Going Big Hiking
What would you do if you were actually free?
It started with the question, “What would I do if I was actually free?” The answer appears to be, “I’d move to Arizona.”
The question came up on a morning prayer walk a couple of weeks ago. Let’s just say it was one of those mornings where it felt like I was Houdini, bound in chains, upside down in a water tank, observed by an audience hoping to watch a man drown. The only difference is that I’m not frakking Houdini.
I must have asked myself this question a million times before, at least in other, oblique ways. Ways like, “What do I want to do?” At nearly 49 years old, I still haven’t figured that out. I still have some ideas, but in that moment of disinterred honesty, some surprising things came up.
I tried to define “free.” I definitely meant “freedom from caring about criticism.” That’s a big one. I didn’t want to be free to sin or otherwise be evil. I didn’t mean “freedom from my marriage,” although I did mean “freedom from the futile desire to make my wife happy.”
I’ve frequently talked about having goals, purpose, etc. On that, I’m the biggest hypocrite on that. All of the usual things that drive normal people don’t even start my engine. For the last 16 years mere survival has been my biggest motivation. In case you’re wondering, I can tell you after my exhaustive study that living to merely survive will sap your energy and will to live like nothing else. It’s not a Great Cause. It’s just dying more slowly. With a never-ending To Do list.
So, what would I do if I was truly fee? I think I have an answer. And it started with a kids’ Christmas party last weekend.
The kids spearheaded the party. They planned it, reached out to their friends, put together the “menu,” (not surprisingly, it was all candy), and followed up. Honestly, it was an unprecedented exercise in executive function.
They had a great time, but there were casualties. It’s what happens when kids basically have unregulated access to hot chocolate, cookies and sleep deprivation. I was glad to see them all running outside and getting some exercise with their friends, but they were fueled by sucrose.
My son K had the worst of it. The next morning he was wiped out, and he was not going to church.
I admired his defiance, actually. He made a stab at compliance, but his new pair of church pants we got him didn’t quite fit, and as one who cannot abide disorder, that was the final straw for him. He switched back to jammies and stood there before my wife and I, tears streaming down his face, chin jutting up to look in our eyes, and said, “NO.”
We usually have some kind of clothing-related rebellions on Sunday mornings, usually with the girls, and we’ve mostly held the line. Nice dresses turn into pants, which turn into jeans, which then devolve into ripped jeans… (They really know how to wear us down through incremental rebellion). But a full-on, manning-the-barricades rebellion? That’s rare.
“Walk with me,” I told my wife. We had a little confab in the back room. We both saw eye-to-eye on this one. Clearly K was in no shape to go to Liturgy, and forcing him to go would do nothing to stimulate pious sentiments. On the other hand, we couldn’t indulge or reward the ‘tude. Particularly with this kid. He’s strong-willed and may even have some special needs. Let’s just say his feelings are big and pure.
The resolution: I’d stay home with him, he’d rest, eat healthy and wouldn’t get any screen time.
So, I did “TV Liturgy” in the living room, which I abhor, and he went back to bed. Afterward, seeing how everyone was gone and K was in bed, I did something I never do: I decided to browse YouTube on the so-called “smart TV.”
My subconscious took the remote and did a search for “Best hikes in the southwest.”
Number of times I’ve spent substantial time in the American southwest? Zero.
I’m aware that pretty much everything I’ve seen about the territory is from professional photographers and it’s likely impossible that it could be that beautiful. However, about five seconds into watching the first one, I was a believer.
“K,” I shouted from the couch, as a good father does, “Get in here and watch TV with me!”
So much for the “No screen time” rule…
That first video had almost the exact name of my search, “Best hikes in the southwest.” (Good SEO there…) It was a recap of some places that are difficult to imagine exist in nature. The creator (I don’t think we’re supposed to call them “videographers” anymore) was somebody named Jerry Arizona, which can’t possibly be his real name. Nonetheless, he put together a montage of their 2021 hikes around the southwest that had me and the boy hooked.
The next video we watched was about the Zion Subway that looks fairly technical. In fact, in the video notes, he calls it “canyoneering,” not merely “hiking.”
Then you’re in it. The canyon is absolutely gorgeous at this point. Alternating between swims, obstacles and creek walking. Sooner than you want, you’ll come to another rappel just upstream of Keyhole Falls. This is my favorite section. There is a beautiful slotted up-section after the rappel, complete with all sorts of strange formations in the rocks carved out by thousands of years of water flow.
K is nodding and grunting the whole time. It’s his nature; the most pure genetic manifestation of our distant Viking/Prussian heritage. “Yes,” he says. “Yeeessss. Yessssss.”
One thing about K: He’s the climber. It’s his family nickname, in fact: “K the Climber.” There isn’t a rock, tree, or decorative IHOP rock wall that doesn’t challenge him, provocatively, to dominate it. Seeing the variety of landscapes along the Zion Subway, he was seeing himself on every one of them.
Me? I was hearing angels sing. My first thought: I could imagine singing Vespers there.
“Should we watch another one?” I asked the Boy. He nodded vigorously and snuggled up to me. (He’s 12 years old and is still an Olympic-level snuggler. His hugs are fierce, bordering on violence.
So, I picked another one, more or less at random, about The Wave in Arizona. K’s first response, roughly one second into the intro, was, “YES.”
A plan began to form. Conveniently, it was exactly the same plan that I’ve been haphazardly working on all year long. The difference now, though, was that I had an end goal in mind. I realize I should probably be thinking about retirement and/or building a self-managed and controlled career, but this idea was life. This was something I could imagine clearly. It’s quite likely the foolishness of a foolish man, or the massive burst of creativity an fMRI sees in a dying brain. But as an alternative to the easy, downhill path to the grave we’re currently on, I frankly don’t give a damn.
I don’t know how many more Jerry Arizona videos we watched, but when the rest of the family returned from Liturgy, we were still sitting there on the couch, glued to videos I can only assume were smuggled out of Paradise.
Despite the very real risk of getting a shiv in this dream, I said to my wife, “Come sit down. Everything has changed.”
The videos moved her, too. I was fairly shocked, actually. And as expected, she noted all the impediments to this goal. We have this, and this, and this, and that, and that, and that. We’d need XYZ and ABC, etc., etc. And she was right about all of it, of course. We have obligations that would need to be soundly taken care of.
“Yup,” I said. “My goal is to have the trip fully funded by May 15th.”
Her eyes drifted off of mine. Her face went rigid, as it does, when I say such things. We’ve been here many times before, and I’ve disappointed her almost every time. What’s different right now? Well, right now almost nothing is different. We’re stuck behind a Raiders of the Lost Ark-sized eight ball with resources dwindling and my day-job career falling short of survival levels.
I didn’t care. I still don’t. And since I expected that reaction, it didn’t kill my spirit (too much).
Plus - I saw something in her eyes, too. It was that look of lightning, far-off, but moving closer.
“You know,” I said, “[The company I work for] has offices not too far from the monastery you visited in the spring…”
A week later she had her own plan. Her plan involves living in an RV while we save up for a house, and there’s an ellipsis in the part where we come up with enough money to afford an RV, and a truck strong enough to pull it, but I like where her head’s at.
My plan hadn’t involved freaking moving to Arizona - it was just going to be a well-funded, two-week-long celebration of debt freedom - but…hold on here. Why not?
Why. Not?
We were talking about these things over breakfast this morning. (Breakfast tortillas. Breakfast tortillas!) Neither of us have spent any significant time in Arizona. Connecting flights, maybe. Drive-throughs. So what’s the pull? Are we just suckers for National Geographic-level photos?
Let’s go Big Melodrama.
Have you read Stephen King’s “The Stand?” Well, you probably shouldn’t. It’s mostly vile, and definitely something I shouldn’t have devoured in my tender teen years (or several times since…) Part of the story involves the remnants of humanity (in America) being called to one of two places - the evil survivors of a great plague get a call to go to Las Vegas. The good survivors have visions of “Mother Abigail” in…Iowa or some place like that. Corn. There’s lots of corn.
The survivors can’t explain it. They just sense that there’s a place in middle America where there’s peace and leadership. As survivors converge on Mother Abigail’s cabin, they realize they’ve all been receiving the same “broadcast.”
It’s not quite like that for us, for me. But here’s what the idea represents: space to breathe. Tulsa isn’t bad - in fact, I love it here, for the most part. I think it’s one of the country’s best-kept secrets. I could easily settle down here and learn to love it. (The key word being “settle.”) It’s got everything, albeit in smaller quantities. And, well, mountains or oceans. It doesn’t have those. As it happens, living near one of those is one of my absolute prerequisites for happiness.
But there’s something about vistas that my soul needs to “breathe.” Vast solitudes. Emptiness in which you can hear the music of the spheres, or that still, small voice that is, in fact, the Father.
I mentioned a monastery. Evidently it’s a good one. A great one, in fact. Our friend Fr. Paisius has been speaking highly of it. We watched some videos of that, too. I particularly liked the ground tour video:
I can easily see that as “home base,” but it’s the vast, open spaces I look forward to. Maybe I’ll hear Him.
So, a plan is forming, one way or another. Live there…visit frequently, I don’t know yet. All I know is that grinding out the days for survival is living death, and I’m not ready to lay down and die yet.
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Also, I’d love to hear from you - especially if you have intel on Arizona or hikes in the southwest. ;-)
It's really good to know you're not the kind of dad that cuts off physical affection at a certain age. That John Wayne, stiff upper lip BS is the slow death of civilization.