The Meditative Life

One of the most significant things I’ve done for myself — and, consequentially, for others — has been to start a meditation practice. A primary purpose of meditation is to cultivate mindfulness, which we can define as the intentional awareness of the present. Cultivating mindfulness allows one to see thoughts and emotions more clearly and experience the sensation of being alive moment to moment more fully. While I could espouse the tremendous benefits of a meditative practice, I think that ground is well-trodden.

Roughly one and a half years has passed since I began a practice and I believe that it has substantially changed my day-to-day experience of life. That must feel like a drastic overstatement. However, the simple act of sitting down for half an hour every morning has cultivated a disposition towards the meditative life that has spilled over from meditation itself into coffee, writing, and shaving.

Anyone who knows me at all knows that I love coffee. I can chat endlessly about varying brew methods, different taste profiles, and the intricacies of regional varieties of beans. I simply can’t get enough of the stuff. The process of bean to cup is, to me, a beautiful blend of art and science, not to mention the wonders of the complex tastes of a good cup and the subsequent rush of caffeine.

Despite all this, one of my favorite aspects of coffee is the ritual of making a cup. For a few years now, I’ve brewed my daily cup(s) with a tremendously versatile contraption called the Aeropress. It can make a cup that is espresso-esque, french press-like, or even on par with the profile of a pour over. Each method requires a slightly different song and dance, but they all have something in common: they put me in a meditative and mindful state.

I am there as the water boils to a crescendo. I am there as the beans whine under the pressure of the grinder. I am there as the earthy smell of the grounds rushes to my nose. I am there as the water clashes with the grounds, creating yet another pulse of olfactory sensation. I am there as the first sip tells a story of origin and of travel. Until the last sip, I am there, in the present.

The point here is that meditation need not stop when I open my eyes at the end of a sitting. In fact, it cannot end there if we are to take the lessons of mindfulness and contemplation seriously. One can find spaces for the meditative life if you find ways to carve them out and I believe we all owe it to ourselves to find anchors in the challenging sea of life.

An additional area where I’ve found a way to create that space has been with a return to the analogue. Now, I’m a proponent of technology as much as the next guy. I’ve seen what incredible work technology can do while watching the growth of my brother’s non-profit from a simple idea to real, measurable impact. Yet, in this fast-paced world of sometimes overwhelming connection, it is hard to argue that we need to slow down sometimes. It’s why, although I use a fairly robust digital task management tool, I still get great satisfaction and a helpful pause for reflection when I sit down every morning, with that fresh cup of delicious coffee on deck, a good pen in hand and a quality notebook. In this tactile environment, I write down my tasks and chart out the day. It’s why I’ve made an effort to send more handwritten letters to my partner, my family, and my friends. It’s also why, fittingly, I drafted this very essay with a great beginner’s fountain pen in a fresh notebook, a gift from my brother.

The movement of a pen across a page is an incredible sensory experience. When you notice these sensations and dip into that blissful state of flow, you’re entering a fantastic space for the exploration of the meditative life.

Shaving, too, provides a similar space. I unfortunately have pretty terrible facial hair. It’s uneven, patchy, and unseemly given sufficient time. This all amount to a persistent need to shave, and to shave often. I had come across old-school shaving and decided to try it after the almost universal guarantees of a better shave and some fun while I was at it. So, I ordered my badger brush, some shaving soap, a heavy safety razor, and a sampling of razor blades. The guarantees proved true: I did get a closer shave and it was an insertion of fun into an otherwise mundane chore (once, of course, I had learned how to not cut my face open). I was hooked!

What this return to the past art of shaving required, however, was more time. Prepping the brush. Creating the lather. Applying the lather evenly to my face. Carefully shaving as to not cut myself. Cleaning all the tools. These all take time. If created space for that time, though, I was equally creating an opportunity for the meditative life. However many extra minutes of time spent on this fading style of shaving was spent immersed in the present. A good shave with these tools required it. Often, I finish a long, leisurely shave with the same peaceful state of mind on offer from a sitting.

This is not to say that we all need to meditate daily, brew fussy coffee, handwrite letters with a fancy foundation pen, or shave with an old-school razor. (Though I think we would all be better to ourselves and others if we all committed to meditation.) These spaces that I think contribute to a meditative life are not the only pathways. There are days where I don’t sit for meditation, or I grab a coffee from a questionable percolator at a cafe, or I decide to fire off a quick email instead of sending a letter, or I use a cartridge razor for a quick shave. Those days provide ample opportunity for the meditative life, as all days do.

Still, I know that the days where I make the effort to spend time in these spaces, ones that demand a little more attention and a little more time, I feel better. With these anchor rituals of meditation, coffee, writing, and shaving, I’m more there. And that feeling of thereness spills over into the rest of my day. That’s what a meditative life offers. I invite you to build one with me, one moment at a time.

Knowing Hope

The deeply institutionalized injustice in the news these days has profoundly distressed me. The unchecked deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are only a sampling of a woeful pattern so evident that I no longer have doubts that there is something broken in our criminal justice system. Broken in the normative sense: the system is working as designed but not as it should be designed. To the those who still doubt: engage with Rawls’ original position and, if any conceivable resulting structural set-up results in the outcomes we have witnessed, please share your findings.

My doubt that the current set-up is broken is no longer up for debate and I have a growing sense that a lot of people feel the same way. Amidst this clarity of the brokenness, hope seems to be in short supply. The recent tragic murders of two police officers only exacerbates our weary collective spirit.

I have to believe that we can change this. I have to believe that we can overcome hidden mistrust. I have to believe that we can stop damaging assumptions in their tracks. I have to believe that we can budge a stubborn status quo. I have to believe that that we are not too far gone. I have to believe that there is hope.

In the middle of studying for my first set of exams for law school, I went for a run on Stanford’s campus early in the morning after the news of the grand jury’s non-indictment in the case of Eric Garner’s death. I was full of anger. I always run past the law school at the close of my runs, driven by a foolish notion the work is not done until I am past the learning, the buildings of the law school standing in for the “learning”. Cooling down and walking through the law school’s courtyard, I came across a bunch of fallen leaves:

Looking at the scene, I dwelled on the idea that, like us humans, leaves are in some existential struggle. Always a few must hold on in hope that new ones come to take their place and, as seasons change, continue the work of growing. The fall? Inevitable. The growth? Not so much, requiring sunshine and a dogged fight against gravity. Though gravity will inevitably throw us to the ground, we can still grow. We can still reach. We can still know hope. This belief in hope made me recall an essay by Victoria Safford titled “The Small Work in the Great Work” that I have returned to many times in recent months. Stafford writes:

I have a friend who traffics in words. She is not a minister, but a psychiatrist in the health clinic at a prestigious women’s college. We were sitting once not long after a student she had known, and counseled, committed suicide in the dormitory there. My friend, the doctor, the healer, held the loss very closely in those first few days, not unprofessionally, but deeply, fully — as you or I would have, had this been someone in our care.

At one point (with tears streaming down her face), she looked up in defiance (this is the only word for it) and spoke explicitly of her vocation, as if out of the ashes of that day she were renewing a vow or making a new covenant (and I think she was). She spoke explicitly of her vocation, and of yours and mine. She said, “You know I cannot save them. I am not here to save anybody or to save the world. All I can do — what I am called to do — is to plant myself at the gates of Hope. Sometimes they come in; sometimes they walk by. But I stand there every day and I call out till my lungs are sore with calling, and beckon and urge them in toward beautiful life and love…

There’s something for all of us there, I think. Whatever our vocation, we stand, beckoning and calling, singing and shouting, planted at the gates of Hope. This world and our people are beautiful and broken, and we are called to raise that up — to bear witness to the possibility of living with the dignity, bravery, and gladness that befits a human being. That may be what it is to “live our mission.”

Let me shout at the gates of Hope for a moment.

Days after that run, my class at Stanford took our first exam. Fitting, it was Criminal Law. I couldn’t help myself from, when answering a policy question on rape, going to war on the unacceptable gap between law in theory and law in practice.

An hour after finishing the exam, Stanford Law School gathered for a Die-In while the sky around us darkened with much-needed rain in a California severely wounded by drought:

As it was the first protest I’ve been part of, I know not of the efficacy or value of this kind of peaceful statement in the age of social media activism. Still, I showed up and am among the mess of bodies that laid silent for four and a half minutes. When the time had passed, we chanted “Black lives matter”, a chorus of voices strained by tragedy. Somewhere in the cascade of dwindling volume I heard whispers of hope, almost as if our discordant voices had softly merged into one powerful note. I will hold very tightly to that hope. It is why, although it easy to mock the idea of these Die-Ins as empty statements, I think these gatherings are important because they help us know much-needed hope.

I believe we are at what Seamus Heaney calls a “meeting point of hope and history”. Safford writes:

Once you have glimpsed the world as it might be, as it ought to be, as it’s going to be (however that vision appears to you), it is impossible to live compliant and complacent anymore in the world as it is… And so you come out and walk out and march, the way a flower comes out and blooms, because it has no other calling. It has no other work.

[…]

I am interested in what Seamus Heaney calls the meeting point of hope and history, where what has happened is met by what we make of it. What has happened is met midstream by people who are — among the multitude of things we are — spiritual beings and all that that implies of creativity, imagination, crazy wisdom, ancient wisdom, passionate compassion, selfless courage, and radical reverence for life. And love—for one another absolutely, and that love that rises out of us, for something larger than ourselves, call it what you will. I am interested in the place, the places, where history is met by the hope of the human soul, life’s longing for itself. I am interested in hope on this side of the grave — for me there is no other kind — and in that tidal wave of justice that could rise up if only we would let it.

I know hope. Not the hope that will effortlessly come to fruition because of some enlightened generation or the steady march of time. No, the hope I know lays bare the extreme demands of compassion. We all must be blacksmiths, relentlessly hammering the moral arc of the universe at the furnace, bending it towards justice. These injustices are impermanent only if we make it so.

Our failings are numerous and inevitable, but we have to keep feeling, keep discussing, keep learning, and, most of all, keep knowing hope. For we must know it. There is no other way.

Footprints

I left a lot of footprints in the last few months. Some were faint, the imperceptible rearrangement of the smallest particles on the hard surfaces of wooden floors, buses, or the ever-expanding concrete jungle. Others dug deeper, showing the contours of my feet in wet sand, fresh mud, or damp trails. Some footprints were made by the smooth arches of my bare feet and some the awkward flatness of a $1 pair of flip-flops bought in a big market in Thailand. Most, however, were crafted by the pressure of my trusty Salomon trekking shoes.

All these footprints are likely gone by now, washed away by the elements or the many that surely followed after me. Still, it’s amazing to think of where I left footprints this summer.

Before I left even one, I thought about why I travel, inspired by a letter I came across written by Kurt Vonnegut.

I landed in Peru and jumped right into the adventure, taking buses from Lima to Cusco, stopping along the way to sandboard in Huacachina and venture down one of the deepest canyons in the world outside of Arequipa. As soon as I made it to Cusco, I set off on a trek to Machu Picchu via the Salkantay Pass, approaching the journey as a pilgrimage and a chance for open meditation.

From Cusco, I made my way to La Paz. In the border town of Desaguadero, my bus left me, an omen of the trouble to come. After exploring La Paz, I hurled down the World’s Most Dangerous Road on a mountain bike and ran into some trouble on the bus during the return trip.

From La Paz I made my way to Sucre in the south of Bolivia, running into a miner’s blockade halfway. I ended up hitchhiking to Potosi and finding a connecting bus to Sucre, making an expected short journey into a much longer one.

From Sucre, I continued on to Uyuni, running into a car race that shut down traffic for six hours. In Uyuni, I saw the amazing salt flats and experienced the best star gazing of my life and then crossed the border to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile without any bus problems, shaking whatever curse had been following me in Bolivia.

In San Pedro, I checked out a few things and then hopped on a bus to Calama, a copper mining town. I kept moving, getting on a bus to Santiago. I ended up really loving the city for its emphasis on parks and cafes and had a powerful experience at a museum.

My girlfriend, Asha, met me in Santiago and we spent a quiet week in nearby Valparaiso, a city that reminded me a lot of San Francisco. After she returned home to the US, I kept on going to Argentina, making my way to Mendoza. There, I tried my first fabled Argentinian steak, paraglided, and visited some local wineries.

After Mendoza, I traveled to Buenos Aires and slowed down a bit, exploring the city at a leisurely pace, visiting antique markets and creepy cemeteries, seeing tango shows, and, naturally, eating lots of steak.

From Buenos Aires, I took my first flight in two months to Iguazu, where I saw the amazing Iguazu Falls. After taking in those incredible views, I continued on to the north of Colombia, where I trekked through the jungle to the Lost City.

After the tough trek, I landed in the quiet town of Salento in the heart of the coffee growing region of Colombia. There, I had the chance to do nothing and found myself writing and thinking a lot. I reflected on the importance of finding different ways to be mindful, the value in a blank page mentality, and the exponential importance of packing light. All that writing made me remember that I was doing most of it on an iPhone and the important thing wasn’t how you get it down, but that you do get it down.

Nearing the end of my trip, I skipped down to Quito, Ecuador, to meet my brother and his girlfriend, Sara. Arriving in Quito, I learned a lesson in intellectual humility through asking for directions. Josh, Sara, and I raced through Ecuador, visiting cloud forests, hacking through the Amazon, and surviving a rafting trip down a racing river.

Three months after I landed in Lima, I found myself back in San Francisco and started to reflect on the trip and begin writing some “gifts” to some close family and friends that I finished over a few weeks of easy relaxation and lots of good coffee.

It was an unforgettable trip. I had no idea what I was in for when I started thinking about traveling a year ago, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about the last few months. I learned a lot about myself through traveling alone and was able to meet so many incredible people and explore so many incredible places.

I have a sense that the itch to grab a small pack and hit the road will come again very soon. One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is to take that energy and treat my own home as a new place. If there is one thing I know, it’s that there are orange skies to be discovered everywhere if you have an open mind and heart.

Until the next adventure.

"Gifts"

Minimalism has become a significant part of my identity. While an obvious illustration is my packing light, it also permeates into other aspects of my life. I don’t really have knick-knacks. (One small exception: a rubber ball I found in my grandfather’s workshop that I use as a thinking tool while writing or studying.) People are attached to these little things not because of what they are - wood carvings, trinkets, ticket stubs - but because what they represent: adventure, love, people. My solution has always been to take a picture of the knick-knack, write why it’s important to me, and then let it go.

These knick-knacks, though, are the staple gifts of travelers. They’re a way of saying, “Hey, I thought of you in this market.” They are tokens of affection. I think it’s incredibly important to show people that you care about them, but buying of trinkets clashes directly with my minimalism. I found a solution when I came back from my trip from Qatar, India, Thailand, Vietnam: I gave out some “gifts” in the form of stories to a few people.

I found that to be a great exercise in both giving and reflection. In the same spirit, here is another round of “gifts” to a few people from my travels through South America:

While I enjoyed the trip immensely, I couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting to get back to the mission, something that my brother and family ingrained in me.

I made a new friend in Peru, Jo, that made me think of a special person back home - Asha - and the importance of the creative spirit in others.

As I ran down the mountain that leads to the gates of Machu Picchu, I felt connected with my mom, a tremendous distance runner.

That same mountain - and many others - led to a reflection of where my love of mountains began: among the wild landscape of West Virginia at my grandmother’s.

The experiences of learning how to deal with uncertainty along the way brought me back to learning an important lesson from my sister in Malawi so many years ago.

Meeting new people and working to find an authentic place of companionship made me appreciate having people like Sara in my life.

One of these new people, a Chilean named Antonia, reminded me of my brother, Garrett because of their shared ability to bring together dissonant views.

In Santiago, I saw parallels between my dad’s fight for tobacco regulation and the Chilean people’s struggle for freedom and the value of committing to the long haul.

The Art in Others

When people heard that I was planning to go on a three month trip through South America, I often got the same response: “You’re going alone?” I had never traveled solo before and as I hopped on to the plane to Lima, a little bit of fear sunk in. I thought maybe I couldn’t hack such a long stretch on my own.

How wrong I was.

It’s actually difficult to stay solo on a solo trip. You’re always meeting someone going your way and this makes for quick friends. I met a lot of friends along the way, but far and away my favorite was a Canadian named Jonathan.

I ran into Jo at the very beginning of my trip in Lima. We were on the bus going through Peru and we found that we had the same loose plans: head to Cusco, trek to Machu Picchu via the Salktantay Trail, and then continue on to La Paz in Bolivia.

We hit it off pretty quick, likely due to the fact that we both enjoy conversing in song lyrics. He has a deep reservoir of American songs on tap and is keen to use them to express how he’s feeling. I get along just fine with this style of communication.

For Jo, though, music is more than just a way to be a little silly. You see, Jo is the lead singer for a small French-Canadian band called Le Scone and has the heart of a performer (watch them jam out in an acoustic session here). I have a great memory of Jo at the front of the bus on the way to Arequipa playing a Backstreet Boys song on a borrowed ukelele into a terrible microphone. Swaying from side to side as he tried to play, sing, and balance on a moving bus, his energy was on fire with the whole bus singing along with him.

Jo and I traveled for a few weeks together and we found we had a lot in common. We both love the outdoors, have a willingness to be adventurous, and are linked by the sphere of law (his current area of work and my future one). Despite all these things in common, I think it’s the creative energy in Jo that I gravitate towards.

Creative work is hard. Admittedly, I’m no master with words, but I would still consider myself a writer, albeit one in a tiny, obscure place on the great wide web. I’m a shaper of words and I take pride in the things you can see on The Orange Sky and my personal site. The work takes thought and toil, but it’s incredibly rewarding.

It’s because I consider creativity a part of my identity that I gravitate towards others who I feel are fellow creatives. Jo is alive when he’s playing music and the vibrancy I saw in him reminded me of an important someone back home. I’ve been seeing Asha - someone I coincidentally got to know the last time I left the US - for close to a year and a half now and I think one of the most beautiful things about her is the creative energy she has.

Much like I’m a writer, Asha is a painter (although, I’d argue, she has a knack for the written word, too). She pours that creative energy into blank canvases in the form of shapes and colors. To hear her talk about art is to bear witness to a wonderful passion. The occasional glimpses of her work that she shyly allows me to see always leave me with a better understanding of the world inside her.

The expression of your inner creativity is a terrifying endeavor. To write, to sing, or to paint is to lay yourself bare before others. It takes bravery, a deep sense of self, and a mind open to the world around us. When I see others on the same journey of expression, I can’t help but be in awe of those qualities.

I don’t think those qualities only express themselves in just an artist’s creation, either. In Jo and Asha, I think those qualities are present beyond their art: it is simply part of who they are. It’s what makes one a good friend or valuable significant other. I, like Kurt Vonnegut, believe that to pursue the creation of art grows the soul.

Create something. Let it grow you into something beautiful. Others will recognize.

The Love of Mountains

I love the mountains. I love the long, slow burning story they tell. I love their offerings of challenge and reward. I love their immensity and their immediate ability to put things in perspective.

I think I love the mountains because of my grandparents. Growing up, they had a beautiful house in West Virginia. If you stuck your head out the window as you climbed their winding gravel driveway, tall, rich green trees said hello with the fresh smell of the woods. At the door, we would meet Nana and Pops with smiles and hugs as we crunched the gravel beneath our feet in excitement.

Inside were sure to be treats, conversation, laughter. The living room had one face with a series of sliding glass doors that lead to one of my favorite places in the world: a wooden porch looking into the mountains. Rocking chairs beckoned you to take a seat, relax, and take in the view. From this heavenly throne, you could see the mountains calling to us, begging to tell us their old secrets and wise observations.

It is one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever known, no doubt a feeling crafted by the love that my grandparents gave us. They encouraged us to chase our dreams with absolute confidence. As a result, mountains became a powerful symbol for me. In the background, mountains see the world made. They represent at once the peace of those rocking chairs and the vibrant conversations around the kitchen table about tomorrow.

Along the way in South America, I saw many mountains and they brought me great joy. I find myself calm and at home in their embrace. While Pops passed away years ago and Nana has since moved away from the mountains of West Virginia, I felt like I was visiting their house every time I took in the dominating presence of mountains all over the continent. I was on the porch again, listening carefully to the landscape.

Kindness in the Arena

Anyone that knows me well enough will say that I have a certain passion for argumentation. (I’m submitting that for Euphemism of the Year.) I like to picture myself as Maximus Decimus from Gladiator: confident, precise, and determined. Getting closer to the truth, if you put me in the arena, I can be a little rough around the edges.

One thing I’ve always admired about my brother Garett is his incredible tact; he can disagree without being disagreeable. (As semantical note, Garrett is technically my brother-in-law but my biological brother Josh and I have long agreed that this distinction hides more than it shows.) He has this way of pushing back, then pulling together two disparate view points in order to find some common ground. It’s something that I often struggle with in the heat of an argument and I’m always grateful when he’s around to help nudge me in the right direction.

I thought of him when I hung out for a few days with a Chilean journalism student named Antonia. We met on a bus across the Chilean-Bolivian border and she offered to show me around Santiago when I made my way there after visiting San Pedro de Atacama. She’s interested in international relations - the field of my undergraduate studies - and we talked a lot about the way the world is changing as we strolled around Santiago. What I noticed is that like Garrett, she has the same natural ability to not bite down too hard in a discussion and keep things moving and it led to some great conversations.

I’m grateful that I have an aggressive instinct when it comes to the debate of ideas. I think that with the right people, it can push the conversation to more useful and interesting places. With that said, I’m also aware that I don’t always need that killer instinct. Sometimes, it’s much better to connect ideas and to bridge gaps. It’s from random connections like Antonia and close people in my life like Garrett that I hope to learn how to do just that.

The Long Haul

My brother and sister love to tell the story of the day Dad came home and told them, “We killed Joe Camel.” My dad worked at the FDA at the time and was engaged in an all out war to regulate the tobacco industry. I was too young to really have a memory of this story, but I do know that it didn’t end there. He had committed to something much larger than himself, something that might not bear fruit until years later. He was right. The fight over tobacco regulation continued long after he left the FDA until President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law in 2009.

Recently, I came across a powerful statistic published in a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association:

between 1964 and 2012, eight million premature deaths were avoided as a result of tobacco control.

History is a messy and complicated affair. Occasionally, however, you are able to step back a little and see the arc of smaller stories. With the aforementioned retrospective, the tobacco fight is one of these little arcs that I feel I can actually grasp and I think I’ve learned a lot about the long haul from being able to see the story happen in my own lifetime. It gave me a sense that committing yourself to the big things isn’t an act of naiveté. It’s an act of courage.

I was able to get a sense of another smaller arc when I visited the museum in Santiago. After walking through the second floor, a floor of dark corridors filled with the shadows of abuse and terror of the Pinochet regime, you reach the open and light space of the third floor. The third floor represents the resistance, the fight, the overcoming of the Chilean people.

In 1988, there was a national plebiscite to determine whether Pinochet should continue his rule. YES meant more Pinochet; NO meant elections for a new government. The campaigns from the opposing sides became the stuff of legends. The NO movement won out, capturing almost 56% of the vote. Pinochet’s time as the leader of Chile had come to a close. The NO movement is perhaps best represented by their cheery jingle: “Chile, la alegría ya viene” (Chile, joy is on its way).

The song felt like the fruition of a movement, the closing of a narrative. It was powerful. In that moment, I thought of my dad and his unrelenting commitment to the long haul. These commitments matter. As we sum up these arcs, we start to bend the bigger story. It’s often worth it to take a step back and wonder what arcs we are engaged in.

Enabling Authenticity

At home, there’s always a sense of being a known entity. You’ve met your neighbors. You’ve shared coffee and beers with your friends. Your parents and community have watched you grow up and learn. Your identity has been slow-cooked through the years, occasionally altered by the random spice of life.

Travel, on the other hand, lacks this fixedness. It puts you into contact with lots of new people. Every bus and hostel is a chance to reinvent yourself. They don’t know where you came from, what you do, or what you are like.

You can approach these moments of self-creation with terror or excitement. I choose the latter. There is a danger in this creation, though: you might enter an inauthentic space of self. You might present a charade to your new companions and, in the process, chip away at who you really are.

I’ve found the key to authenticity in these moments of self-creation has two key components. First, you must bring everything you are to the table. Second, you have to encourage others to do the same. When I do these two things, I can skip past the formalities and get to the good stuff: a space to be honest. It’s there that chance encounters feel like fate and quiet moments extend into eternity.

I think the first component is easy when you have a little bit of confidence. I have plenty (probably too much). The second, however, can be tricky. How can you enable another person to be authentic? It requires you to be non-judgmental and appreciative of everyone’s little quirks. I can’t think of someone better at this than Sara.

Everyone in my family has this strange mix of incredible seriousness and outrageous goofiness. My brother is no exception and I think it’s why he and Sara get along so well. She has the rare gift of giving people around her the green light to be themselves. No one feels the need to tone down their eccentricities. To feel comfortable in your own skin around others is no small thing.

When I was traveling, I tried my best to encourage new people I met to come along with me to that interesting space of companionship, but I know that I can always do better. I’m very thankful that I have people in my life who can help me continue to learn.

Down the Mountain

Everyone has a “thing”. Some people like to fix up old cars, pursue the perfectly brewed cup of coffee (ahem), or watch documentaries. My mom likes to trail run. She’s completed an untold number of 50Ks, a sizable amount of 50 milers, and a handful of 100 milers. I don’t know how it became her “thing”. Years ago she, like Forrest Gump, started running and just kept on going.

In 2012, she roped the whole family into doing a 50 miler in the Headlands of California. By the whole family, I mean my mom, dad, brother, sister, brother-in-law, brother-in-law’s twin brother, and me. It took us 12 hours, 34 minutes, and 56 seconds, but we did it. It was one of the most memorable moments of my entire life.

After completing a marathon, a 50k, and then a 50 miler, I decided to retire at the top of my game. There could be some more big runs in my future, but I think I’ll stick to hiking for the near future. It’s a bit more speed. That doesn’t mean I don’t run occasionally, though. When I do, I feel like my mom is with me.

One such moment was the last part of my trek to Machu Picchu. After five days of walking (about 50 miles in total), we had made it to the entrance. I spent the day exploring the site, soaking it all in. On the way down, my legs started moving a bit faster and I found myself running down the mountain that I had labored up hours before. I fell into a smooth rhythm, leaping from stair to stair, rock to rock. After five days of trekking, the change in pace felt good.

My mom was with me in that moment, moving carefully right next to me. Together, we closed out the magnificent five days by gliding down that mountain. During the descent, I found myself in a state of immense bliss and peace. As I crossed a bridge and waited for a friend to catch up, I could only smile. Distance really does feel like an illusion sometimes.