.

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Albuquerque - Give Thanks

“Here powers failed my high imagination: But by now my desire and will were turned, like a balanced wheel rotated evenly, by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Dante, Paradiso, Canto XXXIII

Many months before this journey began, I remember sitting alone in the dirt. The late Minnesota summer sun beginning to set, the dull buzz of insect wings far away, pressing my fingertips into the soil absentmindedly; the pleasure of feeling the coolness of the dirt; pushing deeper, mossy tendrils tautening, snapping. In this calm, my mind wandered aimlessly, more attuned to the warmth on my cheeks than any thought. And there, in the stillness of that moment, I heard a whisper in my mind: “Give thanks.” 

I did not meditate then. But that afternoon, I did. I closed my eyes, and with each breath intoned silently the words – “Thank you.” For over an hour I sat there, nearly motionless. With each “thank you”, I found memories flit onto, across, and away from the backs of my eyelids -- recent kindnesses and long-lost recollections alike -- as if the holes I’d dug into the dirt a moment before had pierced some veil separating this waking life from a more elemental and eternal one where all memories still live.  Of all the faces that emerged, the one that most surprised me was the face of Christine, a woman I hadn’t seen, spoken to, or really thought about, since graduating high school almost 15 years before. 

Why her, I wondered? We never dated. We were friends, but mostly from a distance. I remember seeing her alone out of school, maybe twice. Yet, on that day, her compassion and kindness bubbled up so clearly into my mind. 

When I was young I was often bullied. By the time I was in high school, the way I’d coped with it was to cultivate the persona of an independent and aloof intellectual – set apart from my peers and quite happy to be there. But the truth is I’ve always had a bleeding heart and in my soul I crave love and connection to the people around me. Unlike so many of my peers who believed (and didn’t especially like) my practiced personality – she always saw through that, and engaged me at the heart level. Her acts of kindness were never heroic, but she was steady, generous, and full of compassion in so many little moments; moments that came back to me in vivid colors 15 years later as I sat on the dirt. 

In the past year I’ve now had several of these inexplicable, semi-mystical experiences. This was the first, and it left me dazed. So, at first, I ignored it. But many of the memories from my trance recurred in my dreams that night, waking me up into the darkness of a strange room.  And in that state I decided it was a sign; “give thanks” – not only in my mind, but in my words and deeds too. I found her on Facebook, and sent her a short note on messenger merely saying “Thank you” in but a few lines.

Now, just six months later, I found myself pulling into her family’s driveway in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She appeared, a baby in her arms and two small girls at her side. Getting out of the car, one of the girls tottered toward me and threw herself around my shins. “She’s a hugger,” Christine told me with a laugh. 

When I drove away the next afternoon, I was overwhelmed with gratitude and love for this family. Love for the girls, who’d wrapped their arms around this tired stranger. Gratitude for her husband Dan, who welcomed me into their home with open arms. Admiration for his strength of spirit. Joy from watching Dan and Christine’s devotion to their girls – and an image permanently imprinted onto my mind of him carrying them to bath time – one daughter around his neck, another dangling upside down in his arms. Awe for the strength of their bond, tested and proven true in the face of tragedies that broke my heart to hear recounted. But most of all, love and gratitude for my old friend, for seeing me for who I am, not who I often pretend to be – even now.

I once read that children smile 300 times a day, while adults only smile 20. As I drove away the next day my cheeks throbbed I’d been smiling so much. And to think – none of this would have happened had I not heeded a small, hushed whisper many months ago, inviting me to, “Give thanks.”

Who will you thank today? And what unexpected new love will emerge for you when you do?

Sante Fe - Exploring Alone

“Someone else’s vision will never be as a good as your own vision of yourself. Live and die with it, because in the end it’s all you have. Lose it and you lose yourself and everything else.” Georgia O’Keeffe

Santa Fe was the first city I’ve explored on this trip. I had no intention of visiting it, but once I was there, I thought why not deviate from my plan of sticking to the wilderness and try exploring here too. It is a beautiful place, with a diversity of feels and a persistent pulse. Amid the bustle, I felt both a heaviness and lightness of spirit. While thankful for the freedom to explore or linger as I pleased, there is no loneliness quite like being alone in a crowd. 

Optunia Coffee Shop - at opening

I felt frustrated to feel so much sadness, especially on a bright sunny day. So much has shifted for me these past few weeks. Sadness, unattached to personal tragedy or empathy for someone else, felt like a personal failure. Being sad felt like part of my old story – a state of being that with enough yoga and meditation one might be able to vanquish. 

Stained glass shadows spilling onto the floor of the Cathedral of Saint Francis of Assisi

Perhaps that is why the welcome video at the Georgia O’Keeffe museum so moved me. It is 15-minute video of quotes from her life. “I think it’s so foolish for people to want to be happy,” she said as I sat down midway into the film,“Happy is momentary – you are happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.”

I’ll be honest, I’ve never much liked Georgia O’Keeffe before. Yet in Santa Fe, everything shifted.  

More broadly, I don’t think I ever “got” modern abstract art before. In New York, it felt like a joyless game of learning the right names; and masochism, because the winners of the game had to display the soul deadening paintings in their homes. But I didn’t find O’Keeffe’s work deadening. I understood why bright colors would do this, but what was it about the compositions themselves?

In so many of these posts I’ve written about how the best conversations, words, and photographs are almost always the product of having first sat quietly with a subject for some time – unconstrained. That is what I saw in O’Keeffe’s work. A rejection of realism, which merely / mirrorly reflects. Instead, in many of her words she reveals lines and colors which could only have been seen after sitting with a thing for a very long time. In abstraction, by magnifying only certain lines, she strips away that which we all readily see, and instead points us to truths which have always already been there, but which we may never have seen. To me, this gives her images a pulsating vitality, even when the subject was desert bones.

Close-up from painting in Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. No copyright infringement intended.

Close-up from painting in Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. No copyright infringement intended.

I know that many men carry secret angst. I know that human beings are capable of atrocity. I know that consumerism and the capitalist order only came to be as the result of subtle (and blatant) inequities and hypocrisy. It takes no special eye to see depravity and put its shape on a canvas. I want art which reveals that which is true but unseen. I want art to fill me with passion (to live, to change, or feel in new ways). That is what I found in O’Keeffe. A woman who wandered long in the desert, and sat with stones, branches, bones, and cliff faces – a woman who sought to convey something elemental about the language of the desert, the rhythms of life, and the shape of death. 

I felt inspired by O’Keeffe’s insistence on discovering and painting in her own way – even before others understood what she was saying. I also felt deeply connected to her. A feeling that has only grown since with each day I’ve lingered in New Mexico – running my hands over twisted branches, digging stones from out of the mud, scrambling up rocky ledges to find new angles on all that is below. 

Twisted dead tree branches on the top of Kitchen Mesa at Ghost Ranch. Georgia O’Keeffe spent her summers at Ghost Ranch for many years.

She is right about happiness too, of course. I can cultivate gratitude. I can seek new clarity of vision. I can reflect in hoping to understand my feelings. But I will never be able to control the emergence of happiness, sorrow, or pain. The best I can do is learn to observe them and let them go, knowing they will come to visit me again at a time of their choosing. And amid it all – I can stay true to that which I love, to my personal quests, and pursue them doggedly, even if the whole world doesn’t yet understand what I see.

My time with O’Keeffe’s work began to give me a new sense of calm and confidence in my purpose — feelings that kept me company, even as I walked alone among the crowds of strangers.

~~~

After leaving the main part of the city, I visited Whiskey & Clay, a small pottery gallery owned by Kimmy, a friend of Matt’s. She invited me to join her and her friends at concert that night at Meow Wolf, for a band called Rayland Baxter (I’d never heard of him before).

Original pottery at Whisky & Clay

What is Meow Wolf? It’s hard to know where to begin. After sending out my email last week, I got a lot of responses. In them, a few themes emerged. One was that multiple people encouraged me to experiment with psychedelics. I’m not there yet, but Meow Wolf may be a sober person’s best chance to experience a psychedelic state short of learning holotropic breathing. Beyond that – I still don’t know how to describe it. Situated in a 20,000 square foot converted bowling alley, it’s a series of connected spaces designed by experimental artists that you can explore – many have hidden passage ways, benches, and ladders connecting you to the another space. The first part of the experience makes you believe you are solving a mystery. The second half simply revels in the art, the colors, the contours, and the absurdity of it all. At every turn, I felt new waves of excitement, wonder, and delight. Pictures simply can’t capture what it was like. 

The concert was held amid this beautiful insanity, in what must be one the most inventive stages in America. At first, I couldn’t find Kimmy and her friends. So I lingered in the back and observed the crowd and the band, as I’ve always done at concerts. But, that was the old me. Enough of that. I love music, and I love to move. The music was incredible. Slowly, I forgot about finding her, and I started to move into the center of the crowd and move to the beat.

Later, when I found Kimmy, she was not terribly warm or cold. After a moment of wounded pride, I shrugged, and moved away from her without looking back into the middle of the crowd. Closing my eyes, I lost myself in the beat again. Throughout the day so much had changed. Now within the crowd, I was both alone and not at all lonely. I didn’t talk to or connect with anyone at the concert after Kimmy - and I didn’t care at all - I felt entirely connected to the music - and I’ve rarely had more fun.  

Rayland Baxter and his band warming up a few hours before the show

As if the universe wanted to test me one last time to ask - “Are you really happy exploring all alone?” - when I finally came home I had trouble sleeping because a couple in the room above me were singing, laughing (and making other noises of connection), until well past 2am when I finally fell asleep.

In the morning I saw the happy couple leaving. And who do you think it was? Of all the hotels in Santa Fe, and of all the rooms - I’m 99% sure it was the leader of the band from the night before himself. I literally burst out laughing. Oh serendipity – what surprises do you have in store for me today?     

“Only Connect!” Taos & Santa Fe, NM

“Only Connect! That was her whole sermon … live in fragments no longer.” E.M. Forster

When I “said yes” to this road trip I had a tentative itinerary. I was going to drive west to Utah last Tuesday. As of today, I’m no further West. In fact, I’m still driving south away from Utah deeper into New Mexico.  

While on a hike through the mountains, I got caught up in a snowstorm - but what a beautiful storm to get caught in! At 10,500 feet on the South Zapata Lake Trail - Sangre De Christos Wilderness (Rio Grande National Forest)

Truly profound experiences only seem to arise for me if I let go of my expectations and timeline. It’s a theme that keeps re-emerging in me on this journey (whether it’s how I hike, what I photograph, how I write these reflections, or how I connect with strangers). If I want to create the space for something deeper to emerge, I have to let go, be present, and let who I am with (people, words, and images alike) reveal themselves in their own ways. 

As I plan my days, I’m trying to live this out by: (1) not planning where I’ll go more than a day in advance, (2) staying everywhere I go at least two days, and (3) saying yes when someone I know is near and asks to meet.

Since my last post, I’ve gone on several major detours, all because opportunities have emerged to live out these values.

The golden hour (on my iPhone) - Devisadero Peak Trail, Taos, New Mexico

My first detour happened when a friend (Colette) contacted me and asked if I was ever planning to make it to Taos, New Mexico. I was in the Dunes when I got the message, planning to drive west to Durango. I was two hours to her then. “If not now, when?” I wondered. I decided Moab and Mesa Verde could wait. So, I changed my plans and drove south. 

Though to say Colette was a friend wouldn’t be quite right. I’d never spoken to her in person or on the telephone. We’d never sent emails or had long text exchanges. Four years ago, we started following each other on Instagram. Historically, neither one of us posted images of our faces. 

Well, you might be asking, what exactly did we know of each other? I didn’t know what she looked like or many of the specifics of her life (beyond that she was a poet in her 40s or 50s who lived in New Mexico). Through her images I had a window into how she saw the world. Through her captions I had clues to the syntax of her mind. And over the years, we’d affirmed each other posts. Together, that seemed enough to say yes. 

You may think I am crazy to have booked a two-day trip to Taos simply to have lunch with a person I follow on Instagram. But though we are from different worlds and generations, the blind lunch turned into a full afternoon of deep connection. At one point, we were 30 minutes from town, driving through the mesa, after having visited the Taos Earth Ships. Conversation shifted from what was before us to the ways we knew we had contributed to the broken relationships in our lives. I’d just met this person, but it felt entirely natural and right. I almost started to laugh with joy – how absurd (and beautiful!) to be driving in stranger’s car through the desert, sharing some of our most intimate regrets. And too – how life affirming!

Rio Grande River gorge outside Taos, New Mexico

If this is possible with someone I just met, what else is possible? Moments after leaving her, I found out a college friend (Matt E.) was just passing through Santa Fe, two hours south (he was also on an extended road trip). I previously had no desire to go to Santa Fe. But again, I knew, I had to say yes. So, the next day I drove to him.

On the way from Taos to Santa Fe, I stopped at Ojo Celiente to visit the hot springs. I never made it to the springs. I got consumed for over 3 hours picking up pieces of quartz (some translucent, some rose tinted, some yellow tinted, some merged with granite, some merged with what looked like pyrite). The stones were strewn in strange places all around the hill side. I’ve never seen such beautiful rocks out in the wild.

In college we knew each other well, but since we had only spoken a few times. Our 6 hours in Santa Fe took us to more deep and life-giving places than we’d ever been before. Between sharing the stories of our journeys we settled into a long exploration of our respective Shradda (the deep underlying beliefs we hold, but rarely examine, yet from which everything else emanates). And from there, (1) what we are hoping to get out of being on the road, (2) what are we saying “yes to” by going on our journeys, and (3) what we might be running away from; but that we’ve been too scared to admit, even to ourselves.

When he left for Marfa, Texas, we both understood each other’s brokenness, strength, and dreams in new ways. I feel so much love and compassion for him (and from him). Like Colette, our paths will not likely pass again for some time; no matter; our path needed to cross in this moment; and because they did we will both journey on in new, more connected ways.  

I’m realizing that to “only connect” is what this time is offering me. An opportunity to connect the thoughts in my head with my heart. An opportunity to connect my heart with my actions. An opportunity to connect who I am in some places, with who I am everywhere. An opportunity to choose connection with others over re-affirming what I already know. 

To “only connect” also requires a lot of letting go -- letting go of my desire to get affirmation from others when I come to them (emotionally, mentally, and romantically); letting go of my fears that I will be rejected if I share my true self; letting go my expectations for how my time in another’s presence will unfold. 

How not to connect - yet how I think I’ve often tried to connect without realizing it! From a gallery in Taos, NM

If I want to “only connect”, there is much I also need to bring. I need to show up. I need listen, generously. I need to embody compassion, not judgment. I need to be willing to be seen; not just to see. I need to fully present (in mind, attention, and body language).  

Matt shared this image of me. We both teared up looking at it. "Love" - Inner Child Trapped in Us, by Alexandr Milov. (Image: Vitaliy Deynega). No copyright infringement is intended.

And when new unexpected opportunities to connect emerge, I need to be willing to clear my schedule, change my plans, and say yes — to all of it.