History Channel’s “Alone”might just be my favorite television show of all time. It’s the closest thing to actual reality television on the planet. Ten wilderness survival experts from various lineages and locations are each dropped off at a designated site in a remote location. Alone. They have a minimal supply of survival gear and camera equipment to record themselves. No camera crew. No production staff. The person that lasts the longest in the woods wins a grand prize of $500,000 cash.
On season six of “Alone,” Woniya Thibeault nearly won the grand prize, but became the runner up when she used the emergency satellite phone to “tap out.” Even though she did not win the season, she won the hearts of many in the audience, including me. It was her approach, her philosophy, and her deep, full mind-body connection to nature that was so palpable and inspiring to watch.
In 2023 Thibeault published a book titled Never Alone, which walks the reader through her lived experience preparing for and “surthriving” in the Northwest Territories of Canada, as well as her post-show reentry into society and her reflections of the entire journey.
Of the copious wisdom and insights provided in this delightful page-turner, five themes emerge as Woniya’s most insightful and powerful gifts to us all. Here they are.
WONIYA’S TOP FIVE MOST POTENT OFFERINGS FROM NEVER ALONE
1. We can live on more than physical sustenance; we can also be nourished by beauty and by finding awe and wonder in whatever life offers.
When most of us think about surviving out in the wild, we envision prioritizing the basics–water, shelter, food. If we’re thriving so well that we get all those boxes thoroughly checked, then maybe we’d progress to focusing on comfort, convenience, making life a little easier on ourselves. But that’s a big “if.” Most of the wilderness survival experts throughout all the seasons of “Alone” never make it past the stage of constructing a long-term shelter and generating a reliable supply of food.
Woniya’s approach was different. Yes, she was strategic about her shelter location and attempted multiple active and passive food procuring methods. But she also took time to notice the colors in the sunset. She kept note of the days of her stay that were prime numbers; in actuality it didn’t have any material significance, yet to her, she made it a thing. Rather, she allowed it to be a thing.
What to others would be a distraction, a waste of energy, is actually a source of energy for her.
Woniya herself even says in the book, “we can be nourished by a lot of things.”
2. The importance of ritual, animism, and acknowledging one’s ancestors
If you’ve watched “Alone,” you know that one of the primary ways contestants leave the show is neither lack of food nor physical injury or ailment–they choose to leave because they feel, well, alone. Many skilled, well-prepared bushfolk “tap out” on the show because they miss their loved ones, they realize their priority is to be at home, or because they just can’t take being away from any human contact any longer.
Human beings are (one of if not) themost social creatures on the planet. So, it takes not only a skilled survivalist but also someone who can handle being alone to go far on the show.
Woniya’s answer to curing and preventing loneliness woes? Treating the life and elements around her–the plants, the birds, the squirrels, the berries, the water, the sun–as allies, as companions. Her animistic instincts allowed Woniya to experience the feelings of closeness and kinship that many humans only feel when in the company of other humans.
She would often make a ceremony out of honoring the animal she’d skilled or the tree she was about to chop down. One of her most profound rituals was continuing to offer ancestor plates long into her stay in the wild; despite operating at a vast caloric deficit, when food would finally make its way to her pot, instead of scarfing it all down she would slow down, savor every morsel, delight in every ounce of nourishment, and, most inspiringly, offer a small portion of her precious calories to her ancestors. Despite severe hunger pangs and living in a body desperately craving physical sustenance, by honoring her ancestors she also invoked their presence and so had more allies and support nearby. She was not alone. Some might say she strengthened her karma with this practice, which then led to successfully trapping the next hare.
In the book she relates how the COVID-19 pandemic gave everyone a taste of “illustrat(ing) why mastering the skills to provide for our own needs from the resources right around us is not a relic of the past but a real and present need. They aren’t just ancestral ways; they are timeless ways.”
So her magic was animism, ritual, ancestral connection, selflessness, and also… dance parties. Yes, wilderness survival dance parties. Woniya threw herself a weekly dance party in the Arctic wilderness while trying to survive all by herself. Who says you need to have more than one person for a dance party? Who says you need to have any music other than what’s available in your mind? Who says you shouldn’t be “wasting” your energy dancing in a survival situation when you could be fortifying your shelter or procuring food?
In the end of her “Alone”journey, after all of the rituals and ceremonies and ancestor plates offered, Woniya winds up embodying the feeling not just of being deeply connected to her ancestors but of being an ancestor herself. She truly embodies this feeling, realizing her unending connection to the past, the present, and the future, all at once.
This moving conclusion illustrates the power of her practices.
3. The Right Way To Do Things Is Your Way
Woniya faced enormous pressure to conform. With a $500,000 prize on the line, contestants on “Alone”understandably give great thought and care into what limited items of gear they will bring with them into the wilderness.
While virtually all other participants on “Alone”invest in state-of-the-art technical outdoor gear, Woniya chose to make her own clothing. Her own clothing. To be the sole materials to stand between her body and the elements above the Arctic circle for more than ten weeks! She ingeniously knitted an oversized sweater fastened with buttons made of salt to have extra sodium as well as extra fibrous material and cordage available. She crafted at a feverish pace in the days leading up to the filming of the show to finish in time, and even then she had to bring a few pieces in her luggage that were only partially finished. But it isn’t just her creative ingenuity nor her dedicated work ethic that makes her decision to make her own clothes so special–it’s that she went against the mainstream methods and had confidence that the way she knows was the best way.
She continued with this mindset at production base camp where, after arriving and assessing the other participants, felt like she was clearly the “weird one” of the group (due to being the only one knitting a sweater for the show while listening to a lecture in one of their training sessions). But she didn’t mind being the weird one. She believed in her way of doing things.
This quality reared its head dramatically at the end of her stint on “Alone”when Woniya decided it was time for her to tap out and go home. Her time by Tu Nedhé (colonially known as Great Slave Lake) was over. She had been fearing that the production staff would remove her during a routine medical check due to her physical condition, and while she passed the exam, she had a feeling that the next med check could be her last. And so, rather than push her body past its natural limits, potentially impacting her physical health for the rest of her life, she chose to leave on her terms, forgoing the chance to win a half a million dollars in exchange for integrity, a belief in herself, and an acknowledgment that she had already given and received everything she needed in her time in the Arctic.
4. Social commentary on femininity, body shapes, food culture (both modern and ancient), capitalism
Never Alone is such a wonderful read in part because Woniya not only chronicles her experiences before, during, and after the show, but also she tells stories from her past which illuminate the wholeness of who she is.
At a time in her life, she was very opposed to anything overly feminine–glitzy jewelry, makeup, high heels, that sort of thing. Her strong feminist beliefs guided her to avoid and resent anything that the patriarchal world might reward for being some sort of archetypal, societally approved ideal woman (whatever that means). But by the time of her experience on “Alone,” her relationship with femininity had evolved. In one particularly jubilant lakeside dance party, she had transformed her scarf into a skirt and, despite the frigid Arctic temperatures, she insisted on wearing it, not out of some cultural obligation but because she wanted to genuinely celebrate sacred feminine energy, the energy that brought her to that point, the energy she channels in her softer, slower, more spiritual approach to life in the outdoors.
Another potent moment hit when Woniya was returning home and traveling through airport security. After a brief conversational exchange when Woniya mentioned to the security guard that she had just been in the wilderness and had lost a dangerous amount of weight, the guard replied “congratulations” to her weight loss. Woniya reflected, “Having just emerged from the most potent, extreme, and beautiful experience of my life, I’m both confounded and horrified by our society. My experience in the Arctic lifted a veil, revealing the fabricated reality we have built for ourselves and the damage it inflicts. Almost no one I have ever interacted with in the ‘real world’ actually understands the reality of survival or the true meaning of food. Congratulations for almost achieving total starvation? What is wrong with you people?”
As one might imagine after needing to nourish herself for weeks in the wild, Woniya’s perspective on food shifted. Literally every scrap of sustenance she consumed for 73 days was sourced from the wild. Not from the corner store. Not from a garden. Not from a refrigerator. Not even from a neighbor. One would see food from a new viewpoint after going through an experience like that, a perspective with more clarity, more significance, less influence from the modern world, perhaps even more… truth.
During her first days reintegrating back into the modern world, while she was in the checkout lane to buy greens at Safeway (because the co-op was closed), Woniya thought, “I’ve just come from the wilderness, where lack of food was slowly killing me. Now I’m surrounded by more calories than I could eat in my lifetime, and I’m absolutely horrified by it. All I can think is–this stuff is poison. It’s literally true. These calorie rich, nutrient poor, highly processed foods are the bane of our society. The vast majority of illnesses that so-called “civilized” people experience are due to overabundance of foods we were never meant to eat and lack of the daily activities and natural rhythms that characterized our ancestors’ lives. What would our world look like if we all knew the real value of food and gave our bodies only what would most nourish and fulfill us?”
Woniya concluded, “any day with food in it is a good day. Food is not something we are entitled to, and for most of human history, our ancestors had to work hard for it and often went with less than enough. Every time you sit down to a meal, remember to look at the food in front of you with tremendous gratitude, and know that you are, in fact, immensely wealthy.”
In the modern world, most of us rely on using the system of capitalism to make money to then spend on things that other people make. We make enormous trade-offs when participating in that system, trade-offs that affect not only our lives but the lives of others and the lives of future generations. Woniya’s unique viewpoint after having a survived for a few months outside of that system shines a light–”As long as humans require warmth, shelter, water, and food, our lives will depend on our ability to find them, and our credit cards won’t always be the answer. The beautiful thing is that this isn’t a liability–it’s an invitation to live a richer, more satisfying life that’s in tune with the cycles of the season and the natural world.”
5. Trusting in the universe and practicing magic
To survive in the wilderness for long, one must have a fairly deep understanding of science. The natural world often operates with predictable scientific systems. Plants and their effects on our bodies, the movement and behavioral patterns of animals, water purification, the cycles of sunlight, the tides, the combustion of wood… an adequate knowledge of the science behind these aspects of nature improves one’s ability to last longer in the outdoors.
These are things that can be studied. The science is documented. Books can be read. Workshops can be taken. The knowledge can be gained, all that one needs to apply is time.
There are other things that cannot be studied as much as they can be practiced.
More so than any other participant on “Alone,” Woniya believes and is connected to more than just animal tracking and shelter building. Woniya believes in magic.
One shining example of the type of magic Woniya practices came when she was building her shelter on season six. A particular tree was directly in the way of the place she wanted to expand her shelter. Rather than removing the tree, as most other survivalists would have done, Woniya quite literally asked the tree’s permission before cutting. And not only did she ask consent, but also she actually listenedfor and felt into an answer. While a previous similar tree had given her a clear ‘yes,’ she felt this one distinctly reply ‘no,’ so she inconvenienced herself to build around it. This would have been considered an “unwise” survival move because of the extra effort and calories it would use to build around this tree, not to mention the possibly “inferior” or “less ideal” shelter design, but time and time again her trust in her own intuition lead to magical events.
One such event was finding a tiny piece of metal in her cabin, which she repurposed into a valuable needle. This tiny piece of metal was found in the part of her cabin that would not have existed had she chopped down the tree that had spoken to her.
In two different instances she found arrows she had lost, and it was only because of preceding choices, moments of slowing down, of listening, and of connection that she had happened to be in those locations.
When she was preparing for the show and hustling to finish her clothing and packing, Woniya pushed it a little too close and ended up missing her flight to production check-in. At first, she was devastated, worried that she was compromising her chances at participating after all of this preparation. It turned out, however, to be a blessing because she would only miss the arrival day, the least important of all the pre-show days, and it gave her crucial extra hours to knit her unfinished pieces. So perhaps she didn’t push it too close and actually prepared in the exact way she needed to.
Does that kind of good fortune come from trust in the universe? From believing in magic? Is it luck? Coincidence? Does she create her own karma, manifest her own destiny?
Her openness to receiving what comes as a gift, as a sign, as magical does seem, as an objective observer, to lend credence to the argument that an openness to magic invites more magical moments into one’s life.
TAKEAWAY
Of everything Woniya shared about and demonstrated on her “Alone”journey, the thing that makes her stand out, the thing that makes her so memorable and unique, is her steadfast beliefs that things like connection, awe, and beauty are survival skills as equally important as knowing your knots, building a fire, and constructing your shelter.
This ancestral, holistic, spiritual, and more feminine approach to life in the wild is so striking because it seems counterintuitive to those who, like me, are steeped in modern western culture. How could dancing at sunset be just as or more crucial to survival above the Arctic circle than putting in extra time to build and insulate one’s shelter? How could toiling over making your own clothing be more beneficial than leveraging the advancements in manufacturing and textiles? How could giving away your precious food when you’re starving be a key to unlocking more time surviving alone?
Woniya’s life is all the proof we need to prove that all of these can be true.
MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM WONIYA’S FINAL REFLECTIONS
Here are a few words quoted directly from the end of Woniya’s book Never Alonewhen she’s condensing her key messages for the audience.
“There are few things as transformative as feeling seen and held by an intact wild place, merging with the natural world around you, and coming to see yourself not as separate but as an important and valued part of it–feeling a belonging so deep that there’s no such thing as loneliness.”
“When we listen deeply and engage with the world around us in a way that honors it and gives back, whether we’re in human company or not, we are, in fact, never alone.”
“We never know what we are capable of until it’s really all on the line. Rather than waiting for an experience [that pushes you as hard as I was pushed in the Arctic,] start believing now that you can achieve the staggering accomplishments of your wildest dreams.”
COMMENTS & REFLECTIONS
Are you a fan of Woniya Thibeault and the television show “Alone”?
What resonates with you about Woniya’s story?
Have you read other books, watched other shows, or know of other stories that followers of Woniya or “Alone”would enjoy?
After 38 years of orbiting the sun by way of the Great Lakes of North America (Canada 1985-1990, Wisconsin 1990-2003, Minnesota 2003-2023), I was getting ready to, for the first time in my life, leave the humble Upper Midwest and move to the tropics. And before I made that move, before I abandoned all the north has to offer–from its gorgeous summer lake life to its bountiful autumn harvests to its relentless, icy, bitter, frigid, ice scrapey, shovel-filled winters–I would journey with a friend to the one heralded nature spot in Minnesota I hadn’t yet visited in my 20 years in the North Star State, to the one place on the globe where my home of the last two decades and my birth country meet, to what could very well be my last expedition into the nature of the north – the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
It all started in the summer of 2022. I was with a friend, in a driveway, escaping the backyard chaos of a child’s birthday party for a few moments. The friend was Blake Sundeen. For the previous handful of years, Blake and I had been closer to the acquaintance side of the friendship spectrum, friends only because we share a close mutual friend. Lately, though, through a few conversations at social gatherings, I’d been feeling a stronger connection with Blake, a magnetism toward his energy, and I suspected the feeling was mutual. He was one of the few people I could nerd out with when talking about hiking, trails, nature, wildlife sightings, climate change, and sustainability. We seemed to share a similar outlook on these topics. And so, on that driveway, the idea emerged that we should do some sort of camping trip some time. How fun it would be to go romp around in the woods with someone else who felt as alive in nature as I do!
Once I get an idea that I’m excited about, I tend to go full steam ahead with the travel planning and coordination. This instance was no different. Just a couple months later in September 2022, we did go on a camping trip. We brought two other yahoos with us and ventured into a hike-in campsite at Cascade River State Park. It was fun. We hiked a long hike. Only one person did a late-night shaving of a piece of his finger with the axe while chopping wood. We had a good time.
Leaving that weekend at Cascade River, though, I did not feel satisfied. It wasn’t quite the wilderness experience I was hoping for. It was too easy, too comfortable. When I’d told my travel companions what I was planning for the long weekend menu–dehydrated meal packs for dinner (which are a camping luxury in my opinion), tea for breakfast, trail mix for lunch, and granola/protein bars to fill in the cracks–they didn’t say much, which I assumed meant everyone agreed with the plan. But when we arrived at the campsite and everyone unloaded their gear, I was disappointed to find the crew had vastly overcompensated for my minimalist meal plan by bringing a mass quantity of packaged, processed food. This alone gave the entire experience a cushy, glamping vibe that left me wanting more out of what could be my last nature experiences in Minnesota.
BOUNDARY WATERS
In the months that followed, Blake and I planned a trip to the Boundary Waters. Over egg foo young one day, we discussed some ground rules, a handful of expectations that we each had for the experience to be fulfilling for both of us:
It would be just the two of us
We will actually have a minimal food plan (especially since we’d have to carry everything)
We’d be gone for a total of five nights – first night at the outfitter and then the next four nights out in the wilderness.
We would go at the end of May, soon after the lake ice would melt, but hopefully before all the mosquitoes and lake flies would hatch. It might be chillier, but that was our available time window.
We’d set an ambitious route covering a lot of miles since we would be a lean and nimble crew of two, but we’d be flexible to make changes to the route depending on the conditions of the weather, our bodies, and our desires once we got out there.
Our entry point would be at Clearwater Lake in Zone 10, the Northeastern-most zone in the BWCA. From there, we would paddle further north and east through Mountain Lake and Moose Lake, two long lakes that touch both the United States and Canada. After that, we’d circle south and then west through a handful of other lakes to make it back to Clearwater Lake in five days.
The map we used on the journey.We put in at #62. The idea was to paddle east thru Clearwater, Mountain, and Moose, then turn around in Fowl Lake to return west thru either McFarland, Pine, and Caribou or East and West Pike Lakes.
Day 1 – Tuesday – Travel Day
Night one we spent at Clearwater Lodge. On the way up we stopped at a sporting goods store to purchase the cheapest fishing rods we could find. We arrived late at the lodge, and we accidentally squatted in a camper cabin because we couldn’t find the bunkhouse (the cheaper option we’d reserved) in the dark. The cabin was not made up for guests; the blankets were wrapped up in bags and there were some loose tools scattered about, but there were two beds and a roof, so it sufficed for a shelter.
The cabin we accidentally squatted in.
Day 2 – Wednesday – First Day of Paddling and Setting Up Camp
We paddled Clearwater Lake and almost all of Mountain Lake. Camp at night one was a bit of a disaster. We were both using hammock setups for sleeping. No tents. My genius packing idea was that I’d bring one regular tarp (for the ground or as an all-purpose item) as well as the rain fly from my tent, which I’d set up over my hammock. It keeps the rain off my tent, so of course it’ll keep the rain out of my hammock, right? Well, as I set up my sleeping rig I realized I broke one of the rules of wilderness survival–don’t let the first time you try your gear be when you’re out in the woods. The tent fly was not shaped as a simple rectangle; it had a custom shape meant specifically to fit the tent it came with. So, I got wet. So far, so good.
Day 3 – Thursday – Fishing in Moose Lake & The Luxor
After portaging and paddling into Moose Lake, we made a choice to stay in Moose Lake for the day. It was supposed to be one of the best fishing lakes in the entire Boundary Waters, and we’d just spent some dough to buy our amateur fishing gear, so we decided we’d have an easier, more luxurious day with a shorter paddle to make more time for fishing. We stopped at a campsite, unloaded, and then took the canoe back out to try our hand at fishing. An hour and several inlets later… no bites. No nibbles. Nada.
At camp, my sleeping situation was vastly improved with some tweaks–I realized the tent fly wasn’t going to work and started using my regular tarp, which worked much better. It started to rain as we sat around the fire, so Blake showed me how to prop up our other tarp over the fire using long tree limbs. Being able to stay out by the fire amidst a downpour felt so luxurious out in the wilderness we dubbed this campsite The Luxor.
Our only photo of “The Luxor.”
And while we didn’t see any moose around Moose Lake, we did have a friendly visitor join us late around the campfire, a large bunny we named Harold. (Get it?) He was massive and seemed to enjoy our company.
We had so much free time at this camp that Blake carved a functional bow and arrow.
Aiming at (and missing) a squirrel
Day 4 – Friday – The Day it All Went South. Or Was It West?
Choosing the shorter paddle day on Day 2 meant we were going to try to put some miles behind us on Day 3. We were charged up from The Luxor and ready to move. The plan was to paddle east into North Fowl and South Fowl Lakes, cut back in west to Royal River and Royal Lake, and then loop south into Little John Lake, then cruise through McFarland Lake, and make it to Pine Lake where we’d make camp at the first desirable campsite we’d see. It was an ambitious route covering a lot of distance, but after our more relaxed day at The Luxor, we had gas in the tank, and this way we’d be able to meander our way across the large Pine Lake on Saturday and take our time to choose a superb campsite for our last night in the woods.
Things started off well. It was a bit sad to tear down The Luxor, but I was already looking forward to recreating it, heck, maybe even upgrading it, at whatever campsite we’d choose next. I was now a champion of the Boundary Waters, ready to tackle anything.
Getting into North Fowl and South Fowl lakes, we noticed two things. One, we understood how those lakes got their names; all of a sudden there were flocks of birds everywhere! Two, I observed just how stark the difference is between a lake area that is protected by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and a lake area that is not. There were cabins clogging up the shoreline. My eyes were opened to just how wonderful it had been to be making our way through complete, undeveloped wilderness.
After the Fowl Lakes we successfully found and portaged into Royal River – the turnaround point of our expedition, the point where we’d stop going east, away from our entry point, and begin heading west back to our outfitter. We got into Royal Lake, which is essentially just a large opening in Royal River, and proceeded northwest where, after a portage, the river opens into John Lake.
Note the Fowl Lakes on the east and the point where Royal Lake and Royal River then allow you to loop back westward
As we geared up for the next paddle, we checked our map and saw that we would have only a short paddle west to get from the opening of Royal River into John Lake to the narrow passageway that leads to Little John Lake, where we’d dip south for the portage into Little John. We began paddling and hugged the left bank of the lake, which would lead us to that narrow passageway.
Now, we paddled for what felt like a short while to us and made it to the area that we thought was the narrow channel we were looking for. It had been our experience looking for the other portages thus far that they weren’t always easy to find. They aren’t well-marked. It’s the wilderness out there! You have to read the shape of the land, the topography as well as the directions on the map, in order to find where the likely portage spot is.
The water started getting shallow. Reeds and tall grasses were poking up from the water all around us. We paddled deeper into the shallows until we came to a spot that my brain said, “This must be the narrow passageway we’re looking for.” It was a little muddy ridge that stood in between one shallow pond and another shallow pond. This was a little different than the other portages we’d done, but hey, nature isn’t symmetrical everywhere, right? We called it the “No-portage Portage,” because all we had to do was hoist the canoe over this one-foot patch of mud and we were back in a shallow pool of water. Easiest portage ever!
After this point, though, the shallows didn’t lead anywhere. They didn’t open up into another beautiful blue lake. The water started getting even shallower. The tall grass was getting thicker. It was getting harder to paddle the canoe. At first I thought, “we must just need to trudge through this a bit more,” but from the back of the canoe, Blake said, “something doesn’t smell right.”
This moment was the first time it occurred to me that we might be somewhere other than where we thought we were.
We decided to go a little farther before making any bigger decisions, but this bog we were in was no joke. It was a full on bog – part land, part water, all trouble. We’d have to dismount and walk because the water was too shallow, and we’d be lugging the canoe through the mud and then… whoop!… one of our legs would get sucked 2-3 feet into the mud. It didn’t take much of this before we stopped and really looked at the map to figure out where we were.
Entering the bog of no return
It’s a scary feeling, not knowing where you are in the woods. After some theorizing back and forth over a period of about 15-20 minutes, we concluded that we must have missed the narrow channel into Little John Lake, paddled the entirety of John Lake, and ended up in the bog in the northwest corner of John Lake.
We meant to take the green route, but red is what we did
In a way, this felt like a relief. Even though we’d spent the better part of an hour muddling through this bog, now we “knew” where we were. At least, I felt like we knew, because we didn’t actually know for sure. We couldn’t Google it. But, assuming we were right, it would take another 20 minute slog to backtrack through the bog, and then another little bit to repaddle south on John Lake, but hey, in the matter of maybe one hour, we’d be back on our planned route, and we still had enough daylight to make it to Pine Lake and make camp before sunset. This plan of action seemed like a no-brainer to me.
Blake, on the other hand, saw our situation differently.
Blake didn’t see our path as a “wrong turn.” Blake did not want to “go back.” Blake saw this as an opportunity for us to put our outdoorsman skills to the test. He pointed out on the map that there is a portage between John Lake and East Pike Lake. If we could just hike our way to this portage, which we should have been pretty close to, then we’d be able to get into East Pike Lake and paddle west back to Clearwater Lodge through the Pike Lakes. While the plan made a shred of sense, what made much more sense to me was to backtrack. We knew the way. If we marched forward, since we didn’t know exactly where we were, we didn’t know exactly where to go.
He convinced me to go “just a little farther” to see if it would clear up, get easier. Hopefully we’d see the actual portage soon. So we’d lug the heavy canoe a ways, stop, check the map, I’d say something like, “let’s just turn around” and Blake would reply, “just a little farther.” After 3 or 4 times of this routine, my internal alarm bells really started going off. We were losing daylight and not making any progress. I told him, “This is it. If it doesn’t open up to a clear path in the next five minutes, we’re turning back.” He agreed. He knew he had pushed me to my limit and that our situation wasn’t looking that good.
But in that last little five minute stretch, it did appear to open up a bit. And so in that moment he made a believer out of me. We could do it. We could break another rule I’d learned about hiking through the woods, which is–don’t leave the trail.
Life presents us with these moments, these fateful forks in the road, the moments when you realize you’ve gone astray and you’ve diverted from your intended plan. Do you retreat and get back on course, or do you press onward? These moments set the course for the next minutes, hours, and days of your life. Little choices like french fries or onion rings we may think only impact our next few minutes, but some choices turn out to be big choices, and they affect your following days, weeks, years, and maybe even your whole life. Maybe all of our choices actually impact us in this way. Sometimes, though, you can feel the weight of a choice, where the downstream impact is so obvious and so colossal that you can tell–this is a big decision. This was one of those moments.
So we could turn back, or we could break this tried-and-true rule about not leaving the trail, and we’d be OK because we “knew” where we were and we knew where we wanted to go and the path ahead looked easy enough and we were two strong, competent dudes that could do it.
I agreed to proceed. From that point on, in my mind, there was no turning back.
Five minutes later, I wished we’d turned back.
The hours that followed were the most grueling, rugged, terrifying hours of my life.
Here’s what we were facing. First off, we were both wearing heavy packs; mine was the heavier one, because our system on the normal portages was that Blake would carry the canoe, so he had the lighter pack. We dubbed my pack “Big Bertha”–I don’t know for sure but she probably weighed around 100 pounds. In order to get to a standing position with Bertha on, I needed to either set her up on an elevated log (ideal) or I’d have to squat down on the ground, put the shoulder straps on, and then Blake would need to hoist me up.
So we have the heavy packs, and we also have a kevlar canoe with our fishing rods cinched down to the inside of the canoe rim. In this unofficial portage we were in, sometimes Blake would have the canoe by himself overhead, and sometimes he would grab the front and I would hold the back and we’d do more of a lift-and-drag maneuver. (Not exactly textbook portage technique.)
We were in the bottom of a sort of ravine, a shallow valley, with slopes climbing upward on either side. At the bottom of the valley were thick brambles, these tough, spindly sticks all intertwined, making them virtually impenetrable. They didn’t have leaves and they didn’t have thorns, but as Blake would push through them at the front of the canoe, they’d bend and flex and then hurtle back toward my face with lightning speed–WAP!
After some rough going through the brambles, we eyed the slope to our left. There weren’t nearly as many godforsaken brambles up there. It was, however, up. It turns out going uphill in the Minnesota wilderness with a canoe and a 100 pound pack on your back is not a walk in the park. If the path would have been open and clear, the hill might have been manageable, but the path was not open, there were trees everywhere. When you’re backpacking, trees in your way are not a huge problem; you simply walk around them. When you’re backpacking with a canoe, though, the game is changed. They didn’t tell us this at the outfitters, but I discovered a universal truth about canoes in those woods–canoes don’t bend. In order to move forward, we had to find angles through the dense forest where we could move 17 feet of canoe in one direction without running into a tree. Turning was terrible. Many times we’d have to hoist the canoe vertically in order to get it around one tree and then, seconds later, be doing the same maneuver in reverse because of the next maze of trees just feet ahead.
The ground underfoot? Terrifyingly treacherous. It was late May in northern Minnesota. The ice on the lakes had just melted two days before we arrived at Clearwater Lake, so while the lakes were thawed and paddleable, the floor of this densely shaded forest was not entirely thawed. Occasionally we had to traipse through snow. Now, I’ve lived with snow my whole life. I’ve done pretty much everything there is to do with snow, including walk on it. But this snow, this was some tricky, deceptive-ass snow, which we learned the hard way. I would be walking on dirt, and then I’d be walking on snow, and then with my next step I’d lose my whole leg into a hidden three-foot snowhole–poof! Stepping into invisible holes is not an activity I’d recommend while carrying 100 pounds on your back.
When we weren’t walking on and falling through snow, we also had to contend with unreliable, decaying, moss-covered fallen trees and logs that lay blocking our path. Often there was no other choice but to walk over them. The wet moss was extremely slippery, and every once in a while we’d be treated to the gift of trying to step on and over a downed tree only to have our feet plunge right through the dead wood. It felt like only a matter of time before one of us sprained an ankle or twisted a knee.
They say that when you’re in the wilderness you aren’t supposed to fight Mother Nature, you’re supposed to go with nature, to listen and observe the rhythms of your surroundings and use what’s available to your advantage.
That sentiment is nice and all, but this. Was. A. Battle. A trial. Tough Mudder ain’t go diddly on this.
We fought. We trudged. We fell. We dragged this poor canoe under, over, and between so many goddamn trees and plants. At one point I had to Army-crawl through the cold muck with Big Bertha on to get under an enormous fallen tree. It was exhausting. We dug deep and pressed agonizingly slowly onward.
We had to get to East Pike Lake. Were there times I was cursing Blake in my mind for putting us in this position? Obviously. Those moments were fleeting, though. There wasn’t time nor energy to ruminate. Plus, I had chosen this. I had ultimately agreed to continue, and I had adopted the mindset that there was truly no going back.
Eventually, battered, bruised, sweaty, and filthy, we got to a point where the sunlight was really fading quickly. We knew we weren’t going to make it to any lake before nightfall. I didn’t want to make camp in the dark, especially since we were in the middle of an unfamiliar woods without the false sense of security an actual campsite gives you. It was time to make camp.
Blake then had an idea. What if he ran ahead to scout out our path for the next day, while I stayed behind to set up camp?
[Zack Morris-style Time Out.] You know how in every horror movie that was ever made, everything’s going along fine until the band of merry friends has the brilliant idea to… drum roll please… separate?! Well that is exactly what was going through my head at that moment. Sure, there were some merits to the idea. It would be helpful to scout ahead and see if, in fact, we’re headed in the right direction and to know how much farther we had to go until we reached a lake. But at what cost? In a horror movie, is anything the protagonists are trying to gain by separating ever worth the cost of being alone? Literally zero times. [Zack Morris Mode over.]
So of course, moments later, Blake is bounding off into the woods with nothing but an empty water bag, a headlamp, and a compass, leaving me at our “campsite” at the bottom of a brambly, unwelcoming forest valley.
Most everyone is familiar with the “fight or flight” survival response we have in our reptilian brains when confronted with danger, but there is a third survival response we have ingrained in us as well–freeze. With Blake gone, I went into freeze. I couldn’t make camp. I couldn’t do anything. I needed my companion, but he wasn’t there. I noticed I was frozen, and at first I told myself it was because I didn’t want to set up camp in a way he’d disagree with, but actually, that wasn’t the truest truth. The truest truth was that I had never been in this situation before. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. How was I going to confront this actual survival situation?
I felt a wave of strong emotion swell. In hindsight, I am so thankful to have had some coaching and practice with emotions. I had some sense of what to do. I didn’t fight it. I let it in. I leaned into it. The emotion took over. I full-body bawled into the dense forest. No one was there to see me. I didn’t have to hide anything. All the tears and sobs and snot poured out of me. I tried to name the feelings. Fear. Anxiety. Worry. Uncertainty. They were all there. So many things could go wrong here.
The thought crossed my mind, “I could die in here.” These trees might be the last things I ever see. I may never see my kids again. I could feel the negative thought spiral swirl.
My meditation and gratitude practices kicked in then. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about dying. I’d already practiced that. And I’d also practiced noticing my thoughts and feelings, noticing them as an observer rather than as the “self” that is experiencing them. As the observer, I could then see how this despairing thought of imminent death could grip someone else in my situation, but it didn’t take hold of me.
As I reconnected to my breathing, the sobs started to subside, and I recognized the fear, and I asked the fear–what are you so afraid of? Death? Pain? Being alone? I realized that it was indeed the fear of dying that scared me most, the notion that this would be my last day alive on Earth. OK, so I’m afraid today will be my last day. Hold on a sec. I still have food, I still have water, and I have all of our camp and survival gear. It occured to me that even if I never see Blake again, even if something close to the worst case scenario does happen, today is not the day I’m going to die. A few days from now, that might be a different story, but as long as I don’t get eaten by a bear, I have a really good chance of surviving to tomorrow.
That’s the idea that snapped me out of freeze.
“What can I do to make this situation a little better?” I thought. To hopefully attract Blake, but if nothing else to give me comfort, every five minutes I blew my whistle as loud and as long as I could for an entire lungful, took a deep breath, and then yelled, “Blaaaaaaaaaaake!!!!!” until my breath ran out. Then, after that release, after giving my body a sense of, “I’ve done what I can do,” I continued slowly setting up our tarp ropes.
This routine carried on for what felt like an eternity, but realistically it went for probably 45-75 minutes or so. Eventually, as dusk was setting in, one of my whistle blows was responded to! “I’m comin’, Gip!” replied Blake from a distance. Minutes later he approached with a pep in his step, a bag full of water, and a huge grin on his face. “I found the lake,” he beamed as he held the bag of fresh water up high. His news of our whereabouts should’ve brought me a huge sense of relief, but what was more relieving was simply to have his company again.
I sheepishly admitted I had been mostly useless during his scouting mission, but he was unphased by this. As the temperature continued to drop, probably into the low 40s that night, we finished setting up camp, ate some warm food, hung the bear bag, and prayed no large mammals would get cozy with us as we tried to sleep fast.
I slept with my camping knife extra close that night.
Day 5 – Saturday – Emergence From The Void
We woke up with sun. And the frost. It was cold, but we had purpose. We packed up swiftly, donned our packs, and continued trudging with the canoe toward our newly decisive heading.
Immediately we were reminded how miserable this was. Just because we knew where to go didn’t make the maneuvering any easier. It was hard, slow going. I started wondering how many hours we’d still be in this godforsaken valley until we finally reached the water.
After some number of minutes of this heavy, frustrating toiling, somehow we came up with what turned out to be the most genius, brilliant, mood-shifting idea of the entire expedition thus far – the idea to double portage. This meant we would leave the canoe in a (hopefully) findable location and hike with only our packs until we reached the water’s edge. Once there, we could dump our packs, backtrack to retrieve the canoe, and then we’d be able to navigate through the hills and underbrush without 50-100 pounds on our backs. The choice wasn’t without its trade-offs; we had to make sure we’d be able to find the canoe, and we would have to walk the distance twice instead of once. It was another one of those weighty decision moments.
What an absolute game-changer that decision turned out to be. If only we’d thought of that earlier. But then again, if we’d been able to think of double portaging earlier, we would have. It took that amount of struggle in order for our brains to think outside the box and get creative with an alternative way forward.
From that point it felt like we practically flew through the woods, Blake leading the way down the path he had scouted, his footprints in the snow and mud formed the night before guiding us to glory.
We made it to East Pike Lake, first with the packs, and then with the canoe. A lake has never looked so beautiful in my entire life. But we weren’t out of the woods yet.
We were not at an official portage. We had bushwhacked. That meant that instead of crossing from one lake to the next at the lowest elevation point, we were up on a cliff. We had to get our bodies, packs, and the canoe down roughly 50 feet of drop-off with no discernible path to follow. Normally this would have terrified me, but now, after making it through what we’d just gone through, it just seemed like the next thing we had to do, the next task to complete. We shimmied and tacked down the ridge ever so delicately until we reached the water’s edge.
If I knew how to backflip, I would’ve done so at that moment.
The paddle westward across East Pike Lake was the most glorious canoe ride I have ever experienced. To be able to float and glide along the water after needing to bulldoze and carry, well, it felt like heaven.
Once we arrived at the portage into West Pike Lake, it seemed obvious to me that we would continue into West Pike, which would be the final lake we’d have to traverse before a final portage into Clearwater Lake, our destination. As you might expect by this point, Blake had other ideas.
“Take a look at the map,” he encouraged. (The only map we had left, mind you, because he had lost our other one.) “There’s another portage southward which gets us into Pine Lake, which connects to Caribou Lake!” Now, we had been told at the beginning of the trip by the outfitter that Caribou was one of the nicest lakes in the area, also good for fishing and that there was an interesting falls area somewhere nearby, so that’s why it was on Blake’s radar. The difference in routes, though, was that if we went through West Pike (my way), we’d only have one more portage, but if we went the Pine and Caribou route (Blake’s way), we’d have three more portages, and not only that, but the portage from East Pike to Pine was almost 400 rods long (400 canoe lengths) and rated a Level 10 out of 10. This portage was the farthest and the hardest of any other portage on our entire map, and Blake wanted us to choose it after all we’d been through.
So we did.
Green was the easy path. Red is what we did.
It was an incredible feeling, doing that portage. At the beginning of our trip, if we’d been confronted with this choice, there is zero chance I would have agreed to do the Level 10. But after bushwhacking through the wild, it honestly felt like child’s play. Sure it was far, and sure it had some tough terrain at parts, but it was still an actual trail. It felt like a treat to be able to schlep all of our stuff through an intentional, somewhat well-trodden path. I finished that portage feeling like a hero.
Rinsing off and feeling like a champion around 5pm after the Level 10 portage.
We paddled some more, the wind at our backs, and made camp around 8pm at the most gorgeous campsite ever created. OK, it was probably an average campsite, but in my eyes, with an open clearing with a fireplace, a nice flat rock leading down to the water I could walk barefoot on, and a sunset view over a gorgeous northern lake, it felt like a million dollar home. In fact, it felt so swanky, we dubbed our final camp setup “The Belaggio.”
Sunset view from Sat night camp
Me dancing around The Belaggio.
Day 6 – Sunday – Homeward Bound
We were still way up in the Boundary Waters, and I was supposed to be home for dinner Sunday night. We had some work to do, but our bodies needed some slow movement Sunday morning. We finally packed up and left The Belaggio around noon, and carried on toward Clearwater Lodge.
We attempted to find the falls around Caribou Lake that the outfitter had mentioned. No, there wasn’t a well-worn trail for us to take there. So we bushwhacked. Again. This time, though, without the canoe and our big packs, just a light pack for a final romp through the woods. We traversed a slope for some time, pushing our way through more brambles and thorns, until finding… a tiny little creek bed. Not quite the epic falls we were hoping for, but it felt good to tack on some extra difficulty to our already insane journey.
Resetting the body in a low squat after our last bushwhack and before our final paddle.
We portaged into Clearwater Lake, and as we paddled to the outfitter, a small motorized fishing boat was heading toward us. As they got closer, we realized it was the guy that works at the outfitter. He was looking for us! We were arriving at the lodge a bit later than expected, and Kristyn had called in to check on us. Had we made it to the lodge an hour earlier, I would’ve been able to call and let her know everything was alright, but alas, we didn’t make it in time for that. After the first wave of embarrassment passed, it actually felt nice to know that someone out there was keeping tabs on when we should’ve been emerging from the wild. I was sure she wouldn’t be pleased with our late arrival home, but I hoped that once she heard the story she’d be happy I was still alive. (She was.)
Victory pose
The Aftermath
When you spend time in the woods, away from screens and electricity and traffic, it changes your perspective. I’d experienced this before. This time, I’d not only camped–I’d had a wilderness survival experience. It definitely changed how I viewed the world in the days immediately following our expedition.
The first morning in my house, you would think I would’ve slept until noon, but no, I was up before the rest of my family, and I felt an immediate pull to go outside. I sat on our back deck, which faced a wooded wetland area, and sat down to meditate. The birds were chirping loudly, and typically when I would sit out here in the morning it would be the bird songs that would capture my attention. Not this morning. This time I immediately noticed how much louder the distant highway traffic noise sounded in the distance than it normally does. It was this foreign, man-made disturbance to nature’s common audio field that was catching my ear after having been subjected to nothing but nature’s auditory offerings for the past six days.
My body did need to recover that day, but one day of rest was all my body was interested in. The next day I filled up my 60 liter pack with pointless stuff, I just wanted to get some weight into it, and I went out to the hiking trails behind our house to run hills, all before breakfast. This is not something I was doing prior to the Boundary Waters, but after what I’d just gone through, it felt easy. Normal. Like what I was supposed to be doing. I’m sure I looked like a nutcase to the casual walkers I passed by.
I felt like reading or listening to podcasts didn’t interest me. I didn’t need any more “new” in. I had just been living a life of… being alive. I had just touched some deeper truths, some realer version of the real world.
I felt more like a human. Like those of the generations before me who didn’t have GPS, the internet, and all this high-tech survival gear. I could feel the beautiful balance in my body from rowing the canoe in a seated position to rucking around with a heavy pack in the portages. As soon as I was really feeling ready to stop paddling, it would be time to portage again, and vice versa. Every change was welcome. I actually felt in my bones a taste of what it must’ve felt like for the people who first explored and inhabited these lakelands.
And, in the days after my return, I had a newfound love of the simplest things in our home, like our refrigerator and the miracle of a working faucet.
A FEW LEARNINGS
These were the top lessons I take with me from my time in the Boundary Waters:
If you’re gonna whack some bush, wear gloves. Your hands will take the most beating.
If you don’t have gloves and you have a free hand, you can use hold a large water bottle or a large carabiner to push brush out of the way so your hands don’t have to do all the dirty work.
If a portage is too intense, you can always drop the canoe and double portage.
Doing really hard things sucks in the moment and feels really damn good afterwards.
I know more than I think I know.
I know how to pick a good campsite in the wild.
I know how to burn wet wood.
I know how to ration water.
I know how to read a topographical map.
I know how to read the land and find the pathiest paths.
Most of all, the biggest life lesson I learned was this:
There is no such thing as a “bad decision”–there are only trade-offs.
All the choices we made on this journey, whether to paddle to the next lake or not, whether to take this route or that one, whether to have a relaxing day to fish or move some extra miles, whether to retrace our steps or venture onward into the unknown… whichever way we chose would work out. There wasn’t a “right” decision and a “wrong” decision. It all comes down to trade-offs. If we choose to take it easy and fish, it means we have to paddle more the next day, but we have a chance at grilling up some tasty lake trout that evening. If we skip the fishing, no chance at lake trout, but we have easier paddling each day. Neither option was wrong.
This insight sticks with me. It relieves the pressure of decision-making, removing the idea that if I just analyze my options a little bit more I will uncover which one is the best, most perfect, most right choice. It’s not about getting it “right.”
It’s about doing my best with what I know at the time, accepting whatever comes after, leaving the rest behind, and knowing that I can always make another choice in the next moment.
I always thought they called it the “Boundary Waters” because it’s on the boundary between the United States and Canadian borders.
Now I believe it’s because it’s a place where one can to go expand their boundaries. I know I did.
I kicked off this week by making a brand new recipe for my beloved Kristyn’s birthday.
Our favorite restaurant in the Twin Cities is Bar La Grassa. It’s a hip Italian joint in the trendy North Loop neighborhood in Downtown Minneapolis, and everything about this place is spectacular: the craft cocktails, the entire menu section dedicated to bruschetta, the mouth-watering entrees, the housemade pasta… it’s all just so damned good. Kristyn has enjoyed their Gnocchi with Cauliflower & Orange in the past, and our neighbor so graciously mentioned that she’d found this recipe from a Minnesota food blogger who created a make-at-home version.
And so, in a fashion not unlike one of our first dates, where I first had Kristyn over to my place and made her fettuccine alfredo, I rolled up my sleeves and did my best Bar La Grassa impression, gnocchi-style, complete with a couple of bourbon old fashioned’s.
The dish turned out absolutely delectable. What really stood out about this evening, though, was not the lip-smacking tastiness of my concoction, but instead it was the deliciousness of the vibe we created in our home. Italian guitar strumming through the speaker. Candles flickering on the table. Cabernet in our glasses. Our kids were so into the peacefulness of the setting that, when we were done eating, they allowed Kristyn and I the space and time to slow dance in our family room while they busied themselves with their winter capes we’d just dug out of storage. It was a Monday evening as parents in the suburbs, but it felt like a Friday night on the town. These little touches made the evening feel special, indulgent. Even though it was my life, it felt like I had entered a nicer, higher plane of existence reserved for celebrities and royalty. It was an ordinary Monday made extraordinary with the addition of just two potent ingredients: effort and novelty. That’s really all it takes to keep life spicy. We can induce the pleasure of novelty simply by applying a little effort to find or create newness with the things we already have.
Side note: if you try to make the Cauliflower Gnocchi recipe (which I heartily encourage you to do), use two pans, not one, so you can sauté the gnocchi separate from the cauliflower and shallot, and double the butter. I audibled both of these decisions while making it, and was very happy with both of those choices.
THE FORMULA OF NON-FICTION BOOKS
This week I finished Gretchen Rubin’s book Better Than Before, a book about habits. I’m very curious about the power of habits, and this book offers a multitude of insights on the topic. One of the bigger takeaways of the book is that habit formation is an individual endeavor and that one approach will not work for everyone. We each have different tendencies (based on our life experiences and genetic dispositions), and only based on our unique tendencies (such as how we respond to inner expectations versus external expectations) will a particular approach to habit creation be successful.
One of the habits I’m forming with fairly reasonable success is to take notes of books (and podcasts) as I consume them. Rather than reading an educational book or listening to an insightful conversation and then letting the knowledge slip out of my mind as I make room for the next content, I slow down and take notes I can reference later. Of course, the process of writing the notes down is often enough to cement the idea into my brain more permanently. These notes sometimes turn into mini book reports that I publish on this blog, like The Most Important Lessons from “10% Happier” or Lessons From “Into The Wild” by Jon Krakauer.
As I was wrapping up my notes on Better Than Before, I noticed a pattern, a sort of formula with books, specifically non-fiction books in the self-improvement realm. The formula goes like this:
Pick a topic you’re curious about –>
Research the crap out of it, which includes: reading tons, talking to friends, and interviewing experts –>
Document everything as it unfolds –>
Observe connections or patterns that emerge –>
Map out or define these connections or patterns in some sort of diagram, flow chart, table, list, or framework, and –>
BOOM, there’s your book
(Plus, you know, writing 50,000 or 100,000 words in a compelling, expertly crafted, and easy to digest way)
While it may sound a bit obvious (as I read what I just wrote above), this noticing felt like a revelation to me. All of these self-improvement books I’m reading share a common thread – they all have their own sort of framework that the author has “created” (although some authors note they haven’t created anything per se, they have simply noticed and documented something that was already there). In Katy Bowman’s book Move Your DNA, she shares a Venn Diagram she created with a large circle titled “Movement” and within it, a smaller circle labeled “Exercise,” explaining the paradigm embedded in the book’s thesis–we are too focused on exercise routines and are ignoring the much larger picture of body movement that affects every cell in our body every moment of every day. In Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the framework he put together is so obvious it’s the title of the book!
In the case of Better Than Before, one of Rubin’s frameworks is the Four Tendencies, where she groups every person into one of four buckets, based on how they respond to inner and outer expectations: Upholder (serves inner and outer), Questioner (serves inner, rejects outer), Obliger (serves outer, rejects inner), and Rebel (rejects inner and outer). She capitalizes each of these tendencies as if they are proper nouns with the same credibility and “properness” as Christmas or Egypt, even though this idea of labeling these tendencies was just a notion she came up with during the research phase of this writing project. Yet, as a reader, I noticed myself reading these labels and this framework as truth, as fact; a smart person wrote this well-researched book and is capitalizing these terms, so this must be the way things are.
Noticing patterns and creating useful frameworks and lenses to view the world through is the helpful work authors contribute to the world. It’s what transforms an idea into a useful idea. It’s what takes reams of research and converts the findings into something one can internalize. I feel like I have now noticed a pattern in how authors notice patterns, and it feels like I’ve just accessed a cheat code on how to write a useful book.
Now the question is–do I have the courage and the discipline to play the game in which I can use my new cheat code?
MONITORING MY BEHAVIORS
When I started training for a marathon in 2020, I stole an idea I’d seen a friend posting about on Facebook; I created a simple spreadsheet to track how many miles I ran every day. I also used the Nike Run Club app to track my miles, but apps come and go (I’ve since switched to Strava), but no matter what mile tracker app I use, my spreadsheet never changes. I found tracking my miles in this way to be extremely useful and also rather enjoyable. I’m not claiming this method will work for everyone, because not everyone shares my tendencies, but I really enjoyed having a numerical and visual account of how my weekly and monthly mileages were progressing. I was motivated by beating my previous week and by seeing my monthly miles stack up over time. I don’t know if I would have been able to complete a marathon without this system of monitoring my quantitative progress.
This week, I returned to this idea, except I’m no longer training for a marathon. Instead, I’ve started tracking other behaviors, other practices I have decided are the practices that align with my values, that I believe in, that I want to hold myself accountable to practicing on a weekly basis. I created two separate worksheets: Mind and Body. For both of these, I’ve decided to use the measurement unit of minutes–the number of minutes I spend doing the practice each day.
On the Mind worksheet, I’m tracking: Meditation, Spanish, and Music. I considered adding Writing, because it is a Mind exercise I’m deeply interested in practicing, but I’m jotting down notes so often throughout the day, it would be too cumbersome to track.
On the Body worksheet, I’m tracking: Strength, Cardio, Yoga, and Being Outside. I’m not training for any particular physical endeavor. I am interested in developing a body that is well-adapted to a natural life over the long term, minimizing potential for injuries and maximizing healthy longevity. With what I’ve been learning about the body and movement from people like Tony Riddle and Katy Bowman, I believe that a variety of movement practices is the key to achieving my body goals, so I’ve set up a rotation of dedicated exercise practice six days a week with the following cadence: Strength, Yoga, Cardio, Strength, Yoga, Cardio, Rest. I included Being Outside on my Body tracker, because it is just so freaking nourishing to be outside, so regardless of whether I’m running, walking, hiking, playing with my kids, or sitting under a tree, I’m going to monitor how many of my daily minutes I’m spending immersed in nature.
Time is our most limited resource. What gets monitored gets done. My intention is that by monitoring the behaviors I most want to develop into habits, I’ll have the same excitement and motivation that I did when tracking marathon miles, and eventually I’ll be living a life in perfect harmony with my aspirations. (At which point, I’ll probably change the goals again, ha!)
Probably not so coincidentally, as soon as I finished making this tracker, I felt compelled to go for a walk outside. I hiked around the trails at Westwood Nature Center in St. Louis Park, MN, and it felt invigorating. It was a cold day. I saw two other humans. I saw many deer hunkered down, turkeys squabbling, squirrels scavenging acorns, and pileated woodpeckers hacking away to prepare for winter. I felt more alive being in the midst of all these creatures working hard at their own survival.
Pileated woodpecker adding some sonic ambiance to my woodland stroll
THANK YOU TO WRITERS
This week I also started and finished the book The Year of Less by Cait Flanders, a memoir in which Flanders shares her journey of detaching from the habit of mindless shopping and consumerism. I’ve always been skeptical when people would claim to finish a book in a day or three. I’m a slow reader. But this book was a fast one for me. Upon finishing it, I felt compelled to send Cait a quick email. I wanted to thank her for writing the book, to thank her for the value I got from it (I hadn’t really considered making “internet friends” with similar interests until she mentioned meaningful relationships she’d made that way), and, more than that, I wanted to share how I related to her on several levels, to lob a hook into the water that I feel like a kindred spirit and am open to connecting more deeply than as just a reader of her book.
I then remembered hearing Dan Harris share on his podcast that one of the ways he first got into relationship with Dr. Mark Epstein was by reading his book and then reaching out to Epstein to set up a call, which Epstein agreed to.
Eureka! This gave me the idea to write the author of every book I read, as long as they are living, and thank them for the book. I don’t necessarily aspire to meet and become friends with all of these others, but as someone who’s dabbling in this whole writing business, I know how hard it is to put words down, so the very least I can do is to thank them for their effort. It feels karmically right. Plus, I’ve been in sales my whole career. I know how to do successful cold outreach, and that’s when I was peddling every business owner’s least favorite expense–advertising. It can’t be harder to write someone a thank you note. What’s the worst that can happen?
I started this new gratitude practice with Cait Flanders, and I’m looking forward to continuing this tiny way of giving back to my writer teachers out there.
I started out this week like I have many other weeks of sabbatical–feeling aimless. Many Monday’s I will make a list of what I want to do that day and that week, and I will look at the list and feel like I have a lot to do, and I will not know where to begin. I’ve tried many productivity apps and journaling systems, but try what I may, I often get a feeling of Monday Doom: so much to do, so little time, clueless where to begin.
Luckily for me, I have a life partner who listens, holds space for me, and allows me to process thoughts through conversation. It’s incredible how useful it can be to externalize my thoughts with another person; so often the act of putting my thoughts into words that are cohesive enough for someone else to understand reveals the answers to my questions without the other person needing to say anything. In a Monday morning conversation with Kristyn, I was able to see that I know I don’t ever want to have a “job” again, a job where someone else is in control of how I spend my day. Therefore, if my plan is not to jump into some preset system but instead to forge my own path, then of course it’s going to feel aimless because I am creating the aim as I go.
This realization brought me some relief; however, it also made me consider the following–how can I carve out a custom existence for myself without completely reinventing the wheel? How can I make this easier? Who can I model myself after? There clearly are other humans who have exited the traditional workforce and embarked on a less traditional, less linear path. And I do have some role models, but none that I want to emulate entirely. This line of thinking launched me into a vortex of studying the online presences of some of my role models, to really study how they present themselves and market themselves to the world. I started bookmarking and screenshotting websites like crazy. I subscribed to email newsletters. I worked on building up a picture of what my ideal lifestyle design really is. What do I like about the work other people have done? What gap do I see in all of their collective work, what questions have been left unanswered that I want to devote myself to? What am I uniquely positioned to do in this world, that my unique combination of skills, experiences, and interests will best serve the greatest good? How does one answer questions like this??
Surprise surprise… I went for a hike to process. During this hour-long walk, I left myself a ten-minute Voice Memo. The following mental downloads came to me.
I may have these exact details wrong, but I liked how in the book Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin tells the story of her friend who wanted to write a book, and to form the habit she scheduled the time from 11am-1pm every day to be dedicated to writing. The power of Scheduling helped her form this habit. Three years later, her book was done. I love this! I love this use of time, this way of harnessing the power of the long term to one’s advantage. Over time, if I do small, incremental actions consistently, big things get done, big change can happen. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I want to have confidence of what my vision is and where I’m headed, so that I can be laying down meaningful daily bricks toward building my own Rome. I’ve learned (from many sources including The Dalai Lama, Carmen Spagnola via Kristyn, and various guests of the Ten Percent Happier podcast) not to have too much attachment to the end result, not to be focused on completing my “Rome” to some precise specifications. But, I do believe in the power of the strategy of small practices and actions done consistently over a long period of time, and it would sure be nice to have a concrete direction for my actions. For example, if my vision was to become a professional beach volleyball player, then it would very easily become clear that my daily practices need to include a ton of physical exercise, strength training, sand workouts, and the like, as well as a focus on nutrition and on studying the game. When my vision was to complete a marathon, it became crystal clear that I needed a plan, a roadmap of weekly mileage recommendations, to get me across that finish line. I followed this 16-week plan from Runners World, scheduled all the runs in my Google Calendar, ardently followed the plan as best I could (with a few adaptations along the way for the inevitable curve balls of life that arose), and presto–I ran a marathon.
I know I don’t want a “traditional job” ever again. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what I do want. I’ve learned about myself enough over the past six months to know there are certain activities that are largely energy-giving to me (hiking on trails, making music, writing, playing with my kids, cooking a tasty meal, meditating, yoga, volleyball…), but I haven’t been trying to string them together in any productive, career-oriented way. So far, it’s been more about experimenting with different practices and behaviors and taking note of which ones feel right, resonant, important. I have been intentionally not thinking too far ahead, not worrying about practicality, profitability, or perfection, and instead drawing my focused inward, to the present. But, much like how the decision we made 4 years ago to move to Costa Rica made a lot of other decisions along the way more clear (knowing how important Spanish immersion school was, knowing we’d be changing employment, knowing whether or not a certain repair on the home would be worth it since we knew our move-out date…), I am wanting another hit of the clarity that comes from commitment to a direction.
I then recalled what I had seen on the websites of Spring Washam, Oren Sofer, Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, Shawnell Miller, and others who are their own business, and noticed something in my mind’s eye; when you condense your life into a Navigation Bar, you are forced to pick a just a handful of words that you live by, a few choice labels you want your essence to be about. I had seen words like: Author, Books, Podcast, Newsletter, Blog, Speaking, Courses, App, Group/Club, Events. These words aren’t personal value words–those are a different set of words to live by. NavBar words can help act as useful containers for one’s work. I don’t want to simply exist and be content with stillness only. I want to do my part to make the world a better place, to make my life’s work meaningful, and to make sure I give back to the planet more than I’ve taken before I die. I want to work. I want to try. And at some point, if I’m going to find water by digging a well, I just have to pick a spot, start digging, and keep digging.
What spots am I going to pick to do my digging?
What kind of work do I want to devote myself to?
What do I want my words to be on the top of KevinCarlow.com?
What words do I want to hang my hat on?
And then it hit me, this idea and felt sense of being my authentic self, of living a life that I’m so confident in and unashamed of that I’m OK with it being public, that I’m OK with sharing it. A public way of living where I know I’m genuine and that I’m not being a fraud (by, for example, talking about how great being vegetarian is but then eating a bunch of meat myself, or by inwardly despising advertising but making my living from the industry anyway). If I hold that thought, of being so authentically me that I have no shame of being public with it because I am always just being me… that level of honesty, that’s what’s going to get me there.
I walked with this idea for a bit, and then I noticed a particular tree situated twenty feet above on the uphill side of the trail. One of its thicker branches was shaped with a natural hammock-like parabola to it, and this thick branch extended outward from the trunk at an easily mountable height of four feet off the ground. I marched up to it, climbed in, positioned my mittens under my tailbone, laid my head back, and immediately a sense of ease and peace washed over me as I gazed up at a sparse winter canopy and the bright blue sky beyond.
I then uttered, “I’m now lying in a tree and looking up at the sky. And I think I need to give myself permission to write. That is what I’m holding myself back from. To ask for and to give permission to take large chunks of hours to indulge in my interest of writing. To muster the courage to write the piece about leaving Corporate America, about leaving a successful career and why. It’s time to write that. It’s time to write the harder stuff.”
Answers arriving in a Tree Hammock
After a while I got down from my tree branch cot and, as I reached the wide open lowland area that sits right at the intersection of the narrow path that leads back to my neighborhood, I concluded the walk like this:
“And now I’m sitting here in a squat, gazing toward the setting sun (ridiculous that it’s this close to the horizon at 2:34pm), and I’m reminded of the balance of accepting that the way things are right now is totally fine. There’s so much peace and joy of sinking into… now. Today is great as it is. I don’t need to worry too much about building toward some big outcome, some epic destination. Kristyn mentioned earlier that everything I was talking about this morning was outcome-based. She’s right. I have a lot of conditioning and training from the business world about focusing on outcomes. So as I’m squatting here in my hiking boots, sinking into the soft, squishy earth of dying leaves and wet soil, I want also to sink into having a dream day, today. Whatever that means for today… going to bed with the feeling of completeness, of wholeness. That I turned over some stones today, and that the stones I left unturned were left so intentionally, mindfully. Today was not the day to turn over those stones. And that’s OK.”
TUESDAY
Morning meditations are starting to feel less like something I have to make myself do and more like something I just do. I went to bed before 10pm last night, and this morning I woke up at exactly 6:00 with no alarm (I’ve been setting my alarm for 6:15 and groggily waking up). I now have some extra time before the kids get up, and I’ve already done some stretches and am now writing this!
I followed up on yesterday’s contemplations by revisiting some of the websites of people I like. I made my way to Gretchen Rubin’s homepage, and BAM! Her opening line hit me like a ton of bricks. The featured sentence on her homepage reads, “We can accept ourselves and also expect more from ourselves.” I’ve examined the paradox between ambition and acceptance many times, and seeing this on her site gave me a conflicting sense of validation mixed with hopelessness. In a way, I feel validated that a successful author shares in my focus on this topic, on its importance. It makes me feel more connected to her and that perhaps I am onto something significant if a successful writer is also intrinsically intrigued by this yin and yang of contentment and striving. But it also makes me feel hopeless. Who am I to attempt to do anything valuable in a realm that’s already been explored by experts, by wiser, more knowledgeable, more skilled people? Who am I to write, to blog, to podcast, to create my own newsletter? Will I really be able to create anything so valuable that the world is truly better off because of my creation, as opposed to if I’d dedicated all that time to planting trees or whatever else? Ugh.
CONNECTION TO NATURE
On Friday I convinced my kid that was home from school to strap on the winter gear and head out to the snowy woods. Getting children out the door during Minnesota winters is a massive struggle, moreso with a highly sensitive child that doesn’t enjoy the feeling of snow pants and walking around in large, thick boots (especially when the destination is a “boring hike” and not sledding with the neighbor kids), but once we got going and started noticing nature’s interesting gifts, she quickly forgot about the comfort level of the snow gear.
As we got to the very end of the small trail, the very first reasonable checkpoint to turn around and return home (which is as far as I could convince my kid to go), we came upon a most peculiar sight. About 5.5 feet off the ground hung the rear portion of a rabbit carcass, skewered onto a sapling. We discussed how it might have gotten there, and we couldn’t come up with any definitive theory. We were flummoxed.
Upon returning home, my child wasted no time telling Kristyn what we had discovered. It was a most unusual sighting, after all. Kristyn, in return, wasted no time with her response to this news. Without hesitation, in supremely witch-like fashion, Kristyn’s response to learning of a skewered rabbit carcass within walking distance of our house was–we need to get that rabbit’s foot.
The back half of a rabbit just hanging around
Armed with some latex gloves and a tree trimmer, Kristyn bounded away from the house with the fervor and pace of a Black Friday shopper hellbent on beating everyone else to the best deals in town. She retrieved the foot, began the curing process, and traipsed back into the snowy lowland area behind our house to place the remaining bits in an area more easily accessible to the wildlife and the worms. Our child was understandably uneasy throughout this process, it being her first encounter with dead animal bits up close, but she fed off our energy and was curiously asking questions, and once the foot was sealed in a mason jar of isopropyl alcohol, she made sure it was placed in a location she and her sister would be able to look at it.
My experience throughout this whole ordeal was one of gratitude and of most pleasant surprise. I was thankful to myself and to my kid that we went through the painstaking process of gearing up to get outside, enjoy the fresh air, and move our bodies along the snowy path that led us to the rabbit remains. And, moreso, I was so pleasantly surprised by Kristyn’s reaction to the situation. The idea had crossed my mind that “hey, rabbit’s feet are lucky, and we just found one,” but I did not consider actually retrieving it. Kristyn had never done anything like this before, but she acted as if we had just found a pot of gold and decided to leave it out in the woods. I was proud to watch her so highly value an opportunity to gain more connection to the land around us. It’s fun being married to a witch.
It’s Thanksgiving week! While the traditional American Thanksgiving spread has been a long-standing favorite meal of mine, the holiday had some extra significance this year, for a few reasons. For starters, I volunteered to prepare four of the side dishes for our extended family of ten. I offered this up because… it felt right. My mother in law was still rehabilitating her broken leg from a car accident a few weeks prior. I’m currently unemployed. I enjoy cooking. I love the combination of mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and cranberries (and whatever else is on the table). So, I scooted out to the store on Monday to gather supplies and beat the last-minute rush on green beans and the like.
Prepping mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, and cornbread casserole the day before Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving this year also felt significant because I wrote a sort of prayer to be shared before the feast. I had never done this before, and I was nervous about actually saying the words out loud. The idea came to me, as many of my ideas do, on a hiking trail. I have never identified as a religious person nor as a spiritual person, but lately I have been uncovering a more spiritual side to myself, a side that is open to and invites in the notions of prayer, of contemplative practice, of the possibility of energies unseen, of the possibilities of ancestral spirits being accessible to us, if we allow them in. And so, while I was hiking around and considering what my ideal November would look like, I thought about Thanksgiving, and this family gathering felt important to me. This is also around the time of year that my partner’s father died when she was a child, so Thanksgiving has always had an extra significance, an extra weight to it, ever since I joined the Moravetz tribe. In Thanksgiving’s past, we would typically share in a brief, uncomfortable (for me), semi-automatic Grace, the same Grace (I learned) that my partner and her family would say around the dinner table as a kid. It always felt a bit awkward to me, since this was the only meal of the year where Grace would be said, and it was rather abruptly hopped into and hopped out of, and then we carried on. As the years have gone on and our family has grown with the addition of little ones, getting everyone together, at the table, waiting to eat, and attentive for a moment of unity had drifted away from the routine.
After reading Thubten Chodron’s The Compassionate Kitchen, in which she describes in great detail the rituals around food practiced at her Buddhist abbey in Newport, WA (where the only food that’s consumed is the food that is donated), I had been contemplating my own consumption practices. How mindful am I when I cook? When I eat? Am I happy with my relationship to my food? My big takeaway from this book was a newfound interest in the following notion: taking a moment before eating the food on my plate to stop and to think about and appreciate the food, its source, how it made its way to me, and how it will nourish me. For me, for now, it doesn’t have to be an elaborate series of prescribed verses or have any level of formality to it; I just want to have a more consistent state of mindfulness in the moments before and while I nourish myself.
Applying this concept to a Thanksgiving prayer, I spoke the following words into my Voice Memos while hiking, and I later transcribed them so I could read them for my family at the table:
PRAYER OF THANKS Let us give thanks for togetherness, for the privilege and the great fortune of being able to gather as a family. As a healthy, mostly functional family. This gift of life that we all enjoy is amplified especially when we share in that life, together.
We express our gratitude to have so much. To have the resources to enjoy such a magnificent feast. We give thanks to everyone and everything involved in bringing this nourishing food to our table: To the farmers who grew the crops, to the workers who transported, organized, and distributed the food to us, to the bird and the pig which gave their lives to sustain ours. to all of you, we give thanks.
Let us celebrate this Thanksgiving holiday as did our ancestors. Not our colonial American predecessors, but our far reaching ancestors, who would celebrate the fall harvest and its bounty with an expression of togetherness, of sharing, of generosity, and of gratitude. Let us hold their spirit in our hearts, and let us carry forward their spirits for future generations.
May we also hold space in our hearts for those who are not here with us tonight. May this family continue to grow in its ability and skill of creating space for sadness and grief. To find comfort in the discomfort of loss, or the discomfort of anything really. the presence of those not here in body is still felt in mind and heart, and so long as we tell their stories, remember their stories, they are not gone. Even though their bodies may have returned to the earth, their spirit lives on through us.
I’d like to give a special thanks for (my mother in law), who, when she was our age, when she was growing up and raising her family, worked her ass off, saved and invested prudently, and positioned her family and descendants to have more easeful lives than she had. That type of forward thinking, a down the line sacrifice that has no immediate pay off… it’s something special. And so to you, we give thanks.
May our lives be filled with joy and compassion for ourselves and for others, today, and every day.
Cheers to family!
—
When the moment came, when we were all sitting down and it felt as good a time as any to announce that I had some words to say, I could feel a nervous anxiety spike within me. It was like that moment in karaoke when your name is called, it’s your turn to sing, and you have to make your way to the microphone and wait until the music kicks in. There were these pivotal few seconds where I sat at the table, with my hand holding my phone under the table, having a frantic mental debate with myself. “Am I really going to do this? What if it’s too long? What if the kids interrupt me? Am I doing this for me to show off my writing, or do I actually believe it will bring the family closer together and model the behavior I wish for our family? People have already started eating; did I miss my moment?” And with one deep belly breath, I shut off the mental chatter and announced that I had written a little something that I wanted to share.
It was much harder to get the words out than I had anticipated. I’d already spoken these words once into my Voice Memos with no problem; why was it so hard to get them out now? I found myself getting choked up in the throat and hot in the face, even at the “easy” parts of the prayer. Nerves. I’ve gotten this way before, and I realize now that it happens most often when I actually deeply care about what it is I’m saying. I could read some sort of written verse to an audience of 1,000 people, but when it comes to heartfelt, meaningful words that I’ve written, and it was to an audience of the people I care about most… woof! Much harder. I did manage to get through it, though, and afterward I felt proud and relieved. I think my family was relieved too, relieved they could stop letting their food get cold.
I want to continue doing things I believe in, no matter how hard they are to do.
I DON’T ENJOY THE OUTDOORS; I NEED IT
On Tuesday of this week, I was really having an existential start to my day. “Existential crisis” is too big of a phrase, but the internal struggles I was having felt existential for sure. It’s like my mind is a big soup pot. I’ve been throwing all of these inputs into the pot – Tony Riddle‘s inspiring barefoot runs and natural lifestyle, the Minimalists on the Ten Percent Happier podcast talking about getting rid of the stuff that doesn’t bring you joy or have a purpose, working on decluttering our own house and the umpteen steps it’s going to take to move to Costa Rica, meditating and watching my own thoughts, talking with a financial advisor about how we’re investing, managing, and donating our money, countless conversations with my partner about her learnings and about our shared trajectory – and I’m having a hard time seeing clearly through the mind soup and envisioning my actual ideal existence for right now, today.
I contemplate about this often, and there are times where it continues to elude me. It’s typically the abundance of choice that gets to me. There are so many “could’s” with how I could spend my time. Where to start? What to do now? I’m often seeking for the “right” answer to this question. I’ve learned that when I get lost or stuck or overwhelmed, it’s time to change things up and move my body.
Piggybacking on what I’d been reminded of by listening to The Minimalists, I picked one room in our house to look for stuff to get rid of and ended up grabbing 15 junk items to dispose of. Immediately I felt a little bit better, one half-inch farther down the path of decluttering our lives. After this, I went out for a walk in the snow and sun in 35 degree temps. It’s becoming more and more evident to me that I don’t just like hiking and walking around outside; I need it.
I get so many mental downloads from the practice of walking around in nature and focusing on: mindfulness, mindful breathing, mindful steps, mindful listening. Amós Rodriguez, one of the participants on the show Alone, taught me that “my sphere of disturbance should be smaller than me sphere of awareness.” I think about this often as I make my way through the woods. The nature, the movement, and the absence of distraction clear my head, and so often do I get zapped with an “aha moment” from my own inner voice: new thoughts for what I now am almost certain is going to become a podcast, answers to my various relationship anxieties, realizations about questions I’m pondering, they all just… appear. On this particular walk, I enjoyed the cycle of walking, actively clearing the mind, getting inevitably zapped by an insight, stopping to squat and write it down or voice memo it, and then getting up and starting the cycle over again. Moving meditation is a highly effective technique for me.
Resting the body and mind on a snowy trailside hill.
On Wednesday, after making mashed potatoes with my kid (one of the four side dishes we were preparing for Thanksgiving) I once again went for a walk, alone, this time to the nearby lake instead of the woodland trails I so often favor for hiking. This spot is where this week’s featured image comes from. There are some steps that not many use which lead down to the waterfront on the western banks of the lake, and I found a perfectly situated downed tree with a comfortable, level seat right about 12-18 inches off the ground, directly facing the sun. At around 3pm in the Minnesota winter, the view was sublime, unencumbered by bush or branches, with a clear view of the wide open, frosted lake. It’s about a 15 minute walk from my front door. I am grateful to live somewhere with access to choice spots in nature like this. I am grateful to myself for seeking and appreciating this simple, costless pleasure.
On Saturday I again headed outside. I sought out the lakeside sit spot again, and this time I did a formal meditation by the lake, by which I mean I focused on my breath and did nothing else. Even though the temperature barely crested 50 degrees Fahrenheit, I had the sun beaming directly at me and some wind protection from the trees to my one side. The jacket came off. The cool breeze was invigorating and the wind gusts, rather than swaying me off my perch, actually anchored me deeper into my sit spot. When my body reacted to the wind by sinking deeper into the earth, that’s when I knew I was “in the zone.” The lake was mostly frozen, but on this warm day, the area at the lake’s edge had thawed. The soil and sand were wet. The smell of wet earth and decomposing leaves filled my nostrils with each inbreath. It was pleasant, like Earth’s rich odor was nourishing me somehow.
On Sunday, I closed out the week with a run. It was 38 degrees. I ran for about two miles, pushed through the first hump of temptation to stop and turn around (which often happens when I run without a specific length or destination in mind), and then found a patch of roadside grass that had been mowed. You know, how sometimes cities will mow a 3-4 foot swath of grass if there’s some grassland-y type land next to the road or trail? Anyway, this patch of grass called to me. There was no snow on it. The grass was almost green still. If there was ever a time and place for me to give barefoot running a try, the place was here, and the time was now. I kicked off my shoes and socks and I ran barefoot in late November in Minnesota for about a mile. First I was carrying the shoes, then I changed tactics and tossed them into the deeper grass for later retrieval. The ground was cold and squishy, but it didn’t bother me. It felt nice. Running without shoes, I immediately noticed that I paid way more attention to the ground. I took shorter strides. I used my whole foot. And I smiled. It was not painful. It was invigorating. I felt like I could have gone forever like that, were it not for the concrete separating me from my home.
NEIGHBORS ARE WHERE COMMUNITY BUILDING STARTS
My neighbors are redoing their kitchen and main floor. Big project. They needed to move a bunch of stuff around their house to get ready for the workers. I offered to help out. To my pleasure, they accepted the offer.
I bring this up only to say this; I wish I was more neighborly with my neighbors. Like, old school neighborly. As Kristyn often ponders–why do we have seven houses in our cul de sac, and we also have seven snowblowers and seven lawn mowers? Is all this individual stuff-acquiring really necessary? How much cheaper and easier would life be if we worked together as neighbors more often? Took turns watching each others kids, took turns making meals, had a snowblowing committee and a gardening committee. Why do we all grow tomatoes in our own gardens? No one can ever eat them all!
I know it sounds kind of perverse, but I was sincerely delighted that my neighbors let me carry their furniture up and down their stairs for an hour or two. That is what neighbors are freaking for!
AVATAR IS NON-FICTION
One evening this week, Kristyn and I watched Avatar. I’d been wanting to rewatch this movie ever since I read its mention in the book Active Hope. Once I looked up how to stream Avatar, and was reminded it’s a James Cameron creation (the incredible Canadian filmmaker also responsible for Titanic, The Terminator, and Aliens), it leapt up to the top of my must-watch queue (which currently consists of zero other shows).
There is so much about Avatar that I love. Other than a slight issue with a sort of “saviorism,” where the outsider protagonist is able to come into this new culture and save them from oppression, the rest of the film really works for me. The metaphors to real life are correct, even if they are portrayed with a fictional species on a fictional planet in a futuristic setting; humans are extracting precious resources with reckless abandon, disregarding who might be harmed, all for the sake of economic growth. Colonialism, capitalism, white privilege… it’s all there. These are the lessons we should be paying attention to. I hope the future Avatar movies continue on these themes and adapt them for our current times.
I also loved how the Na’vi people were portrayed (the indigenous people of the moon Pandora). They were super connected to their land; the “training” sequence showed it all. When Neytiri is teaching Jake their ways, she shows him what fruit to eat, how to fall from the top of the forest canopy and use the trees and plants to break one’s fall (a lesson which later saves Jake’s life), and they are so connected to the land that they even literally connect their minds to horse-like and dragon-like creatures through a cord in their long hair braid. There’s also a powerful scene when the Na’vi people band together to attempt to channel the power of Ewya (their sort of “source”, Mother-Nature-type energy) in a ritual to heal the human Grace, who has suffered a bullet wound. In that scene, the tribe of a few hundred Na’vi are all squatting low to the ground in a restful low squat, hands on each other’s shoulders, swaying back and forth in front of the tree of souls. Watching this was like watching the definition of connection to land for me.
I mostly am mentioning our watching of Avatar because of a comment Kristyn made as we debriefed after watching. As we were discussing how the metaphors and symbolism in the movie are so spot on, she remarked, “Movies like The Matrix and Avatar should be considered non-fiction.” After a chuckle, I realized I think she’s onto something. I’m not an uber-fan of science fiction, but I’ve enjoyed the genre my whole life, and I think the thing that separates the great science fiction and fantasy stories from the lesser ones is that they are basically non-fiction – they are so relatable and the themes are so resonant to our actual lives. I wonder if that’s how scriptwriters and novelists think; I’m going to create a fantasy world with some interesting characters as the “container,” and then inject a bunch of actual scenarios, emotions, and problems from everyday life. There’s probably a little more to it than that. Or is there?
NATURALLY BETTER RESEARCH – A SURPRISING FIND
As I embark on this Naturally Better journey (I am still defining what that even means), I felt compelled to poll my friends and followers (all four of them). I created a survey and sent it out to my network. I’ve done this on occasion in my life, creating a survey and badgering people to fill it out. I enjoy learning how other people think, and, sometimes, I like doing it in a measurable, quantifiable way (as opposed to having a bunch of anecdotal conversations).
One of the reasons I enjoy surveying people is that I like to get data to compare myself and my own thoughts to a larger group. I like to learn if I am an outlier or if I’m closer to average. When I sold advertising for a living, countless times I would run into objections that sounded like this: “Does anyone even watch the TV news? I don’t,” and, “The only time I watch the news is at 10pm, so that’s when I want my commercials to run,” and, “Has anyone ever clicked on those Google ads? I always skip right past those.” Everybody thinks they are average. Every person thinks they are in the middle of every bell curve. Nobody thinks they are special. Nobody thinks they are different. We all consider ourselves “the average consumer,” “the average homeowner,” or “just another parent.” The truth is – we can’t all be average at everything! This is why I like gathering more data points. A data point of one (i.e. my life, my experience), while it may be a very important data point to me (because it’s me!), is still only one data point. I am not statistically significant of the market or of all people. When it comes to getting good sleep, maybe I’m pretty average, but when it comes to weekly exercise, maybe I’m more disciplined than most people, even though to me my routine feels “normal.”
With my first survey that would help inform my future work with Naturally Better, I wanted to keep it short. I asked three multiple choice questions, all with the same multiple choice answers. I wanted to learn what fundamental aspect of our everyday lives people want to get better at most. Then, I wanted to learn how that changes if they change the focus from themselves getting better to the future of humanity getting better.
The results of the survey are below. If you’d like to take the survey yourself before reading further, you can do so at this link – Kevin’s Simple Survey. If enough people add to the responses, I’ll republish this article in the future with the updated findings.
Question 1
Here are the results to the first question – If you could instantly be better at one of these, which one would you pick?
When people were asked about their own self improvement, their top choices were Exercise more regularly and Experience fulfilling relationships more often and more deeply. So people want to get better at Exercise and Relationships above things like Sleep, Meditation, Eating, and Living in Harmony With Resources.
Question 2
I then asked – If you could pick a second one, which one would you pick?
Here we see much more of a mixed bag. Sleep got the most votes, but it’s pretty spread out. My takeaway here is that once you get down past our first burning desire for improvement, we are individuals that have different growth edges.
Then came the kicker – Above all else, which of these does our world need us all to do the most for the long term benefit of humanity and life as we know it?
Question 3
Here we see a huge shift in the responses, with the overwhelming winner being: Live in greater harmony with my resources.
I have two takeaways from this.
First, it’s worth noting that when we focus on self, our responses are more varied, but when we focus on all people, our response was much more uniform. As we widen our perspective, as we zoom out beyond self and community and country and politics and get all the way out humanity, regardless of our backgrounds and identities, we tend to agree. This notion gives me hope.
Second, I find it very interesting that when we look at our own lives and we examine what we want to get better about ourselves, most say the top priorities are Exercise and Relationships, but when we think about what’s most important for the long term collective, we say it’s Resources.
This begs the question–why? Why aren’t our personal aspirations more in line with what we know is needed for a viable future for our grandchildren? I could theorize, but instead I plan to have some conversations about this with people smarter than I to see what can be discovered here.
One thing I do now “know” from this utterly unscientific survey of a mere 31 of my friends: no one gives a rip about meditation and journaling.
Monday of this week was Halloween. Due to my bushy, unkempt sabbatical beard, I slapped together a last-minute costume and attended our neighborhood Halloween driveway get together as the cross-country-running version of Forrest Gump. I still hadn’t done anything with the beard in the days after Halloween, which you can see proof of in this week’s featured image.
Ever since enrolling our children in Spanish immersion childcare, pre-school, and public school, and being more exposed to aspects of Latin culture, we have grown an admiration of the traditions around Día de Muertos. We have made it a tradition to create our own ofrenda (home altar) in the entryway of our house around this time of year, to remember loved ones who are not with us any more, particularly Kristyn’s dad. She wrote a great piece about this on KristynWithAWhy.com, which I encourage you to check out.
The Carlow Moravetz Ofrenda, 2022
(I realize I’m a white American man that’s now talking about a tradition that is not exactly of my own lineage, and of the trickiness that brings, but at the end of the day, I know how I feel, I know my intentions, and I know that the way we acknowledge the spirit of it in our house feels right to us and is done in an honorable way, so for me, that’s what counts.)
It was also quite adorable this year to observe how my children, while Trick-or-Treating around the neighborhood, cared much more about petting the animals of the homes we visited than about snatching up their candy. They would’ve stayed and pet the 9-week-old kitten all night if we’d let them.
STRIKING A BALANCE WITH MY PARTNER
On Tuesday I had a lengthy conversation with my partner about food. In many aspects of our relationship, we find a balance that works for us. With any given task, though, a “balance that works” does not always mean we split the task 50/50. We each have our own strengths and our own chores that annoy us less than other chores. She doesn’t hate folding clothes, I don’t hate cleaning out the fridge. Over the last ten years or so, we’ve been tweaking and refining how we tackle all of the responsibilities of home ownership, adulthood, and life so that, on the whole, things feel balanced to both of us.
Food is one of those unavoidable aspects of life. We need it to survive. But when it comes to food, there’s more to it than just cooking the food. Someone has to plan what food is going to be acquired. Someone has to get the food. Someone has to organize how the food is stored. Someone has to prepare and cook the food. Someone has to clean the dishes used to prepare and to eat the food. And, if you care about food waste (we do), someone has to monitor the aging of all the ingredients and factor in how and when the leftovers will be eaten and/or incorporated into future meal plans. It’s a job with a bunch of sub-jobs underneath it.
On the whole, I get less stressed about food than Kristyn does. I like cooking, and I like being intentional with the ingredients used to nourish the bodies of myself and my family. I don’t want to speak too much on Kristyn’s behalf, but the short version is – years ago one of my roommates had said that he wished he could just take a pill and it would satisfy his hunger and his nutritional needs so that he didn’t need to think about food at all, and upon hearing this, my reaction was, “Oh that sounds so bland and boring, and think about all the flavors and connection to your fuel you’d miss out on,” while Kristyn’s reaction was, “YES absolutely me too.” So, the balance that works for us is that I am the primary food person in our house.
Before I go on and get myself into a heap of trouble, I want to be clear – she does make food and does get groceries and does do many dishes. It’s just that we’ve come to an understanding that I am the primary food person. And, like with any big job that has one person shouldering a larger share of the job, it can get to be a lot. There are times where I feel “kitchened out.” In those times, a break from the kitchen would feel great. The problem is, I feel resistance to ask for help. I’m terrible at asking for help in general. When I worry that the favor I need or the assistance that would really make my day is in direct contrast to my partner’s wiring and preferences? Forget it! I know that meal planning and prep can be more stressful for her, so I tell myself this story that I’m putting an “extra burden” on her by asking her to take over making dinner for a night.
What I learned through the course of this conversation, though, is that by not asking for help and trudging through another slog in the kitchen, I’m not actually helping the situation. I’m not resourcing myself. I’m operating from an imbalanced place. This has downstream effects, and those effects aren’t positive.
What is especially great about not only this specific conversation but also the general state of our relationship is that we are having these conversations, we aren’t leaving things unsaid, and we are having them in a calm, constructive way which leaves both people feeling better than when we start. I’m really grateful to have Kristyn in my life to teach me and to practice with me communication and attunement to others.
IMPROMPTU SONG-MAKING WITH MY CHILD
From 2:30pm-5pm Monday-Friday, we have our eldest child at home with us (before the younger gets picked up from Spanish pre-school). We try to mix up how this time is spent, with some togetherness as well as some independent work and play.
On Wednesday of this week, she and I headed down to our ramshackle “music studio” in the basement to mess around with the funny sounds we can make on the microphone. She immediately requested the “robot voice” (a sound setting in Garageband). As soon as she started talking in that voice, we got the idea to make a song about a robot. Over the next fifteen minutes we created a super simple track with two verses and a bridge. We didn’t write the verses, though; she improvised them on the spot as a basic musical accompaniment played in the background! It was such a cool experience to watch as my kid’s brain came up with clever things a robot would say and sing them on key and to a beat.
“I Am A Robot” is not quite ready for release yet, but when it does make its way to the web… you’ll know.
WHAT IS MY DREAM? ANSWER: THAT’S TOO BIG OF A QUESTION TO ANSWER
On Thursday, I once again fed myself a prompt in my journal. The day’s prompt: What is my dream? When I give myself journal prompts like this, I try to write with a brainstorm mentality, to free the mind and the pen to write without filter or direction. Anything goes. Any thought counts. If the though enters my brain, write it down, no matter how ridiculous or (seemingly) off-topic it might be. This particular day, even with the brainstorm mindset, I was stuck. Like, majorly stuck. I couldn’t quite picture anything concrete. Then I started judging myself for not having a solid dream. “How ridiculous is that?! I don’t know what I want? What I yearn for? Even kids know what they dream of. Why are you having such a hard time with this? You don’t even have a job right now. This is all you’ve been thinking about for months and you can’t even write down one stinking dream?”
It was time for a hike (see featured image). Not only did I have exhilarating encounters with two different sets of deer partners (buck and doe) mere feet off my trail, but I unlocked an insight while thinking on the prompt “What is my dream?” and talking out loud into my Voice Memo app as I walked. This insight came after 20-30 minutes of fruitless pondering. My mind was easily distracted. It was looking for any excuse, any thought to pull me away from the discomfort of sitting answerless to this question. Every time I noticed my mind following another train of thought, I re-centered on the prompt “What is my dream?”.
Eventually, when I finally was able to just linger in that question, really embody it, I realized that, for me, in this moment, the question was too big. It needed a time constraint. What if I broke the question into small time increments? What if I changed the prompt to “What is my dream for today?” and then expanded from there? This approach was game-changing.
In breaking this big question down into tiny chunks, I was able to figure out the following (these are the notes as I wrote them on that day):
My dream for today is to simply be doing what I was already doing – hiking outside. Eating delicious food for supper with my family. Spending quality time with my family where we are making each other laugh and enjoying each other’s company. Have an easeful time putting my kids to bed where I am in lock step with their desires of what they need to have an easeful bedtime. And then connect with my partner, have some mutually incredible sex, and close the day with an effortless meditation. That is what would make today a “dream day,” and I’m already on the path of living it.
So, then, how is my dream for any other longer stretch of time any different than stringing a bunch of those exact days together in a row? Wouldn’t I just repeat this day again tomorrow? And the next? In a way, yes! But also, life has certain requirements; not all minutes of all days can be play, unless you happen to have access to unlimited resources. Ok, so let’s zoom out a little.
I then inquired “What is my dream for the month of November?” … My mind immediately gravitated toward Thanksgiving, a holiday landmark in the month of November. I dreamt of preparing delicious, crowd-pleasing dishes and of delighting in the joy they bring to my family. And I then felt compelled to think of a prayer to offer before the meal. I went on a twenty-minute tangent writing out a Thanksgiving prayer that flowed effortlessly out of me.
And finally when I returned again to my question about my dream for November, and I finally stopped the many distracting thoughts my mind was taking me in, in the split second that I finally cleared my mind and just left space for that question, the feeling rushed in that I want to be making more progress toward our move to Costa Rica next summer. It is starting to feel like time to be tackling that project more enthusiastically and prioritizing it at the tippy top of the list. This is broken into three parts: learning Spanish, completing the project of building out our property, and getting rid of our unneeded possessions.
I quit the exercise here. This seemed like far enough for now. Let’s make November my dream November. And that starts right now.
If I can live out my dream day, and my dream week, and my dream month, all I have to do is start stringing those together and I will be living my dream life.
When the kids and I camped at Itasca State Park a few weeks back, we had met and made friends with a family named The Coldwater’s. This is the family I mentioned on the Week 16 post, who built their own homestead and live off the grid. I knew they lived up around Minnesota’s North Shore somewhere, so when the plan came together for my friends and I to head that way for a camping trip (Week 22), I reached out and asked if they would be willing for my traveling party to make a brief visit on our way back to the Twin Cities, so we (I, really) could see their place and perhaps even offer some assistance as they prepare for winter. To my great pleasure, they said, “Yes!”
To my chagrin, however, when the time came on Sunday, my traveling companions were not interested in the detour. I could hardly blame them. They had lives and families to get back to. We had hiked about 12 miles the day before; energy stores were not full. They didn’t know these people. So, we sped by the turnoff to their homestead and made our way back to the city.
But as this Week 23 began, I couldn’t shake the feeling like I had just missed out on a golden opportunity. Ever since I discovered the television show Alone, I have had a growing fascination with people who are able to live off the land. Of course, that television show is a contest and doesn’t reflect actual reality, but many of the participants on that show do, in their everyday lives, live on self-made homesteads in which they’ve built and constructed various parts of their shelter and living situation (garages, sheds, workshops, gardens, wells…). I’ve watched many of their homemade videos on YouTube teaching various skills and giving tours of their lifestyles (Woniya Thibeault’s channel Buckskin Revolution is one of my favorites). I don’t envision myself living completely off the grid in my future, but I do have a great admiration for the connection homesteaders have with nature, with food, and with the resources in their immediate vicinities.
And so, when I had finally met some people who live this way, and I was going to be very near their home, and they had agreed to allow me to visit and see firsthand what it’s really like to live without power or running water year-round, it did feel like a golden opportunity for me to learn, to have a much richer learning experience than watching a screen or reading a book. I sensed that a first-hand experience like this would help shape my future thinking and planning, to help bring into focus what my ideal lifestyle design really is. How much comfort do I really want to live with? How much am I willing to trade convenience for connection to nature? Do I really want to work my butt off every day so that I can live off grid and subsist off the land as much as possible? I can theorize about this stuff all day long, but getting out there and actually visiting some homesteads and community-oriented neighborhoods will help bring that thinking into focus.
When I arrived home from the camping trip with the boys, and I found myself wishing I had more fervently insisted we take the detour, I asked myself, “What can I control in this situation?” After sitting with this question for a few days, on Wednesday I checked the weather forecast, and the forecast for the upcoming weekend, the Saturday and Sunday of this Week 23, still looked amazingly nice. I all of a sudden got a jolt of excitement, and I lobbed out a prayer and asked the Coldwater’s if they would be open to my entire family coming their way in the upcoming weekend (leaving the duration of the visit completely up to them).
The next 36 hours was a total roller coaster of sporadic text conversations back and forth: when would we arrive, what would we need to pack, how does your family approach food, it’s a busy season for them to prepare for winter so perhaps it won’t work, but actually having some kids around for their kid to play with might be nice, and so on. There weren’t any firm commitments made one way or the other.
It was Thursday evening, the night before we’d theoretically be leaving for a 4-hour drive north to visit a place we’d never seen, and we still didn’t know for sure if we’d be going or not. We definitely hadn’t packed a thing. It was a little nerve-wracking, the not knowing our plans for the next day, but I was thankful that both Kristyn and I were just taking it moment by moment, confident that the chips would fall just as they should.
(Ironically, we were actually watching Alone: Frozen Episode 7 as this conversation was transpiring. SPOILER ALERT – in that episode, Woniya successfully traps a fox, which was really cool to witness. She was always one our favorite participants, and to see her succeed in that way, by trapping one of the more cunning animals in the wild, was my personal highlight of that entire season.)
The fox Woniya caught on “Alone: Frozen” Photo Credit: History Channel
Just as we finished watching, we finally reached a decision about the weekend – we would not be making the trip the next day. Their child was not feeling so well, and we agreed it wouldn’t be best to mix questionable germs. So, while it was a little disappointing to go through this flurry of excitement at the prospect of having a fun, spontaneous family adventure into the wilderness, all to be squashed within a matter of 36 hours or so, it was nice to go to bed that night with a definitive knowing of what our plans would be for the weekend.
Here’s the kicker. The next morning, Friday, I drove the kids to school, like usual. On the drive home, I entered our cul de sac around 7:50am, and as I rounded the turn bringing our house into view, walking across the street directly in front of me was a red fox. It trotted across the street and straight into my front yard, and then it carried on into the woods beyond. I was stunned into stillness. I had already put my car in park and turned it off right there in the middle of the road. Then I just sat. What a moment! Not 12 hours earlier I had watched my favorite Alone participant trap a fox, and now one was traipsing through my yard at the precise moment I happened to be outside in the right location to witness it. Plus, at any point in the last few years, if you had asked me what my spirit animal is, I would have replied, “the red fox.” It’s the animal I think I would be if a wizard turned me into my animal form.
This was most definitely a sign. But, a sign of what? Instantly it came to me; this was a sign that I have plenty of awesome stuff right here, right where I am. I don’t need to go anywhere. Everything I need is right here. It’s a truth I know to be true, but I often need reminders of things I already “know.”
Immediately after this, I got a strong intuitive hit that I needed to go for a hike (hence the featured imagine on this week’s post). It felt right to spend more time outside, right now. No AirPods, no Apple Watch, no Strava mile-tracking. Just go be outside and walk.
Within two minutes of starting out on that unplanned hike, I encountered a huge barred owl. I love wildlife encounters, and this one felt extra special. Owls aren’t something I see every day, and they’ve always seemed to be one of the more interesting birds. And there it was, staring me down as I gazed up at it from the hiking trail. This experience was another huge affirmation that I was in the right place, exactly where I was supposed to be, with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do but to be right here, right now.
I hope I carry this moment forward and remember it the next time I’m feeling like I want to be somewhere other than here.
Five weeks ago, the idea of an October camping trip to Minnesota’s North Shore was born in a driveway during a kid’s birthday party. This week, the idea became reality.
Our destination: Cascade River State Park, near Lutsen, MN, a mere hour-long drive from the Canadian border. I reserved a hike-in campsite for myself and three friends at this state park, and after calling the park to inquire about the available sites, I chose “BP2” (Backpack 2), which is situated on top of Moose Mountain.
Our home for the weekend
There are advantages and disadvantages to any campsite. Some have better access to water, better views, more privacy, proximity to trails and amenities, and so on. We opted for the site that had privacy and a great view, but the trade-offs were… we had to climb and we had to pack in our water. It was just over one mile from the car to the campsite, but that mile was a pretty steady 45 degree incline the entire way.
Now, for a true backpacking expedition, this wouldn’t be too much of a problem; in fact, for many backpackers along the big American trails like the A.T. or the P.C.T., inclines like this would be the norm. In those cases, however, the backpackers are typically equipped with proper gear like form-fitted rucksacks, trekking poles, and freeze-dried or dehydrated food like rice or oats. Essentialism is key – bring only what you need. In all of my planning and discussions with my crew before our departure, it seemed I either did not properly communicate this tenet of backpacking, or I did and they just ignored the advice, because we packed in a LOT of stuff! Even though our bodies were at their freshest point of the weekend, that first mile hike from the car to the site was the most grueling mile of them all, with the weight of full-size camping chairs, full water jugs, and enough junk food to send an army into diabetic shock weighing us down. With enough trudging and plodding along, we did eventually make it to camp, and the view and the privacy made it all worth it.
Cascade River State Park Campsite BP2, overlooking Lake Superior
As we unpacked, and I saw just how much food my friends brought for this two-night jaunt in the woods, I felt a sense of disappointment rise within me. I didn’t make a big deal of it at the time, I just went with the flow and embraced the notion that we each packed what we needed to pack. I had put a lot of thought into the planning of what we’d bring (on a shared Google Doc), so we could coordinate items, prevent overpacking, and do things a little more communally and a little less individually. So at first, I thought my shock at all these surprise items was due to a feeling of our plan being undermined or not followed, a disappointment that, despite my best efforts, the idea of communicating and packing our gear communally was too much for my friends, too outside their comfort zone, too far away from their conditioned tendencies to want to be in control and do things as an individual instead of as a group.
It wasn’t until later the next day, though, that I realized the bigger source of my feeling; a big part of what I enjoy about camping, hiking, backpacking, and being out in the woods is the suffering. I like the suffering. I crave it. It’s part of the allure of the outdoors for me, the opportunity to taste how challenging life in the wild really is. Life in the modern world is so incomprehensibly comfortable. I like my time on camping/backpacking trips to be in as direct contrast to that as possible. I like to wake up and get out on the trails early, eat a bit of trail mix through the day whenever my body signals it needs some fuel, and then have one warm meal with some tea in the evening as the sun is going down and I’ve made camp for the night. I like stripping things down to the essentials. I even like being a bit dehydrated. Not so dehydrated that I’m having headaches or muscle cramps, but really conserving my resources and waiting to consume anything until my body is really asking for it. When I take this minimalist approach to my time in the outdoors, I’m able to feel my body and hear my thoughts more acutely. Typical daily patterns and habits are broken; there is only this moment. This approach also makes the re-entry into modern life so much more eye-opening. I experience a deeper gratitude for the simplest of things. I come home and am extremely thankful for my faucet with running water. When was the last time you were thankful for your faucet? That’s the power that a few days away from modern conveniences can have.
It was actually very useful for me to crystallize this personal insight, and I don’t know if I would’ve arrived at that insight had my one friend decided to leave his can of Easy Cheese at home (or better yet, left it unpurchased on the store shelf). I realized just because it’s there, it doesn’t mean I have to eat it; I can make my own choices. So it turns out I’m thankful for the lesson provided by the excess junk food. (Plus, I wasn’t the one that had to carry it.)
We had a truly epic weekend. The weather was unseasonably awesome for mid-October in northern Minnesota, and we made the most of it. We hiked many miles, shared many laughs, and even shed a few tears (mostly from laughing so hard). Thank you to the women in our lives for taking care of our children and homesteads to enable this weekend of joy for us boys!
Here is a list of the memories I jotted down the day after we got back. Most of them will not make sense to you, the reader, but hey, this blog is for me just as much as it is for any of you, so these are for me!
Memories:
On Saturday we hiked north on the trail up the eastern side of the Cascade River. There is also a trail on the western side of the river, but the state park map gets cut off before it shows where the crossing is from east to west. We assumed it would be obvious. It was not. We found a dirt road and a parking lot, but no obvious spot of where to cross and pick the trail up on the other side. We walked along the road and river for a ways, looking for a spot to cross, and at one point there was some “fencing” made of black fabric attached to some posts, like you might find blocking off a construction site. My friend saw this fence, walked over to it, jumped over it, walked into the wild woods beyond, turned around and yelled back, “I think I found it.” Because, you know, typically hiking trailheads are found on the other side of a fence one has to jump.
As we walked off trail, trying to find the trail, we enjoyed variations of the phrase, “I think this must be the path. This part of the woods looks pretty path-y over here.”
Moss feels better when you take your shoes off.
We all know the feeling of déjà vu, but have you ever experienced déjà new? How about déjà now? I can’t explain exactly what these mean, but I know that if you go off into the woods with your friends, you’ll find it.
Despite our meandering about at the river crossing, we ended Saturday with utterly perfect pacing of the day, with the sun setting over the horizon just as we arrived back to camp.
As we returned to camp from our long day hike on Saturday, one friend hauled a massive dead log on his shoulders up to our campsite. Another friend made it his mission to burn this log to bits, no matter how long it took.
THE LOG
While we returned home with all of our appendages still connected, one of my friends did manage to slice his thumb with our log splitter. I learned that my backpacking first aid kit could use a little sprucing up.
Bring tortillas on future camping trips to go with hot meals!
I do love how the guys that came on this trip surprise me. I’ve always loved surprises, ever since I was a kid. In their own way, each one of my friends did stuff that I did not expect, and it’s fun to surround myself with people that keep me on my toes and make life interesting.
And finally, when you get right down to it, all we really need in this life are woods, friends, and snacks.
Oh, and I almost forgot, at the beginning of the week I did some warmup hikes with my trusty hiking companion.
Hiking companion I can’t bring on wooded trails (burrs) and I can’t take farther than 3 miles (he’s 11).
Months ago, I planned and booked a camping trip for our family to Itasca State Park. I had done a three-night solo camping trip there in September 2021, and at that time I had assessed that it would be an excellent state park to bring the entire family. So as soon as it became available to reserve, I booked us a campsite (with a camper cabin, a one-room log cabin to add a touch of convenience) for the end of August 2022. As the day of departure approached, Kristyn began to develop a cold, and I suggested that perhaps I could take the kids camping and she could stay home to rest and enjoy some alone time. This offer did not take much convincing. And so, the kids and I loaded up in the minivan and embarked upon a four-night camping trip, just the three of us.
Even though my kids are only six and four years old, and even though we were going to be three and a half hours from home, and even though I was not going to have any help in taking care of my children nor myself, I was feeling confident about the adventure. Excited. A touch of nervousness, perhaps, but having completed a successful two-night camping trip with my eldest earlier in the summer, and having spent so much time with both kids all summer long and observed their current maturity levels, I felt like we were just on the right edge of being “old enough” to make this a viable endeavor with me as the only parent. Thanks to the awesomeness of my children, I couldn’t have been more right.
Here’s an excerpt from my journal on the night of arrival to our campsite (and let’s just reflect on the fact that I had even one moment to consider writing in a journal!):
The girls have chosen to use the markers and paper we brought to color while sitting on the floor. “Amar Pelos Dois” is cooing over the portable speaker in our nicer-than-expected camper cabin. Four nights in a cabin with my two kids – it feels a bit like ‘The Ultimate Survival Challenge,’ but it also feels like it’ll be a cinch. It’s the second hour of being here, and the girls are showing me they can occupy themselves and each other, even with rain bringing us inside. … This time in the woods with my kids is the last hurrah before summer is over and the final school year in the USA starts. What is my intention with this time? To demonstrate to my kids that fun and joy can be had without much. To experience hiking in a positive way (my youngest is not a huge fan, yet). To let them lead so we all can learn from their choices and behaviors.
We had a lovely spaghetti dinner. I cleaned up while they played Concentration with each other. We began a tradition of enjoying tea and apples after dishes were done. And for the next three days, we enjoyed exploring, hiking, playing, finding bear tracks, picking M&M’s out of trail mix, swimming, and simply being in the outdoors.
MY CHILDREN ARE MORE GROWN THAN I KNOW
When taken into the outdoors, without many modern conveniences and left to their own devices, they seemed to age two years in two minutes. All of a sudden, not only did my youngest child no longer need or want any help in a public bathroom (the family bathroom kind where it’s just one small room), they specifically requested I leave them be and wait outside. Both kids, all of a sudden, seemed to just know how to wash and dry dishes, when given the opportunity. When we arrived at the headwaters of the Mississippi River, the main attraction of Itasca State park, the kids did not hesitate. You see, at these headwaters of America’s largest and most powerful river, the river is very small, almost streamlike. There are rocks that act as stepping stones where one can actually hop across the Mighty Mississippi. It’s not the most challenging physical act, to balance on these rocks and make it across, but it’s also more challenging than taking a stroll on a sidewalk. And when my kids saw this, saw a few adults carefully making their way across the stones, my kids did not hesitate. As I wrote in my journal later, “Before I knew it, their shoes were off. Fording the Mississippi with two children… it was mildly stressful, but I was simultaneously proud and in awe of their bravery and ability/balance, while enjoying the experience for myself.” It blew me away how ready and equipped they already are to act more mature, and all it took was removing distractions, removing convenience, giving them an opportunity to shine, and then getting out of their way.
MEETING THE COLDWATER’S
One afternoon, we were hanging out at the park’s largest playground, the one near the swimming beach, and it was here that we had what felt to me like a fateful encounter. It was here that we met the Coldwater family, a family of three that live “off the grid,” as they put it, in northern Minnesota. The woman and her son were playing at the park, speaking French to each other (I learned the woman is from Belgium) and at this my children’s ears perked up, because they are learning Spanish and have an ear for foreign language. This curiosity about their language was enough to spark interaction with these people, and the more I learned about the Coldwater family’s life, the more I was drawn in. They built their own house using natural materials like straw, wood, and lime plaster. They are acquiring a sailboat and have plans to sail from the Caribbean, through the Saint Lawrence seaway, all the way to Lake Superior to return to their home in northern Minnesota. They also plan to take this boat on a Trans-Atlantic voyage to the Mediterranean for a couple of years. They have no running water and bring water from the natural spring that’s 1/4 mile away from their home, 2-3 times every day. They have intimate knowledge of how to harvest and prepare wild rice, a practice they learned from the Lakota people. I could go on. Oh, and they were just delightful human beings who seemed completely in tune with enjoying the present moment. I was and still am so enchanted with this family. I don’t necessarily aspire to live in a log cabin off the grid, but I do believe they are living in a way that is much more connected to the natural world, the world from which we all come, than I am, and for that, I admire them. I deeply hope to stay connected to them in some way, but if not, I’m happy to have met and to have been inspired by them. And I am grateful that I listened to my kids and let them lead the way when they said, “We want to go to the park,” or I would have never met the Coldwater family.
A FEW FINAL MEMORIES OF SOLO CAMPING WITH TWO KIDS
When you arrive to the state park and your campsite isn’t ready yet, head straight for the playground.
A quick backstory – when I was a kid, I remember eating apples after dinner, but before bed. We would do this often in my home (via my dad), and we would do it even more often whenever I was visiting my grandparents (my dad’s parents). While I still enjoy apples, eating them nightly is not a habit I carried forward into my own life. Fast forward to this camping trip, and as I packed for it, I brought precisely enough apples with us so that we could share an apple together every night. Not sure why, it just felt right. Every night, as I placed a bowl of sliced apples on the cabin table in front of my children, I could feel some historical, inter-generational frequency vibrating within me. Like, even though I haven’t actually been there before, it felt like I had been there before. Almost like I could feel my father and his father working through me. And I was aware of the feeling like I am actively passing on a tradition, a conscious programming of my children to share some of the same programming etched into my core. I did not plan for nor expect this feeling to arise, but it was really cool when it did.
At one point, the kids were using the toys that I had brought in ways I would never have imagined – they were outside, using the jump rope and ladder golf ladders, and other items from nature to construct a sort of… bridge structure. At one point, in between the gathering and placing of sticks, rocks, and pinecones on top of this structure, my kid looked to me and said, “We know that water is the glue of nature, so we’re going inside to get our water bottles.”
Building a bridge together
MORE FUN OUTSIDE AND FINDING INSPIRATION EVERYWHERE
Our camping trip was from Sunday-Thursday, so when we got home, we still had the weekend to enjoy, and although one might think we would have been depleted of energy from the time outdoors and the long car ride, it was quite the contrary – we all felt energized from living a more simple life and spending time together. So, we went out for some more activity!
The day after we returned from camping, the weather was gorgeous and Kristyn was still not feeling 100%, so I took the kids to a park in town. They simply could not get enough of being outside! I felt proud at how easily they made friends with other kids at the beach. As they played with newly-made friends, I went for a nearby stroll, and I happened to notice this dedication placard on one of the park benches. It reads: “Jerry Gale [In Honor Of]. High-energy dad, grandpa, & eternal optimist who went to bat for causes he believed in.” I don’t know who Jerry Gale is, but I know he must have been a great man. If, once I pass away, my family remembers me in this way, I will consider my life a success.
An inspiration
THAT’S A WRAP ON SUMMER – WHAT HAVE I LEARNED FROM ALL THIS TIME WITH MY KIDS?
The end of this week marks a wrap on summer. A sabbatical summer. I spent so much time with my kids, intentionally so. Earlier in the season, I consciously made the choice that this summer was going to be a time of me being a kid again, of letting go of what’s “supposed” to happen. So, what did I learn from my two little sources of wisdom?
We are social creatures. My kids love making friends with anyone. It’s a credit to their friendly personality and disposition, and it’s also their plain humanity shining through. Their “flow state” is enabled when playing with or talking to new humans.
What does that look like in the adult world? How do I suppress my natural urges to connect with a new person? Why do I do that? What do I fear? What would it look like if I gave all strangers the same benefit of the doubt that my kids give other children on the playground?
Siblings are extremely valuable. My kids practice so many life skills together: communication, problem solving, teamwork, debate… They don’t really realize how lucky they are to have each other.
This makes me more grateful for my own brother. Even though we don’t talk much these days, I’m very grateful we had each other in our formative years. I believe I’m a better person because I had him (and my parents) around to teach me the kind of things an older brother needs to be taught: humility, thinking of others, sharing, and so on.
Parenting is easier when I let go of personal wants. In spending heaping amounts of time with my children, moments of my impatience or frustration inevitably arose. When I examine the root cause of those moments, they almost all originate from having my own desire. I want to finish the chapter in my book. I want to go on a long hike. I want to start making progress on preparing dinner. I want, I want, I want. Whenever I have a want that doesn’t align with my kid’s want, friction occurs.
If my goal is for parenting to be easier, and for my relationship with my child to grow positively, there is a simple answer – let go of my want. It fixes everything.
My kids simply want me to be with them. During the day. At night. They seem to not be able to get enough of me, of my attention, of my love, of my energy. They want me to be their witness. Their cheerleader. To be there in case something bad happens. To have someone to read to them. Someone to snuggle. Or climb on. Someone to play pretend with. To hold the heavy things. Someone to help. Sure, they’re getting old enough to be able to play on their own for a while and enjoy it, but it’s never their first choice. I am not this great to anyone else on the planet.
For two people to have this much pure love of me, I owe them my energy and my time.
There’s our 2,220 mile international road trip in a Canadian haiku nutshell, folks.
When the pandemic foiled our plans to visit Canada in 2021, it was a disappointment. Then again, the pandemic was the cause of many disappointments for many people. In the grand scheme, it wasn’t a huge loss. We just kicked the plans back a year. Which, like so many pandemic disappointments, had a big silver lining, because it meant that we got to make the trek while on sabbatical, which meant extra days of fun and not needing to thread the corporate needle of available PTO days!
Being a Canada native, I still have many ties to the country, mostly in Ontario. I moved to Wisconsin when I was five years old, and I lived there through the end of high school. Nearly every summer, though, my parents would take my brother and I on the twelve-hour drive from Neenah, WI to Magnetawan, Ontario, where my mother’s best friend owned a tiny lakeside plot of land in a private campground called Lost Forest Park, or as we affectionately call it – LFP. For a handful of years, we would stay as visitors in our friend’s trailer, but the lot next to our friend became available for sale, and my parents were motivated and able, so they purchased the adjacent lot, and from that moment on, this place has been our family lakeside getaway. Why would we stake a claim to land that was a 12-hour-drive from home? In part, because of all the joyful memories built up there over the years with our friends and other neighbors, and in part because just three hours south of LFP is the greater Toronto area, where many of our extended family still reside. We would often couple the drive to LFP with a tour into the city, to see my grandparents, or cousins, or other friends, or some combination therein. Or, once we had our own trailer in the campground, sometimes those relatives would leave the city for a vacation to come visit us in “cottage country.”
During my college years at the University of Minnesota, I still had the summers “off,” and I did make it back to Ontario a few times. After that, though, life started happening. I was an adult. I started a business. I was living in Minneapolis, which is a 17-hour haul from Magnetawan. As much as I missed that place, it was hard to make time to return. Still, once I met Kristyn, we did make it there once as a pre-child couple, and once again with our fresh, three-month-old firstborn in tow. That most recent visit was six years ago. It was time I made it back to where it all began for me.
And so, we drove. Many miles we drove. Eventually, after the DVD’s borrowed from the Hennepin County Library wore thin from use in the minivan DVD player, we arrived.
Keys to success for long car rides with kids:
Start early in the day. If you start before sunrise, they can be sold that it’s still nighttime and that we need to sleep for a while.
Fill a laundry hamper with a variety of books and toys that don’t make noise and get mileage with the kids’ attention. Hand puppets, fidget poppers, sketch pad or LCD writing tablet.
Save the big guns. Start out with the toy hamper. Once all options have been exhausted, proceed to playing verbal games like “I Spy” or “Find the colors of the rainbow.” Once the appetite for games has run dry, proceed to playing their favorite music. Once voices are tired, should you so choose, then and only then resort to a screen. If you start an 8-hour drive with a screen, you are likely doomed for the tail end of the journey.
Plan for more time than Google Maps says.
Before the road trip, train kids how to do an efficient and germ-free “bush wee.” (Thanks Blueyfor the lingo.)
Bring extra hand sanitizer.
Pack tons of snacks. Then pack a reserve bag of extra snacks. Pack your snacks somewhere you can actually reach them without stopping the vehicle.
Don’t forget an in-vehicle garbage bag and wipes/napkins.
If any issues on the road arise, when in doubt, throw some fruit snacks at it. This usually solves the issue.
THE FIRST EIGHT DAYS BY THE LAKE
We spent the first eight days in Canada at my parents’ recently upgraded trailer at LFP. It’s still new to them, and thus very new to me and my family. As we entered the park grounds and made our way down the winding gravel road, trees hugging the shoulderless edges on each side, I could feel a buzzing inside of me. A buzzing of excitement, but also of… familiarity. Comfort. I’ve been here before. I know this place. This place knows me.
Even though many of the structures and people in the park have changed, the land has not. The lake is still there. The beach still has sand. The chipmunks still startle you with their shrill chatter. The pine needles still stick to your foot when you opt to traipse around in bare feet.
We packed a ton of fun activities into these eight days:
tubing
wakesurfing
fire pies and s’mores
late night card games
kayaking
sunset glow-in-the-dark frisbee toss
jumping, crawling, and floating on the giant “lily pad”
trampolining
hammock laying
late night bonfiring
made many trips to the dusty old “log” (lodge) to play ping pong, air hockey, foosball, build block towers, and have dance parties
ate popsicles with our toes in the water
calmed down for the night by sitting on the end of the dock, watching the sun set with our toes dangling in the cool lake water
THE MAGIC OF RETURNING TO THE SAME PLACE OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME
Anyone who has ever traveled away from their home to see a new place they want to see knows – it’s fun and exciting to see new places. And there are those that live in the same place for years upon years of their lives, and those people know the value in staying put, owning your property, becoming familiar with the land, and having a place with years of memories built up.
There’s another kind of magic that gets unlocked when you leave and return to the same place many times over the span of 35 years. I felt this sensation again and again while at LFP, and it is hard to describe.
First, there was part of me that was expecting everything to be like the way it was when I was there as a teenager. I know I’m older now, that I have a family and a whole life in Minneapolis, but it was like I was expecting everyone else to have been frozen in time. What do you mean the neighbor kid that used to be five years old is now graduating high school? How can it be that some of my favorite neighbors no longer own a spot in the park, and haven’t been coming for years, or aren’t even alive anymore?
It’s more than that, though. It’s like a mixture of equal parts comfort and surreality. Comfort of knowing the place, knowing the sights and the smells, but the surreality that it’s no longer the time that is so deeply engrained in my memory. You know how the music you listened to as a teenager stays with your forever? It’s not because the music back then was so much better than it is now; it’s more about how that’s the music you were listening to as you were in the years of building and shaping your true identity. The music gets attached to that. I think a similar imprinting has happened with me at this place.
Part of what I enjoyed about training for a marathon and logging all of those miles on the trails near my house was that it gave me the opportunity to gradually observe the changing of the seasons, the passage of time. One of my favorite patches of trail was running from my house to Bryant Lake and back; the lake served as a sufficient “carrot” to motivate through a longer run, because the view of open water never ceases to revitalize my body and spirit. Depending on the time of year, the trail looks different: in spring I could see right through the bare trees and get a view of the lake 1/4 mile before reaching the beach, whereas in summer with full growth I’d have to make it all the way to the beach before seeing water, and in the fall I enjoyed the awesome reds, oranges, and yellows of the foliage along the way.
Returning to LFP over the years has a similar effect; it unlocks a different, larger way of viewing and processing the passage of time. It gives new meaning to what the concept of “five years” or “twenty years” means to me. It allows me to tap into younger versions of myself, to actually feel the feelings I had felt years ago. Memories, for me, are typically much more about what I did than what I felt. But when I return to this place, which I’ve been to so many times, I do remember the feelings. The feeling of freedom and adventure I would get, being allowed to walk the “roads” of the campground unsupervised (because it is a private and close-knit community). The feeling of anticipation as I’d look out at the lake to see if it was calm enough for an ideal waterski. And I’d especially feel the feels when looking at the sun setting over the western edge of the pine-topped horizon, a view that I’ve drunk in so many times in my 37 years, a view that never gets old. Watching the sun set over that lake now, and the sense of calm and closure of a day well lived that it brings, it’s like I not only get the sense of calm from today’s day, but a larger, deeper, aggregate satisfaction from all my previous sunset watchings combined. Like there’s some extra frequency I could tap into, a parallel timescape that I could touch by standing in the exact same place I’d stood years before, and years before that.
Never underestimate the power of returning to a place in nature from your childhood.
STOKING THE EMBERS OF RELATIONSHIPS
Much like the cool embers of a fire need stoking in order grow back into a warm fire, a relationship that has cooled off over time can also be rekindled. If too much time passes, those embers will be colder. The feelings fade over time, unless you make time for rekindling and reconnection.
This is a notion that came up as I reconnected with old friends and neighbors at LFP – people I hadn’t seen or talked to in six years. It didn’t take long to jump back in to comfortable, friendly chatter, but I realized that, had a few more years gone by, there would’ve been so much to get caught up, it would’ve taken longer to warm back up to each other.
It serves as a reminder that for any relationships I value, I need to make an effort to stoke those embers if I can feel them cooling off.
Reconnecting with longtime friends
GETTING PULLED BEHIND A BOAT AT THE SAME TIME AS YOUR KID
Of all the types of rides one could do, I have to say that getting pulled behind a boat is up there with the best of ’em. Whether you are in an inner tube, on some sort of ski or board, or using your bare old feet, getting pulled behind a boat at speed is as close as most of us get to walking on water. Nothing quite instills the same quality of joy in me as skimming across the top of a calm lake, feeling the smoothness of the water as I slice through it, the wind whipping my air, and soaking in the same lake-top view the loons get to enjoy every day.
So it stands to reason that when I got the chance to get pulled behind a boat, on a circular tube, with each of my kids taking turns to ride the same tube with me, I was an enthusiastic “yes!” The best part about that experience was my view of my kids’ faces. Holding on to the same tube, our faces were mere inches apart. Once they got comfortable going at a speedy clip, I demonstrated a few other ways to lie on the tube (as opposed to on the belly), such as bringing your knees in and crouching on all fours. After lying back down, my kid scooched up on all fours for the first time, and the view I got looking up to that ear-to-ear smile, with wind-strewn hair and nothing but sunny blue sky overhead, knowing that I once felt that same, first-time-tubing joy on this very lake, and getting to be there and share in it with a point blank view of it all… that is a hard moment to top.
HIKE INTO PARRY SOUND WITH KRISTYN
One day my parents treated Kristyn and I to the gift of time; they offered to watch our kids so we could get away for some hours of togetherness between the two of us. Lucky for me, I’m married to someone who, like me, enjoys the simple things in life, so we used our gift of time to seek out the nearest hiking trail for some quality time outdoors, which led us to the North Shore Rugged Hiking Trail in Parry Sound, an inlet of Georgian Bay, which itself is a part of Lake Huron.
We clocked a good number of miles ambling along this not-so-well-marked trail system. Hiking with Kristyn is one of my favorite activities. When you hike with someone else, because you are both moving, and you are both surrounded by nature, and you are not sitting face to face with each other but are moving alongside each other or in a line (i.e. not making direct eye contact), it opens up a new level of conversation and thinking. Movement sparks creativity and insights. The shared rhythm of moving together aligns that energy. It was such an enjoyable few hours of my life, and the only thing I needed was a trail, a water bottle, and my partner.
Kristyn hiking happily
We ended up finding a glorious sit spot with many flat rocks, warm to the touch from soaking in the day’s sunshine. Our shoes and socks came off. The spot was pretty secluded. We stayed. We meditated. It felt like one of those spots you find in nature that you want to make your home and never leave. Eventually, though, the time did come for us to make our way back.
Taking in the view of Parry Sound, ON
The sparsely detailed map we had seen at the trailhead showed the trail went north along the shoreline and eventually hit an end point where you simply turn around and come back south, with a few various pathways all heading the same direction. We had made it to the end of the trail, and as we started to make our way back to the parking lot, we took a few turns we hadn’t taken on the way out. We did this on purpose to explore one of the other pathways we hadn’t seen on our northbound jaunt. We got to the point, though, where the trail started forking in odd ways, higher up into the hillside, with residences becoming visible through the brush. We were still on a system of trails, but it was starting to feel wrong. Some might have said we were lost. Kristyn, unworried about the situation, pointed out, in one of the many conversational sparks of insight one gets while hiking, that, “Getting ‘lost’ is really just having too much attachment to a place that’s not where you are right now.”
From that moment on, any time I feel lost, whether it be a physical, locational lost or a mental feeling of being lost, I will remember this wisdom and fill myself with mindfulness that wherever I am right now is where I need to be.
CHANGE OF PLANS WITH A SILVER LINING
As we approached the end of our planned stay at LFP, an unpleasant surprise developed. We were supposed to go stay with my cousin for two days, and then my aunt and uncle for two days, but the latter group got COVID-19. Boo! They were vaccinated and had mild cases, but it still meant that we could not stay with them for two nights as originally planned. We opted to stay an extra night with my parents and tack on an additional night with my cousin in Stouffville. While it was a bummer to not see them, there was a definite silver lining in that we removed one transition from the itinerary. The first night with kids in any new sleeping arrangement tends to be a bit chaotic, at least for our family, so as things unfolded we were glad to have one fewer “first night in a new place.”
So after one final rainy day at the trailer, we packed up and headed three hours south into the city to stay with my cousin, her husband, and their two boys aged 3 and 1.
CONNECTING WITH COUSINS
I’ve always had a special place in my heart for my three cousins from Mississauga. For the first years of my life, they were my only first cousins, and my brother and I were their only first cousins. Among the five of us, I am the oldest. The next oldest is my cousin Allison, a year and a half younger than I. Because we were (and are) the two oldest, there was always something a little extra magical about our bond. Even though we never lived close to each other, grew up in different countries, and would only see each other on rare family get togethers, it still feels like she is the “sister I never had.” What a treat it was to get our newly formed families together and live under the same roof for a few days!
It was a treat, and it was also mild pandemonium. Anyone who’s been in a house with four kids under the age of 6 knows what I’m talking about.
But truthfully, it wasn’t really pandemonium at all. I was so impressed by these parents of two young boys. They are in the middle of making baba ganoush while also calmly attending to a needy one year old and also having an adult conversation with me. How? I don’t understand. I can’t even make mac and cheese without needing complete silence and eight feet of space around me on all sides.
While the daytime hours were fun, the good times really heated up after the kids got to bed. What I enjoyed most about these few late-night convos with my cousins was that we skipped over common small talk and got right into real talk. What are we striving for as parents? How does one get financially free? Just how different is a Canadian accent to a Minnesotan one? (Hint: if you need to find out the answer to the latter, just put a Canadian and a Minnesotan together and have them both pronounce the sentence, “I left my house to go to a boat conference.”)
I also immensely enjoyed their ritual of evening tea after the kids went down. Not the way I make tea, which is to microwave a mug of water and then toss in whatever tea bag was within closest reach out of the Lazy Susan. No, they made tea. With a kettle. And a teapot. A teapot we would all share. And we drank the tea out of a Turkish tea set (like this). And there were lemon wedges. This all probably took an extra four minutes to prepare compared to my bachelor-style method of tea-making, but the impact of the difference was immense. I could feel a greater sense of bonding, of community with the four us, simply by all sharing tea out of the same pot. We laughed, we cried, we laughed some more, all while sharing in our tea. When the pot emptied, we refilled it. (We did need something to wash down the salt of the ketchup chips.) This was a shared ingestion behavior that I was grateful to take part in and have modeled for me. I’m looking forward to integrating this ritual into my own home. I’m now in the market for a Turkish tea set.
UNLOCKING THE WISDOM OF GREAT GRANDPARENTS
With my cousin’s house as our home base, we ventured into the city of Toronto on two different days to visit each of my grandmothers. It had been years since I’d seen either of them, and I was excited and grateful for the opportunity to introduce my children to their great grandparents.
I also knew that this would be a rare chance for me to have quality face time with my aging grandmas, and on our hour-long drive into the city I considered what I might want to ask them, what knowledge or story did I most desire to selfishly extract and internalize. It dawned on me that the only reason I’m even here is because of the choices they made, because of their successful parenting of their own children. So I decided that no matter where the conversations went, and no matter how distracting our kids were, at some point in each visit, I was going to ask each of them, “When you think back to when you were raising your kids, or even as you look back with hindsight, what kind of parenting philosophies or strategies did you use? What do you think to be the most important things in raising children? What should I do with my kids?”
Their answers astonished me. Not because of what they said, but because both my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandmother said virtually the exact same thing.
The one answered my query with a more thorough response: “Let children be their individual selves, whatever that means. Resist the temptation to compare one child to the other. We are all different, with different strengths and skills, no matter how ‘equal’ or ‘fair’ the parents may try to raise them. One kid might need more affection, where another might need more movement and rough play. Give kids what they need even if it means one needs ‘more’ than the other. ‘Fair’ isn’t always fair.”
The other grandma, upon hearing my question, answered without hesitation: “Let them be. Just let them be.”
When my second grandma uttered those words, it hit me like a ton of bricks. It sounded so similar to the first response. And, my grandmas are right. By the time kids get to be 4-5 years old, they really don’t need much help anymore. They want to do things for themselves. They don’t want to be taught – they want to do. They don’t need to be corrected – they will end up figuring it out on their own. It’s my job to keep them safe and then get out of their way. I am deeply grateful to have received this insight and reminder from the elders in my family.
If there’s something you really want to know – ask your elders!
GOING WHERE THE ENERGY FLOWS
We capped off our road trip with a one-night stay at a family friend’s house. They are long-time family friends, they have a great house with a backyard pool, they have two older kids (and our younger kids love playing with older kids), and they live in an area that was on our way home, but none of those are the reasons we made a point to visit them.
We slated one of our road trip days for this visit because of how, over the course of many years, the adults in that family made Kristyn and I feel along the way. We felt cared about. We felt seen. Noticed. Loved. They are the type of people that make sure to send you a note on your birthday, that ask about you when they speak to one of your relatives, that just genuinely seem like they give a rip. So many people today are so busy with their own lives, they don’t make time to look up and stay connected to those close to them (or those that were once close). These folks do. I felt a deep sense of knowing that we needed to make an effort to see these people.
Turns out, I was right. We had a glorious day. The kids paired off nicely and entertained each other while the adults got to sip and chat (which is usually the goal, is it not?).
Two of my favorite quotes from this 24-hour visit:
Adult, while playing a late-night card game, a tad frustrated after losing several hands in a row, and then losing the next one because of having taken too many tricks, but it was actually her low cards that had won the tricks and the high cards had not – “F*@!, that’s not how I thought I would be angry!”
6 year old to 11 year old, who have never met each other, while standing next to the diving board – “Should we hold hands and jump off that?” They did. <3
IN CONCLUSION
We then drove home by way of Chicago. It was a fairly uneventful two-day drive, which is exactly how I prefer my two-day drives to be.
I am so glad I invested the time and energy into making this trip a reality. You know it’s the sign of a good time when you’re already thinking about when you’ll come back to a place before you leave it. Until next time, Canada!
