[Grammar-free zone! Except for a few clarifications, this is an unedited journal entry from a week and a half ago. It’s embarrassing. It’s long-winded and rambling. It’s kind of whiny. It’s also one way I’ve learned to work through my shit: by studying the game tape. This is the game tape from a warm winter day at the Grand Canyon.]
Journal 01102018
What a busy mind, what ups and downs! What confidence! What mousiness! What gives!
Okay, so that’s a bit of hyperbole, but man it’s been frustrating. What feels right and awesome one minute becomes so wrong the next. Anyway. I drove out to Grand Canyon yesterday. It was a beautiful drive through the forests- I had waves of nostalgia from all the cartoons and movies I’d seen as a child set in this landscape of high desert- pines and forest floor; no shrubs. A driver behind me started almost tailgating me and, already going 5 over, I became annoyed and bothered, and then bothered that I was bothered. I thought about what Steve 2.0 [this is the term my friend Jared and I came up with to describe this ‘new version’ of myself that’s made a showing over the past year] might do, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Would he keep driving at his own pace? Would he speed up? Would he pull over to let the eager driver past? Would he slow down even more as a way to say, “fuck you, dude.”? One thing I knew, was that he wouldn’t have let something like this annoy him in the first place. He’d probably pull over- no big deal, no ego damage- but mostly he just wouldn’t let it bother him much. It bothered me. I laughed at myself for getting worked up, in between chastising myself for it. Eventually I slowed down hard, passive aggressively, before pulling over to the side of the road and snapping back onto the asphalt as soon as the driver passed me. I flipped him off as he sped away in front of me. It still chafes that I felt so chafed! To be kind, to be fair, I was worked up in my brain space, wrestling with myself over how to get back to that good old self-acceptance, feeling desperate and hopeless because there was no thought I could think that would get me back to that place. I know it’s about letting go, I know it’s about unconditional and non-judgmental acceptance, I know all that already. Still, there was something in my chest that wouldn’t let go, that had to put conditions on whether or not I could be content or happy, something that still judged, and judged with a fury, ready to pounce on anything in my past, anything in my present to prove I wasn’t good enough.
At the Grand Canyon, I paid the cute ranger at the gate, found a parking space, and walked over to the outlook. I delayed looking through the trees to the canyon behind them for as long as possible. I had some hopes that seeing this wonder of the world, this impossibly enormous gash in the earth, would be something of a spiritual experience, that it would move me. I hoped the scale of it would calm me down, thinking about the flight from Buffalo to Chicago a month earlier. While I didn’t have an outpouring of teary emotion, my breath did catch when I first saw it. I’d seen pictures, but they’re right- you don’t appreciate it until you are there in person. I took my time looking at it, observing it, trying to soak it in and let it affect me. I noticed details in the rock, in the way the cliffs alternated between slopes of dirt and vertical bands of solid red rock, a series of natural retaining walls. From a trailhead at the rim, it’s a descent of about 5000 feet over six miles. These things were steep. In the distance below, you could catch glimpses through the gaping fissures of the Colorado river. A roof of dark clouds stretched across the landscape, a herd of gray buffalo lumbering towards the cliff and then over, but, miraculously not falling. Instead they kept surging slowly off to the northeast running on an invisible floor laid across the chasms below. I thought of Santa’s reindeer, or of the mythical horses from [the movie] Krull that could run through the sky, or of a floor of glass that stretched over the canyon. In spite of my ruminating thoughts and feelings, I could catch some appreciation for what I was seeing, I could calm myself enough to observe the details. I decided I’d like to get at least a little hiking in while I was here so made my way over to the South Kaibab trail that had some doable looking trails. It was between forty and fifty degrees-probably closer to 40- and chilly, but not distractingly so. I stopped along the rim on my way to the trailhead several times to look over, even sitting down a couple of times (once to try to get some tears out). Sometimes looking out into the distant landscape, while beautiful, also seems somewhat unreal. That’s how I felt at times about the canyon. I found myself wanting to look at the details that were close to me, the bark of a tree, the way the sage brush vibrated in the wind, even the patterns in the asphalt I walked over. I felt for my gait, for the way my my legs and feet moved as I walked, paying attention to the immediate detail of how the placement of my weight in each step started at the heel and rolled up to the ball of my feet before the opposing heel took over the duties. These details, I mused, surely must be as magnificent and beautiful as the canyon. There is wilderness enough in simple reality, I thought. I realized that I had started to feel some obligation to wonder at the canyon at the expense of the other equally valuable details all around me, as though the canyon were grander (heh) than the patterns in a leaf, than in the way the asphalt crumbled on the edges of the walkway into the dirt, than running my hand over a burnt out and desiccated tree, than the way the power lines ran above the trail, like a three dimensional shape imposed on the landscape, not unlike the exhibit I’d seen at the New Mexico Museum of Art a day before. I’m more convinced now than even then that this is truth. That the little details of life are as majestic as its grand sweep. A leaf is as majestic as a mountain, sometimes more so. I find that it’s easier to focus on the details close to me. Throughout last year, when I drove around town, instead of looking for beauty off into the distance, I often glanced down to my steering wheel and soaked in all the details of it- how the light hit it to cast brief shadows across the “H,” the dust, the tiny grooves and the vestiges of grime packed into them, the grains in the gray plastic, the subtle changes in texture across it. I used this method to refocus numerous times. There was a beauty in the details, and in the nonjudgmental soaking in of the details. I’ve thought several times lately that nature as we commonly understand it, gets all the credit. We denigrate our technology, our cities, our civilization as something from which we need to escape to “really” encounter nature. I disagree with the notion, even as I agree that there is *something* about ocean and trees and mountains that seem to calm us. Still, I don’t know. I suspect that it has more to do with the clearing out of distractions than the inherent nature of “nature.” I think of those times when I’ve felt most connected to my life and in awe. In my house, looking at the snow decorations from the Christmas party hanging from my ceiling. Sitting outside the Garage before our show to listen to the wind and observe the garish denuded mountainside across the highway. This hardly qualified as what most people would consider “nature” and yet I was so calm and so enamored with every detail that surrounded me. We have only to look at our hands, to feel our chest rise as we breath, to be close to nature. The key is quieting the mind. To the degree that being out in the ‘natural’ world assists in that, great. But I’m not convinced it’s necessary to reap similar benefits. That said, I’m also not convinced there isn’t something special about leaving the trappings of civilization for a while and being out in this ‘nature.’ Clouds never cease to amaze me with their chaotic and constantly changing forms, their presence providing a sense of scale for the vastness of the sky. Is this worship of “nature” cultural? Inherited? I don’t know, but I think about it. This morning I woke up to a snowy landscape- it had snowed for probably the first time this winter here in Flagstaff and the pine trees that blanketed the city were thickly frosted, dimly lit from above by a sun hidden behind a veil of cloud. That was a beautiful scene I woke up to. This is a quiet little mountain town. Apparently there’s a college nearby, but I haven’t seen the influx of college kids to prove it- maybe just a few more than I’d expect at the coffee shop yesterday. It’s still a small town. I’m sitting in another coffee shop right now, Rendezvous, situated beneath a historic hotel. From the window across the room from me I can see the slushy streets of a quaint downtown, brick storefronts all in a row, some with awnings, some not. It’s ‘historic downtown USA,’ almost perfect in its quaintness.
But back to the Grand Canyon. After some walking I made it to the South Kaibab trailhead and after chatting briefly with a guy who was one of the parent chaperones on a high school field trip from Ohio, I headed down, passing a number of winded hikers, including Rangers, many of whom looked like young reformed felons, on my way down. The steep trail, retained by small log barriers, gave way to sandy red dirt, before resuming its yellow path downward. I stopped at “Oh Yeah” point (I think that’s what it was called) to snap a few photos. I liked being down below the rim. The thought came to me several times yesterday about being a participant in life and not just a tourist. Something about going down into the canyon instead of safely observing it from above, felt like a push towards that participation I sought. After resting for a little while on a rock overlooking the canyon, I turned around to head back up. I love steaming up a steep trail, feeling my legs and core engage and power me up. I don’t sprint, not usually, but I keep a good clip, and enjoy winding myself in the process. ‘Attack the hills’, has been a rule I often follow. This can get me into trouble when the trail is only hill, only incline. I think back to the Sundial Peak hike. I don’t remember the last time I’ve been so physically exhausted and so bent on pushing and pushing further, even while allowing myself to take breaks. I took a little pride as I overtook various hikers I’d passed on my way down, lamely and teasingly encouraging a couple of them, “don’t give up!” in something like forced jocularity. As I hiked out, the sun was going down, casting light onto the sides of the canyons and creating a dramatic scene. I stopped numerous times to snap photos, both with my phone and with my camera, which I’m still trying to figure out how to use well. By the time I’d reached the top of the canyon again, I was feeling a good deal better. If not basking in euphoria for my life, I was at least more calm, which was a welcome change from earlier in the day. On my walk back to the visitor center- around two or three miles from the trailhead- I had more time to think (a dangerous prospect). I again returned to thoughts of returning to Utah- not yet, but eventually, soon- to put on a ridiculous production of Copperhead the Barbarian, involving all my friends in the undertaking. I returned to thoughts of starting this blog I’ve talked about. I returned to thoughts of writing the memoir/how-to live in the GandSB. All of these things felt reassuring. And yet, and yet, I still can’t shake the feeling that there’s something more for me to learn out here, that there’s still a missing piece, something to know that I don’t currently know. There’s a nagging feeling that if I let myself feel good about myself for anything I do or am or whatever, that it is a shallow confidence and liable to be destroyed. I do so feel pulled both towards breaking myself down completely to the very essence of self, and that some type of renunciation is necessary to gain this wisdom and also pulled toward being courageous and returning to my life, returning and starting anew with a life of beautiful details. These two drives seem to oppose one another which throws me into a tailspin and I don’t know how to proceed. I picked up a book on kindle yesterday, “Journey into Vanishing,” a memoir written by a kid (I say ‘kid’ but he’s in his mid-twenties) [the author is actually in his forties and wrote about his experience in his twenties] who had been rendered blind in one eye while playing a pickup game of basketball as a junior at Harvard. Devastated by the change this made in his life, and sensing the illusory nature of any sense of self he had, he retreated to a cabin in the woods, where he lived for two years with minimal outside contact. He plainly states at the beginning of his memoir that he went into the woods to try to find that essential self that couldn’t be so easily destroyed as the life he thought he had before he was blinded. Provocative stuff. There’s a romanticism about holing up in the woods, about removing all the superfluity of life to get to the core. This, I believe, is what McCandless was trying to do, although if he was motivated by hurt and grief, it was buried deeply. This is what Cheryl tried to do by reducing her life to the physical marathon of her PCT hike. This is what Least Heat Moon did, what Pirsig did, each in their own ways. In the end, isn’t it all a stripping away of the details of life to get to the root of things, to find that essential and unassailable “self”? Isn’t it always, at bottom, a quest for invincible wholeness? I’m interested to read what he has to say. I still wonder why, after all I accomplished last year, do I feel so adrift now? Do I need to retreat to a cabin in the woods and cut off all contact with family and friends until I do find that ‘self’ again? When I first felt that self in all of its glory, last year on January 24, I sensed that rather than having arrived, it was a vision, a taste of what was to come. Throughout the year, through various ups and downs, that sense of self started to feel more calm, more established. Not the euphoria I so often chased and longed for but the deeper sense of self that Jana commented on when we hiked in the canyon. The self I felt at the final BB at the BB [Breakfast and Ballads at the Bearded Bard- a get-together I occasionally hosted at my house in which breakfast was served in exchange for a song] and at my birthday party and as I interacted with mom in Canada, and so on. Was all that truly building up to this? This wandering around the southwest, unsure of where to go, what to do, and feeling that sense of self leak out of me, wondering if it will ever return? I notice how I feel when I interact with others on this trip. I notice the dynamic I set up within myself between so many of them, the placating, pleasing, deferential self. The child relating to the adult. I am lost again, it seems, and am not sure why or how. I thought I was on the right track when I sold the house and quit the job and headed off into the sunset. I have no idea what to make of it.
Last night after showering I went to a local bar that the internet recommended as having good food. When I noticed they offered nachos, I was sold (the nachos, however, were not that great. Refried beans on nachos is a travesty, not to mention the stingy toppings of cheese and meat). I eventually fell into conversation with the guy sitting at the bar next to me, Cole, a 30 year-old bartender- off work- at the bar where we were. Cole was about to leave on a trip to Japan to snowboard- his first trip overseas in his life- and he was excited about it. We talked about this and that, and I admitted to him I wasn’t sure that travelling was the answer to self-discovery, teasing out my mixed feelings about such ventures through a series of challenging questions. I was interested in how he’d respond and also needed to put my own questions out just to ask them. “What is it about travelling that makes you a better person?” “Do you really have to leave your home to live somewhere else in order to be happy?” And so on. It might be fun to write a book about people who’ve gone on journeys of self-discovery that failed, where they ended up even more lost than those that seemed to succeed. Like science needs studies that fail to move the marker of human knowledge forward as much as it needs studies that support hypotheses, maybe we need to hear the stories of people who didn’t find themselves on their big JoSD [Journey of Self-Discovery] and what they think about that. Kind of like my position that you don’t have to leave home to find yourself. You just have to know what you need to change and change that. [I’d refine this to say the only important thing is facing yourself, seeing yourself clearly and dealing with that, no travel required.] Leaving home is, more often than not, a shotgun approach, broad and blunt when it could be more surgical. Maybe.
Cole gave me some good recommendations on a day hike I could take into the GC later this week- all the way to the canyon floor and back, a twelve mile trip that promises to be grueling, but doable and topped off with a stop at the hotel/bar for a bloody mary as a reward. I like the idea and think I’ll go for it, weather permitting. That can function as leg day I guess. A million deep lunges. Cole also opened my eyes to some of the nuances of scotch whiskey, illustrating to me the difference between highland Scotch, which is aged with peat, giving it a smoky flavor (“smoke and band-aids”), and a sweeter, smoother lowland whiskey- his preference. He also showed me how you can add just a smidgen of water to the whiskey which has noticeable impacts on the profile of the drink. While I didn’t love the highland whiskey on the first pass, I thoroughly enjoyed the same whiskey with a drop of water with it, which amazed me- that such a small seeming innocuous addition could have such an impact on the flavor. The lowland scotch didn’t taste all that different to me after the addition of some water. Cole also voiced his dislike for shakers in favor of stirring the drink in a glass of ice thirty times before pouring it into the glass along with whatever other flavorings and additions make the cocktail. Shaking, apparently, unintentionally introduces shards of ice into the drink which compromises the taste. If you’re going to add water or ice, do it intentionally, I guess. He talked about how shaking “bruises” the alcohol. I have no idea what that means. We exchanged numbers and if I make the hike on Thursday or Friday I plan on sending him victory pics. It was nice to talk to someone for longer than the brief exchanges, usually in the process of ordering food, that I’ve had this past week.