On Mondays.
It’s Monday in America. A mid-May morning and fresh snow up in the mountains all around Missoula. Over the weekend we had a brief revisit of cold. After a week of warm weather, the creek was ripping by Friday, well over the normal flow, water was sloshing across the small island I go to swim every morning, and where I normally put my towel and bag down was over run with creek. But then Friday night cooler temps set in. Overnight the snow up in the mountains had quit melting and the creek dropped by morning. Saturday my 17 year old son and a friend strapped on their backpacks and snowshoes and headed up into the Rattlesnake Wilderness. Throughout the day I’d look up from yard work towards the north noting the storms blowing through even heavier there than down in the valley. We were inundated with rain, hail, sleet, and wind, with periods of calm, but up there it looked to be wild all day. I could see the cells moving directly into the mountains they were in.
On Saturday I built a fire in the yard as I worked, periodically returning to it to stoke it and get warm and dig into a book I’m reading. Yard work, book, fire. It burned all day. By evening Simon sent me some photos from his some-how-in-cell ridge line… they were camped in deep snow on a ridge well into the wilderness area. Snow blowing, a fire, and a dug out pit out of the wind. I was very jealous I wasn’t there. I also realized how good I have it, having kids that go adventure independently and think to send me photos and updates along the way. Getting those photos and videos was somehow just as good as being there, knowing this was what I raised them to do, and the independence we’d tried to foster paid off, but they still want to share it with us.
In the evening the skies cleared a little and the temps dropped even more. As I went inside I imagined the tent up just out of view in the mountains under the stars, a small pine fire burning beside it. I wasn’t there, but my mind was. I dove back into my book and eventually deep into sleep.
By Sunday morning the creek was a good 12 inches lower than it had been on Friday. This morning it was even a few inches lower again, and I reclaimed my usual spot on the bank to store my stuff while swimming.
Fast natural cycles. Slow natural cycles. The world is so much more in charge of itself than we give credit to it. For all the fear and trepidation the media (and neighbors and friends) have been selling about fires and snowpack and all the woes of the world, the world continues on around us. As someone that is intentionally picking and choosing my media inputs with not only selectivity but perhaps more importantly with a time filter, I’m finding a few things. First, my own mental clarity and what I concern my mind with is different, better. But it’s also honestly a little isolating. I’m a fairly isolated person in many regards already, but I do enjoy chatting with the people that live around me, and it’s uncanny how stressed many of them apparently are, about things they have no control over nor need to even be thinking about. It’s not being informed. It’s obsession. And the more solace I find in quiet, the more I realize how stressed our broader society has become.
Many blame the devices, and I do too. Having a phone in your pocket at all times offers a level of disconnect from one’s surroundings unlike any offered before. Sort of though. Books in many ways offer a similar mental escape. But herein lies an enormous difference. Books offer a focused, deep dive into a story, an idea, a history, a singular vein of concentration. They allow for a more thoughtful, in depth perspective. There is a specificity with following the voice of an author down a thought train that simply does not occur with online media. A good book can sometimes take weeks to finish. And during those weeks a narrative unfolds that requires the mind to follow in long form, not only connecting patterns that emerge chapter by chapter, but over the course of the larger story. Individuals and history do not randomly jump in unrelated and unspecified ways, and if they do it’s usually a sign of a poor authorship. And as the books unfold the reader takes on, hopefully, a rich experience of learning either the history and story of a true thing, or the patterns and universal stories of that connect us as humans, even in fictional tales.
Online media does not do this, or if so, it is rare. There are authors I like to follow online, who connect dots throughout their writing throughout the year. As you read their work they pull you in because you get to to know them, know what they are thinking about, know how they position their perspectives and how they seek to navigate their lives in the pursuit of more clarity, peace, joy, understanding. Their curiosities follow a pattern and natural flow. These are the writers I’m interested in.
But most of what comes out of the phone is chaos, unplanned, scattered, unfocused, and random. And while many of us in recent years have come to recognize this, and at least for myself, are trying to curb it’s influence on our brains, it’s clear that broader society is rather doped into the whole mess and it shows even in casual conversation. The seeds planted in this broadly accepted landscape are based almost entirely on fear, division, and control. And when you look at the base narrators, the ones that control the ecosystem, it’s clear to see why. Division and fear are weapons of control. There is a huge portion of the world that wants peace. And many are willing to cede freedom for such. It’s a thing we’ve witnessed around the globe as long as history has been written. The irony of course is that while the world has added several billion people in just a century, the world has become more peaceful, less impoverished, and safer from natural disaster. But that is not what is preached online. And that online chatter, even in it’s chaotic, haphazard fashion, has become gospel for many. People are pursuing peace, but in the wrong place. The digital world, that consumes ever more of people’s time, is not where peace and calm are found. It is out in the world, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our walks under the trees and under the sky with the sound of birds. It’s not a life based on naivety but in a balance between a rational amount of information crossed with experience. Information without experience is nonsense.
There is an addiction problem unfolding broadly throughout the world. The addiction is to the online narrative, a narrative that at it’s core is built to hold attention, and does so by stating in no uncertain terms: You need to be here because you don’t know what is about to happen, and it might be really bad.
Meanwhile the world continues to turn outside. We get older. We live, and someday we die. Our time on earth a limited thing and only God knows how long we’ll live. We could exit tomorrow. How will we have lived? In a state of digital induced drunkenness and fear? I’m striving to fight that for myself and my family. But even as we fight it, the world seems ever more wrapped into the false narratives, the impending apocalypse that never comes. And even when it does, because many experience tragedies not at a global scale, but at a personal level, those are the ones that we actually encounter, and even then, we humans are designed in such an incredible fashion that we can continue on. Our inherent resilience is incredible. So knowing that, why does everyone worry so damn much about everything?
In a more religious time people would put the fear and trepidation into the hands of the divine. It’s something we’ve lost societally, and in many regards it shows. But it hasn’t gone away, that desire for the world to be controlled by some greater force. It’s simply shifted. People have become religious about other things. Often it’s based on a government or a branch of science, people are seeking something that is in control. And while I do not have the answers, I can say with certainty the answer does not lie in human build enterprises. While we can find resolve in relationships, we can will always be disappointed at some level with the entities of human kind, because there is no perfection in humanity. It’s looking at the wrong thing. Again for me, I go outside. I don’t worship the nature, but I see the hand of something incredible even if not fully understandable at work in it. Does this make me religious? Not in the sense of religion, but in the sense of curiosity. But I’ve also come to know that my body as a human has only certain receptors that create my understanding, and there is a whole lot out there I can not and will never understand. So that is my acceptance. And in that comes a good bit of peace.
And the rest is adventure.
What a playground earth is. What a place to be born, to wake up, to grow in and get to explore. My goal isn’t to create or form or join a religion. My goal is to see and understand the world as it exists around me. To contribute and build a few cool things along the way. My goal is to tap my curiosity and use it to see the world and learn about the things I do have the capacity to take in, better understand and help those around me, my family, my friends, my community, to help find clarity and peace in a world that none of us control, but that all of us can interact with. I don’t need an organized religion to make me wonder. I don’t need organized religion to find connection. But I do have to choose to approach my day to day with the pursuit of living better.
And what gets interesting for me is how focused knowledge comes into play. The world certainly has fast moving events, floods, rockslides, storms, fires, things that come on unexpected and with severity and that require fast action. We prepare for those things as we learn about them. But those fast acting things are not the overall pattern of the world. Most of time moves at the pace of trees and geology. And so our interactions with the world need not always be abrupt, rapid, and based on instinct. So goes our accumulation of knowledge. A book can teach a history of an area in a way instagram or tiktok or x never will. As someone who considers himself fairly knowledgeable about all the issues and history of the middle east and central asia as those regions relate to energy security, specifically the conflicts that have arisen around oil and gas, I’m currently reading Black Wave and learning an entirely new history of the area that does not diminish what I’ve thought I’ve known, but that is certainly blowing my mind with regards to a shift in perspective based on learning how what I though I knew about the religions of the area was greatly incomplete. It’s a somewhat dense book, but easy to read and offers a clarity I hadn’t found in 20 years of reading about the area. And while I’m not completely off the social media, I dip in periodically, I can say with certainty that very, very few people are talking about anything based in historic perspective with regards to the supposed news stories that surround the middle east and central asia right now. They are throwing around junk candy. Most of it’s not worth putting in your mind. That’s just one small arena. That’s just one small thing. And yet there are millions who are obsessed with it throughout their entire day, feeling stress over it, reacting to information provided to them by people with an agenda for monetary gain and political control (which ultimately is also monetary gain.)
Don’t let them have your mind. Don’t let them control you with fear. Even if the grand apocalypse were to come, your mind would be better suited to deal with it were you not controlled by their narrative that ultimately just stifles curiosity and exploration of the world around you.
I talked to my mom and told her what Simon was doing over the weekend. He biked to the edge of the wilderness, ditched his bike, and continued on up into the snow line, crossed a peak, camped on a snow laden ridge overlooking a wilderness that leads well up into Canada and beyond. Was I worried about him?
No more than I ever am. Having kids there is always a desire for them to be safe in their endeavors. Highway trips are a concern for every parent I think. But we intentionally raised our kids in the outdoors, spending weeks of every summer in the mountains and deserts of the west. And in the mountains outdoors every winter. We raised our kids to find comfort in the discomforts of the natural world, to find the joy in the little things, and to embrace the weathers that come in all forms the natural world. Was I worried he might get cold? No. I knew he would. Was I worried he couldn’t deal with it? No, I knew he could and he would. He’s had 17 years of being out in the wild lands, having started camping when he was a week old.
He rolled out of the mountains just as our weather cleared. A cold Montana weekend had interrupted what had been a warm and clear previous week. And as he came down from the mountains, the weather cleared again, and it looks like another incredibly sunny and warm week. But he didn’t care. He’d had a blast. He’d seen the mountains being mountains, which is a thing of beauty when you get a front row seat. And while there were people on their phones and conversations lamenting the impending fears they have about fires, floods, famines, and existential destruction, he was in the mountains watching a small corner of the world unfold, interacting with it, being in it, exploring what that little area was like. Those are the experiences of life that matter. The digital abyss is just that… an apocalypse always. What matters more, what I’m pursuing, and what I hope you can too, is the real world with it’s cold, it’s hot, it’s wet, it’s sand, it’s mud, it’s leaves in the wind, it’s birds and boars and bears. It’s not a thing to fear, it’s a thing to find beauty in. There is something grander to it than we’ll ever have the capacity to know, but when you walk through it, explore it, and try to see it with fresh eyes, there is a certain magic that occurs in us that leads to the realization that we are meant to be here, meant to be in it, part of it, interacting and even contributing to it. We weren’t born into the wrong world. We weren’t born into a world any more terrible than it’s ever been. We are born into this world. This isn’t about religion or politics or any of the obsessions we see so commonly touted by the loudest voices. Those loud voices would love to tell you how to live, but it only matters if you listen. This is about real life. And it’s a fair bit simpler than we are often told.
