Please, please, PLEASE get in touch with us and let us know if we're inspiring or annoying you, if you have questions or comments, or just to say hi! We may even stop in and see you at some point!

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Update on the Walmart Chronicles...

Since I have a space taken care of as far as parking is concerned, I thought I'd do some more exploring. Last night I "camped" at the Walmart at Stapleton, off I-70 and Quebec in eastern Denver. It was the most comfortable I've ever been at a Walmart. There were three other RVs in the parking lot, and two parked semi tractors. It's comforting to know that you're sharing space with others, some on a journey similar to my own, others catching a few weeks between shifts on the road. I feel like there's an unstated camaraderie that occurs between us.

REPLAY: The absense of control/The sweetness of solitude

I wrote this blog in March, and I feel it was a very crucial part of where I am now and how I got here. Looking back, it's intriguing to see my own history from slightly altered eyes. I think when we can do that, we gain a spectacular insight into who we are and who we want to be.

One shouldn’t know just how to percieve our own life. The reason I say "should never" is because I feel that having any sort of handle on our lives (where we are, where we are going, why we are going there), while these are all great ideas to have, they spoil the innocent joy of how we live our life.

Consider a good story you’ve heard, a good book, good movie, or a good song. Think back to the first time you heard it. Do you remember having an idea about what you thought it was going to be? Maybe you did, and you were pleasantly surprised. Maybe you did, and you were reassured in your choice you made to watch this movie. Maybe you knew nothing about it, and were stunned that this was out here, and you knew nothing about it.

Now think back to the second time you heard this story. The third time. If it’s a really good story, you enjoy it every time, but you still never quite gain the mistique of having heard it for the first time.

Can we apply this principle to our own lives? Is it safe to say that we can wander through our own lives, on the one hand making the decisions that make us happy, truly happy, setting goals that will help us find an even greater happiness and sense of self? I believe it is, and I think having everything pre-destined, while a noble ideal, leaves something to be desired in the essense of life.

Imagine going on a backpacking trip and seeing something you’ve never seen before in the solitude of the wilderness. Imagine the first time you were on an airplane or the first time you went to a different state or a different country. Imagine your first road trip, your first pet, your first child...

Imagine your hardest times. The times you’ve felt yourself tested, challenged, pushed beyond what you knew to be your own personal limits of existance. Think back to the times when you knew you couldn’t make it one more day without something giving way to all of the weight of the world that you were carrying on your shoulders.

I would hope that if you’re reading this, you’re still here. Somehow you made it through those difficult times. You’ve answered the calls of the challenges and met them, and chances are, you’re a different person now then you were.

You didn’t plan for the bad things to happen. They just do. And you cope with them, you grapple with them in the depths of your soul and show return to the every-day workings of your life as new and improved and better than you were, even if you are now stained glass instead of an open window.

I feel happiness should be the same way. I feel like happiness shouldn’t be planned as much as met with open arms in the midst of everything that goes wrong or awry in our lives. I beleive that when we map out the courses of our own paths through life, we lose some of the flavor of what it is to be overcome by happiness, only leaving room for the undeniable realities of grief and suffering.

I believe that it’s arrogant of us as humans to expect that everything is going to be okay and that bad things interrupt the flow of the good. I think that particular philosophy robs us of our abilities to learn from the difficult times, an prohibits us from learning even more from the good times.

Every aspect of our life has the potential to be unknown territory, the potential to be new and exciting or challenging. I don’t think that trying to funnel your life into a very narrow track of the typical "career, family, financial security, etc." allows you to branch out and experience the weird sensations that may lie just beyond the outside of the funnel.

I suppose with this rant, all I can do is encourage you not to be scared. Maybe I have no right to encourage anything. Maybe this is a blog about me being scared and afraid to branch out and seek my own truths about some questions that are bigger than me. However, I know for certain, that there arecertain parts of this universe that have to be negative, even if simply for the idea of balance. I feel obliged to tell the stories, to boast the good deads and gently utter the not-good.

However, I am not afraid to let go of my control. Do not be afraid to go boldly into the unknown, to trust the lack of control. Whatever happens, I have to believe that despite the losses and wickedness, there are lessons, too, to be learned from the random and overwhelming good that exists when you forfiet control.

Do not be afraid.

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Lead climbing in Eldorado Canyon



I took a trip up to Ryan's on Sunday, and the result was little Ryan getting a new set of walkie talkies, me getting a bed built, and leading a climb in Eldorado Canyon. The latter was absolutely amazing. I felt like I had just entered into a new realm of giants, legendary and prolific climbers who lived lives like I'm striving to live for the sake of pushing themselves and their sport (or faith, as they're so often intertwined). It was spectacular. Just amazing.


I'm also very stoked for this opportunity to share so many of these experiences with so many of my friends and family. I'm getting back in touch with people I haven't seen in years. Good times had by all.
If you are interested in my travels, you'd probably like to see my friend Todd's adventures. His site is at pst-solutions.com. He is part of my inspiration for this project, and I owe him a debt of gratitude. My friend, climbing partner, and mentor, Ryan has a blog too. His awesome political blog is here. Todd, Dad, Jenny, and Ryan... you'd get a kick out of this stuff.

Monday, September 29, 2008

The BattleWagon in the flesh!


Here is the BattleWagon, my home away from work or whatever else I may be doing at the time. Sleepy. Cozy. Warm. Inviting. You know you love it as much as I do... okay, maybe not that much. It's not a Volkswagon, but it is a Westy in spirit (except it'll actually do better than 35 up a hill on a highway). More pics soon to come. Thanks for reading!

Friday, September 26, 2008

The Sweetness

I'm almost through my first week without a house. I'm close to getting a good parking spot off street. Having just read some history on Greg Mortenson living out of "La Bamba" (see Three Cups of Tea), I'm thankful I won't have to be driving around looking for dark alleys that the cops won't find me and wake me up in the middle of the night. Beyond that, the actual sleeping part is quite pleasant. I always seem to sleep better when I'm camping out, and this is like always camping out.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

REPLAY: The Rock That Changed My Life

I posted this blog last October on my related blog site. It's a re-hash of old material for your entertainment. Enjoy.

I was raised to embrace the outdoors as my religion. Instead of dressing in our best clothing and making the walk to the Methodist church a few blocks away in my small hometown, our family donned our most rugged clothing, packed ourselves and our 2 big black lab mixes into my dad's old Land Rover, and took off for another new trail, road, or high mountain lake somewhere in the wilderness.

I grew up in a small town in Rocky Mountains. The local range was full of gentle giants, towering mountains that held us in their embrace like loving mothers do their own children. Growing up like this, I didn't learn my morals by being told from a preacher at a podium what was right and what wasn't. I learned by being humbled by views that few people were ever going to see in their lifetimes. I discovered, no matter how badly I wanted to stay home and play with friends and neighbors, that I would always regret the part of the day where we had to turn around and head back to the truck. I was inspired, as a young adult, to continue chasing these dreams, exploring these places that had the ability to expand my view of the world around me and deepen the view into myself.

Through friends and family, I have been led to places I didn't know existed. These places had a way of transcending everything I thought I understood about reality. The journey to and from my geographic destination ultimately became a spiritual voyage into new realms of serenity and passion that made my brain feel like a bomb with a lit fuse. A few days ago, my close friend and most-trusted climbing partner Ryan led me to one such place, except at this place, the bomb in my psyche exploded, shattering my reality once again.

The sun rose on a terribly windy Saturday morning in our camp south of Moab, Utah. We set up camp after midnight the night before, our bodies rested but our minds aching from the five-hour-drive to get here from Denver. Ryan, his family, and our friends Dan and Melissa were all in attendance, making the preparations for what was to be a challenging climb in significantly gusty wind. We all drank some coffee and piled in my van, heading steadily towards our destination inside Arches National Park.

The sun had been up for a while, and we stopped at a few places along the way to admire the huge rock cathedrals that seemed to have been made by Mother Earth for God, or maybe vice versa. This alone was a very deep experience, but was only a glimpse of what was around the corner.

We continued to drive, and turned into a small viewing point off one of the main roads in the Park. There, we saw our climb: Owl Rock. "The Owl" is a modest sandstone spire, but I only say modest because, compared to the other towering monuments in the park, it's eighty foot summit isn't exceedingly remarkable. I should correct myself here and say it WASN'T remarkable at first sight, being limited to walking on flat land. I remember thinking to myself, half-seriously, "This is it? It looks like a giant wang! Where's the glory in this?"

The wind howled, and Ryan, bravely yet nervously, led the route up the large crack on the west face. I ran around taking pictures of this feat, knowing that someday, I was going to be doing the same thing on some other rock. He took his time, placing the correct gear into the correct place so that it would protect us, should we fall. He was graceful yet bold as he approached the summit, and when he got there, he tied into the chains bolted near the top, scrambled to summit, and stood, the wind at his back, the rising sun behind him. However he felt then will never be completely known to me, but how I felt seeing him there was overwhelming. He had become more than a simple human, but also less than a human at the same time. He had become part of the rock, part of the earth, part of a force that is bigger than I can even begin to know how to comprehend.

Ryan set up his belay spot on the Owl, and Dan was next up. Dan made this climb look easy, taking out the gear that Ryan had set on his way up, and trusting the top rope that held his life at bay. Dan easily grabbed holds, crammed his feet into the crack, put his toes on little pebbles that one wouldn't think capable of holding even a child's weight, much less a grown man's. The summit in his grasp, Dan made the final pitch, reached the top, and sat there for minutes, taking it in. Another god-like image burned itself onto my brain, another climber bonded with some unexplainable Chi, and I waited patiently for my turn.

Dan came down, and I roped up, ready, willing, and eager to have my chance to climb a rock. Climbing mountains had been my single goal at this point, but this small tower held more inspiration for me than the tallest mountain I had ever climbed. Slowly but surely, I started my trek. It was an amazing sensation as I crammed my hands, arms, legs, and hips into the large crack that now felt more like a cradle than a part of a sandstone tower. I inched my way up, and got to the crux of the route. Still 20 feet below Ryan, I stopped climbing. This crux was more difficult than anything I have ever encountered before. I was nervous and excited, and I had to talk myself down. I had to breathe.

Breathe.

Calm and collected, I easily moved over the crux and found the rest of the route to be like a ladder to heaven. Meeting up with Ryan, I checked my ropes, got my instruction, and began my Buddhist-like hands-and-knees crawl to the summit. And there I sat, quietly, happily, humbly, and feeling so many other wonderful emotions that I can't write. The wind swept over me, like God was holding me in Her arms, and I never wanted to leave. I cried as I thought of the most important things to me and how those things were now redefined. I smiled as I saw the clouds in my own life give way to a clear view of things that maybe weren't so beautiful, but were a part of me. I felt pride. I felt honor. I felt changed.

In the days after the Owl, I found myself thinking about these climbs and escapades into the wild. I felt like I could train and learn as much as I could, but would I morally be ready to climb? Are all of my sins and my bad karma going to allow me to accomplish what I'm setting out to do? I think, in retrospect, the only thing we can do is trust that there is a general idea for what we are supposed to be in our lives. Having the courage to follow what our ideas for ourselves is the tricky part. That courage gives us the moral compass necessary to have a passion for something bigger and better than what we know to be real. That courage allowed me to climb the Owl. That courage allowed me change my life.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Week One is Freaking Out!

I don't have the bed built yet, nor do I have a place to park. Parking in weird spots (i.e. Walmart) and sleeping next to and partially buried under my clothes and gear and stuff... it's exhilarating, but also a little unnerving. Just breathe, Russ, and gear up for the best trip ever.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

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It's crazy how sometimes we, as humans, find inspiration in the strangest or most unexpected places. It's almost as if, somehow, we are subconsciously searching for something greater, a search that trumps even the best intentions we are aware of, that leads us to new and motivating things we couldn't fathom before.

On September 11th, my cousin Shawn Funk died. To say I knew him or anything significant about him would be fallacy. I haven't seen him in around 20 years. I knew bits and pieces, like how he had dreads and did amazing pottery, but that was all secondhand and vague. He died, and I went with my mom and brother to his funeral, and here were all of these people whose lives he had touched for being a free spirit. I fear I've made an error in not getting to know this guy. I think we could have been good friends. However, Shawn did inspire me.

Free spirits are usually kindred spirits with one another. A free spirit can recognize another upon their first meeting and many times are drawn to each other. The essence of Shawn was with us all at that service, and I felt motivated to follow through with my goal of moving into my van, the BattleWagon, to see where I go with it. We only live once, and now is the most precious time.

This is a more severe feeling than when I had watched "Into The Wild" or read the book before that.

So, tomorrow is my last day at home in my Capitol Hill studio. I'm out. My home will be a 1994 GMC Safari, and I'll be building it to my needs as I go. Come on this adventure with me.