For the third time in our marriage, Kristyn and I got away for a night. We call it our “couple’s retreat.” This time, we rented a tiny studio beach house on a beachfront lot in a remote part of Playa Junquillal, about an hour south of where we live.
Earlier this year we crossed the threshold of ten years of marriage together, but this felt like our first chance to properly recognize that milestone. In the weeks leading up to the getaway, we loosely discussed our plans, our hopes, our shared intention, but we never really landed on a definitive itinerary. We knew we wanted the time to mean something, that simply going to the beach and reading our books while sipping piña coladas wasn’t going to cut it. But what to do? Renew our vows? Concoct some sort of ritual? Create a list of Must-Do’s and Hope-To’s?
In a previous retreat, we learned the importance of ambiance. Just a couple of small, thoughtful adjustments to the environment–a lit candle, the right playlist, a stick of smoldering incense, a scarf draped over a lampshade, evening tea, a journal–can have a big impact. So the night before we left, we had no exact plan, but we packed an assortment of ambiance accoutrement and trusted that our collective intuition would take care of the rest.
It did.
The black sands of Playa Junquillal
With the aid of the ocean, the breeze, and sugary black sand that glittered with flecks of gold; with the support of nature and medicines and ambiance; with a gorgeous sunset and a crescent moon as our witnesses, together we ritualized togetherness, we ritualized thanking and letting go of old shapes that no longer serve us. We deepened our intimacy. We celebrated us.
In a personally potent moment on the beach, Kristyn asked me, “What is it that you are going to leave behind?” I paused to reflect, sinking my feet firmly into the wet, heavy sand and breathing in the sea before me. I answered that I was leaving behind three things: acting annoyed by my family, avoiding the big feelings of myself and those around, and the notion that I’m somehow insufficient, that I’m not enough in some way. Those three things felt right, like my top three priorities. Then we looked at each other with a “Now what?”-type look. Intuition drew me to a hefty piece of driftwood which I picked up and held. When I uttered the words, “This stick is those three things,” I felt my whole body start to tremble, to quiver with an unexpected energy. The small act of using the driftwood transformed this experience from words to ritual, and in doing so it somatically connected my body to the experience in a way the words alone would not have done. I could only handle the sensation for a few seconds before my body took over and hurled that log as far as it could.
Kristyn looked over at me and remarked, “You really looked like you wanted to get rid of that stick.”
I did.
Letting go of the no-longer-useful
In meditation practice it is often taught that one should practice both informally (everyday practice) and formally (going on a retreat or to a workshop with a teacher once or twice per year) in order to connect to the full scope of what the meditation practice can offer.
I believe this double focus on both informal and formal practice is an effective, formidable, perhaps even essential approach for the health of a committed relationship as well. It takes both a daily commitment to giving and receiving love amidst the minutiae and trials of everyday life combined with a periodic check-in with the other person to go deep, reflect, connect, and reassess the state of the relationship and the direction in which it’s headed.
Some may find themselves unhappily grinding through life only to get to the once-a-year 10-day vacation where they can finally have a chance to relax, unwind, and connect. Others might find more peace in their day-to-day home life, but hesitate or find resistance when going that extra step to plan and execute an adventure, an excursion, a time to break the mold. Both of these formulas miss out on an essential piece of partnership practice.
Welcoming the next chapter
In my experience, a retreat does not need to be extravagant. To the contrary, I’ve found that I actually get more out of the experience with less stuff, fewer activities, less square footage, minimal distractions. The less money and travel time that goes into it, the less guilt I have about the retreat and the more time we get to have doing the actual thing! The experience could easily be created in our own home (as long as we could find sleepover destinations for our kids!). It doesn’t need to cost much. It’s not about being a tourist, seeing new sights, or sharing in some wild new experience. It’s not about “getting away from it all.”
An annual partnership retreat is about taking time to slow down and deepen connection. Exactly how that looks–what combination of physical, verbal, and emotional intimacies feel relevant to practice and strengthen–will vary from partnership from partnership, and even within the same partnership over time. But if the compass is set to point toward deeper connection, I always leave the retreat feeling uplifted, enlivened, hopeful. I leave with a renewed sense of love for my partner and gratitude for my life.
The couples retreat experience fills up a deep well, a well of connection that we can dip into an drink from for weeks and months beyond the end of the retreat. In our daily lives we can do little things to add small amounts to that well, but over time, its contents start to dry up. The demands of life require too much of us, and try as we might to keep it full, the gradual evaporation of that well is inevitable. Every once in a while, we must take a time-out to dump a bunch of love back into that bad boy.
I used to think of a couples retreat as a nice-to-have, a delightful treat.
History Channel’s “Alone”might just be my favorite television show of all time. It’s the closest thing to actual reality television on the planet. Ten wilderness survival experts from various lineages and locations are each dropped off at a designated site in a remote location. Alone. They have a minimal supply of survival gear and camera equipment to record themselves. No camera crew. No production staff. The person that lasts the longest in the woods wins a grand prize of $500,000 cash.
On season six of “Alone,” Woniya Thibeault nearly won the grand prize, but became the runner up when she used the emergency satellite phone to “tap out.” Even though she did not win the season, she won the hearts of many in the audience, including me. It was her approach, her philosophy, and her deep, full mind-body connection to nature that was so palpable and inspiring to watch.
In 2023 Thibeault published a book titled Never Alone, which walks the reader through her lived experience preparing for and “surthriving” in the Northwest Territories of Canada, as well as her post-show reentry into society and her reflections of the entire journey.
Of the copious wisdom and insights provided in this delightful page-turner, five themes emerge as Woniya’s most insightful and powerful gifts to us all. Here they are.
WONIYA’S TOP FIVE MOST POTENT OFFERINGS FROM NEVER ALONE
1. We can live on more than physical sustenance; we can also be nourished by beauty and by finding awe and wonder in whatever life offers.
When most of us think about surviving out in the wild, we envision prioritizing the basics–water, shelter, food. If we’re thriving so well that we get all those boxes thoroughly checked, then maybe we’d progress to focusing on comfort, convenience, making life a little easier on ourselves. But that’s a big “if.” Most of the wilderness survival experts throughout all the seasons of “Alone” never make it past the stage of constructing a long-term shelter and generating a reliable supply of food.
Woniya’s approach was different. Yes, she was strategic about her shelter location and attempted multiple active and passive food procuring methods. But she also took time to notice the colors in the sunset. She kept note of the days of her stay that were prime numbers; in actuality it didn’t have any material significance, yet to her, she made it a thing. Rather, she allowed it to be a thing.
What to others would be a distraction, a waste of energy, is actually a source of energy for her.
Woniya herself even says in the book, “we can be nourished by a lot of things.”
2. The importance of ritual, animism, and acknowledging one’s ancestors
If you’ve watched “Alone,” you know that one of the primary ways contestants leave the show is neither lack of food nor physical injury or ailment–they choose to leave because they feel, well, alone. Many skilled, well-prepared bushfolk “tap out” on the show because they miss their loved ones, they realize their priority is to be at home, or because they just can’t take being away from any human contact any longer.
Human beings are (one of if not) themost social creatures on the planet. So, it takes not only a skilled survivalist but also someone who can handle being alone to go far on the show.
Woniya’s answer to curing and preventing loneliness woes? Treating the life and elements around her–the plants, the birds, the squirrels, the berries, the water, the sun–as allies, as companions. Her animistic instincts allowed Woniya to experience the feelings of closeness and kinship that many humans only feel when in the company of other humans.
She would often make a ceremony out of honoring the animal she’d skilled or the tree she was about to chop down. One of her most profound rituals was continuing to offer ancestor plates long into her stay in the wild; despite operating at a vast caloric deficit, when food would finally make its way to her pot, instead of scarfing it all down she would slow down, savor every morsel, delight in every ounce of nourishment, and, most inspiringly, offer a small portion of her precious calories to her ancestors. Despite severe hunger pangs and living in a body desperately craving physical sustenance, by honoring her ancestors she also invoked their presence and so had more allies and support nearby. She was not alone. Some might say she strengthened her karma with this practice, which then led to successfully trapping the next hare.
In the book she relates how the COVID-19 pandemic gave everyone a taste of “illustrat(ing) why mastering the skills to provide for our own needs from the resources right around us is not a relic of the past but a real and present need. They aren’t just ancestral ways; they are timeless ways.”
So her magic was animism, ritual, ancestral connection, selflessness, and also… dance parties. Yes, wilderness survival dance parties. Woniya threw herself a weekly dance party in the Arctic wilderness while trying to survive all by herself. Who says you need to have more than one person for a dance party? Who says you need to have any music other than what’s available in your mind? Who says you shouldn’t be “wasting” your energy dancing in a survival situation when you could be fortifying your shelter or procuring food?
In the end of her “Alone”journey, after all of the rituals and ceremonies and ancestor plates offered, Woniya winds up embodying the feeling not just of being deeply connected to her ancestors but of being an ancestor herself. She truly embodies this feeling, realizing her unending connection to the past, the present, and the future, all at once.
This moving conclusion illustrates the power of her practices.
3. The Right Way To Do Things Is Your Way
Woniya faced enormous pressure to conform. With a $500,000 prize on the line, contestants on “Alone”understandably give great thought and care into what limited items of gear they will bring with them into the wilderness.
While virtually all other participants on “Alone”invest in state-of-the-art technical outdoor gear, Woniya chose to make her own clothing. Her own clothing. To be the sole materials to stand between her body and the elements above the Arctic circle for more than ten weeks! She ingeniously knitted an oversized sweater fastened with buttons made of salt to have extra sodium as well as extra fibrous material and cordage available. She crafted at a feverish pace in the days leading up to the filming of the show to finish in time, and even then she had to bring a few pieces in her luggage that were only partially finished. But it isn’t just her creative ingenuity nor her dedicated work ethic that makes her decision to make her own clothes so special–it’s that she went against the mainstream methods and had confidence that the way she knows was the best way.
She continued with this mindset at production base camp where, after arriving and assessing the other participants, felt like she was clearly the “weird one” of the group (due to being the only one knitting a sweater for the show while listening to a lecture in one of their training sessions). But she didn’t mind being the weird one. She believed in her way of doing things.
This quality reared its head dramatically at the end of her stint on “Alone”when Woniya decided it was time for her to tap out and go home. Her time by Tu Nedhé (colonially known as Great Slave Lake) was over. She had been fearing that the production staff would remove her during a routine medical check due to her physical condition, and while she passed the exam, she had a feeling that the next med check could be her last. And so, rather than push her body past its natural limits, potentially impacting her physical health for the rest of her life, she chose to leave on her terms, forgoing the chance to win a half a million dollars in exchange for integrity, a belief in herself, and an acknowledgment that she had already given and received everything she needed in her time in the Arctic.
4. Social commentary on femininity, body shapes, food culture (both modern and ancient), capitalism
Never Alone is such a wonderful read in part because Woniya not only chronicles her experiences before, during, and after the show, but also she tells stories from her past which illuminate the wholeness of who she is.
At a time in her life, she was very opposed to anything overly feminine–glitzy jewelry, makeup, high heels, that sort of thing. Her strong feminist beliefs guided her to avoid and resent anything that the patriarchal world might reward for being some sort of archetypal, societally approved ideal woman (whatever that means). But by the time of her experience on “Alone,” her relationship with femininity had evolved. In one particularly jubilant lakeside dance party, she had transformed her scarf into a skirt and, despite the frigid Arctic temperatures, she insisted on wearing it, not out of some cultural obligation but because she wanted to genuinely celebrate sacred feminine energy, the energy that brought her to that point, the energy she channels in her softer, slower, more spiritual approach to life in the outdoors.
Another potent moment hit when Woniya was returning home and traveling through airport security. After a brief conversational exchange when Woniya mentioned to the security guard that she had just been in the wilderness and had lost a dangerous amount of weight, the guard replied “congratulations” to her weight loss. Woniya reflected, “Having just emerged from the most potent, extreme, and beautiful experience of my life, I’m both confounded and horrified by our society. My experience in the Arctic lifted a veil, revealing the fabricated reality we have built for ourselves and the damage it inflicts. Almost no one I have ever interacted with in the ‘real world’ actually understands the reality of survival or the true meaning of food. Congratulations for almost achieving total starvation? What is wrong with you people?”
As one might imagine after needing to nourish herself for weeks in the wild, Woniya’s perspective on food shifted. Literally every scrap of sustenance she consumed for 73 days was sourced from the wild. Not from the corner store. Not from a garden. Not from a refrigerator. Not even from a neighbor. One would see food from a new viewpoint after going through an experience like that, a perspective with more clarity, more significance, less influence from the modern world, perhaps even more… truth.
During her first days reintegrating back into the modern world, while she was in the checkout lane to buy greens at Safeway (because the co-op was closed), Woniya thought, “I’ve just come from the wilderness, where lack of food was slowly killing me. Now I’m surrounded by more calories than I could eat in my lifetime, and I’m absolutely horrified by it. All I can think is–this stuff is poison. It’s literally true. These calorie rich, nutrient poor, highly processed foods are the bane of our society. The vast majority of illnesses that so-called “civilized” people experience are due to overabundance of foods we were never meant to eat and lack of the daily activities and natural rhythms that characterized our ancestors’ lives. What would our world look like if we all knew the real value of food and gave our bodies only what would most nourish and fulfill us?”
Woniya concluded, “any day with food in it is a good day. Food is not something we are entitled to, and for most of human history, our ancestors had to work hard for it and often went with less than enough. Every time you sit down to a meal, remember to look at the food in front of you with tremendous gratitude, and know that you are, in fact, immensely wealthy.”
In the modern world, most of us rely on using the system of capitalism to make money to then spend on things that other people make. We make enormous trade-offs when participating in that system, trade-offs that affect not only our lives but the lives of others and the lives of future generations. Woniya’s unique viewpoint after having a survived for a few months outside of that system shines a light–”As long as humans require warmth, shelter, water, and food, our lives will depend on our ability to find them, and our credit cards won’t always be the answer. The beautiful thing is that this isn’t a liability–it’s an invitation to live a richer, more satisfying life that’s in tune with the cycles of the season and the natural world.”
5. Trusting in the universe and practicing magic
To survive in the wilderness for long, one must have a fairly deep understanding of science. The natural world often operates with predictable scientific systems. Plants and their effects on our bodies, the movement and behavioral patterns of animals, water purification, the cycles of sunlight, the tides, the combustion of wood… an adequate knowledge of the science behind these aspects of nature improves one’s ability to last longer in the outdoors.
These are things that can be studied. The science is documented. Books can be read. Workshops can be taken. The knowledge can be gained, all that one needs to apply is time.
There are other things that cannot be studied as much as they can be practiced.
More so than any other participant on “Alone,” Woniya believes and is connected to more than just animal tracking and shelter building. Woniya believes in magic.
One shining example of the type of magic Woniya practices came when she was building her shelter on season six. A particular tree was directly in the way of the place she wanted to expand her shelter. Rather than removing the tree, as most other survivalists would have done, Woniya quite literally asked the tree’s permission before cutting. And not only did she ask consent, but also she actually listenedfor and felt into an answer. While a previous similar tree had given her a clear ‘yes,’ she felt this one distinctly reply ‘no,’ so she inconvenienced herself to build around it. This would have been considered an “unwise” survival move because of the extra effort and calories it would use to build around this tree, not to mention the possibly “inferior” or “less ideal” shelter design, but time and time again her trust in her own intuition lead to magical events.
One such event was finding a tiny piece of metal in her cabin, which she repurposed into a valuable needle. This tiny piece of metal was found in the part of her cabin that would not have existed had she chopped down the tree that had spoken to her.
In two different instances she found arrows she had lost, and it was only because of preceding choices, moments of slowing down, of listening, and of connection that she had happened to be in those locations.
When she was preparing for the show and hustling to finish her clothing and packing, Woniya pushed it a little too close and ended up missing her flight to production check-in. At first, she was devastated, worried that she was compromising her chances at participating after all of this preparation. It turned out, however, to be a blessing because she would only miss the arrival day, the least important of all the pre-show days, and it gave her crucial extra hours to knit her unfinished pieces. So perhaps she didn’t push it too close and actually prepared in the exact way she needed to.
Does that kind of good fortune come from trust in the universe? From believing in magic? Is it luck? Coincidence? Does she create her own karma, manifest her own destiny?
Her openness to receiving what comes as a gift, as a sign, as magical does seem, as an objective observer, to lend credence to the argument that an openness to magic invites more magical moments into one’s life.
TAKEAWAY
Of everything Woniya shared about and demonstrated on her “Alone”journey, the thing that makes her stand out, the thing that makes her so memorable and unique, is her steadfast beliefs that things like connection, awe, and beauty are survival skills as equally important as knowing your knots, building a fire, and constructing your shelter.
This ancestral, holistic, spiritual, and more feminine approach to life in the wild is so striking because it seems counterintuitive to those who, like me, are steeped in modern western culture. How could dancing at sunset be just as or more crucial to survival above the Arctic circle than putting in extra time to build and insulate one’s shelter? How could toiling over making your own clothing be more beneficial than leveraging the advancements in manufacturing and textiles? How could giving away your precious food when you’re starving be a key to unlocking more time surviving alone?
Woniya’s life is all the proof we need to prove that all of these can be true.
MEMORABLE QUOTES FROM WONIYA’S FINAL REFLECTIONS
Here are a few words quoted directly from the end of Woniya’s book Never Alonewhen she’s condensing her key messages for the audience.
“There are few things as transformative as feeling seen and held by an intact wild place, merging with the natural world around you, and coming to see yourself not as separate but as an important and valued part of it–feeling a belonging so deep that there’s no such thing as loneliness.”
“When we listen deeply and engage with the world around us in a way that honors it and gives back, whether we’re in human company or not, we are, in fact, never alone.”
“We never know what we are capable of until it’s really all on the line. Rather than waiting for an experience [that pushes you as hard as I was pushed in the Arctic,] start believing now that you can achieve the staggering accomplishments of your wildest dreams.”
COMMENTS & REFLECTIONS
Are you a fan of Woniya Thibeault and the television show “Alone”?
What resonates with you about Woniya’s story?
Have you read other books, watched other shows, or know of other stories that followers of Woniya or “Alone”would enjoy?
After 38 years of orbiting the sun by way of the Great Lakes of North America (Canada 1985-1990, Wisconsin 1990-2003, Minnesota 2003-2023), I was getting ready to, for the first time in my life, leave the humble Upper Midwest and move to the tropics. And before I made that move, before I abandoned all the north has to offer–from its gorgeous summer lake life to its bountiful autumn harvests to its relentless, icy, bitter, frigid, ice scrapey, shovel-filled winters–I would journey with a friend to the one heralded nature spot in Minnesota I hadn’t yet visited in my 20 years in the North Star State, to the one place on the globe where my home of the last two decades and my birth country meet, to what could very well be my last expedition into the nature of the north – the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
It all started in the summer of 2022. I was with a friend, in a driveway, escaping the backyard chaos of a child’s birthday party for a few moments. The friend was Blake Sundeen. For the previous handful of years, Blake and I had been closer to the acquaintance side of the friendship spectrum, friends only because we share a close mutual friend. Lately, though, through a few conversations at social gatherings, I’d been feeling a stronger connection with Blake, a magnetism toward his energy, and I suspected the feeling was mutual. He was one of the few people I could nerd out with when talking about hiking, trails, nature, wildlife sightings, climate change, and sustainability. We seemed to share a similar outlook on these topics. And so, on that driveway, the idea emerged that we should do some sort of camping trip some time. How fun it would be to go romp around in the woods with someone else who felt as alive in nature as I do!
Once I get an idea that I’m excited about, I tend to go full steam ahead with the travel planning and coordination. This instance was no different. Just a couple months later in September 2022, we did go on a camping trip. We brought two other yahoos with us and ventured into a hike-in campsite at Cascade River State Park. It was fun. We hiked a long hike. Only one person did a late-night shaving of a piece of his finger with the axe while chopping wood. We had a good time.
Leaving that weekend at Cascade River, though, I did not feel satisfied. It wasn’t quite the wilderness experience I was hoping for. It was too easy, too comfortable. When I’d told my travel companions what I was planning for the long weekend menu–dehydrated meal packs for dinner (which are a camping luxury in my opinion), tea for breakfast, trail mix for lunch, and granola/protein bars to fill in the cracks–they didn’t say much, which I assumed meant everyone agreed with the plan. But when we arrived at the campsite and everyone unloaded their gear, I was disappointed to find the crew had vastly overcompensated for my minimalist meal plan by bringing a mass quantity of packaged, processed food. This alone gave the entire experience a cushy, glamping vibe that left me wanting more out of what could be my last nature experiences in Minnesota.
BOUNDARY WATERS
In the months that followed, Blake and I planned a trip to the Boundary Waters. Over egg foo young one day, we discussed some ground rules, a handful of expectations that we each had for the experience to be fulfilling for both of us:
It would be just the two of us
We will actually have a minimal food plan (especially since we’d have to carry everything)
We’d be gone for a total of five nights – first night at the outfitter and then the next four nights out in the wilderness.
We would go at the end of May, soon after the lake ice would melt, but hopefully before all the mosquitoes and lake flies would hatch. It might be chillier, but that was our available time window.
We’d set an ambitious route covering a lot of miles since we would be a lean and nimble crew of two, but we’d be flexible to make changes to the route depending on the conditions of the weather, our bodies, and our desires once we got out there.
Our entry point would be at Clearwater Lake in Zone 10, the Northeastern-most zone in the BWCA. From there, we would paddle further north and east through Mountain Lake and Moose Lake, two long lakes that touch both the United States and Canada. After that, we’d circle south and then west through a handful of other lakes to make it back to Clearwater Lake in five days.
The map we used on the journey.We put in at #62. The idea was to paddle east thru Clearwater, Mountain, and Moose, then turn around in Fowl Lake to return west thru either McFarland, Pine, and Caribou or East and West Pike Lakes.
Day 1 – Tuesday – Travel Day
Night one we spent at Clearwater Lodge. On the way up we stopped at a sporting goods store to purchase the cheapest fishing rods we could find. We arrived late at the lodge, and we accidentally squatted in a camper cabin because we couldn’t find the bunkhouse (the cheaper option we’d reserved) in the dark. The cabin was not made up for guests; the blankets were wrapped up in bags and there were some loose tools scattered about, but there were two beds and a roof, so it sufficed for a shelter.
The cabin we accidentally squatted in.
Day 2 – Wednesday – First Day of Paddling and Setting Up Camp
We paddled Clearwater Lake and almost all of Mountain Lake. Camp at night one was a bit of a disaster. We were both using hammock setups for sleeping. No tents. My genius packing idea was that I’d bring one regular tarp (for the ground or as an all-purpose item) as well as the rain fly from my tent, which I’d set up over my hammock. It keeps the rain off my tent, so of course it’ll keep the rain out of my hammock, right? Well, as I set up my sleeping rig I realized I broke one of the rules of wilderness survival–don’t let the first time you try your gear be when you’re out in the woods. The tent fly was not shaped as a simple rectangle; it had a custom shape meant specifically to fit the tent it came with. So, I got wet. So far, so good.
Day 3 – Thursday – Fishing in Moose Lake & The Luxor
After portaging and paddling into Moose Lake, we made a choice to stay in Moose Lake for the day. It was supposed to be one of the best fishing lakes in the entire Boundary Waters, and we’d just spent some dough to buy our amateur fishing gear, so we decided we’d have an easier, more luxurious day with a shorter paddle to make more time for fishing. We stopped at a campsite, unloaded, and then took the canoe back out to try our hand at fishing. An hour and several inlets later… no bites. No nibbles. Nada.
At camp, my sleeping situation was vastly improved with some tweaks–I realized the tent fly wasn’t going to work and started using my regular tarp, which worked much better. It started to rain as we sat around the fire, so Blake showed me how to prop up our other tarp over the fire using long tree limbs. Being able to stay out by the fire amidst a downpour felt so luxurious out in the wilderness we dubbed this campsite The Luxor.
Our only photo of “The Luxor.”
And while we didn’t see any moose around Moose Lake, we did have a friendly visitor join us late around the campfire, a large bunny we named Harold. (Get it?) He was massive and seemed to enjoy our company.
We had so much free time at this camp that Blake carved a functional bow and arrow.
Aiming at (and missing) a squirrel
Day 4 – Friday – The Day it All Went South. Or Was It West?
Choosing the shorter paddle day on Day 2 meant we were going to try to put some miles behind us on Day 3. We were charged up from The Luxor and ready to move. The plan was to paddle east into North Fowl and South Fowl Lakes, cut back in west to Royal River and Royal Lake, and then loop south into Little John Lake, then cruise through McFarland Lake, and make it to Pine Lake where we’d make camp at the first desirable campsite we’d see. It was an ambitious route covering a lot of distance, but after our more relaxed day at The Luxor, we had gas in the tank, and this way we’d be able to meander our way across the large Pine Lake on Saturday and take our time to choose a superb campsite for our last night in the woods.
Things started off well. It was a bit sad to tear down The Luxor, but I was already looking forward to recreating it, heck, maybe even upgrading it, at whatever campsite we’d choose next. I was now a champion of the Boundary Waters, ready to tackle anything.
Getting into North Fowl and South Fowl lakes, we noticed two things. One, we understood how those lakes got their names; all of a sudden there were flocks of birds everywhere! Two, I observed just how stark the difference is between a lake area that is protected by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and a lake area that is not. There were cabins clogging up the shoreline. My eyes were opened to just how wonderful it had been to be making our way through complete, undeveloped wilderness.
After the Fowl Lakes we successfully found and portaged into Royal River – the turnaround point of our expedition, the point where we’d stop going east, away from our entry point, and begin heading west back to our outfitter. We got into Royal Lake, which is essentially just a large opening in Royal River, and proceeded northwest where, after a portage, the river opens into John Lake.
Note the Fowl Lakes on the east and the point where Royal Lake and Royal River then allow you to loop back westward
As we geared up for the next paddle, we checked our map and saw that we would have only a short paddle west to get from the opening of Royal River into John Lake to the narrow passageway that leads to Little John Lake, where we’d dip south for the portage into Little John. We began paddling and hugged the left bank of the lake, which would lead us to that narrow passageway.
Now, we paddled for what felt like a short while to us and made it to the area that we thought was the narrow channel we were looking for. It had been our experience looking for the other portages thus far that they weren’t always easy to find. They aren’t well-marked. It’s the wilderness out there! You have to read the shape of the land, the topography as well as the directions on the map, in order to find where the likely portage spot is.
The water started getting shallow. Reeds and tall grasses were poking up from the water all around us. We paddled deeper into the shallows until we came to a spot that my brain said, “This must be the narrow passageway we’re looking for.” It was a little muddy ridge that stood in between one shallow pond and another shallow pond. This was a little different than the other portages we’d done, but hey, nature isn’t symmetrical everywhere, right? We called it the “No-portage Portage,” because all we had to do was hoist the canoe over this one-foot patch of mud and we were back in a shallow pool of water. Easiest portage ever!
After this point, though, the shallows didn’t lead anywhere. They didn’t open up into another beautiful blue lake. The water started getting even shallower. The tall grass was getting thicker. It was getting harder to paddle the canoe. At first I thought, “we must just need to trudge through this a bit more,” but from the back of the canoe, Blake said, “something doesn’t smell right.”
This moment was the first time it occurred to me that we might be somewhere other than where we thought we were.
We decided to go a little farther before making any bigger decisions, but this bog we were in was no joke. It was a full on bog – part land, part water, all trouble. We’d have to dismount and walk because the water was too shallow, and we’d be lugging the canoe through the mud and then… whoop!… one of our legs would get sucked 2-3 feet into the mud. It didn’t take much of this before we stopped and really looked at the map to figure out where we were.
Entering the bog of no return
It’s a scary feeling, not knowing where you are in the woods. After some theorizing back and forth over a period of about 15-20 minutes, we concluded that we must have missed the narrow channel into Little John Lake, paddled the entirety of John Lake, and ended up in the bog in the northwest corner of John Lake.
We meant to take the green route, but red is what we did
In a way, this felt like a relief. Even though we’d spent the better part of an hour muddling through this bog, now we “knew” where we were. At least, I felt like we knew, because we didn’t actually know for sure. We couldn’t Google it. But, assuming we were right, it would take another 20 minute slog to backtrack through the bog, and then another little bit to repaddle south on John Lake, but hey, in the matter of maybe one hour, we’d be back on our planned route, and we still had enough daylight to make it to Pine Lake and make camp before sunset. This plan of action seemed like a no-brainer to me.
Blake, on the other hand, saw our situation differently.
Blake didn’t see our path as a “wrong turn.” Blake did not want to “go back.” Blake saw this as an opportunity for us to put our outdoorsman skills to the test. He pointed out on the map that there is a portage between John Lake and East Pike Lake. If we could just hike our way to this portage, which we should have been pretty close to, then we’d be able to get into East Pike Lake and paddle west back to Clearwater Lodge through the Pike Lakes. While the plan made a shred of sense, what made much more sense to me was to backtrack. We knew the way. If we marched forward, since we didn’t know exactly where we were, we didn’t know exactly where to go.
He convinced me to go “just a little farther” to see if it would clear up, get easier. Hopefully we’d see the actual portage soon. So we’d lug the heavy canoe a ways, stop, check the map, I’d say something like, “let’s just turn around” and Blake would reply, “just a little farther.” After 3 or 4 times of this routine, my internal alarm bells really started going off. We were losing daylight and not making any progress. I told him, “This is it. If it doesn’t open up to a clear path in the next five minutes, we’re turning back.” He agreed. He knew he had pushed me to my limit and that our situation wasn’t looking that good.
But in that last little five minute stretch, it did appear to open up a bit. And so in that moment he made a believer out of me. We could do it. We could break another rule I’d learned about hiking through the woods, which is–don’t leave the trail.
Life presents us with these moments, these fateful forks in the road, the moments when you realize you’ve gone astray and you’ve diverted from your intended plan. Do you retreat and get back on course, or do you press onward? These moments set the course for the next minutes, hours, and days of your life. Little choices like french fries or onion rings we may think only impact our next few minutes, but some choices turn out to be big choices, and they affect your following days, weeks, years, and maybe even your whole life. Maybe all of our choices actually impact us in this way. Sometimes, though, you can feel the weight of a choice, where the downstream impact is so obvious and so colossal that you can tell–this is a big decision. This was one of those moments.
So we could turn back, or we could break this tried-and-true rule about not leaving the trail, and we’d be OK because we “knew” where we were and we knew where we wanted to go and the path ahead looked easy enough and we were two strong, competent dudes that could do it.
I agreed to proceed. From that point on, in my mind, there was no turning back.
Five minutes later, I wished we’d turned back.
The hours that followed were the most grueling, rugged, terrifying hours of my life.
Here’s what we were facing. First off, we were both wearing heavy packs; mine was the heavier one, because our system on the normal portages was that Blake would carry the canoe, so he had the lighter pack. We dubbed my pack “Big Bertha”–I don’t know for sure but she probably weighed around 100 pounds. In order to get to a standing position with Bertha on, I needed to either set her up on an elevated log (ideal) or I’d have to squat down on the ground, put the shoulder straps on, and then Blake would need to hoist me up.
So we have the heavy packs, and we also have a kevlar canoe with our fishing rods cinched down to the inside of the canoe rim. In this unofficial portage we were in, sometimes Blake would have the canoe by himself overhead, and sometimes he would grab the front and I would hold the back and we’d do more of a lift-and-drag maneuver. (Not exactly textbook portage technique.)
We were in the bottom of a sort of ravine, a shallow valley, with slopes climbing upward on either side. At the bottom of the valley were thick brambles, these tough, spindly sticks all intertwined, making them virtually impenetrable. They didn’t have leaves and they didn’t have thorns, but as Blake would push through them at the front of the canoe, they’d bend and flex and then hurtle back toward my face with lightning speed–WAP!
After some rough going through the brambles, we eyed the slope to our left. There weren’t nearly as many godforsaken brambles up there. It was, however, up. It turns out going uphill in the Minnesota wilderness with a canoe and a 100 pound pack on your back is not a walk in the park. If the path would have been open and clear, the hill might have been manageable, but the path was not open, there were trees everywhere. When you’re backpacking, trees in your way are not a huge problem; you simply walk around them. When you’re backpacking with a canoe, though, the game is changed. They didn’t tell us this at the outfitters, but I discovered a universal truth about canoes in those woods–canoes don’t bend. In order to move forward, we had to find angles through the dense forest where we could move 17 feet of canoe in one direction without running into a tree. Turning was terrible. Many times we’d have to hoist the canoe vertically in order to get it around one tree and then, seconds later, be doing the same maneuver in reverse because of the next maze of trees just feet ahead.
The ground underfoot? Terrifyingly treacherous. It was late May in northern Minnesota. The ice on the lakes had just melted two days before we arrived at Clearwater Lake, so while the lakes were thawed and paddleable, the floor of this densely shaded forest was not entirely thawed. Occasionally we had to traipse through snow. Now, I’ve lived with snow my whole life. I’ve done pretty much everything there is to do with snow, including walk on it. But this snow, this was some tricky, deceptive-ass snow, which we learned the hard way. I would be walking on dirt, and then I’d be walking on snow, and then with my next step I’d lose my whole leg into a hidden three-foot snowhole–poof! Stepping into invisible holes is not an activity I’d recommend while carrying 100 pounds on your back.
When we weren’t walking on and falling through snow, we also had to contend with unreliable, decaying, moss-covered fallen trees and logs that lay blocking our path. Often there was no other choice but to walk over them. The wet moss was extremely slippery, and every once in a while we’d be treated to the gift of trying to step on and over a downed tree only to have our feet plunge right through the dead wood. It felt like only a matter of time before one of us sprained an ankle or twisted a knee.
They say that when you’re in the wilderness you aren’t supposed to fight Mother Nature, you’re supposed to go with nature, to listen and observe the rhythms of your surroundings and use what’s available to your advantage.
That sentiment is nice and all, but this. Was. A. Battle. A trial. Tough Mudder ain’t go diddly on this.
We fought. We trudged. We fell. We dragged this poor canoe under, over, and between so many goddamn trees and plants. At one point I had to Army-crawl through the cold muck with Big Bertha on to get under an enormous fallen tree. It was exhausting. We dug deep and pressed agonizingly slowly onward.
We had to get to East Pike Lake. Were there times I was cursing Blake in my mind for putting us in this position? Obviously. Those moments were fleeting, though. There wasn’t time nor energy to ruminate. Plus, I had chosen this. I had ultimately agreed to continue, and I had adopted the mindset that there was truly no going back.
Eventually, battered, bruised, sweaty, and filthy, we got to a point where the sunlight was really fading quickly. We knew we weren’t going to make it to any lake before nightfall. I didn’t want to make camp in the dark, especially since we were in the middle of an unfamiliar woods without the false sense of security an actual campsite gives you. It was time to make camp.
Blake then had an idea. What if he ran ahead to scout out our path for the next day, while I stayed behind to set up camp?
[Zack Morris-style Time Out.] You know how in every horror movie that was ever made, everything’s going along fine until the band of merry friends has the brilliant idea to… drum roll please… separate?! Well that is exactly what was going through my head at that moment. Sure, there were some merits to the idea. It would be helpful to scout ahead and see if, in fact, we’re headed in the right direction and to know how much farther we had to go until we reached a lake. But at what cost? In a horror movie, is anything the protagonists are trying to gain by separating ever worth the cost of being alone? Literally zero times. [Zack Morris Mode over.]
So of course, moments later, Blake is bounding off into the woods with nothing but an empty water bag, a headlamp, and a compass, leaving me at our “campsite” at the bottom of a brambly, unwelcoming forest valley.
Most everyone is familiar with the “fight or flight” survival response we have in our reptilian brains when confronted with danger, but there is a third survival response we have ingrained in us as well–freeze. With Blake gone, I went into freeze. I couldn’t make camp. I couldn’t do anything. I needed my companion, but he wasn’t there. I noticed I was frozen, and at first I told myself it was because I didn’t want to set up camp in a way he’d disagree with, but actually, that wasn’t the truest truth. The truest truth was that I had never been in this situation before. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. How was I going to confront this actual survival situation?
I felt a wave of strong emotion swell. In hindsight, I am so thankful to have had some coaching and practice with emotions. I had some sense of what to do. I didn’t fight it. I let it in. I leaned into it. The emotion took over. I full-body bawled into the dense forest. No one was there to see me. I didn’t have to hide anything. All the tears and sobs and snot poured out of me. I tried to name the feelings. Fear. Anxiety. Worry. Uncertainty. They were all there. So many things could go wrong here.
The thought crossed my mind, “I could die in here.” These trees might be the last things I ever see. I may never see my kids again. I could feel the negative thought spiral swirl.
My meditation and gratitude practices kicked in then. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought about dying. I’d already practiced that. And I’d also practiced noticing my thoughts and feelings, noticing them as an observer rather than as the “self” that is experiencing them. As the observer, I could then see how this despairing thought of imminent death could grip someone else in my situation, but it didn’t take hold of me.
As I reconnected to my breathing, the sobs started to subside, and I recognized the fear, and I asked the fear–what are you so afraid of? Death? Pain? Being alone? I realized that it was indeed the fear of dying that scared me most, the notion that this would be my last day alive on Earth. OK, so I’m afraid today will be my last day. Hold on a sec. I still have food, I still have water, and I have all of our camp and survival gear. It occured to me that even if I never see Blake again, even if something close to the worst case scenario does happen, today is not the day I’m going to die. A few days from now, that might be a different story, but as long as I don’t get eaten by a bear, I have a really good chance of surviving to tomorrow.
That’s the idea that snapped me out of freeze.
“What can I do to make this situation a little better?” I thought. To hopefully attract Blake, but if nothing else to give me comfort, every five minutes I blew my whistle as loud and as long as I could for an entire lungful, took a deep breath, and then yelled, “Blaaaaaaaaaaake!!!!!” until my breath ran out. Then, after that release, after giving my body a sense of, “I’ve done what I can do,” I continued slowly setting up our tarp ropes.
This routine carried on for what felt like an eternity, but realistically it went for probably 45-75 minutes or so. Eventually, as dusk was setting in, one of my whistle blows was responded to! “I’m comin’, Gip!” replied Blake from a distance. Minutes later he approached with a pep in his step, a bag full of water, and a huge grin on his face. “I found the lake,” he beamed as he held the bag of fresh water up high. His news of our whereabouts should’ve brought me a huge sense of relief, but what was more relieving was simply to have his company again.
I sheepishly admitted I had been mostly useless during his scouting mission, but he was unphased by this. As the temperature continued to drop, probably into the low 40s that night, we finished setting up camp, ate some warm food, hung the bear bag, and prayed no large mammals would get cozy with us as we tried to sleep fast.
I slept with my camping knife extra close that night.
Day 5 – Saturday – Emergence From The Void
We woke up with sun. And the frost. It was cold, but we had purpose. We packed up swiftly, donned our packs, and continued trudging with the canoe toward our newly decisive heading.
Immediately we were reminded how miserable this was. Just because we knew where to go didn’t make the maneuvering any easier. It was hard, slow going. I started wondering how many hours we’d still be in this godforsaken valley until we finally reached the water.
After some number of minutes of this heavy, frustrating toiling, somehow we came up with what turned out to be the most genius, brilliant, mood-shifting idea of the entire expedition thus far – the idea to double portage. This meant we would leave the canoe in a (hopefully) findable location and hike with only our packs until we reached the water’s edge. Once there, we could dump our packs, backtrack to retrieve the canoe, and then we’d be able to navigate through the hills and underbrush without 50-100 pounds on our backs. The choice wasn’t without its trade-offs; we had to make sure we’d be able to find the canoe, and we would have to walk the distance twice instead of once. It was another one of those weighty decision moments.
What an absolute game-changer that decision turned out to be. If only we’d thought of that earlier. But then again, if we’d been able to think of double portaging earlier, we would have. It took that amount of struggle in order for our brains to think outside the box and get creative with an alternative way forward.
From that point it felt like we practically flew through the woods, Blake leading the way down the path he had scouted, his footprints in the snow and mud formed the night before guiding us to glory.
We made it to East Pike Lake, first with the packs, and then with the canoe. A lake has never looked so beautiful in my entire life. But we weren’t out of the woods yet.
We were not at an official portage. We had bushwhacked. That meant that instead of crossing from one lake to the next at the lowest elevation point, we were up on a cliff. We had to get our bodies, packs, and the canoe down roughly 50 feet of drop-off with no discernible path to follow. Normally this would have terrified me, but now, after making it through what we’d just gone through, it just seemed like the next thing we had to do, the next task to complete. We shimmied and tacked down the ridge ever so delicately until we reached the water’s edge.
If I knew how to backflip, I would’ve done so at that moment.
The paddle westward across East Pike Lake was the most glorious canoe ride I have ever experienced. To be able to float and glide along the water after needing to bulldoze and carry, well, it felt like heaven.
Once we arrived at the portage into West Pike Lake, it seemed obvious to me that we would continue into West Pike, which would be the final lake we’d have to traverse before a final portage into Clearwater Lake, our destination. As you might expect by this point, Blake had other ideas.
“Take a look at the map,” he encouraged. (The only map we had left, mind you, because he had lost our other one.) “There’s another portage southward which gets us into Pine Lake, which connects to Caribou Lake!” Now, we had been told at the beginning of the trip by the outfitter that Caribou was one of the nicest lakes in the area, also good for fishing and that there was an interesting falls area somewhere nearby, so that’s why it was on Blake’s radar. The difference in routes, though, was that if we went through West Pike (my way), we’d only have one more portage, but if we went the Pine and Caribou route (Blake’s way), we’d have three more portages, and not only that, but the portage from East Pike to Pine was almost 400 rods long (400 canoe lengths) and rated a Level 10 out of 10. This portage was the farthest and the hardest of any other portage on our entire map, and Blake wanted us to choose it after all we’d been through.
So we did.
Green was the easy path. Red is what we did.
It was an incredible feeling, doing that portage. At the beginning of our trip, if we’d been confronted with this choice, there is zero chance I would have agreed to do the Level 10. But after bushwhacking through the wild, it honestly felt like child’s play. Sure it was far, and sure it had some tough terrain at parts, but it was still an actual trail. It felt like a treat to be able to schlep all of our stuff through an intentional, somewhat well-trodden path. I finished that portage feeling like a hero.
Rinsing off and feeling like a champion around 5pm after the Level 10 portage.
We paddled some more, the wind at our backs, and made camp around 8pm at the most gorgeous campsite ever created. OK, it was probably an average campsite, but in my eyes, with an open clearing with a fireplace, a nice flat rock leading down to the water I could walk barefoot on, and a sunset view over a gorgeous northern lake, it felt like a million dollar home. In fact, it felt so swanky, we dubbed our final camp setup “The Belaggio.”
Sunset view from Sat night camp
Me dancing around The Belaggio.
Day 6 – Sunday – Homeward Bound
We were still way up in the Boundary Waters, and I was supposed to be home for dinner Sunday night. We had some work to do, but our bodies needed some slow movement Sunday morning. We finally packed up and left The Belaggio around noon, and carried on toward Clearwater Lodge.
We attempted to find the falls around Caribou Lake that the outfitter had mentioned. No, there wasn’t a well-worn trail for us to take there. So we bushwhacked. Again. This time, though, without the canoe and our big packs, just a light pack for a final romp through the woods. We traversed a slope for some time, pushing our way through more brambles and thorns, until finding… a tiny little creek bed. Not quite the epic falls we were hoping for, but it felt good to tack on some extra difficulty to our already insane journey.
Resetting the body in a low squat after our last bushwhack and before our final paddle.
We portaged into Clearwater Lake, and as we paddled to the outfitter, a small motorized fishing boat was heading toward us. As they got closer, we realized it was the guy that works at the outfitter. He was looking for us! We were arriving at the lodge a bit later than expected, and Kristyn had called in to check on us. Had we made it to the lodge an hour earlier, I would’ve been able to call and let her know everything was alright, but alas, we didn’t make it in time for that. After the first wave of embarrassment passed, it actually felt nice to know that someone out there was keeping tabs on when we should’ve been emerging from the wild. I was sure she wouldn’t be pleased with our late arrival home, but I hoped that once she heard the story she’d be happy I was still alive. (She was.)
Victory pose
The Aftermath
When you spend time in the woods, away from screens and electricity and traffic, it changes your perspective. I’d experienced this before. This time, I’d not only camped–I’d had a wilderness survival experience. It definitely changed how I viewed the world in the days immediately following our expedition.
The first morning in my house, you would think I would’ve slept until noon, but no, I was up before the rest of my family, and I felt an immediate pull to go outside. I sat on our back deck, which faced a wooded wetland area, and sat down to meditate. The birds were chirping loudly, and typically when I would sit out here in the morning it would be the bird songs that would capture my attention. Not this morning. This time I immediately noticed how much louder the distant highway traffic noise sounded in the distance than it normally does. It was this foreign, man-made disturbance to nature’s common audio field that was catching my ear after having been subjected to nothing but nature’s auditory offerings for the past six days.
My body did need to recover that day, but one day of rest was all my body was interested in. The next day I filled up my 60 liter pack with pointless stuff, I just wanted to get some weight into it, and I went out to the hiking trails behind our house to run hills, all before breakfast. This is not something I was doing prior to the Boundary Waters, but after what I’d just gone through, it felt easy. Normal. Like what I was supposed to be doing. I’m sure I looked like a nutcase to the casual walkers I passed by.
I felt like reading or listening to podcasts didn’t interest me. I didn’t need any more “new” in. I had just been living a life of… being alive. I had just touched some deeper truths, some realer version of the real world.
I felt more like a human. Like those of the generations before me who didn’t have GPS, the internet, and all this high-tech survival gear. I could feel the beautiful balance in my body from rowing the canoe in a seated position to rucking around with a heavy pack in the portages. As soon as I was really feeling ready to stop paddling, it would be time to portage again, and vice versa. Every change was welcome. I actually felt in my bones a taste of what it must’ve felt like for the people who first explored and inhabited these lakelands.
And, in the days after my return, I had a newfound love of the simplest things in our home, like our refrigerator and the miracle of a working faucet.
A FEW LEARNINGS
These were the top lessons I take with me from my time in the Boundary Waters:
If you’re gonna whack some bush, wear gloves. Your hands will take the most beating.
If you don’t have gloves and you have a free hand, you can use hold a large water bottle or a large carabiner to push brush out of the way so your hands don’t have to do all the dirty work.
If a portage is too intense, you can always drop the canoe and double portage.
Doing really hard things sucks in the moment and feels really damn good afterwards.
I know more than I think I know.
I know how to pick a good campsite in the wild.
I know how to burn wet wood.
I know how to ration water.
I know how to read a topographical map.
I know how to read the land and find the pathiest paths.
Most of all, the biggest life lesson I learned was this:
There is no such thing as a “bad decision”–there are only trade-offs.
All the choices we made on this journey, whether to paddle to the next lake or not, whether to take this route or that one, whether to have a relaxing day to fish or move some extra miles, whether to retrace our steps or venture onward into the unknown… whichever way we chose would work out. There wasn’t a “right” decision and a “wrong” decision. It all comes down to trade-offs. If we choose to take it easy and fish, it means we have to paddle more the next day, but we have a chance at grilling up some tasty lake trout that evening. If we skip the fishing, no chance at lake trout, but we have easier paddling each day. Neither option was wrong.
This insight sticks with me. It relieves the pressure of decision-making, removing the idea that if I just analyze my options a little bit more I will uncover which one is the best, most perfect, most right choice. It’s not about getting it “right.”
It’s about doing my best with what I know at the time, accepting whatever comes after, leaving the rest behind, and knowing that I can always make another choice in the next moment.
I always thought they called it the “Boundary Waters” because it’s on the boundary between the United States and Canadian borders.
Now I believe it’s because it’s a place where one can to go expand their boundaries. I know I did.
In the summer of 2024 we took our family of four on a five-week trip to Canada and Minnesota to reconnect with friends and family after living in Costa Rica for a year. We had a full schedule, went on many adventures, changed locations ten times, and managed to do it all with smiles on our faces.
Rather than recount all the happenings of the trip, I find it more useful to reflect on my biggest takeaways and lessons learned, so with that spirit in mind, here are my most potent reflections about making my way around North America no longer as a resident, but as a visitor.
LESSON 1 – ASKING FOR HELP IS HARD, AND IT’S WORTH IT
Something about my conditioning has made it extremely challenging for me to ask for help. I notice this all the time in my everyday life. I would rather use every finger and balance stuff on my shoulders and head to carry everything from my car to my house rather than ask my empty-handed neighbor that’s walking by, “Hey, could you give me a hand with this?” which they would surely do with pleasure.
But time and time again on this trip, I was confronted with a choice. I could either do things like spend lots of money (on rental cars, hotels, items I needed) or go without a thing I didn’t pack (like a beach towel or the appropriate footwear for a certain activity), or I could ask a friend for help.
I ended up asking for more favors in a five-week span than in any other five-week chunk of time in my life.
We borrowed vehicles from friends in both Canada and Minnesota, saving thousands of dollars in rental car fees. We weren’t even that close to our Minnesota friends, and our Canada friends not only lent us their vehicle but also picked us up from the airport late at night with their kids in tow. Unbelievable and staggering levels of generosity!
We slept over at friends’ and neighbors’ houses. We used their sheets, burned their firewood, and messed up their rooms with unshelved toys. At one house I even asked to borrow a towel the next morning for a volleyball session.
I organized a day of Bro Games, but I barely brought any gear–I had to rely on my friends to bring everything and make the event happen.
People cooked countless meals for me, and prepared other food when one of my kids didn’t like what was served (major parenting pride-swallowing, go-with-the-flow and accept the help challenge!).
All of this receiving was hard. For me, it’s easier to give, to be generous, to help someone out. What’s much harder is to ask for help or to receive an unrequested yet helpful offer. It sounds backwards, but that’s how it is.
Being showered with all this attention and generosity leaves me feeling supported. Moved. Loved. It’s humbling to acknowledge that there are people out there in the world–people who have their own struggles and challenges and hardships and trauma and careers–who go out of their way to help me out, to make my life more smooth, to bring me more joy.
Asking for help is hard for me, yes, but ultimately, after moving through the discomfort, it leaves me with the fulfilling feelings of humility and gratitude.
If you’re reading this and you helped me or my family on our trip, you have my warm and deep appreciation. Thank you!
LESSON 2 – THE ABUNDANT CONVENIENCE OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM IS NICE, BUT IT’S TOO MUCH
Upon return to North America, I was immediately struck by just how convenient life is. Paved, lit roads with multiple lanes and large shoulders, liquor stores with craft beer selections as far as the eye can see, paper towel dispensers in public bathrooms. Things that once felt normal now seem magical.
On our way back to my uncle’s house in the Toronto area, it was late and I wanted to get gas before arriving at his house, because we had a big drive the next day and I wanted to avoid having one extra thing to do in the morning. We were five minutes away from his house in the suburbs and, thankfully, there was a gas station on the way. We stopped to fill up, and in the remaining four minutes of the drive to his residential neighborhood we passed by no fewer than three more gas stations!
By living in our beachy, somewhat remote area of Costa Rica, many American modern conveniences like this are not available. Our closest gas station is a twenty minute drive away. I have to plan out our next fill up. And yet, I am not unhappy. That inconvenience doesn’t upset me; it’s just how life is here.
Take another example–after a long travel day to get back to Costa Rica at the end of our trip, after waking up at 2:45 am, sprinting Home Alone-style to our connecting flight in Miami, finally arriving, getting our truck, and driving the 90 minutes from the airport back to our house, in addition to unpacking we still had to buy groceries at two different stores, cook dinner, and wash the dishes; there ain’t no drive-thru’s here. But it wasn’t a huge pain. We just… did it. In fact, it actually felt nice to be back in my own kitchen, chopping locally grown vegetables and eating food that didn’t come wrapped in a package that was then put into another larger package to be driven by a delivery driver to my front door.
We are all very adaptable, and it feels like my neighborhood in Costa Rica has enough convenience for me without being super overdeveloped. Yes we have to plan out when our next trip to the gas station will be, but I prefer that over there being 2-3 gas stations at every intersection in town. We don’t need that. But that’s what happens when capitalism gets taken to the extreme and we move from progress into overshoot (“when something moves beyond the point at which it can be sustained,” as defined in the book Active Hope).
Don’t get me wrong, I ate my share of takeout while I was in North America, but the difference for me now is having the perspective that getting to dine on jalapeno scallion cream cheese wontons dipped in a mulberry sauce (courtesy of St. Louis Park’s Wok In The Park) is not just a typical thing that all beings can access–it’s a truly miraculous treat to appreciate, savor, and marvel at, and maybe even take a moment to consider what trade offs am I accepting by making the choice to eat them.
LESSON 3 – I PREFER CONNECTION TIME OVER EPIC ADVENTURES
Upon knowledge of our visit, several of our friends and family members wanted to pull out all the stops for our time together by planning excursions to places like Canada’s Wonderland, a waterpark, or the Minnesota State Fair. Even though our family had a great time at all of those destinations and wonderful memories were made, I found the experiences to fall short when reflecting on their costs and benefits. I learned that I value quality, uninterrupted connection time more than the thrill of a ride, even more than the thrill of watching my child enjoy a ride. And when it comes to comparing an intimate, deep conversation with a friend about their health to busting through crowds with them in order to wait in a sweaty line so that we could pay for a grossly overpriced bucket of poorly baked chocolate chip cookie dough, well… for me, there’s no comparison. I’ll take the convo on a couch 7 days a week.
Now, to be fair, sometimes as parents we prioritize our kids, and we make choices that put their desires ahead of our own. Of course it’s more boring for kids to sit idle and chat for hours. But when my kids were presented with a new place and new kids to play with, I never observed them getting bored.
With all the people I visited on this trip, I knew it would likely be my one chance a year to talk to them. That’s special enough for me. The idea that paying an entry fee to some special place is going to make it more special is not only absurd, it’s actually counterproductive because we end up spending a huge chunk of our time waiting in lines, stressing over limited food options for the kids, and navigating a range of preferences of what the different kids want to do next. Some of our best moments were when we visited another family’s house with nothing planned, and our kids would be enchanted with all of their kids’ toys (helping their kids see their “boring” toys with fresh eyes), and the adults would simply sit and connect.
LESSON 4 – I CRAVE AND VALUE INTIMACY
Our trip got me thinking a lot about intimacy. I learned that intimacy is one of the things I crave the most in this life. I’m not talking about just physical intimacy but the entire wheel of intimacy that can be accessed in a relationship.
Whenever I muster the courage to lead a conversation or a moment in a more intimate direction, I always feel so alive, so fizzy and crackly, like the molecules in my body are like the fervent bubbles in a bottle of freshly-corked champagne. I look back on the moments where the courage wasn’t there, where I had the impulse to ask the delicate question, to say the hard thing, to lean in for a shoulder squeeze, but I lacked the bravery and skillfulness to turn the impulse into action. Those reflections are my teachers, they show me my growth edges, the areas where I want to improve, to build more skillfulness and comfort.
Knowing that I’ll only get to see someone once per year, it changes the conversational calculus for me. I learned that I don’t want to talk about fantasy football, I don’t want to hear about your kid’s upcoming soccer schedule, and I most certainly don’t want to hear about how terrible the construction is on 494; I want to know what’s troubling you, what’s lighting your soul on fire, what you’re dreaming about. And the thing is, the time feels more precious because it’s limited, but actually I want to feel that preciousness all the time.
Not all my friends and family are interested as being as intimate as I am. That’s ok. I don’t judge. We’re all at different parts of our journeys. It’s become clear to me, though, that the relationships I’ll continue to invest in are the ones where the other does want to go deep, does want to be vulnerable and take an intimacy risk, because those moments are life’s juiciest for me, and I want to cultivate as many of them as I can.
EXCITEMENT IS ON THE HORIZON
Upon return to Costa Rica, I feel a palpable excitement about our second year here. We already have a completed house with no pending construction projects (other than some exterior landscaping/garden implementing). We already have a bit of a social network established. We know what school is going to be like. I can speak a little Spanish. I know where I can go to find good avocados, mouse traps, and the best karaoke singers in Guanacaste.
There aren’t nearly as many puzzles to figure out as when we moved here. Coming back from North America now feels a bit more like the dreamy turnkey experience we were hoping it would be when we moved.
It now feels like nothing else is in the way of me pursuing my dreams and living in alignment with my values except me. What a sentence to write and believe.
Music has always been a part of my life. My earliest memories of music bring me back to family room dance parties to songs like Paperback Writer (The Beatles) and Fun, Fun, Fun (The Beach Boys) with my dad and brother in Neenah, WI. I took piano lessons. I learned the saxophone, which I played up into the jazz band at the University of Minnesota. I even dazzled audiences with one year of show choir in high school.
But after the stint of jazz band in college, my relationship to music shifted from playing music to simply enjoying music. I am often the one who puts music on around the house. I’ve curated many playlists for many occasions: beach volleyball games, exercise, writing, making brunch, karaoke songs for baritones, and I even made one specifically for my 20-year high school reunion. I join and occasionally instigate dance parties. I often am tapping out percussive beats with my fingers in idle moments. Every time I’m around live music I can feel my soul come alive.
But in the last three weeks, music feels like it’s found me in a new way.
Nineteen days ago I drove an hour and a half to the city of Liberia, where, in the parking lot of Pequeno Mundo (think Costa Rican K-Mart), with my five year old at my side, I purchased a used alto saxophone from a guy I found on Facebook Marketplace. Why? A combination of curiosity and peer pressure.
Since then, the last nineteen days have been a bit of a musical whirlwind.
CREATIVE INTENTION
When I was getting ready to move to Costa Rica last year, I intended to take some time away from the business world, to take a break from the hustle and bustle. I had a roughly defined mental list of new priorities for this mid-life mini-retirement; I would be trading the capitalist productivity grind to spend more time on things like relationship strengthening, physical and mental self care, and creative expression.
My basic plan for what I’d be diving into creatively can be expressed in two words: writing and music. Most of the writing I’d done in the last 20 years came in the form of composing emails to prospective advertising clients, and while I believe I have some skill in that department, my intention for Costa Rica was that I’d allow myself the time and spaciousness to write more creatively, writing whatever I’d want to put on my blog, documenting our adventure, and attempting to compose the occasional song.
In fact, I envisioned spending countless hours in front of my keyboard and computer screen, headphones on, tinkering away at the alluring and intimidating venture of songwriting. The idea was that if I gave myself the permission to do as little as possible other than to create, to temporarily remove the burden of needing to trade my labor for currency, to allow myself to dive into the deep end of a creative endeavor with no expectation of a “quality” outcome, no commercial goal, then maybe, just maybe, as I racked up those hours of practice I’d get good enough at it to create an entire song (or three) I’m truly proud of. I was so excited about this plan that I couldn’t wait to get started; I had a rudimentary setup in our basement in Minnesota for a few months before we moved where I made a few basic instrumental tracks (and recorded a birthday song for Kristyn with the help of our kids) before dismantling the gear and packing it up in our shipping pod.
As part of the move to Costa Rica, we got rid of many of our possessions, including my tenor saxophone I’d held onto since college. I was in the head space of, “if it’s not essential, it ain’t coming with us.” I don’t regret selling it; I had no idea what life was going to be like down here, and I was embracing that not-knowing and living out my value of minimalism by getting rid of everything that felt non-essential. I’d probably only opened the thing 5-10 times in the last 20 years, so it felt like it was time to say goodbye.
Once we arrived in Costa Rica, due to the construction timeline of our guest bedroom (which is where the simple keyboard recording setup was planned to be) and our inviting another family of four to live with us for the last two months (future blog post forthcoming), the recording gear has yet to be unboxed, but it is still very much the intention to get this going soon.
So while songwriting and at-home musical recording has always been in the plan, what was definitely not part of my creative vision with this international-move-life-reset was musical performance. You see, I’m not a great piano player. The last time I was consistently practicing piano I was probably 10 or 12 years old. If I tried to perform a live show as a singer/pianist, Elton John-style, it would be the most horrendous crash and burn the musical world has ever seen. Play piano and sing at the same time?! Who do I look like, Stevie Wonder?
But there’s this beautiful thing today called technology, and technology allows less-than-mediocre keyboardists like myself to make above average music. By recording one track at a time, and giving myself as many dozen takes as I need, I can eventually plunk out a dance-worthy four note bass line. Then I can loop the bass line, and build from there. Infinite takes and the ability to loop–the magical musical concoction that unlocks songmaking for mere mortals like me.
But perform music? Play with other musicians? This wasn’t on my radar. I didn’t feel like I had the chops in any instrument I brought with me (keyboard, guitar, harmonica, pan flute) to be able to pull that off. Actually it was even less on my radar than that; it was not in my consideration set of activities I’d do in Costa Rica whatsoever.
A FATEFUL CONVERSATION
That all changed in one conversation between me and another guy, after one of our meetings for the La Paz School Gymnasium Fundraising Committee. He was barely an acquaintance. Somehow we got on the topic of music and he mentioned he plays bass and has been playing some with other musicians in the area. I shared that, while I’m very into music and was planning on creating some music at home, my strongest instrument is saxophone, which I don’t have anymore. His intrigue at this point of information was palpable. “You can play sax?! You really oughta get one. Oh man I’ve always wanted to have a sax player in the band so we can play some…” he continued naming a few artists, albums, and songs, but I had lost full attention of his words, because I noticed a flicker of a flame being ignited within me. Just a flicker. I thought, “Maybe I could play sax down here? But nah, I sold it. It’s fun to dream, but it’s been so long since I actually played, it would take ages to be able to be good enough that anyone would want me to play with them.”
Over the next few weeks, this fellow parent of children at La Paz School kept sending me links to used saxophones on Facebook Marketplace. Out of curiosity, I messaged a few of the owners, asking them details about their instruments and to send me a video of them playing it so I could hear that all the notes work. I didn’t have a master plan, and I wasn’t fully intending on buying one; I was simply tugging at a thread of curiosity. The first two videos I received back didn’t wow me, so even though the instruments may have been diamonds in the rough, since their owners weren’t able to make them sound great, I kindly passed. Then one day I get another lead from my incessant friend, and the owner of this sax sends me a video that I rewatch three times–he sounded that good! I get a huge wave of excitement. The price is reasonable. It looks to be in good shape. And it sounds great. The flicker of the flame sparks into a roaring fire, and in a moment I know I have to buy this saxophone. A few days later, I met the owner at the halfway point between here and his home (4 hours away), and in the parking lot of Costa Rican K-Mart, I became reunited with the instrument from my teenage years.
That was nineteen days ago.
Twelve days ago I played on stage with a rock band in front of 200 Costa Rican motorcycle riders.
CHOROTEGA BIKER FEST
The day after I bought the sax I sent a selfie of me holding the horn to that persistent friend of mine, Tom. Within twenty minutes he was sending me songs to learn. He plays in a band called The Liquors, and they had an upcoming gig at Perlas, a local bar with a small stage in the corner. He suggested that if I could learn 3-4 songs from their set list that I could join them at their show coming up in six days. While it was a kind and generous offer, I was confident I wouldn’t be ready in time; I needed to build my embouchure back and figure out how to make the instrument make decent sound, let alone learning songs to perform. The first two days I couldn’t even get the lowest three notes on the instrument to play! Over the next three days, though, it started sounding a little better, and I wanted something other than scales to practice, so I figured I might as well start with a few of their cover songs. Tom informed me that the band plays all their songs tuned down a half-step (so the vocals are more in range for the singer), so I should make sure to practice them that way.
On guitar, changing the tune of the instrument is easy; you just adjust the knobs for each string and boom, all the notes are lower. None of the fingerings or chord shapes change. But on the saxophone, there is no way to change the tune of the instrument. So, playing in a different key means playing an entirely different set of notes. It’s not a huge deal, as long as you know what key to be playing in. Luckily I found this Google Chrome extension called Transpose which allows you to listen to a song on YouTube and adjust the pitch of the song up or down. So I had my three songs: Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen, Midnight Rider by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, and Hard to Handle by the Black Crowes. Tom tells me that for Midnight Rider, actually I shouldn’t play that one a half-step down because they’re already playing it a half-step down in the recording. If that all sounds a bit confusing to you, it should, because it was confusing to me. But I double-checked everything with him and I understood that I was supposed to practice Midnight Rider as-is and transpose the other two songs down a half step. OK, simple enough.
A few more days tick by. They invited me to a rehearsal, but I was unable to make it. Now it’s Saturday morning, the morning of the show. I did a practice session at home around 9am and by 10am, I did a run-through of all three songs as if I was performing them (one take, show must go on), and they weren’t terrible, so I messaged Tom saying, “OK I’m not saying 100% yes i’m in yet but Hungry Heart, Midnight Rider, and Hard To Handle are feeling pretty good. What time do you guys go on? 7:30?” Tom reads this as, “He’s in.” He invited me to come by for sound check in the afternoon, which I did.
When I arrived at the bar’s parking lot, my eyes widened like saucers. This whole time I was expecting the show was going to be on the little stage inside the corner of the bar. Nope. The parking lot was lined with vendor tents. There were a few groups of motorcycle riders mingling. And at the far end of the parking lot was the stage. Well, a Costa Rican stage, meaning it’s actually just the back of an Isuzu construction truck, the type where the walls of the bed of the truck can flip down so it’s just an open, flat surface on the back. And attached to the front of the truck was a giant banner that read CHOROTEGA BIKER FEST. This was no ordinary gig; this was an event!
So that was the stage, and there was Tom and the rest of the band setting up their gear. I hopped up on the truck, we attached a short side mic to one of the regular microphone stands to point into the bell of the saxophone, but we didn’t bother to actually test the sound; the guys weren’t ready for that yet. No biggie, they tell me, now that we have it in the right spot, when I come up on stage they’ll just plug it in and crank it. Sounds like a rock ‘n roll plan to me. Before I leave, they tell me their first set is at 8 and their second set will be at 9, and I’m in the second set.
When I got back home and told Kristyn and my two other roommates that it was now confirmed that I’d definitely be playing in this show tonight, they asked me how I felt about it. Was I nervous, excited…? I replied, “I’m mostly really excited. It’s going to be a pretty big audience! The only thing I’m nervous about is that I didn’t rehearse with them, so I hope I’ve practiced everything in the right key. I might squeak a few notes, or I might lose my place for a few bars, but as long as I practiced in the right key, everything should be fine.”
I went back to the venue for the start of the first set, and I watched as 200 leather-clad Harley riders hung out and enjoyed the tunes. As the second set started, I ducked behind the truck, er, I mean stage, to start warming up. Three songs later I heard the lead singer say, “… and now we’d like to welcome our friend Kevin to the stage.” I climbed up the rickety step ladder and tiptoed my way across the crowded truck bed to my spot. The side mic we were going to use for my sax was gone.
“Your mic didn’t work,” Tom informs me. “We’ll have you use my mic, and I’ll just share with the other guy.” Not wanting to touch his equipment for fear of feedback or making things worse, I let him lower his mic down to sax height, and then he scooches over to the other mic stand, and without any further delay, they count it off and we launch into Hungry Heart.
On the first note I can tell— I’ve practiced the song in the wrong key. Literally every note I’m playing is off. Panic and adrenaline explode inside my body. I sound terrible. I’m making the show worse. After just a few notes I stopped playing. What do I do? I can’t play as I’ve practiced, that’ll just make things worse. Do I just sit up here and not play for the whole song? Awkward! I turned the bell of the horn away from the mic and listened to the band as I quietly plunked around the notes, trying to find the right key. I discover they are playing it an additional half step down from what I was told. With this discovery, I was able to play along a few basic notes without making the band sound worse, but I definitely couldn’t play any of the licks or solo I’d practiced. It was about as rocky of a start as I could have imagined.
I’m not a very religious person, but I know there must be a God, because eventually that song did end. And when it was over, nearly every fiber in my being wanted to get off that stage. Not because I was embarrassed or ashamed or hating my life, but because I was quite confident that the next two songs I was about to play were also going to be in the wrong key. Why would I subject myself and the audience to that trauma?
The next song, however, was going to be Midnight Rider, and this was the one that Tom had told me to practice just like the recording. So, I thought, there’s a chance I’ve practiced this one correctly. Before we started, I had the idea to turn my horn to the side and play the first lick of the tune so that the other band members could hear. The lead guitarist looked right at me and said, “That’s it!” With that tiny confidence boost, I barreled through my internal flight response and played Midnight Rider.
Everything was going great, for the first twenty seconds or so. Remember how the “stage” was actually the back of a construction vehicle? One thing vehicles have that actual stages do not is a suspension. Shocks. A little bit of intentional bounce. As we were rocking out on stage, the “floor” was moving around, and because we had adjusted the mic stand quickly to be at sax height, it wasn’t tightened down all the way. So every twenty seconds or so, my microphone boom would start to swivel away from me. I’d have to take a short break from playing to swivel it back into position. It effectively meant the audience (and the band) couldn’t hear me for most of the song. It also meant that I was so distracted that when the time came for my solo break in the song, I was totally lost. I didn’t solo. I just humdrum played along like it was the chorus. It wasn’t nails on a chalkboard, but it most certainly wasn’t spectacular nor was it how the song was supposed to go.
0 for 2. I’m sweating. I’m imagining the guys in the band are all thinking, “Why did we invite this chump to play with us?” I know I’m tanking this opportunity. Again, the impulse to flee spikes. Who’s to say that this song is going to be in the key I practiced in? But again, I do my trick of swinging to the side and playing the first few notes of Hard to Handle so only the band can hear, and once again, the guitarist validates that yes, I do have the right notes. A glimmer of hope. With that fragment of relief, I have the presence of mind to tighten the mic stand to keep my mic in position. I do this with some trepidation, as I know that messing with live equipment can cause feedback, shit can fall, break… all sorts of badness can happen when you try to tinker with stuff during a performance. But I went for it, and it seemed to cinch down nicely.
The third and last song I played that night absolutely crushed. At least that’s how it felt to me. I hit all the right notes. My mic stayed in place. I looked out into the audience at my roommate, Nate, who had been giving me fairly neutral body language during the first two songs (the fact that he wasn’t grimacing felt generous). But when I made eyes with him 15 seconds into this song, he pumped both fists over his head and gave a huge “HELL YEAH!” which gave me a giant confidence surge that this, finally, was how I was supposed to sound. When it came time for the sax solo, I went for it and it felt incredible. I ended the song with a squealing high note and a flourishing cadenza.
I started the show feeling like a nervous child. I ended the performance feeling like a rock star.
Despite the suboptimal performance, I walked away from the experience with not only the thrill of being on stage, but I also got a bonus gift; once we were done playing, other musicians approached me. “Hey, you were the sax guy, right?” A pair of these were Costa Rican musicians who got my number to set up a time to play together. It felt like such a gift to make a new connection in this way–based on my musical performance and a joint interest in playing more music.
Playing on the back of a truck at the Chorotega Biker Fest
JAM SESSION WITH SOME LOCALS
A few days later, I got a message from Ely, a Costa Rican singer and guitar player. She wanted me to come play music at her house with her boyfriend and fellow musician, Pedro. I was delighted to accept the invitation.
Now, this wasn’t technically my first musical encounter with a Costa Rican, because I’d hopped on to the cajon at a house party alongside a Tico marimba player a few months ago. One week after that, I swooped in on the cajon again with a band playing at Potrero Brewing. Here is what I wrote about those experiences.
Cajon at a House Party
The party was mostly what I expected, except for the addition of a huge contingency of Ticos that live in a nearby town! The party hosts have done a commendable job of expanding their social network beyond the expat community. It was such a delight to have a diverse mix of people at a shindig.
As the afternoon shifted to evening, a few of the locals set up a few instruments: a guitar, a box drum, an indented metal cylinder (a guiro?), and a marimba! Two guys started playing a song on the marimba and guitar. Then a kid picked up the guiro and started banging it around.
I happened to be standing next to the box drum, which was just sitting there, begging for someone to play it. It’s one of those moments in life where you feel like you’re at a crossroads, a decision point, a moment of palpable choice. Blue pill or red pill? Do I just sit back and enjoy the music as it is? Surely that path was the safe one. Or, do I act on my intuition, the inner pull of the musician in me that could already hear the box drum beat no one was playing? But what if I’m viewed as trying to steal their show? What will people think? What if I screw up the beat?! I can feel my heart rate increase now as I type these words and relive the feeling of that moment.
The thought that arose and pushed me over the edge was, “This is why you’re here.” I was the one standing there. I was the one with the set of life conditions that allowed me to know what to do with drum. I felt the pull for a reason. The only thing stopping the pull was fear.
It turned out great and the drum added a nice bassy kick to round out the sound. Even though my Spanish is still regrettably poor, I was able to connect with these guys through the language of music. Perhaps others at that gathering felt a little closer to each other, too. I love the uniting force thatmusic can be, if we can only find the courage to play with others.
Hopping on the cajon at a house party (my swimsuit was wet so I sat next to it :D)
Cajon with Lucidus at Potrero Brewing
I was back at it on the box drum last night at Potrero Brewing.
The gents of Lucidus had a nice acoustic setup at the brewery, playing a mix of covers in English and in Spanish. They played one song where both guys were playing guitar, so no one was on percussion. After it ended, I mentioned that if they had any other songs in their set where they were both playing guitar, I’d be happy to hop in on drum. The singer, also Kevin, showed me his set list and I told him which of those songs I knew. As soon as I said “Paint It, Black,” they both looked at each other and said, “That’s the one!”
Grateful for their openness to have a guest musician hop in and contribute to the vibe.
Cajon with Lucidus at Potrero Brewing
But this felt different. I wasn’t pushing myself into an opportunity. I was being invited.
We had a great time playing a combination of Latin music and “gringo” music. I learned how much better group practice sessions are if I’m familiar with the songs. Not necessarily even having the chance to practice them ahead of time, but just to be familiar with the song: where the verses start and end, what the bridge sounds like, if there are any rests, and so on. They had sent me a few songs ahead of time, which I had listened to and practiced. When we played those together, they instantly sounded great. Fist bumps all around.
It was also super fun to play with them because their whole living room is set up as a permanent music station, with a drum set, a keyboard, and several guitars and amps. One of my favorite bands is Walk Off The Earth, and part of why I love them is that the musicians in that group play several instruments, sometimes even during the same song. Jamming at Ely’s made me feel a little like I got to live out my Walk Off The Earth-style fantasy of playing multiple instruments in one band; I played drums while we played Zombie by The Cranberries, and I played keyboard on a few Latin tunes I wasn’t familiar with.
Above all, I just felt honored to have the rich experience of making some music with people I’d just met, with people who’ve lived in this country their whole lives.
OPEN MIC NIGHT AT THE SHACK
Then, just two days ago, I get texts from three different people telling me about an Open Mic Night that’s getting reignited at another local bar and restaurant called The Shack. “I should come,” these people said. I was excited to go check it out, and my plan was, although I’d bring my sax just in case, I would just come to watch, to learn how the whole open mic thing works. I know at karaoke, you put your name and your song on the list, and then when it’s your turn, you go up and sing. But how does an open mic night work?
I arrived and saw another new friend, Zach Harvey, playing a couple songs with a band. The venue was packed; it’s basically a backyard-style setup, a fenced-in area with a bunch of picnic tables, a firepit, and one corner of the space is the stage. All the tables were full (except for the one closest to the band which only had three older women sitting at it), and there were tons of people standing. I found my friend Tom, who told me his group had already played earlier in the night.
We were shooting the breeze until Zach started playing his last song, which was Hard to Handle–the same song I’d ended with at the Biker Fest! Tom and I immediately looked at each other and he goes, “Did you bring your sax? (Yes.) You should run to your truck right now and go walk up to that extra mic like a boss and just start playing!” Once again, with Tom’s encouragement, I go get my sax. Where to set it up? I knew I wasn’t going to actually hop in with these guys mid-song, especially since the song would be mostly over by the time my sax was put together, but with the nudge from Tom I was spirited enough to get set up and eventually get up on the mic. I scanned the packed backyard, and I only saw one viable spot to set up my sax–the front-and-center picnic table with the three older ladies at it.
I could feel my heart rate increase as I approached the table with my instrument case, asking the ladies if I could join them. As I opened the case and started assembling the saxophone (Hard to Handle still being performed), even though I was facing the band and my back was facing the audience, I could feel hundreds of eyeballs shift from the band to me, watching me piece together the sax with trembling, shaky hands.
Zach finished the song, and as he left the stage, I saw the all-powerful clipboard that dictated who would be coming on stage next. With the prodding of the women at my table, I went up and put my name and a couple of songs at the bottom of the list. I was in no hurry to get up there. In fact, one prominent thought I was having was, “I’d be totally fine if we run out of time before they get to me.” So I sat at that picnic table with my sax assembled, resting on top of my case, while I enjoyed the music and got to know the ladies at my table.
Over the next few songs, something unexpected happened. One guy came up to me and said, “You gotta get up there!” Then, in between songs, one of the guys from the house band approached and said, “You know you can come up whenever you want.” I replied telling him I’d never been here before, so I didn’t know the protocol, and also that I’m a beginner and didn’t want to make them sound worse (ha). I told him that if they were playing a song that I knew, I’d join them (which was a perfect ruse because I don’t really know how to play any songs!). But then, after the next musician was done, one guy from the audience yells out so that everyone can hear, “Does anyone here have a saxophone? Do you know anyone that has a sax?” Several others chime in with cheers like “We want the sax guy!” My palms start sweating. I’m laughing a laugh that’s both genuine and anxious.
The leader of the house band observes the audience’s demands, comes over to me, and goes, “Let’s get you up here. What songs did you write on the list?” “Low Rider,” I reply, which I specifically said first because it’s an easy song that I was most comfortable with. “We’ve already played it,” he answers. Damnit. The one other song I’ve practiced a decent amount is Smooth by Santana. “How about Smooth?” I say. I see intrigue move across his face. “Let’s do it,” he says as he walks back up to the stage.
As we’re getting set up, which includes me firmly securing my mic stand in front of me, I ask the band, “Who’s going to sing this one?” and they all confirmed that none of them were going to sing it. The main singer’s voice was starting to give out. OK, so somehow we’ll just play an instrumental version. Cool. So we start out, and we’re playing the main riff, and they look over at me like I’m supposed to solo. So I give it a little something, but… then what? The song wasn’t going anywhere. We weren’t progressing through the changes in the song. Someone needed to sing. I was starting to panic. Here I am at my first open mic and we’re doing the song that I picked and it’s not going well. There goes my chances of ever playing music in Costa Rica again. I’m doomed.
Just then, like a rock and roll angel swooping down from Heaven, the singer from the band Tom is in, The Liquors, comes up to the stage and asks, “Do you guys want me to sing this?” to which I immediately remove the sax from my mouth to reply “Hell f***ing yes we do!” With the vocalist on stage, we start over. The song shreds. People are dancing. Everyone in the band nails the groove. Total success.
Grooving to “Smooth”
What happens next, I’m wondering. Do I get to pick the next 1-2 songs as well? Seemed like that’s what others were doing. Nope. Kevin, the singer, looks over at me and goes, “Hey do you know ____?” I can’t tell you what song he said, because it was a song I didn’t know. I replied, “No sir!” And he goes, “Well let’s just play it anyway.” And within 15 seconds the band fires up a song that, in listening to it, I did have a vague familiarity with, but I still can’t tell you the title or the artist.
Panic, my new friend, arrives again. Here I am in front of 100 people with a band playing a song I don’t know. I don’t even have a tablet with one of those handy little tablet holders all the musicians have so I can pull up the song and the chords and play along that way. I just have to listen and feel it out. Thankfully, the song had one main bass line that runs through most of the song, so I was able to play along with that and add the flavor of sax to the overall sound. It brought me back to my days of high school jazz band where I first learned to improvise. I’m confident that without that early training I would’ve crashed and burned at this moment.
And just like that, it was 10pm. Time to shut down Open Mic Night. But wait. All of a sudden an older guy from the corner of the backyard, the guy that had yelled out, “Does anyone know someone who plays sax?” goes, “Wait just a minute. We’ve got a sax guy here. We can’t have a sax guy and not play Stand By Me.” Then he looks over to me and goes, “Do you know Stand By Me?” to which I reply, “Well I kinda know the song, but no, I’ve never played it on sax.” And he smiles, looks right in my eyes, puts his hand on my shoulder, and goes, “You’ll do great.”
Before the song starts, I took a quick look at my phone to find the main chords, and I turned my back to the audience to plunk out a few notes to get my bearings. We start playing and it goes swimmingly. I played a wrong note here and there, but I was able to hold it together and even muster a solo.
Solo during “Stand By Me”
Courage is an interesting thing. Without courage, I wouldn’t be able to perform music right now. I strongly feel like I’m not “good enough” to be performing yet. And while some of my courage I believe comes from within me, I know that it was only through the encouragement of others that I was able to burst through my insecurity and fear in order to just get up there and do the damn thing.
MUSIC WITH MY KIDS
The music is even manifesting in my kids. Last night as I was putting my kids down for nighttime, the three of us were sitting in the bed with me in the middle, and each kid had their notebook and pen in their lap. They weren’t doodling. We weren’t playing Tic Tac Toe. They each were writing out quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes (aka “mar-ee-pos-ah’s” as learned in a Spanish music classroom), and rests on their notebook paper, and then asking me to sing what they had written. This activity came at zero prompting from me whatsoever. At least, no prompting in the direct sense, but it does make me wonder how much of my around-the-house musicality does get ingested and metabolized by them in some way.
Music has always been around in our home, and I can feel it growing. One of my kids loves singing along to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, without missing a word or a note, in our at-home karaoke sessions. The other can hardly ever be seen walking because they mostly dance from room to room. Just tonight one of them was choosing ukulele strumming over television. It’s a next-level kind of joy I feel when I see music coursing through the beings of my children, especially we share in a sing-along or a dance or an instrumental groove or a spontaneously improvised goofy ditty; it’s like an electric, magical resonance that lights up my spirit that’s only accessible by tapping into the vibration of sharing music with my children.
And now, earlier this week, our bedtime routine has brought us back to music. The kids have been tending to do their bedtime with Kristyn lately, and her protocol includes ending the time by sending the kids to their “Dreamplace.” She essentially guides them in a short meditation until they’re so relaxed they’re either basically asleep or all the way there. But there were a couple nights where Kristyn wasn’t available for bedtime, so it was my turn to put them down. I decided I’d let Dreamplace be Kristyn’s thing, rather than try to recreate her speciality, a fool’s errand. But since the kids have grown accustomed to receiving this unique, relaxing meditation before sleep, I had to think of something I could to provide a similar effect. As I laid in beds with the kids after some quiet playing, I suggested, “how about I sing a few songs?” They agreed. It’s been such a joy to go back to the way we’d do bedtime when they were babies and I would sing them to sleep in my arms. It makes me wonder how much their bodies remember being soothed when they hear the melodies of You Are My Sunshine and Home On The Range, but judging by how quickly they relax when I start, I’m guessing it’s at least some.
THE ICING ON THE CAKE
And after all that, earlier today I wrote and recorded a song. From the time I sat down to pen the first lyric until the time I finished recording the song, a mere 25 minutes passed by. For perhaps the first time in my life, I felt what it feels like to be in a songwriting flow state.
Earlier in the day, I’d attended my weekly men’s group on Zoom. In the meeting preamble, I mentioned how music was front and center in my life right now. Later, one of the guys told the story of the stressful time he was having while visiting his family of origin, how there’s always so much obligation and pressure in that situation, and that on top of all of that both his father and his dog’s health were not doing so well. When he was done sharing, one of the other guys joked, “Man, that sounds like a sad country song, what with the sick dog and all. Hey, Kevin, you’re a music guy, you should write that song!” We all had a brief chuckle. What the guys didn’t know, though, was that I quickly wrote down all the bullet points of his story that I could remember. Something in me wondered what it would be like to actually try to write that song, and how funny it would be if I actually went through with it.
When the Zoom call was over, I opened up a fresh document, and the lyrics just flowed out of me. Granted, I wasn’t trying to win a Grammy. The song was meant to be a lighthearted joke. But still, I could feel the phrases come with ease. I had an intention, a theme for the song, a source of inspiration. I also knew that I wanted to write and record it all in one sitting; if I kicked the can down the road, if I let the project wait, I’d likely not finish it. It had to be right then. I knew I was going to record it on my iPhone, and I was going to do it all in one take; I didn’t care how bad the recording sounded, how imperfect it would be, how many little mistakes I’d make. The point wasn’t to make a beautiful song. The point was to make an entire song and get it done.
In reflection, I believe it was those three ingredients that allowed this song to flow out of me so freely: clear intention/theme, acceptance of imperfection, and a deadline. It feels like such an important download for my future songwriting self to have absorbed, and it all came because I decided to do the hard thing, the unexpected thing, and turn the group’s joke into something real.
(And in case you’re wondering, the guy in my group received the song very well. He said it, “cracked him up and made me smile so big.”)
FINAL REFLECTION
I have a shred of regret for discontinuing playing saxophone after college. I told myself the story that I didn’t have time for it, that it wasn’t important, that it wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I allowed myself to believe that certain types of actions are better than others, that starting a successful business or performing well in a lucrative job was what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
What I see now is that I created a false dichotomy. It actually would have been possible to have a job and play music at the same time. Sure, I might not have been able to play 2-3 gigs per week, but I still could’ve been playing. And it would have brought me a lot of joy. And the music playing may never have materialized into a money-making endeavor, but what I didn’t understand back then was that I don’t have to make a career out of artistic expression in order to enjoy artistic expression. I can do it as time allows. I can do it on my terms.
I walked a fine line this year with Christmas. And I walked it well.
A big part of my intention with the life change I’m going through is to reduce my participation in consumerism and to increase my satisfaction and gratitude for what is already here. I also am the parent of two children aged 7 and 5, and Christmas is still a most magical time for them. So the mission this year was to thread the needle of creating the conditions for magical moments from the perspective of my kids while executing this mission within my minimalist values.
Here’s how that looked.
What we did not do:
Burn fuel and time traveling away from our home
Host guests
Go out for parades, events, and light shows
Wait in long lines to visit Santa
Elbow our way through crowded shopping centers
Deal with the project of getting a family photo taken, printing up cards, licking many stamps and updating everyone’s home addresses on the mailing label file.
Purchase any decorations or wrapping paper
What we did do:
Used the handful of Christmas items that we shipped down with our move to decorate the house: a small reusable tree made of recycled material, four stockings, and a pine-scented candle.
Practiced and played holiday tunes on our keyboard.
Played family board games, including the game of Clue that Kristyn purchased with her own money when she was in third grade, which yes, made the trek with us to Costa Rica.
In years passed, we used a giant roll of craft paper as our wrapping paper, which worked great because we could draw designs on the paper as an additional activity. Without the craft paper this year, we used any materials in the house we could find–mostly the extra reusable tote bags we hadn’t been using regularly and a few odd pillowcases.
On Christmas Eve night, we set out our final two homemade cookies and carrots for Santa and his reindeer.
To fill Kristyn and my stockings, instead of buying a bunch of useless junk or stressing about finding legitimately useful gifts (that we somehow haven’t needed to obtain until Christmas), I just put two cans of our favorite adult beverages in each stocking. When we pulled out the cans, the kids, who know I like beer, reacted as if I’d just won the lottery. “I knew you’d get beer! How happy are you, Dad?!”
The kids each received a few gifts from us (socks, underwear, water bottles, books, and fresh art supplies) and one gift from Santa (a pair of Crocs (which were on the wish list) and a friction-powered toy truck).
The Crocs were worn all day, the trucks whir was heard throughout the house, and many artistic creations were produced.
Instead of buying cinnamon roll dough in a can, I made this Cinnamon Coffee Cake recipe from scratch on Christmas morning. The activity acted as a perfect speedbump to slow down the frantic pace of gift opening, which was especially fitting since there were only a few gifts under the tree.
One of the gifts the kids received was the book Children Who Dance In The Rain, a beautiful tale about privilege, gratitude, and learning the joy of giving and of simply living. It felt so good for the kids to be reading a book about people who have so few possessions. I could see the gears of understanding and compassion turn in my eldest’s head as we read the book a second time.
FaceTimed with the grandparents and sent messages out to our loved ones.
Went for not one but two family swims.
Ate leftovers from our Christmas Eve Fancy Toast feast for happy hour and made a simple pesto pasta for dinner in about 20 minutes.
We ended the night with a family snuggle in bed and each took a turn reading a book for the family–even the five year old!
I’m proud of how our family celebrated the holiday season this year. When the kids walked up to the tree on Christmas morning, it was just as magical for them as any other Christmas. Their eyes were big. Demeanors were giddy. They didn’t ask to watch any screens. And clean-up was a breeze!
There was a moment as the sun was setting on Christmas day, when my family had gone out for a walk around the neighborhood and I was home alone, staring out to the gentle glow of the Costa Rican sunset, that I realized how much I enjoyed my day. I wasn’t stressed. I didn’t have twenty jobs to do. No one needed anything from me. I was at peace.
I had given myself the ultimate Christmas present, and all I’d had to do was try to do as little as possible and weave in just a pinch of magic.
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How do you keep the holidays minimal and magical? I’d love to hear about it in the Comments!
What’s the best beach to visit in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica? Which beach town is family friendly? Where is the best surf? All of these questions and more are answered below.
Tamarindo
Playa Tamarindo
Town
The place to be in Guanacaste! Tamarindo is the most developed, highest tourist traffic city in the area. It has the most restaurants, hotels, rentals, and bars, and thus it is the most visited area.
Beach
The beach in Tamarindo is known for the surfing. It has reliable waves suitable for beginners and still plenty fun for more advanced surfers. Several surf shops offer lessons. Because it is so popular, it is also usually crowded, especially during high season (November-April).
Langosta
The quiet sister to Tamarindo. It’s just a few minutes away from Tamarindo, so you can still enjoy all that “Tama” has to offer, but your stay will likely be a bit quieter with a little less nighttime noise.
Playa Grande
Town
“Grande” is a quiet surfer’s town. The RipJack Inn is an awesome hotel right near the beach with a restaurant, yoga studio, and a sand volleyball court.
Beach
The surfer’s Mecca in Guanacaste. This is where the experienced surfers go to catch quality, consistent waves. Not recommended for first-time surfers.
Potrero & Surf Side
A sunset shot of Playa Potrero taken at Hemingway’s
Town
The little town that has it all. Hot spots include:
Potrero Brewing: not only do they brew a wide variety of craft beers and sours on site (house margaritas are also on tap for you non-beer drinkers), but the folks at Potrero Brewing have designed the ultimate hangout space in the area. The brewery has both inside and outside spaces, with big screen TVs and games inside and a bunch of patio seating and live music setup outside. Across from the patio are three food truck-style restaurants so you can enjoy a snack and stay for a while. Don’t miss Pre-loved Tees, a second-hand, self service t-shirt shop packed with unique tees located in the upstairs of the brewery.
Hemingway’s: if you’re looking for an oceanfront place to eat, drink, and hang out, there might be no better place than Hemingway’s. Built right next to the beach, Hemingway’s has tables in the sand as well as an entire pool and bar area on the mainland. Live music happens on peak nights and they have a full menu as well as wood-fired pizzas.
The Shack: offering some of the tastiest food and most well-crafted cocktails in the area, this two-story bar and restaurant is known for hosting live music events often. Check their active Facebook page for updates on upcoming shows.
Canatico: owned by a married couple consisting of one Canadian and one Tico (hence the name), this pizzeria bar and grill has a delicious variety of bar and grill favorites on the menu, and if you’re staying nearby and need a pizza delivered, Canatico is your best bet.
Perlas
Artwave Gallery & Oh Terra Studio: a back-to-back pair of art studios featuring beautiful paintings and gorgeous clay pottery and ceramics from two fabulous local artists.
Beach
At Playa Potrero, the surf can vary a bit at this beach, but it tends toward the calmer side for the beaches in the area. The water is not very clear, and the sand is fine and a bit darker (so it can get hot). The beach has easy public access. There is a Sailing Center right next to Hemingway’s which offers kayak, paddleboard, and sailboat rentals.
On the north side of Potrero you’ll find Playa Penca and it’s little sister, Playa Prieta, which are known by locals to be some of the prettiest, most enjoyable beaches in the area.
Brasilito
Restaurant Patagonia Del Mar, with Playa Brasilito in the background
Town
The town is very small and is mostly a town for the local Ticos; not many tourists stay here, although there are a few small hotels in town. There is a grassy parking area in front of the beach with a few sodas. Patagonia Del Mar boasts the town’s nicest restaurant view, and Masala serves up high quality Indian fare.
Beach
The beach in Brasilito is not that great. The water isn’t very clear and there are very few trees or shady areas. The adjacent beach to the south, Playa Conchal, is known to be one of the nicest beaches in Guanacaste, and since Conchal has restricted access by vehicle (see Conchal below), people will often park at Brasilito and then walk across Brasilito Beach in order to access Conchal Beach.
Flamingo
Flamingo Marina
Town
On one side of Flamingo you have the marina, and on the other side you have the beach. Marina Flamingo is a newly completed area with a large marina of boat slips and high-end shops on the mainland. It’s all quite posh. Surfbox is a favorite for a fancy cocktail or a tasty brunch/lunch, but expect to pay marina prices.
Beach
The beach is gorgeous, with mountain views on each side and fine white sand underfoot. The waves can be larger, not consistent for surfing. You will find several beach vendors offering crafts, massages, and even pina coladas served inside a pineapple!
Conchal
Conchal is a beautiful beach made of tiny white shells. The area around the beach is known as “Reserva Conchal” and is an exclusive, expensive place to get into. There is a golf course as well as a Westin hotel inside. You may be able to find a short term rental inside Reserva Conchal, but if you don’t have a tee time, a rental, or a room at the hotel, you won’t be able to get in. The other way to access the beach is by walking (or riding a horse!) along the sand from Brasilito Beach, or by watercraft.
Las Catalinas
Town
Las Catalinas is a newer development that is quite unlike anything else in the area. It had a Mediterranean vibe, with brightly colored townhomes and walking-only paths. There are some spendy, trendy shops scattered throughout the development. There’s also a robust hiking trail system that starts at a trailhead in Las Catalinas, leading to various beach and mountain destinations. It’s a fun place for a day trip, and in general is a bit more expensive than other places in Guanacaste.
Beach
Playa Danta is the nearby beach at Las Catalinas. It’s a beautiful beach. A moderate hike along the trails will take you to Playa Dantita, the little sister to Playa Danta, which is more quiet and secluded. Dantita is a gem if you’re looking to take a couple hike and picnic lunch on a beach.
Avellanas
Town
It takes a little effort to get there, but Playa Avellanas is a beautiful area. Lola’s is an awesome spot to post up for the day; it’s a beachfront restaurant with many different types of seating areas, included a lofted 2nd story dining area.
Beach
It’s a pretty good surfing beach. Nice sand.
Summary
Guanacaste has so many beaches and beach towns, and they all have their own character. Have a suggestion of another beach or beach town that should be in this article? Let us know in the comments!
As I mentally prepared to move to Costa Rica, I knew things were going to change for me. In fact, I was planning on it.
I was moving to a new country with many intentions, one of which was leaving behind certain parts of my old life. I wanted to strip away the clutter, the physical clutter of the many items that had amassed in our too-large home, the mental clutter of a challenging job in a busy life, and the overall soul/being/belief/understanding sort of clutter one accumulates from 37 trips around the Sun. The idea was do less chasing after stuff and to create more spaciousness. Space for what, exactly? I couldn’t say, exactly.
As I would journal and contemplate and do many mental exercises, thought experiments, and soul searches to help me determine my life purpose, to help me figure out what I’d want to pursue in this next season of my life, what I yearned to do more of, who I wanted to become, who I wanted to be right now… the same smattering of ideas would emerge, in no particular order: music, blogging, meditation, volleyball, strength training, gardening, hiking, more time with kids, creating a podcast, writing a book, learning more wilderness skills and bushcraft, volunteering…
I intentionally left it open-ended as we completed the move, because I knew I was going into the unknown, into a new place with a different climate, landscape, and culture. I didn’t want to be attached to any singular narrow vision too tightly; I didn’t know what effects this major transition was going to have on me and my family. I just knew I wanted to live with more space. I wanted to give myself the freedom to do and to be whatever felt right and leave any notion of what I’m “supposed to be” and “supposed to do” in my rear view mirror.
Now that three months have gone by, I’m noticing that, perhaps unsurprisingly to some, it has been volleyball that has emerged as one of the primary endeavors I’m pouring myself into in this first chapter of my life in Costa Rica.
COACHING
What started out as a casual offer to the school Movement Director during New Family Orientation Day, that I could “pitch in where needed” with the volleyball program, has turned into a Head Coaching position of a multi-school youth volleyball club. I started my first day as Coach with 28 kids, one decrepit net with an archaic, rusty crank system, and a cart of volleyballs. I had no whistle, no clipboard, and no help, other than the handful of notes and drills I’d scratched into one of my kids’ half-used Five-Star notebooks earlier that day. Three months later, I work with another co-head coach, we’ve formed two competitive teams of 15 kids each, started an “open gym” night for all youth from the area to work on volleyball skills, and we’ve even played (and won) our first match against another club team. And I now don’t forget to bring my whistle to practice.
One of the best experiences of coaching this youth club team so far was the night after our first match. It was a nailbiter of a match, where, in a best-of-five competition, we won-lost-lost-won the first four sets, so it came down to the fifth and final set, where we did ultimately emerge victorious with a 25-23 final score.
Our team and fans celebrating after our first match
The best part of this, though, was not that our team won, but how I felt that night. As I laid in bed getting ready for sleep, I could feel an energetic hum circulating through me. It felt familiar. I realized I’d felt this way many times before, in high school and in college, on the nights after I’d played in a sanctioned, refereed volleyball match. My mind would be reviewing and replaying the various rallies from the match that afternoon, reliving particularly enjoyable spikes or blocks and learning from unforced errors. This time, as post-game coach instead of post-game player, that electric current running through me was more subdued, not quite as consuming as when I was a young lad, but it was still there, and it felt good. For a few moments, I got to feel like I felt when I was 18. Magical!
BEACH
I’ve also gratefully been welcomed by the small group of advanced beach players that live in my area, who turn out to be totally rad, generous, and kind people. We gather sporadically, several times per week, at either Tamarindo Beach or Playa Grande, the two closest spots with sand nets in our pocket of Guanacaste.
The volleyball sessions are organized in a small group message thread, not unsimilar to my old group text chains coordinating 2-on-2 pickup ball with the guys at the sand courts around Bde Maka Ska in Minneapolis. The only difference is, in Minnesota, we’d plan things out a few days in advance, to give everyone time to finagle ducking out of work early or to “work remotely” that afternoon or to “need to pick up their kids from daycare” that day. Here in Costa Rica, the group thread to schedule a pickup session always starts with someone sending out the same one-word message: “Tomorrow?” At first this lack of advanced planning frustrated me, as it felt like it thwarted my attempts to be a good partner and dad, to communicate to my family when I’d be missing the morning get-to-school routine. However, I’ve come to learn that the reasons we don’t plan things further out here are part cultural but also part practical – sometimes big rains come for days on end, disrupting everyone’s schedules in myriad ways. If you don’t make plans, then your plans can’t get ruined.
INDOOR
I’ve also now started playing indoor volleyball, through an introduction from someone on the sand courts. They had been lamenting how that, for weeks, they’d been trying to organize a group of advanced indoor players, but were having a hard time bringing it all together. After connecting those I’d met at the beach to the indoor crowd, we now have enough people to have epic, high level volleyball going once per week at a gym in the nearby town of Huacas.
Amidst all of this, the school our kids attend is nearing the completion of building a new gymnasium. This is a huge deal for the school and the surrounding community. Currently the school leases a gym space down the road in order for students to be able to play volleyball or basketball. This space is hot, dusty, hot, far away from the school, and really stinkin’ hot. The new gym is being built on the school grounds and will have a roof with an open air design, which will protect everyone from the sun and provide air flow at the same time. Basically, the basketball and volleyball programs at the school are about to get a major upgrade, and I happen to have moved here right before that all gets going. This feels like yet another sign that I’m meant to participate. The volleyball-loving entity within me has taken action, and I now am on a small committee of parent volunteers to raise funds for the new gym so that it can get equipped with a proper roof, floor, and sports equipment.
CONNECTION
And now, because of my position with the youth team, my avid playing at the beach, and my general disposition of being passionate about the sport, more and more people are getting connected. It seems like not a week goes by now where I don’t receive at least one message out of the blue from someone who got my info from someone else. In referring to my ability to bring people together, someone told me, “We need you!!” It all is making me feel like this is part of why I’m here, this is part of what I’m meant to do here, an ideal use of all my skills and past experiences that have put me in this position in this time and place.
SEARCHING FOR AND FINDING A SENSE OF PURPOSE
It feels like, and this feels scary to admit, that being “the volleyball guy” down here is my first taste of what it feels like to actually be living out my purpose. It feels like I might actually be offering one of my ideal, optimal gifts to the universe. That feeling is a feeling I’ve been searching for over the last year and a half.
There are exercises one can do to help hone in on one’s purpose or one’s next move in life. I have done many of them. For example, Josh Steimle’s way of thinking about this is to find your “Genius Zone.” You write down a list of all the things in which you are an Expert. This can be anything from speaking English to sales to raising a five year old to the behavior patterns of chihuahuas in Minnesota. Then you identify which of all of these things is your One Big Key Zone, the one that you are a deep expert in. If your whole career has been in real estate, then real estate is probably your One Big Key Zone. Lastly, you identify your Secondary Zones. Then you make a Venn diagram. In the middle of that Venn diagram is your Genius Zone. So let’s say your One Big Key Zone is real estate, and two of your Secondary Zones are speaking Spanish and writing. Plot those three zones on a Venn diagram, and boom – writing a blog in Spanish for how to purchase your first home is your Genius Zone; it’s a project you could undertake that brings your special talents together.
Another way I’ve journaled to try to get to the root of what I’m meant to do with my life is to free write on the following prompts:
What do I care about deeply? What do I value?
What am I good at?
What do I really enjoy?
Imagine it’s ten years from now, everything has gone “right,” and I’m the best version of myself I could possibly be. What am I doing? What’s important to me?
How can I feel more fulfilled?
The idea after free writing on all of these questions is then is to take a step back and look at what’s on the pages, to see if any patterns or trends emerge, if, in reading any of my own answers, I feel a particular gravitation or aversion to any of them. All of this work was ultimately pointing to my underlying desire to be able to get to a point in my life where I am giving my best offerings to the universe. I’m fortunate to feel like I have several areas of passion and expertise, but it also has presented a quandary; if I pour myself into one area, let’s say writing a book, then yes this is taking advantage of one of my talents but is this really the best endeavor I could pursue? What if I get deep into a book writing project, spending countless hours of my life on it, when all that time and energy could have been better spent creating a podcast or producing a funk album or selling more solar panels? What if one of those projects would ultimately have a bigger, more positive impact on the world? How can I know what is truly the best thing for me to pursue?
And so, with that fixation on perfecting this thought experiment, I then loop back into more analysis. Welcome to the loop I’ve been on for the last year and a half.
When I mentioned all of this work and mental acrobatics to my unofficial life coach, he advised that I not focus so much on getting it “perfectly,” “optimally” right and simply to do three things: experiment, live in gratitude, and know that if the path feels right (if my vitality or life energy is up) then it probably is right.
And what I have now noticed as I look back on all of those purpose-seeking exercises is that “volleyball” was in every one of those journal entries. I would always write down “volleyball” at some point as one of my genius zones or something that brings me joy. And as I reflect on the most recent three months of my life here in Costa Rica, I also notice that I’ve been prioritizing volleyball without intentionally doing so. It’s just happening. The 24 years’ worth of experience and pleasure playing this game is like its own entity within me acting on its own. I find myself raising my hand to coach a team, to drive 30 minutes to find advanced beach players, to guide a “parent’s volleyball night” at the kids’ school. It all feels so natural. It feels like it’s what I’m “supposed” to be doing here and now.
And admitting that, saying out loud that it feels like volleyball might be my purpose right now, feels silly. Trivial. Dumb. A voice creeps in saying, “Really? VOLLEYBALL is the best you can do? A game?! You have all this privilege and good fortune and a sound mind and you’re going to use all of that for a GAME?!”
Whose voice is that? Who knows? But yeah, I am embracing this game. Why?
it’s a need in this community
it’s good for my body
it’s a built-in way to grow my network of familiar people in this new place
there are signs all around me pointing me in this direction
I get to access feeling like a teenager again
I get to help and add value to this area right now
I love to play
Volleyball actually is the thing I’m way over my 10,000 hours on. It is the thing I can do and do and do and never get bored of it. The thing I happily pay money to do (to pay for the indoor gym time). It’s the activity I have dreams about; I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve dreamt of spikes inside the ten foot line and of straight-down block kills. It’s the one sport I’ve been playing for more than half of my life. It’s the only thing I set my alarm for in Costa Rica. It’s the one movement practice I’ve stuck with consistently for over 20 years, without any effort or discipline or grit. It’s been easy because it’s the one thing I truly do love.
So why do I need to question it? To doubt it? To continue to search and chase and strive to level up to something greater? Can’t it be enough that I love a thing and it makes me feel happy and it’s good for my health and I can help the people near me with my talents, all while embracing the notion that it doesn’t have to be forever, it can just be enough for right now? Well gosh darnit, I think it can!
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If you spend a bunch of time searching for your life’s purpose, you might just find that it’s been hiding in plain sight all along.
It’s a weird experience, feeling like you are waking up to your own life. It’s even weirder to type those words with the intention of sharing them with the internet. But that’s how I feel. Not that I abruptly un-jacked from The Matrix and have instantly awoken to a new, real world, but gradually, as each day passes, as my practices deepen and evolve, I feel like I’ve been becoming incrementally more in tune with all that my life is. I feel like I see things more clearly. When someone is upset, I get less caught up in the emotion of the moment and I can see the story behind the pain. When all I’m doing is standing in the middle of a forest, I can more clearly see the layers and depth of beauty that surrounds me, the abundance of life around me and within me. What does all this hippie-dippie gobbledygook have to do with my setting out to create 104 weekly blog posts chronicling a 2-year break from the working world and then giving up 30 weeks into it?
For starters, it’s because, in my hard-to-describe state of feeling a little more awakened or alive or some such clichéd word, I am realizing that it no longer feels like I’m “On Sabbatical.” For many, the term “sabbatical” implies that the leave is short term and that there will inevitably be a return to the work once the sabbatical is over. I see no return in my future. From the ashes of my past and the soil in my foundation, only new growth can emerge. The idea of writing a weekly blog documenting my time away from the working world suited me, until it didn’t. What once felt like a worthy practice, an easy launchpad into the world of writing, an exciting endeavor I could one day look back on with interest, now just feels restricting. I don’t want to write because I have to write. I want to write because I want to write.
I find it extremely challenging to write my honest to goodness Truth. I can hear many critical voices murmur as I dare to write without filter, without edit, without restraint. “No one cares.” “Why are you doing this?” “People will judge you.” “What will your parents think?” “You sound like an esoteric cloud-dwelling hippie.” These voices and their siblings offer formidable resistance. Adding to the resistance with my own arbitrary deadlines and rigid framework of “one post about my sabbatical every week” no longer feels useful. Being awake enough to myself to be able to see this is but one example of how it feels like I am no longer “on a break” but that I am metamorphosing into a new being with a new quality of consciousness.
Even writing that sentence, an inner critic says “you sound ridiculous.” But it’s my Truth! I’m feeling ready to start documenting and sharing more of my Truth.
As I continue to live out my days by practicing, among other things, letting my intuition, and the intuition of my partner and children, guide me, weird things are happening. Awesome things. Powerful things. Where to begin?
SETTING INTENTION IN THE NEW YEAR
A week after New Year’s on Monday, January 9, the first day of 2023 when the holiday buzz had finally worn off for most everyone, people everywhere were likely having their first “real Monday” of work in a few weeks. Well, right now, I don’t have a “job,” but I did get to work that morning; even though I had a long list of things I wanted to do for the week, out of seemingly nowhere I felt a strong compulsion to write a letter to my friends. It was hitting me that it was now 2023, the actual year I would be moving from Minnesota to Costa Rica with my family, indefinitely. My available time to share with friends was about to start dwindling at a rapid pace. I felt a sudden urgency to prioritize scheduling a day of connection with each of my closest friends. Here is an excerpt from the letter that went out that day:
Through practices of contemplation, meditation, and reflective writing, my values, the things I most care about in life, are becoming more clear. When I did the Brene Brown exercise of boiling down all of the things I value in life into two words (found here), the two words that emerged for me were: Time and Family.
For me, Family is another way of saying: relationships, community, socialization, friendship, connection, and of course actual family. All of these notions of interpersonal relationship and connectedness roll up to my “parent” value of Family.
When I think of Family, I think of you. Regardless of whether or not we keep in frequent communication in future years, our friendship is definitely something I value right now. And, in a way, right now is all any of us has.
When I think of Time, I know that I don’t want to waste it. But what does it mean, to “waste” time? To me, it means protecting my Time from distractions, and investing my Time living in ways that serve my values. There is no better way for me to do this than to spend my Time with Family.
And so, I’d like to schedule some Time to be with you before I depart Minnesota.
GETTING REAL WITH FRIENDS
In the weeks that followed, I utterly enjoyed my friendships. I hang out with my friends and I enjoy it–obvious, right? What’s been surprising, though, is that time and time again, this phenomenon keeps occuring that I’m not yet totally able to explain. Before, when I would see my friends, we would shoot the breeze, play games, eat some food, you know, typical friend hang stuff. But now when I see my friends, we open. Things get real.
The examples are many:
I went over to a friend’s house during a weekday for lunch. She had the day off and her husband works from home, so on his lunch break the three of us were able to have a chat. Instead of the typical “catching up” chat, they shared a recent story where they’d had a disagreement about parenting, which opened up into a larger conversation about their relationship, how they communicate, and how they make each other feel. There were tears. It felt to me like a big elephant in the room had been addressed and moved through. A day later, she sent me a text saying our talk was “therapeutic” and “reinforced a lot of the reasons why we love each other and are committed to raising the best family we can.”
A former coworker reached out asking for advice about her career. I agreed to a lunch and she opened up about her dreams and her financial concerns. We explored what her real fears were. A few months later, she left her corporate position and now owns her own business.
At a guys poker night, a friend mentioned in an off-hand comment that things weren’t going very well at home. Rather than zoom past that uncomfortable topic (like every other guy at poker did), I made sure not to leave the gathering until we actually talked about it. At one point we stepped outside and I gently inquired deeper to see how he was doing with it all. He shared more, and I could see in his body how it felt good to unload some of the tough stuff. At the end of the conversation, we embraced and he thanked me for caring and asking about his life.
A previous advertising client reached out for a Zoom call to discuss her career change ideas, and at the end of the call said our chat “felt like a therapy session” for her.
In the middle of recording one of my pilot podcast episodes, my guest felt comfortable enough to share a tear-filled, emotionally charged personal story.
For the first time that I can remember, I had a phone conversation with my father where we both cried.
A close friend keeps coming to me with news of his bad days, tough feelings, stress at home, frustrations about parenting. I see the pain. I see how I had been there a few years ago. It’s like I’ve climbed over a fence but he’s still on the other side, and he doesn’t even know there’s a fence there, and I don’t know how to help him get on the other side without telling him how to do it which will only make him avoid the fence at all costs. But at least I can see the fence now, and we’re talking about the important stuff.
I go to my 20-year high school reunion and, by the end of the night, three different people tell me some version of “you are helping me remember what it is to dream for myself.”
We had a couples hang with another couple and they offered to talk about their therapy sessions, an eating disorder, and some challenges they have around their home. I got the sense these aren’t topics they discuss often with others; something about the conditions Kristyn and I created brought these more real topics forward.
And speaking of Kristyn, all this “real talk” has some positive flavor to it as well. I keep getting more in love with my partner. Our support of each other keeps getting more and more layers of foundation. Almost like wrapping a ball in a ribbon or crochet paper. Every time we practice contact nutrition it’s like another layer of protective paper protecting our relationship. It’s becoming fortified. Once I cried to her explaining how thankful I am for who she is and that, just by her being who she is, she helps me live more in my own values. That moment was one extra fortifying layer adding further strength to our partnership.
Writing all this out, maybe crying is a theme here? (˃̣̣̥‿˂̣̣̥)
My friends keep opening up to me. Around me. Am I just seeing this now where I wasn’t seeing it before, but it’s always been there? No. It’s not just perception. Things are unfolding differently now. I’m making choices when discomfort arises. I’m choosing not to avoid, but to linger in the uncomfortableness. I’m choosing to dig into my friends’ tension with them. I’m figuratively holding their hand as we dive into the scary, unfomortable depths of their feelings, their relationships, their desires, their pain.
I focus on staying grounded, on remaining unattached to my sensations and my thoughts. I reconnect to my breath again and again, and I do my best to mirror back to my friends what they share with me, to bear witness to their stories, to aid their personal inquiry. I keep falling into roles of therapist, counselor, couples mediator. Is that just what being a good friend is? Listening, being supportive, being helpful? Or is there more to the story, here? After we have these tough conversations, I keep hearing things like “that felt therapeutic” and “thanks for letting me get that out” and “man, I wasn’t planning on getting this real over salads.”
A NEW BEGINNING
I feel like I’m onto something. I just don’t know exactly what that thing is yet. I know it feels good to show up for my friends, to invite in their reality, and to attempt to navigate the hard stuff with them as their ally. I’m going to keep doing that and see where it leads.
I don’t know where it’ll take me, but my guess is that it won’t take me back to a cubicle selling TV commercials on broadcast news that I don’t even watch.
I’m grateful to my past self for documenting the first thirty weeks of my time away from the working world. It doesn’t feel like a failure that I only lasted thirty weeks out of 104. It feels like that’s how it had to be. That writing was right for that time, and they will forever exist (as long as I keep paying to renew my domain :D) for me to look back on.
Now, though, I have this feeling that there are bigger projects to tackle, more important research and writing to do, more exciting endeavors to pursue, more value to offer the world. What it feels like now is a new beginning. A fresh start where I get to write the rules of my own life. And instead of committing to the rule of “one weekly blog post documenting the journey of my two-year sabbatical,” the new rule is “write often, and write your Truth.”
