US Travel

Lifestyle Inertia

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

Precisely one week ago I was sitting in a canvas yurt filled with strangers. By the time the sun went down the woodstove was hot, the beers were very cold, and we were starting to make friends with people we’d never met before.

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Each of us knew a person or two before we met for dinner in Ketchum, but no one knew everyone. Avalanche conditions in this little corner of Idaho were spooky, and feeling out risk tolerance as a newly formed group forged a kind of bond early on. In the first twenty four hours we became friends over card games, stories, and private jokes.

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We also shot a lot of photographs; at least half the group identified as a photographer in some way or another. I’ve spent the last few afternoons sorting through pictures of a ski trip that fit even the most rigorous definition of fantastic. The weather was perfect, the skiing was tremendous, and living in a yurt is about the best way you can spend a week. But while I was sorting through photos my mind wandered to what might be next. I’ve been back in the groove of life in Missoula for fewer than 72 hours, but can’t help but scheme on the next thing.

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I may have a predisposition to restlessness. I’ve at least got a bad habit of quitting good jobs to leave the country. But I plan hundreds more trips than I take. Since we shussed out of the Pioneer mountains a couple of days ago I’ve laid plans for a ski trip in the Sawtooths and another in Kootenais. I’ve penciled out ski tours across Switzerland and Poland. I’ve researched and begun writing proposals for a month in Japan, and, because of course it stands to reason that a month in Japan will segue smoothly into a bicycle tour of Thailand and Laos, that itinerary ballooned to approach three months.

Twenty minutes after sliding out of my ski boots at the end of this last trip I was racking my brain on the best way to reorganize my assets into a sailboat worthy enough for a year long cruise in the Pacific. Never mind that I get seasick.

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Looking back through pictures and journal entries from trips of the last year or two scratches a certain itch. Memories of  loneliness, mosquitoes, and diarrhea fade and are replaced by the sunsets and powder turns that we photograph to remember. There’s a nostalgia for time we’ve spent on the road and friends we’ll never see again. But in planning the next thing there’s excitement and hope.

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I don’t pretend that even a fraction of the adventures I scheme on or plan will happen. That’s part of the fun. If you reject the real constraints of budgets (money, time, and responsibility in equal parts) and imagine a trip unfettered by an anemic checking account or a 2,080 hour work-year or a dog you adopted from the pound in the midst of an existential crisis (bless her heart), you get comfortable with thinking beyond the back yard. If you allow your mind to wander enough you might find, eventually, that an idea or two resonates and begins to ache.

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If that idea aches for long enough, you might allow yourself to think about the next step. You might find that you can eek out a living while working from the road. That the 40 hour work week is something that’s best left behind. And even that you really can just drive across the border while your mangy pound dog glares at you from the back seat. You might even swallow the hard pill that inertia is not confined to objects with mass, and that the only way to make tomorrow different from yesterday is through deliberate effort.

And who knows, maybe I’ll see you in the south Pacific.

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At the Heart of Angst

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ Leave a comment

“I think I’m ready to get a dog,” I told my mother. “And plant a garden. I think I’m ready for tomatoes.”

The time I spent in Latin America was formative in the way that only travelling alone can be. It was an opportunity to party with Belgians, sip mezcal with smugglers in a candlelit bar, and smoke Cuban cigars on the roof while volcanoes spewed lava under a full moon. I read Hemingway and Dosdoyevsky and watched pirated DVDs of shit TV when I was too sick to hold a book. It was a chance to be in a kind of social vacuum, away from friends and family, to look at what I like and who I want to be. After six months I found that I wanted to be at home.

When I got off a plane in Seattle, my hair was greasy and long. I had dirt underneath my fingernails, and what clothes I still had with me were stained or torn. I smelled very bad and had dozens of dollars to my name. Half a year as a trekking guide in Guatemala left me weary from the road and ready to put down roots.

For a while I was happy to build a life in a little mountain oasis with a dog and a row of tomatoes, but a few years later I quit a good job to drive to Mexico for a while. The garden had mostly failed, and the dog seemed happy to come along.

In the car I had good company and a folding chair and a long book, but the expectations of the trip were different from my time in Guatemala. I wasn’t so much looking for anything in particular so much as the experience of being on the road. Of moving every day and not thinking beyond what kind of ceviche we might have after a nap.

A nomadic inclination is natural, I think, for humans. Ten thousand years ago we wandered across the Bering Straight after game. Pre-Christian civilizations spanned Eurasia, Colonial Europeans mapped the globe, and two centuries ago new settlers trickled westward across a continent already claimed by a different sect of wanderers. Restlessness is as fundamental a part of the human experience as oral history and sharing fire.

But it’s not quite as simple as that, because we’re also driven to stay put and build. We discovered the wheel, and the written word flourished in the relative calm of agrarian society. Whether we’re piling sticks for a shelter or cultivating a field for grain or engineering a high rise apartment, what sets humankind apart is our industry and our drive to improve our place.

That disparity is at the heart of angst.

Not that long ago I drove through Idaho with the dog. The radio didn’t work and cell coverage was a distant memory. I was simply alone with a panting companion. At a gas station in Ketchum a man well into his 40s came to the passenger window, and the dog woke from a nap to greet him.

“Just you and your buddy, huh?” he asked. A Volkswagon van has a way of inviting conversation. The man drove a fifty thousand dollar Chevrolet, and in the back seat his young son was spreading chocolate ice cream across the upholstery. He looked through the van and saw the bits of camping gear spread out. He saw ski boots and a propane stove and a broken paperback, and his eyes glazed over with a kind of longing or instantaneous regret for every decision he’d made in his life. He wanted to talk about the van.

What he didn’t see was that I was sick. My eyes watered and my throat bled, and the van didn’t start when I turned the key. There was no bed in the back. I’d been sleeping alone in the desert, but never more than a few hours a night. There was sand in my toothbrush. I didn’t know if the engine was blown, or if the problem was electrical. If I needed a jump or a new battery or if the starter had finally gone. I did know that I didn’t have the money to fix it and that even under the best conditions the only place I wanted to be was still a day’s drive away. That I longed for a comfortable pickup truck with air conditioning and a good radio and that cruised at 80 miles an hour on the highway.

A man’s eyes turn desperate when he’s been on the road for too long, but if he sits still they soften and let the spark die out. I’m not exactly sure how we’re supposed to spend our time, but maybe that’s the point.

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New Year’s Resolutions are (still) Stupid.

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 1 Comment

Before we get started, I should mention that New Year’s Resolutions are still a stupid tradition. I don’t feel this way out of an objection to self improvement, of course, as much as from the belief that if you’re unwilling to effect a change in your life on December 31, you’re probably going to be every bit as unwilling to make that same change on January 1.

More often that not a New Year’s Resolution is an excuse to put off trying something new until some time in the future (how about January?), and the rate at which we fail on our resolutions is, at this point, a cliché.

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Publically stating your goals for the year seems like a good way to increase your accountability. In reality, the act of making the statement usually suffices to let your friends and loved ones know what you’d like to improve in yourself, and that’s about where it ends. With a New Year’s Resolution, a dramatic act of proclamation replaces the slow and deliberate effort required to modify behavior.

I’ve been fairly outspoken about this, which is why it will probably come as a surprise that I’m about to encourage all of you to make a resolution this year.

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Most of these so called resolutions are silly, nebulous things. “I’m going to give up carbohydrates.” “I’m going to exercise more.” “I’m going to eat more cheese.” They’re difficult to quantify, continuous challenges that take significant commitment in order to yield any palpable benefit. On the other hand there are a number of discrete actions, things we only need to do once or twice, that fit more squarely with the nature of The Resolution and still improve our quality of life.

And so, in 2016, you should go someplace alone.

I don’t mean the entire year. Or a month. Or even necessarily a week. For most people even a few days will probably be a huge shock. What I do mean is alone. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to hike into a Wildnerness and stay there for a while (although that does sound nice). It means that you should take some time to travel and disengage from your status quo.

Alone does mean don’t bring anyone with you. Don’t go visit friends or family. Leave town, and don’t take the computer. Turn off the phone. Let an auto-reply tell your world here that you’ll be right back.

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Take a few days away from work and from family. Away from the cell phone and emails, and remember what it is you like to do. Bring a book or a journal. Bring a camera or a sketchbook. Or don’t bring anything.

If you disconnect entirely, if you can be completely selfish for even a few days, you can fill your days with exclusively what you want to do. You’ll remember a lot about what really makes you happy. You might even learn something new. Don’t feel pressure to come back and tell stories, or put pictures on Instagram. Just go and be with yourself for a little bit.

You might remember that you like to paint. Or write. Or that you want to exercise because it makes you feel better, not because you looked frumpy in the hot tub at Christmas. You might even find that eating more kale is something that you’re really passionate about.

The only changes that will stick are the ones that you really want to make. The first step is remembering what they are.

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My Favorite Thing

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 1 Comment

I like the way puddles freeze at night. Ice grows on the surface and the water leaks out through the ground and an opaque shell stays behind that breaks when I step on it. I like to be awake early in the morning and to have that time alone. I like snow. I like when it’s cold outside and coming into a warm house. I like that my glasses fog when I walk through the door. I like woodsmoke.

I like going to the mountains alone and not saying a word for days. I like the way a pistol jumps in my hand when I pull the trigger and the way a motorcycle pulls away between my legs when I roll on the throttle. I like the way ski boots feel when I put them on in the morning, and the way they feel when I slide them off in the evening.

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I like to cook slowly. I like to lie in bed next to a sleeping girl and a sleeping dog, and to just stare at the ceiling and think about whatever comes to mind. I like the first cup of coffee in the morning to be black.

I like the way water runs through a drain after it’s been cleaned. The way marrow melts in a stockpot over low flame. I like to watch TV on the internet. I like to leave home, and I like to come back.

I like seeing my breath fog in cold air. I like the first half hour in a pool, the first five minutes in a hot tub, and the first thirty seconds in a sauna. I like a fried egg that flips with only the flick of a wrist and when a snowball makes a perfect sphere. I like dogs.

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I like leaving work to read a new book. I like the whiny zipping sound that climbing skins make as they slide across the snow. I like to look at maps of places I haven’t been, but even more I like to look at maps of places I know. Familiarity with a place brings the contours to life. I like that the lights turn on when I flip the switch, although I don’t think about it as often as I should. I like the sound a rock makes when I throw it in a lake.

I like the way a skintrack takes a new shape each time it snows.

I like when grouse erupt from the snow by my feet and we exchange some kind of primal fear, although I don’t like it until much later. I like the quiet that settles in again after the bird has flown away and the only sound I hear is my heart beating in my chest. I like that the longer nights get, the brighter the stars shine.

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I like how wildflowers chase the snowline into the alpine in spring. I like summer rainstorms that are better explained by gods than science. I like when the larch turn golden and line the trails with pillowsoft needles, but my favorite thing is winter.

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So That I Might Not Die Just Yet

~ TheGentlemanAtLarge ~ 10 Comments

I am a lazy person. So lazy that were I Independently wealthy and left to my own devices I would probably spend most of my time holed up with a huge bowl of rigatoni and watching The Wire for like the fourth time. That I’m not independently wealthy would really only offset the couch-sitting and Wire-watching to the evening hours, though, if there wasn’t a yang to my lazy yin. See, in addition to being lazy, I also have a lot of anxiety about the fact that I’m lazy. And that tends to keep me pretty busy.

There’s nothing quite like a good adventure to keep the lazies at bay, and TomRob and I have got one cooked up for this spring that we think sounds pretty neat. It involves skis, bikes and a week or two in May, and I, for one, can’t wait. We’ve got a couple of magazines interested and have managed to scrape together a little bit of support here and there, and it’s always humbling/invigorating to have others take a material interest in your follies. It’s also sort of terrifying.

Obviously a sponsor or editor understands that itineraries sometimes change, or that you might have to call an audible here or there in the interest of safety, but they’d be understandably upset to find out that you played the lazy card and just rode Uber around Portland to drink at different breweries for two weeks (unless you were writing for VICE, I suppose). And obviously we wouldn’t have pitched the trip if that was even an option in our minds, but the other night I woke up at around 3am with the thought: This might be really hard. And not just regular old, eat-a-lot-and-crash-out, Type-2-fun hard, but the kind of difficult that blows deadlines or curtails itself into what amounts to bait and switch.

What if I can’t do it?

Now, the bar for what counts as physical fitness in this town has been set pretty high. It feels sometimes like you can’t swing a cat without hitting a pro runner or cyclist. Another byproduct of being a lazy person is that I am not one of these professional athletes, even by a long shot. Any time I race I strive only for adequacy. sauced

Exercise in Missoula is as much a social pursuit as it is about fitness. If you’re going to spend time with a friend, more often than not you’re going to be running, riding, or skiing. But while the baseline for fitness here is probably above national average, a brutal trip is a brutal trip, and it’s been years since I worked out hard ten days in a row.

In fact, my exercise regimen over the last few years has been based almost entirely on the following three pillars:

griz1) Avoid diabetes

2) Still fit in that American Flag Speedo (it was kind of expensive)

3) Survive adventures

We’ve got plenty of time before we take off, and with the fear of failure in mind it seems like as good a time as any to check in on the ‘ol fitness. I’ve picked the nice, arbitrary, Fibonacci number of 3 as the number of hours that I’ll exercise every day for the next ten days. This is, certainly, meant to serve as training, but more so to help me figure out whether or not this trip will kill me by the end.

Because no study (even a wildly unscientific one) is worth the paper it’s printed on without some way to measure results, I’ve developed a metric for this one. I like to call it the Perceived Likelihood Of Death, or PLOD Index. So over the next ten days, while I exercise for at least three hours a day, I will record on hourly intervals how likely I think it is that this trip kills me, and chart them on the PLOD Plot. The scale is 1-100, as in percentage of certainty of death.

I’ll also make an effort to give nightly occasional updates here.