A Tale of a Brittle Gray Hair

One gray turns brown with every new subscription. Sign up today!

I’m filled with total contentment and maybe even a little bit of joy.

It’s my second morning on Hat Creek near Lassen Volcanic National Park. I’m reading Emerson, pressing too many cups of coffee, and chatting with local fishermen as they cast for trout.

I’m still glowing from the previous day’s hike at Butte Lake, one of my first since an ankle injury six months earlier.aeropress coffee at Hat Creek

Life is pretty damn good.

Then I notice something: A brittle gray hair on my Darth Vader sweat pants.

The last year has aged me.

One week into my fifth meander. I’m thinking back over a half-year, maybe more, of difficulties of my own making – and how I’ve finally gratefully pulled myself out of it.

Depressed. Fallible. Mortal.

Publishing one’s feelings on the interwebz brings interesting reactions. My post about my disorientation after Saguaro Man brought tons of likes (yay likes!) and positive comments from friends and from the Arizona Burner community.

It also brought an email of concern from my counselor: “I find myself wondering if you might be depressed.”

Hell yes I was depressed. And, depressingly, I don’t know where it began. I suppose it was gradual, but it’s been impossible to pinpoint the exact genesis of my difficulties.

When I was at my bottom in May, I was struck by this line from Robyn Davidson’s Tracks: “I did not understand the change, did not realize that I had become isolated, defensive, and humourless, did not know that I was lonely.”

Yup.

The last year has aged me. After so many years of forward progress dating back to my eruption in 2009, I haven’t handled recent reminders of my fallibility and mortality with grace.

I fell off my game more than a year ago and never got back on it for more than a few weeks at a time.

I succumbed to anger over Trump. I succumbed to fear over my health, my financial security, my seemingly-imminent punishment from under-performing. And I succumbed to arrogance. It may not have seemed so outwardly (or maybe it did), but I could feel it growing inside me.

Then there were the reminders of my mortality. There was the gum surgery and the sprained ankle that refused to heal. There was the dad bod that refused to be tightened. There was the unstoppable creep of my Tinder search parameters past 40 to 41, 42, and on.

And, there’s the aforementioned brittle gray hair. Aged indeed.

Facing It. Always Facing It.

I’ve known things were off for a while – maybe as far back as last April (like, April 2016).Lassen Peak

In March, I sat on the bank of the Colorado River during a kayak trip and prayed for release. Unfortunately, I wasn’t ready yet to do the work. I wanted GUSS to fix things, but I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain.

At times, I thought I had surrendered to the process. Instead, it took two more months before I was finally beaten into submission.

And sitting alone, utterly alone, in an apartment during a two-week solo trip to Boulder in May, I got that email from my counselor with this quote from Joseph Conrad: “Facing it, always facing it, that’s the way to get through. Face it.”

When I returned home from Boulder, I finally began to put in the work. By the time I hit the the road a few weeks later, I was fully ready to face it.

And facing it has made all the difference.

A few hours after the encounter with the brittle gray hair, I’m hiking around Lassen’s Manzanita Lake when I experience my first instances of childlike wonder in more than a year.

The volcanic peak is still covered in snow and reflecting beautifully off the lake’s surface. But it’s the birds that do it – robins, Steller’s jays, Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds.

These birds are the Sierras and Cascades to me, and the Sierras and Cascades are my church, my playground, and my sacred spot to face it all – depression, fallibility, mortality, and even a brittle gray hair.

One gray turns brown with every new subscription. Sign up today!

hiker at Lassen Peak

Blowing zeros and other happenings during 90 days sober

When a reporter asks at the end of The Untouchables what he’ll do once prohibition is repealed, Eliot Ness responds, “I think I’ll have a drink.”

My own prohibition was repealed just last week. September 22 marked the end of my three-month commitment to sobriety. For 90 days – including 70 on the road to Seattle and back – I limited myself to a single beer per day in a journey for spiritual clarity and awareness.

Now that I’ve reached my destination, a good reporter might ask: What’s next?

Well, I’m not exactly popping the champagne to celebrate.

I may have one beer. And that’s about it. It turns out that I’ve kinda liked my return to sober living.

The Departure

breathalyzer blowing zero

Mark it zero, dude!

When I departed on this journey back in June, I wasn’t looking for big answers. I simply wanted greater clarity and awareness – of my self and my surroundings – so that I could live in tighter alignment with my values. That’s integrity, Holmes.

As I said back then, alcohol and I have an unhealthy relationship. With alcohol in my life, I have less clarity and less serenity and less sensitivity to my emotions. I’m more likely to get confused, to bottle up my feelings until they boil over, and to just generally make mistakes.

I’m not talking about the dumb things we do when we’re drunk. I’m talking about the way regular exposure to alcohol and other chemicals affects you over time. It turns out that regularly pumping a depressant into your system fucks you up a bit. Who knew?

A 90-Day Journey

Sobriety led to one of the more memorable episodes of this third Meander.

After a day of rafting at North Cascades National Park, I volunteered to drive our van back to camp. When rangers at our campground spotted an open bottle of tequila in the passenger seat, I had to pass a Breahtlayzer to avoid a ticket. I blew zero (of course) and the rangers were cool enough to let me immortalize the moment with a photo.

It wasn’t until about 60 days into my Meander that sobriety really began to affect me. Fortunately, there weren’t huge emotional swings like on my first Meander when I despaired over crushing a duckling with my Subaru.

But there was emotion nonetheless.

On the drive from Mt Shasta to Lassen Volcanic National Park, I cried at the mariachi version of Mumford & Sons’ I Will Wait. I had listened to this song repeatedly while watching my nephews watch in Seattle, so I intuitively knew it’d cause a reaction.

Spontaneously, I found the song on Spotify and played it. My heart knew that I needed an emotional laxative.

After that, throughout the two-week trip from Lassen to Tempe, my emotions were heightened. But the peaks were flatter and the valleys were shallower. I experienced low-level loneliness at times. I looked joyfully forward to my return home. I was far too ecstatic about the twists and turns of Survivor reruns.

Again, this wasn’t the dramatic emotional roller coaster of the first Meander or my seemingly endless depression following my eruption seven years ago. And, you know what, I prefer this calmer, steadier manner of feeling.

Emotions good.

Chaotic mood swings bad.

My Companions on the Journey

To be honest, making it 90 days wasn’t all that tough. For the most part, people were supportive of my mission. I got zero peer pressure from old friends on a brewery crawl in Ballard. The ASU Alumni Association’s annual booze cruise in Seattle was a little dicier, but I expected it to be so.

After all, we’re Sun Devils, man!

Big thanks to Joe for serving as my accountability partner, to Stephanie, Astara, Wendy, and others for listening, and to my Seattle peeps for understanding why I wasn’t drinking around the campfire.

Henry David Thoreau said, “I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.”

I don’t quite agree with that. I’ll continue to enjoy a beer from time to time.

But more than one? No thanks.

After 90 days of sobriety, I’ve decided that water – or a single glass of beer – is the only drink for a wise Matt.

WIN_20150724_103429

Just coffee for me. Thanks.

Five animals I love just as much as Cecil the Lion

I watched a family of ducks swimming as I drank my coffee this morning at Lassen Volcanic National Park’s Manzanita Lake.

It occurred to me that I was still angry about Cecil the Lion, but not for the reason you probably think. Every time I see a Facebook post about Cecil the Lion, or Blackfish, or the Salt River horses, I get angrier.

Not just because those beautiful animals are captive or dead, but because the response to those situations feels so disproportionate to the crime. After all, how many pigs do we hold captive and kill daily to feed our bacon obsession?mt rainier marmot

We care deeply about big majestic mammals like lions, orcas, and wild horses. We care so deeply in fact that many of us are willing to update our Facebook statuses.

Unfortunately, that level of care doesn’t extend to the vast majority of life on this planet. On my travels, I’ve had special experiences with many “lesser” lifeforms than lions and wild horses. Here are five of my favorites.

1. Salmon and steelheads on the Umpqua River. We all know that salmon swim upstream to spawn (making them the true opposite of tuna in Seinfeld wisdom). You can’t truly appreciate what swimming upstream means until you see them battling against the seemingly insurmountable falls along the Umpqua River in southern Oregon.

2. Canada geese at Tahoe and Donner Lake. My first Meander seemed to sync up perfectly with the northern migration of geese and I shared several lakes with them on warm days in Eastern California. When I see them on the Scottsdale greenbelt in spring, my mind wanders toward summer travels.

3. Banana slugs along the Pacific Coast. Life doesn’t get much lower than these slimy little guys that live along the moss-shrouded rivers of the coast. Long and yellow in the Redwoods, stumpy and green on the Olympic Peninsula, they always make me smile.

4. Marmots in the sub-alpine zone. When I first saw these furry oversized rodents at Olympic National Park’s Hurricane Ridge, I didn’t even know such an animal existed. My favorite encounter was with a precocious varmint at Tuolomne Meadow who just couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t share my PB&J.olympic banana slug

5. Steller’s jays in the Sierra Nevada. They’re annoying as hell when you’re trying to crank out that one last hour of eye mask-aided sleep, but watching these beautiful blue birds hop from campsite to campsite looking for crumbs reminds me of lazy mornings reading and journaling in the Sierra Nevada.

My Meanders have often been about big majestic mammals. From bighorn sheep at Grinnel Glacier, to traffic-jamming bison at Yellowstone, to an abandoned black bear cub at Sequoia National Park, I’ve seen some amazing animals.

In my view, the banana slugs and marmots are also sacred and precious manifestations of God (or universe or spirit or whatever noun you prefer).

As I finished my coffee at Manzanita Lake, the relentlessly adorable fuzzy little ducklings passed out of sight. I thought how glad I was that they were paddling along here on this lake and not being fattened up on a farm on their way to somebody’s plate.

Their lives have gotta be worth a Facebook status too, right?

***

Note: Want more of my pro-life ramblings? Check out One Dead Duckling and My Choice to be Vegetarian.

umpqua river salmon

After the eruption: From devastation to serene beauty

In over two months on the road, I’ve heard a lot of questions. One of the most common is, “What is this trip all about?”

Well, on the surface, I think it’s fairly obvious.

My month in California was about eternal things like oceans and redwoods and the Sierra Nevada. My month in and around Oregon was about volcanoes and their impact on the landscape. Devastation, like Mt St Helens. Rebirth, like Mt Lassen. And eventually serene beauty, like Crater Lake.

If you know me, you know that surface-level answers are rarely enough. So, let’s go a little deeper.

 

The Devastation of Mt St Helens

When Mt St Helens erupted on May 18, 1980, the devastation was complete. Whole forests were wiped out. Spirit Lake halved its depth and doubled its surface area. Fifty-seven people lost their lives. Devestation of Mt St Helens

I erupted in the winter of 2008-09. I had just got engaged. I was deeply stressed from grad school and a career change. I was experiencing incredible financial insecurity from the combination of home remodeling debt and the recession.

And then. Boom.

When I exploded, I took forests and lakes with me.

I’ve always liked an analogy from George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air. In discussing his minimalist ways, he said he had to remove everything from his backpack before deciding what to put back in.

Within months of my eruption, a lot had come out of my backpack. Old friends. Fantasy sports. Softball. Meat. Alcohol. My job at Insight. And, eventually, my engagement. The devastation was complete. The landscape of my life was as barren as the wasteland around Mt St Helens in 1980.

 

The Rebirth of Mt Lassen

While not as devastating as Mt St Helens, Mt Lassen did its share of damage to the California countryside when it erupted in 1915. Today, nearly 100 years later, life has returned to the landscape. In fact, it’s beautiful. Waterfalls. Wildflower-covered meadows. Even baby pine forests. Rebirth of Mt Lassen

The rebirth is so complete that my friend and I debated whether Mt Lassen should retain its national park status now that its once-devastated landscape is essentially recovered.

Interestingly, in the rush to repopulate, life overexerts itself. There’s competition as new life floods into the wasteland. It takes time for nature to find the right balance of trees and floor cover, predators and prey.

And so it’s been with me over the last few years. To return to the Up in the Air analogy, I’ve spent the years since my eruption deciding what to put back into my backpack. Unlike Clooney’s character, I’ve tried not to cloud my judgment with alcohol and womanizing.

I’ve tried a bunch of stuff – from church to meetup.com to Tempe Leadership. Some things have stuck with me. For example, I love yoga and hiking and gardening. Some things haven’t. I doubt I’ll return to sand volleyball or soccer or obsessing over HBO.

I’ve decided which friends to keep and which to let go. I’ve found a career path that makes sense for me. I’ve created a spiritual life essentially from scratch. Yup, things are looking pretty good these days.

 

The Serene Beauty of Crater Lake

Mt Mazama erupted 3,000 years ago and left a swath of southern Oregon as barren as that around Mt Lassen 100 years ago and Mt St Helens today. Over the centuries, its crater filled with rain and snow melt. Today, Crater Lake with its still blue water is recognized as one of our most beautiful places.Crater Lake

The eruption of Mt Mazama was over in days, but the transition to the serene beauty of Crater Lake took centuries.

Maybe that’s what this trip is all about. It’s about hitting fast forward on my evolution. It’s about creating space to do little more than think and reflect and journal and grow.

I’ve made tremendous strides recently. One area of focus has been visualizing and setting intentions for my lifestyle back home. Another has been reversing my mistaken belief that there’s a scarcity of suitable partners for me in Phoenix.

Progress has not always been easy. Some breakthroughs have actually been quite painful. But I seem to have hit a point of diminishing returns. In fact, on my most recent hikes, I haven’t thought. I’ve just connected quietly. I’ve walked in peace.

I’ll admit that I’m kinda ready to come home. So, perhaps I’ve done what I set out to do.

Don’t get me wrong. The view from Mt Simpson ain’t perfect. There are still some jagged lava rocks lying around. But that’s OK. As far as I’m concerned, a few lava rocks add character to a landscape.