Reflections from Limbo

A non-human-powered side trip to Bellingham

Today I went to Bellingham first thing in the morning with Devin. Bellingham felt like the manifestation of a stocky orange-haired flannel wearing fisherman in a town. The sea, a blustery blue gray color, tumbled and tossed in the wind. The walk along the coast between industrial buildings and beautiful houses reminded me of Wellington, New Zealand.

I restocked on groceries and bought a sweet new ski backpack at Backcountry Essentials.

LIMBO

Waiting out this storm has put me in a state of limbo. When my baby jogger’s moving, I have clear purpose. Now that it’s not, I need to find purpose elsewhere. Another issue I’ve identified is that my running food (candy, junk foods) doesn’t translate well to sedentary food, so I gotta get some healthy food for the rest of this week.

As of now, it’s looking like my next solid opportunity to move will be Sunday, so I have a bit of time to kill between now and then.

I listened to an interview of Zelig Golden, the guy who founded Wilderness Torah in the Redwoods of California. He talked about the prophet experience as universal. He proposed that what Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed did— go alone into nature to connect with God/higher power/etc— is not unique to extraordinary people, but actually a fundamental human experience.

Golden also talked about his own coming of age experiences going into nature and doing reckless things like climbing multi-pitch rock and ice above his skill level. Those experiences easily could’ve killed him, but fortunately they just became part of his education. Golden said that he turned to nature for his first initiating experiences into manhood because the Judaism he grew up with didn’t have the resources to support him. He compared his risky behaviors in nature to the risky behaviors teenagers engage in with drugs and alcohol and noted that all of these behaviors are natural consequences of an unrooted culture.

Golden helped tie together some themes I’ve been thinking about in my own life as I re-engage with nature in this adventure with a more long-term vision. Like Golden, I too had my first initiations into manhood in nature, starting with rock climbing, then surfing, backpacking, and backcountry skiing. Nature “nourished my soul” like Golden. I felt safe in nature and trusted nature. However, last year I seriously contemplated for the first time in therapy whether my relationship with nature involved unnecessarily risky behaviors. That contemplation eventually led me to change my entire internal dialogue and principles from seeking epic experiences to seeking the safest experiences in nature.

I wonder if my risky behaviors would have been preventable. I think of the stories of indigenous children joining their parents on the hunt for the first time and admire the way their communities exposed them to real danger (caribou and bison) while at the same time protecting them. Even these communities though also had traditions of sending youth on solo vision quests with dangerous physical challenges and extended fasts marking their initiation into adulthood. I guess entering adulthood has to be done by oneself, but can it be supported and facilitated by community in our culture today?

Many of my first solo experiences were done without telling anyone or maybe just one or two peopled because I didn’t want to worry anybody or be discouraged. Now, the blog is enabling me to do this adventure in full connection with my community, which has been eye-opening and felt healthy overall. It carries the risk of worrying my family members more by writing transparently in real time about what’s happening. But, it also reduces the risk by crowdsourcing knowledge and feedback from the community. In my heart, this feels like the right way to do things. Even if doing this adventure in connection with my community challenges my community more, my hope is that it will make us all stronger.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My host Devin for driving me to Bellingham today, and then stopping at the hardware store so I could buy a tobaggin. My mom, dad, and Daniel for talking on the phone. My dad for donating a Bontrager flashing light for my baby jogger. My mom for designing some awesome Canada shirts, “CANADA: a little bigger, a little colder, a little norther”. We’ll order a bunch and start getting them out to the people.