Privilege

It’s knows to most that the larger part of the United States’ demographic lives below a certain income level. And that level represents most of what pays for shelter and food. Anything extra pays for what small luxuries they can afford, whether it is the semblance of some well-todo behavior with trips to a nice restaurant once a year or a family struggle to get to Disneyland to experience the fun-filled day of commercialism.

When I was young, and I wasn’t young for long, mom was resolved and committed to raising me by herself. I spend a lot of time reflecting on that. Albeit she had to work all the time and I was often alone, left to entertain myself and develop who I would become in private. It has been a lonely road. My mistakes have become my own and not the results of my experiences of formative years.

But things that stand out when I regard parenting are that humans have some change in reality when children are born. They start to perceive things in regards of how the decisions they make will affect the outcome of the distant future of their children. When I was young mom would save and scrimp to accommodate a trip for the two of us to California to visit Disneyland. It was expensive for us. For others of greater financial liquidity, this trip was a normal day. We would go and have a great time. What I learn in retrospect is that mom gave everything to see me smile.

We would go out sometimes for a meal at a restaurant. We wouldn’t do too much else. I learned at a young age that I could ride a bike around the block and try to beat the arrival of the school bus. I also learned that I didn’t like the school bus. And thus began my transition to finding myself in a world that was defined by how much privilege you could maintain.

I never really amounted to much because I liked to ride bikes so much. I liked working on bikes. And wherever I went I returned to that baseline. My short stint as a financial professional left me disillusioned and disenfranchised from the big money makers. So I learned to take my meager existence and enjoy what luxuries I can. In the mornings of bright, warm days I enjoy the solitude of the morning coffee and think about riding bikes. I maintain my health in my luxuries.

I ride bikes. I swim. I run. I hike. I don’t go to health clubs because the expense of that social atmosphere doesn’t fit into my budget. I don’t eat out a lot for the same reason. I take trips to places where I can ride bikes and do other fun activities. The fun involves exercise which I enjoy. I kill 2 birds this way. And I enjoy a life that few people do. These are my privileges. I take them. I don’t do anything else. I work and I play. I know this can’t last forever but for now it works. It’s all I have. And as such, being a person without means, I walk the knife’s edge. If something goes wrong, I get injured or I lose my job, or something sets me back financially, it’s over.

These are not the lessons that my mother would have wanted me to learn. But I am here with no real means of changing my state so I enjoy the moments that are given me as I walk the knife’s edge. How we enjoy life is up to us. How we navigate the wilderness that is before us is reflected by this.

wake up for a challenge

For most people waking up to an alarm signals the beginning of the work day. Since my work day lately starts at 10 or 12 I don’t need an alarm. Most days I wake with the rising sun. Most days I get up for reasons other than going to work. This life is easy but without challenge there is little reward. The reward for me is to set that alarm so I can get up, get my junk together and head out to the pool or lake for a swim, for an exploratory mountain bike ride or exploratory trail run. When I wake up to a life like that how could I complain?

Still there seems to be not enough time to be outside!! There are plenty of  mornings where I just take it easy and blog and update my website. I think about the endeavors I am currently pursuing and getting further into them. I search for my next adventure, I spend time scouring maps and looking for my next treasure. And yet, out my front and back door I am resident to the gorgeous Wasatch and Uintah mountains of Utah. I love this place.

I don’t live in a city and endure the struggle of the city life, the financial professional in search of his wealth, or the medicine man of modern marvels and his stresses, I’m no politician nor am I a homeless man. I am a vagabond in spirit but I have a steady and simple life that is built around playing outside. I’ve been a financial professional. This blog site was started during that time. The stress level in my life since that time has decreased dramatically. I could recommend it to anyone! I mean, when you get up to an alarm to go play? c’mon.

In search

Alex woke every morning to the same happy life, in Manhattan. He woke one day and somehow, through the night, something had changed. A dream maybe. But on eyes open, he felt different. So he began a journey to find what was lost, in search of something that he couldn’t have known before. He meets Charlotte, a beautifully attractive private equity manager who seems to know things that she has hidden from herself about the natural world in pursuit of her career. They become fast friends and their paths merge several times before the end. Alex eventually alienates his long time love, in part because she just can’t understand what’s happened and where life has begun to lead him.

Alex’s story is like all of us. We wander through life wondering what purpose we have until we reach a true land of desolation, a place where water is scarce and in every way is a landscape modeled after our own emotional and psychological desolation. Alex falls out of love, into another love, and then another. Charlotte eventually follows the call of a different life. When Alex and Charlotte meet years later they run away together.

While all this is happening an old man wanders through the deserts of Utah having left a life behind. As he returns to the world he left behind, he discovers that his mother is dying and that his old father died while in search of him. When search and rescue found his body he was face down next to a spring. When they returned the body to his mother she fell ill and was slowly dying. And this old, wandering soul has to face her. And in a short time she passes. He returns to his wilderness and comes across a couple out in the wild. They said they’d come from New York and that they would die before they went back.

(I’m writing this story. if you like the concept, please leave some feedback for me. I’d love ideas too!)

Life without stresses

I live a pretty basic life, meeting my own needs and mostly playing in my free time. I’m exhausted and sore from playing hard the last 4 of 5 days. I’ve been out skiing and loving it. Day one of this long week started with a Sunday at Canyons resort. As I rode up the lift with a guy from Manhattan we got to talking about all sorts of things. I explained my career and lifestyle, that it was more or less stress free, that my boss called in more often than I would, and that everyday was good. He talked about his and how he’d lived in the busy life of a NYC businessman.

I remember when I used to dream of that lifestyle, when millions of dollars were my interest. I never thought then that I’d be a 30 year old ski bum. But even this man, having lived that life said that it was more or less only worth it because he could come out to Utah or Colorado to ski. When he was younger and had been fired by his father’s partner he went out to Aspen and lived a ski bum life, eating only peanut butter and honey sandwiches for 3 months.

While the money would be nice, I’d rather just have the mountain and me. All those years I would have lost working for money, hours each day that I could never reclaim and at the end all I could say is that I worked and had money. I work now so that I can play and that’s my only concern. I don’t feel the urge to follow the path of responsible humans, having a solid career, health insurance, or having a family. At least not yet.

I don’t worry about a whole lot. I don’t have to go very far to live the life I grew up in and have also chosen for myself. I surround myself with other like minded people. We all play, riding bikes and skiing together. It keeps me healthy and keeps me sane. My life is too good to give up, for nearly anything.

Throwing down at a ski park

So it seems like a long time ago when I was born. When I was born my town was a small place to me. My world consisted of mom and the house, short and random trips, once in a while escapades to Disney Land, and a youth full of skiing.
I grew up skiing. It’s something I hold onto with ferver and cannot let go. It is so prevalent in my life that I make room for it an any circumstance. It’s worth every minute.
Escaping the life of working and city street to glide on snow is essential to life. Few of us get to enjoy it all year round. Consider me lucky. Consider my life the life you wanted. But really I don’t get to go as often as I’d like.
I got out of my truck and prepped for a couple hours of park play on the mountain when low and behold there was a couple of gorgeous girls driving the Redbull mini my way handing out beverages! Great start to the throw down!
I got up to the park and found it difficult to clear anything with the run-in so I just went in cookin! And sent everything! Awesome!
Go throw down. It inspires life by adrenalin. And it is a way to forget your troubles at least for a day or two.

How it grows cold – Shattered Dreams and Lost Hopes

There are times that come upon us when we make the sad realization that we did not take the course in life that would lead us in the direction we wanted to go. The realization comes when we step back and look at what is happening in our lives isn’t what we planned, isn’t what we wanted, and is definitely not where we want to be. These are the crucial moments to decide whether or not you’re too far down the line to consider options for outing the current situation.

When being who you wanted to be is impeded by surviving you start to see the condition of your situation. That’s not the life I wanted for myself. Yet here I am, living a pretty good life working as a technician for my favorite sports, but without the means to have a fulfilling lifestyle. Working all day everyday used to be appreciated and I should love that I have enjoyable work. But I didn’t start working in my industry to be disconnected from the life that the industry raised in me.

I grew up starting at the age of 3 skiing. I’m not exactly sure where the first run was or with whom but I know I was little. I can still see the edgie-wedgie stuck on my two little skis in front of me. 27 years down the road I ski a whole different way, snowboard, and telemark ski. The last half of my life, so far, I have also become a skilled cyclist, mountain biking specifically.

All I wanted to be able to do when I grew up was be able to ride my bike and ski all day. Or even just a portion of the day. But here I am, working all day so that other people can do what I was wanting to do. That doesn’t make sense. The problem is figuring out how to get on the other side of the table.

It is at this crucial point that I decide that I have 2 options, let it get me down and die this way, or find a way to make my dream possible. I’m not getting any younger and I can’t turn back. There really isn’t anything to lose by trying anew to achieve this selfish dream of being able to have freedom of time.

Inside it is trying, as you might imagine, as I try to gather the pieces of this dream and put it into a tangible picture. And then deciding where and how to start to paint it into reality.

Stirred to move

For the longest time I’ve felt nothing in the way of real emotion, something that stirs me deeply into movement. I don’t know when it happened. But I feel that I know why. I was left alone in a trying time, love abandoned and wandering without clarity. I had found a girl that I couldn’t have but for a moment. And she became everything in a short time. I guess that when you know what you want and she steps into your life things change instantly. You know that she’ll love you forever. Then, for some reason I didn’t understand, she was gone.

Life steadily fell apart from there. All my hope vanished and the rest became self indulgence and survival. A year later I’d be bankrupt as well. It was about that time that I lost feeling. I lost the drive to seek anything better. And slowly I fell away into an emotional netherworld. The world of color faded into a sepia and grays. Motivation became a foreign word. From there I became a pile of ruin. Three years ago now.

Painting this picture is dismal. But the point has to be made. I didn’t think I could actually care about anyone or love anyone again. I didn’t believe that I could do anything. And for the first time today I felt stirred to movement. Today I realized that because of this darkness that I’d been living I may have missed the best opportunity to love again, and be loved by someone who draws light from dark places.

The moment I made this realization was when I also realized that I’d give up an entire lifestyle to make the sacrifice; just to know if this one would be the one. But who am I kidding? I might have missed this train already even though it has much time before it will pass. The critical stage for her is far ahead of where it goes critical for me. It makes me sad.

And if it makes me sad, I’ve been made to feel. I’ve been made to wake. Even if not in time for her.

What I should have learned a long time ago is that what I define my life to be when I wander alone will determine if I can parallel someone else. Suppose I just got lucky crossing paths like a wet noodle thrown at a wall attempting to overlap a straight line in at least one spot. That’s how hopeless I’ve been left to feel about this all.

I’ve also been left to think about how I want the next encounter to be. With whomever it will be.

Snow in reminiscing

It’s that time of year when snow is coming down enough to be trivial for skiing but consequential for riding bikes. So today I took a drive to look into places to ride the snow bike and to do some backcountry skiing in the eastern hills. I found an awesome road to do some winter bike riding on. The snow on it was so packed that I could drive my truck up it without trouble. Should have had the snow bike. I had my truck so I went up there.

That was a spur road off the main highway that leads over the mountain to a little valley where some old time farmers still live, Tabiona. I’d like to get up in there just to check it out. The town lies in the middle of a national forest with no major highway passing through it, just a county road.

As I traveled along the grey sky began to let snow fall. It was reminiscent of winter days, traveling through desert places and touring through canyons and across slopes to find high ridge lines and peaks. In those moments I moved across the snow in an almost ethereal daze feeling the energy of being alive. At peak’s pinnacle I could gaze across mountains and ridges to vast expanses of deserts and in the other direction to vast ranges of other mountains. In the moment hiking up a bootpack path on the knife edge of a steep ridge through four feet of fresh snow I feel closer to something; something I’m unsure how to explain. I’m unsure because I don’t know if I even know what it is.

It’s like this for me when the snow is just right. I’m happy at the chaotic situation and ecstatic to be alive in the chaos. If, on those days, I’d been at home missing the experience, I don’t think I’d know what it is to feel alive. When the snow is like this and I am moving through it I cannot help but feel that I have a purpose, that adventure is my sole reason for being. It’s like traveling through wilderness has always been for me. I am at home. I feel good about it.

And as I move through snow and wild I’m left with myself and a few close friends in a world far removed from the nests of civilization and economic structure. It is there, in those moments that living relies on the ability to stay alive. It means more than going to sleep, waking up, washing vegetables from the store, fresh linens, and knowledge of what the poverty stricken people half way around the world are dying. It becomes my survival. If I hesitate or deviate just a little, it could mean the end. It requires just enough.

But is that really why any of us go? There has to be something more. That’s not what Everett Reuss was after. There must be something more.

Darkness of camp

In the darkness of camp, among the junipers and sand, we had a fire which burned hotter and hotter in the chilling air. It was our light and our warmth. There, in the middle of the desert it was the comfort that we had in the dark of the night and the cold of the coming season.

But despite the calmness and the soothing peace of a fire there in the middle of the desert my friend couldn’t leave her life behind. We were in range of cell phone service and that meant she could check Facebook and listen to her music. While I wasn’t greatly annoyed by this I was awakened to the increasing need for distraction among the living because our lives, as odd as it seems, don’t seem to interest us without the prolific use of our gadgets to stay “connected,” as it were.

I like being connected as much as the next person but I have absolutely no inclination to tell the world what I’m up to when I’m out and about, tramping around the wild places of our small planet. Maybe when I’m done. No one seems terribly interested in my adventures and that’s ok. There are some of you who will benefit from them as you finally open your minds to a non-civilized life of mindless wandering. People are interested in going to parties in Vegas. I’m interested in the empty and abandoned towns that are the iconic wild west.

When you’re out there, leave your world behind. Find peace in the stillness of wilderness. Find your stillness. Realize there is no need nor urgency to be part of the civilization that breeds headaches, smog, and insurrection. Friends will be home when you’re home. They’re always there. Live in the moment around the fire. There’s no need for games, phones, or discomfort. Share stories and read stories. Wonder. Become part of the world you’re in.

Trails that lead away from here

I took a couple of days to wander with a friend out around the desert in search of relics of the past. We found some. But I won’t be sharing many of the photos with you. Certain places are special and certain places require that you visit personally to enjoy what’s left of the past. 

We found the past in the mountains like many ghost places and abandoned mining camps of Utah. Sometimes I’ll come across things long forgotten whose stories that exist only in the cobwebs of the old and dying. When I find the evidence of towns and workings of a people 3 generations dead I wonder and the intrigue grows like a hunger from deep within. The town was abandoned long ago but not before it made a few people very rich. When the mine played out so did the luck and everyone left slowly over time.

It’s the same story everywhere I go. Young people don’t know it and the present generation of labor class has forgotten the stories. But it’s a simple one: the opportunity was only around for a little while and when the dream died so moved on the dreamers. While some stayed and worked with what was left it was only a matter of time before they gave up and left as well. When the last ones finally abandoned their homes and their hopes the only stir was the breeze in the wild grasses that soon reclaimed the land.

All paths led away from this place. They moved on to a different life reminiscing to friends and grandchildren with a sparkle in their eyes: “Those were the days: wild days and most memorable. But the day finally came when the place no longer needed us. It was a somber feeling and a sad moment when I took your mother, no older than you are now, and her brother and we walked away to find a different life because there was nothing left there. Only your granny’s memories.

“We built that town. It’s where I met your old granpa. It broke his heart when the mine closed. His cafe is where he’d hear the stories that I’ve told you. The miners would come in and have a drink and eat and tell these wild stories from beneath the earth… When you create something, as we’d built that town, it’s like losing a child when you have to walk away from it and leave it to whatever fate nature or man has for it.”