Why you should just take the damn hike..
Dardenelles Lake
I often wonder how many trails live in other people's favorites that often go forgotten, unnoticed or simply pushed down to the bottom of the list because of the ever-growing desire to explore everything else under the sun over years and years of ongoing pursuits of exploration and ambitious dreams of finally living each day living wild and free.
I wonder how many others feel the heaviness of years of transitions that end up putting such wild dreams on the back burner just to be questioned when the opportunity finally arrives.
I wonder how many series of self-doubt can take over one's mind that ultimately make our bodies believe incapability is far more superior than strength, passion and wonder?
For me, it started here. On a road trip to Lake Tahoe that was truly starting off with the undesirable all work no play vibes, which is exactly why I took my exit from my 9-5 in the first place.
Lake Tahoe Basin National Forest Lands
"I intend to work to live — not live to work"
The motto I try and live by because I spent far too many years doing the opposite. Living to work, day after day, hour by hour, paycheck by check only to feel like the ends barely met. I suppose that's the "American dream" ... finally making it to wherever we felt we were most successful. The funny thing is, when success is only measured by the achievement to have every bill paid, life starts to feel pointless, like every colorful moment in our minds might as well be muted pigments of every color mixed together that tends to look like that shit color brown when we mix everything so mindlessly but with intention.
The beautiful thing about nature is that she does not allow a single color to be over blended or lost within another fragment of any single being. Each is their own, yet beautifully paired together creating an alternate universe that just so happens to exist on Earth. The forgotten world until we learn how to step away from the one that holds us in fear of losing possessions and our overall sense of livelihood.
What if livelihood was manipulated by people who were betting on you to use yours? Would you pitch a counteroffer, or would you decide what was given was all you deserved?
How much are you willing to bet and are you willing to make a trade in order to have a taste of this other world. And the biggest question, if accessing this other world so frequently was so simple to others, how come it felt nearly impossible for me?
All valid questions worth exploring, over and over in my opinion until the bet landed in my favor I suppose.
Amelanchier Utahensis, Oxeye Sunflower, Snow Plant
Native, but rarely discovered — perhaps that's what makes tiny discoveries such as simple flowers special. We go to the store and buy bouquets of arrangements that hardly last longer than a week, and we grow what suits us in gardens but destroy the foundation repeatably because someone else decided weeds didn't belong.
Sometimes I feel like a weed, invasive species that isn't even native to the very place I call home.
Sometimes home is just a place we never had the courage to walk away from. We replace safe with routine; slower pace turns into stuck in traffic and country feels boring because connection becomes consumption.
Experiences > Consumption
but sometimes we blend the two and forget what it all really means. I used to be the kind of human who would consume anything if it altered by mind and gave me the false sense of happiness I kept chasing. To be transparent, I didn't even give myself the chance to feel what unhappiness was like in the raw, and I certainly refused to believe what I was consuming had anything to do with it.
Not only did one thing change, but everything did. I think when we lose enough that has nothing to do with possession and everything to do with human connection, we start to see the vibrancy of what is freely given.
Can you believe we don't even have to ask for it? We have the free will to just decide willy nilly that what we're chasing no longer serves us. We can choose to go outside and feel anything, everything or nothing at all just to be met with the purest most organic form of life. Organic by nature, not the hoe of foods that pretends to be whole.
Maybe you should use caution while attempting the alternate path, but who does it serve to completely ignore the opportunity when you stumble across it? Perhaps your path has yet to be discovered, and it really is just a hop, skip or a jump away.
Age really isn't just a number when it's wasted doing things that bring you a step closer to the very thing you fear about no longer feeling full of vitality in life. I think of friends who are the same age as me but somehow seem to be falling apart. If it's not the body, then it's the mind. We have been taught to focus on the aesthetically pleasing things to admire about ourselves, but we never learned how to treat our minds with the utmost respect that makes every day worth living. And what about our heart? The very thing that gives us the capability to give emotion meaning.
To arrive in a place where I am allowed to feel all three; to challenge them to work together instead deeply believing they deserve to be torn apart.
Dardenelles Lake, Lake Tahoe Basin
I know this is just a lake, but perhaps its existence is the very thing that makes me believe that the choice to walk the trail to it will always be on me. It does not pretend to be anything but water in the middle of the Sierra Nevadas. Dardanelles did not get its name because one person discovered it. It found its name because the trails were traveled.
Dardanelles is and will always be a roadless area. What used to be a wagon road is now a place anyone can explore. The first step may have been all about discovery but it's curiosity in the mind that will most certainly bring your body here and it's your heart that will make the choice if it wants to fall in love.
