Go down swinging

I struggle to connect with the mundane.

I moved to the PNW from the Midwest with zero climbing experience and recklessly launched into soloing. I have spent many days nobody knows about on rock I had no business being on and have covered miles and terrain I probably should not have been able to. I somehow survived long enough to have my experiences shape my views on what it means to live and create a deeper connection to this reality than I ever knew to be possible. I formed my own version of what it meant to explore my existence, to feel what it means to be human, to feel alive, to shake hands with death. I would quietly slip away in the mornings to go do things few will ever do and nobody will ever know about because I wanted to see what life is, for me. I’ve never written in detail about these days, I have never told anyone the stories from these adventures, they do not live on any social media posts …and they never will. Because those moments were my path to finding what life is at its outer edges, nothing more.

The photo above was taken the day after I had skin cancer cut from my face, a result of catching rockfall with my jaw during a day in the mountains followed by an entire summer of baking the wound in alpine sunshine while climbing. I wear my sunscreen now (you should too) but I never look at the scar it left or any of the others I’ve collected with anything except pride. They remind me I have lived and continue to live. I want to be weathered, I want to have a map of my experiences carved into my flesh. I want to bleed, hurt, grow, evolve and become more.

We as a species weren’t created inherently weak minded, but we unfortunately have evolved. We have turned into creatures of comfort, of ease, of the smoothest path to the softest destination. Truly hard men and women are hard to find in the sea of those who pose, pretend or downright submit to the versions of life that require less of them.

I am unable to understand the lives of those who do not strive to milk every bit of life from this existence.

My eyes glaze over when I see someone wasting hours of their day melting into a video game, into a bottle or a cubicle, into augmented realities that shield them from the most insane lived experience known to exist in this universe. Equally, my ears ring and fill with static when I listen to a habitual “talker” express all the life they will live only to remain stagnant.

I cannot stand the talkers and I hate the wasters.

I am not impressed by the every day. I don’t find a town in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a Taco Bell and a gas station “cute”. I find it a sad prison where generations of people never escape and die in. I don’t accept that someone spending 10 hours a day in an office away from their families and passions for 40 years, no matter how normalized it’s become, to be the path to anyones highest state. While I recognize there are realities at points of life for many that would be labeled “less than ideal” which are part of a larger journey, I cannot relate to those do not fight tooth and nail to escape and evolve from these situations. Why do so many just roll over and give in? Are you really just going to give up and coast for 60-70 years until the lights go out?

I have never met a free thinking, well traveled, constantly tested and challenged human whose life story was less spectacular than someone who spent their existence sedentary, stagnant and content with how things are.

I cannot, will not have any desire to ever be able to understand how a person can look at this nearly impossible-to-be existence we have all been given and choose to do anything less than everything possible. We are stardust arranged into consciousness, on a rock hurtling through an endless universe, during an impossibly too small to fathom period of time. How can any of us settle?

I have been intentional with those I surround myself with. My circle consists of humans touching the outer limits of what is possible, exploring existence via effort. It makes anything less seem, pathetic.

This is not to say my specific way of finding meaning and exploring life is the way but it is a way and I cannot be convinced that someone just idling through life is living to the same degree as myself and those around me who I see on the cutting edge of their version of existing. The ones so often labeled reckless, crazy, obsessed and dangerous are the small minority actually experiencing the depths of this life. Those titles are bestowed upon them by lazy, weak people too afraid to step up and find their own true potential.

I don’t have a poetic way to end this thought train. I feel most of who read this will be in the small circle I call doers, and to them, I nod my head in recognition of a shared stride. To anyone else leaving a lot of life on the table, I say start honoring your existence. You were made for more. You will never arrive, there is always work to be done. Empty the tank and go down swinging.

Onward, Always.