Life had become increasingly stale and there seemed to be only one option left: leave everything behind and set off in search of something more exciting and profound.
A young man can no longer continue living a life that is leaving him unsatisfied. A moment of inspiration leads to him quitting his job and embracing a path that takes him far away from his comfort zone. The ensuing adventure begins in a campground in back of a pizza shop, and winds its way through an unpredictable eight months to a monastery on the other side of the world. While there was value in every moment along the way, they might have all been the vehicle for something even greater.
I entertained expectations of everything and nothing as I cruised along Route 73 through wild and wonderful West Virginia, flanked by an endless embankment of trees so green it was as if there was electricity pulsating through them. Magic was in the air. For the foreseeable future there were no deadlines to meet, no bills to pay, no concrete plans, no responsibilities, and no alarms. Anywhere and anything was on the table. The stars had aligned, though, and at that moment there was nothing on the planet I’d rather be doing: driving to a small campground behind a pizza shop in Kentucky to live in a tent and climb rocks for seven weeks. It was the first stop on a grander adventure; one that had been planned meticulously to a degree, but with much left open to interpretation.
“Do you need a receipt, hunny?”
“No, I’m good, thanks. But hey, do you know if I am on the correct road? I’m on my way to Kentucky.”
“Kentucky? What part?”
“Umm, I’m not completely certain. I’m heading to the Red River Gorge. I’m pretty sure it’s in the eastern part of the state.”
“Yeahhhhh… you prolly wanna keep going south for a while, then just look for signs for Kentucky.”
“Probably? Cool, works for me. Have a good one!”
Eight months prior, my life had been pretty standard for a twenty-seven-year-old white American male: good job, good group of friends, and a nice little apartment. The sense that things had run their coursehad been creeping in, though, and I couldn’t shake it. IT. The feeling that there was something a little moreout there for me. Something richer, fuller, and more potent—a kick in the face, in the best possible sense of the phrase.
The path to that critical juncture had started out as normal as could be. I grew up in a typical suburb outside of Philadelphia, with life revolving around church, school, sports, and friends. Nothing to see here, move along. The sudden death of my father when I was seventeen transformed all that. Some of the changes were immediate and obvious, while others were more subtle and patient. It confirmed some sneaking suspicions I had about the nature of life, and also brought about a deep sense of personal sovereignty. Simultaneously, it planted a seed for a certain way of living that revealed itself more fully over time: a way of thinking, acting, breathing, and interacting with the world around me; a way of treating both myself and others. Although less than a year after my father’s death I headed off to Penn State University to study Finance with visions of future wealth, two years later I was a scruffy-haired vegetarian Philosophy major with visions of being fully alive in every waking moment. I admittedly didn’t know exactly what that meant in the long run, but I did know that there was no way I could lie to myself and spend any of my time doing something I didn’t completely believe in.
Fast forward roughly five years and I was then working at Penn State in the university development office. I had taken up rock climbing after graduating and found a great community of like-minded people centered around a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding activity. In many ways, life was ideal. Yet the old credo of ‘get a degree, get a job, raise a family, and grow old’ had always felt a little stale to me. A strong desire was stirring to dig deeper into life and get my hands dirty: an inkling to completely disengage from the old mindset, then fully re-engage with something fresh and new.
My boss laughed when I informed him I would be quitting “at some point in the next four to five months to do something,” but he quickly realized I was far from joking. After moving into a friend’s basement, with an agreement that I could leave whenever, I began my search. My eyes and ears were wide open for anything that piqued my interest. As I was exploring the web one night, a nondescript link buried in the sidebar of a website caught my eye: Volunteer Abroad. The sudden goosebumps were a clear indication I needed to investigate the idea further.
I had flirted with going into the Peace Corps while in college, as the combination of traveling and doing ‘something good’ was highly appealing to me. Due to my general confusion and lack of direction at the time, though, the idea never went further then grabbing a pamphlet and filling out about a third of the application. The site I was brought to during this new search for some type of path to follow was for a company that placed people in short-term volunteer positions in various locations around the globe. Combing the site, scouring Google, and checking out at least ten other companies, a few hours went by. Sleep was hard to come by that night, as a dormant desire had awakened and was throwing a dance party in my head.
I let the idea marinate for a few days, partially to see if my initial infatuation with the idea of a jaunt around the globe would fade. It didn’t; it only got stronger. I had done virtually no traveling before. Nearly my entire life had been spent within a four-hour radius around Philadelphia. Part of me enjoyed the comfort and familiarity, yet I couldn’t deny the presence of an increasingly strong urge to move, go, and see. With plenty of energy stored up inside of me, why not try to use it for something positive? Ideas popped up randomly. I spent another night brainstorming, digging around the web, calculating finances, and plotting dates. A few weeks after my initial moment of inspiration I settled on a general plan. The goal was simple: go to a few unique places, stay a while, and try to have a fully loaded experience at each. Volunteering in some form was a definite aim, but pursuing the state of being that stems from stripping away all that is comfortable was much more important.
Early in my planning, it dawned on me that one of my good friends from college had moved to Mexico City and helped launch a small business focused on installing rainwater harvesting systems for people with limited access to water. I got in touch with her to see if it was cool for me to crash on her couch for a few weeks; she was thrilled at the idea. After finding many companies providing short-term volunteer opportunities, I settled on the one I had originally seen: Global Community Initiatives. GCI had a number of tempting options: teaching English in Peru, sea turtle conservation in Bali, community development in Cambodia, teaching computer skills in Tanzania, assisting disabled children in Argentina, and working in an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka, to name just a few. You could choose where you wanted to go, the minimum stay was only a week, and it was cheap.
When I spoke to the rep and mentioned I wanted to go somewhere in Africa he suggested Kenya, where I could help out with some non-technical HIV prevention and education. It sounded great. Nepal was mentioned as a possibility for my Asian stop, and it struck a chord with me immediately. I knew almost nothing about it, but my intuition told me that I had to go. The plan there was to volunteer in an orphanage for a month before spending a few weeks teaching English to Buddhist monks.
After the initial flurry of plotting and scheming, I gave myself some time to let the whole thing soak in before I made the final commitment. By the end of my planned journey, I’d have spent nearly all of my money and I would have been out of the workforce for more than eight months. These things didn’t bother me too much, but there were still lingering nerves. The idea of the whole trip seemed too good, though, and the logistics kept falling into place seamlessly. If I registered by a certain date with GCI, I would qualify for a decent discount. I decided if I was going to do it at all, I was going to sign up by then. As I was sitting at my desk one day, fantasizing about the adventure, two things happened. First, I read the hand-scribbled quote by one of my college professors tacked to the board above me:
You want to know how to prepare for the future? Live fully, absolutely, completely in the present! Grab life by the throat and squeeze out every last drop that you can! The rest?? The rest will take care of itself.
Then I realized the deadline was exactly ten years to the day that my dad had passed away. I sent in my application and deposit immediately.
A little over six months later I found myself driving through the valleys of West Virginia, heading to the endless cliff faces of the Red River Gorge. I didn’t make many wise decisions in the year after I graduated college, but joining the local rock climbing gym ended up being one of the best ones I ever made. The first night had been a bit intimidating, especially seeing ten-year-old kids flying up the wall with ease, but it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the sport. Ask fifteen different climbers what they love most about climbing, and you are likely to get at least twelve different answers. For starters, climbing is an excellent physical workout done in a highly creative, ever-changing, and lively social environment. It’s incredibly challenging, stimulating, and rewarding—not only physically, but mentally as well.
On the surface, one might question how this trip fit into the rest of my journey of travelling to far-off countries and attempting to contribute something. Yet what I was really seeking went deeper. For one, I had no illusions about what type of impact I would be able to have during the relatively short time I would spend at each location. Sure, I planned on doing my best to add something positive and leave each place a little better than before I arrived, but I certainly didn’t expect to do anything profound. What I sought more than anything else was growth. I wanted to be exposed, to be vulnerable, and to see what remained when I left behind all that I knew to be safe and secure. Climbing has a tendency to have a similar effect, and in that sense it fit in perfectly.
As the clock approached midnight, I pulled into the parking lot of my home for the next seven weeks. Immediately upon getting out of my car I was hit with a rush of energy unlike anything I had experienced before. I had stepped through the gate of intention, and was psyched to see what I was going to find on the other side.
How deliciously violent springtime in Kentucky could be, it was quickly revealed. As I lay in my tent, with nothing but a few millimeters of vinyl separating me from the torrential rain, I had little choice other than to embrace Mother Nature’s wild side. A handful of the non-stop lightning strikes hit no more than fifty feet from camp, and the sound of a sixty-foot tree crashing often followed soon after. Now we’re camping!
Arnesto’s pizza shop doubled as a climbing gear shop and campground. Located within a twenty-minute drive of over fifteen hundred of the best rock climbs in America, it accommodated anywhere from thirty to two hundred tents of rock climbers at any one time. The setup was simple: a covered pavilion with plenty of room to cook and eat, a pantry where everyone had space for a stove and crate of food, a few bathrooms, a basement-turned-lounge, Wi-Fi, and cheap showers. The icing on the cake was the top-notch pizza. In other words, paradise. It was a melting pot for wandering climbers, and I figured I would eventually find someone to get out and climb with.
Finding a climbing partner proved to be more difficult than I had hoped. I had a great conversation with three guys from Utah, but they were starting their long drive back the next morning. I clicked with a group of four people from Nevada, but only an hour before they left for Tennessee to continue their tour of East Coast climbing spots. Steve was another solo traveler, but I met him the same day he ruptured a tendon in his finger. He would not be climbing for a while. On my fifth day at camp I finally had a chance to climb. Rob was from California, and now lived out of his van in Arnesto’s parking lot working as a local tour guide. He had a day off, so he suggested we head out to one of his favorite areas. I awoke with excitement the following morning. But Rob’s vocabulary seemed to exist of about three words: “dude”, “bro”, and “climb.” The climbs we went to were extremely difficult and the weather was gloomy. The day was mediocre at best, and a palpable sense of doubt began to creep in. As I slowly walked to my tent that night, wistfully staring at the stars, I wondered if I had overplayed my hand.
I had overheard someone mention an online message board where people sometimes find climbing partners, so I spent a few days scouring it until I met Dimitri, a member of the Russian ice climbing team. I had no idea what the hell to expect, but it seemed like a chance to climb. I was supposed to meet him Sunday night in front of Arnesto’s, but after a few hours of not seeing anyone fitting the description, I began to lose hope and again questioned if I had set myself up for a momentous failure. Then, taking one more lap around the front of the parking lot, I saw a dark-haired, quiet-looking figure in a jacket emblazoned with RUSSIA. We exchanged greetings and stood there awkwardly for a few seconds.
“Uhh, I guess we’ll meet here in the morning and go climb?” I asked.
“OK…”
“OK… well, see you then!”
Climbing has many disciplines, which require varying levels of lunacy to get involved in. What we were doing is best known as sport climbing. In short, we’d be climbing forty-to-sixty-foot-tall cliff faces with bolts permanently installed in the rock to clip your rope into. As long as you’re smart about it, it is incredibly safe.
Things were a bit quiet and awkward at first, but thankfully climbing forces you to open your mouth and talk to each other. Dimitri was just beginning a month-long trip to the States. Two weeks there at “The Red” would be followed by two weeks in Yosemite, where he was planning on doing a two-thousand-foot climb by himself. Thin and wiry, he was surprisingly strong. Combined with impressive balance and footwork, Dimitri regularly made challenging climbs look easy. While I wasn’t quite at his skill level, we were consistently climbing and everything had been flowing smoothly ever since I’d met the crazy Russian.
The landscape was pleasing far beyond the fact that its sandstone cliffs contained more climbs than one could do in a lifetime. The rock itself was often composed of a variety of swirling colors—oranges, greens, blacks, and whites—that appeared like experimental abstract paintings. It wasn’t uncommon to pass a waterfall while hiking to a climb, and a few reached as high as eighty feet. There were massive amphitheaters in the cliffs as well as natural bridges and rock arches that had formed over time. We often had to cross streams running through the lush forest, and that slight trickle of spring water that accompanied them was always pleasing to the ear. We were nearly always joined by brightly colored geckos, butterflies, and countless other small friends. I was stoked to be outside, in a beautiful place, doing nothing but engaging in an activity that gets me like nothing else.
Trusting your partner is vital when climbing, as you are placing your lives in each other’s hands. When one of you is climbing and the other is belaying—working the safety system at the opposite end of the rope—a mistake can be fatal. Combined with the intensity of the activity, it is common for a strong bond to form between climbing partners. Our lifestyles meshed well, as everything happened right on time; neither of us was ever early or late. Besides getting in a ton of climbing, the sound of laughter always surrounded us. Dimitri’s thick accent and less than perfect English ended up being great practice for me at dealing with a language barrier. I knew there would be times in the upcoming months where I would be the foreigner. I wouldn’t know nearly the same amount of the native language as Dimitri did English, so I tried to absorb these moments and learn from them.
While Dimitri was somewhat quiet and reserved on the surface, there was a burning passion that lurked beneath. This came through in the way that he climbed, and for the most part was a pleasure to watch. Climbing in the heat can be exceptionally arduous, though, and when brutally hot weather struck on his penultimate day in town, his struggles had him cursing everything from ice cream to pierogi. One particularly hard move had him stumped for almost forty minutes, and there was no sign he was going to get past it. Frying in the sun while belaying him well past the time he should have retreated had me fuming, and we exchanged some heated words when he was finally back on the ground.
While I appreciated the passion that drove him, I have always been of the mindset that climbing should be enjoyable first and foremost. For some, reaching their objective is more important. Ideally the two happen simultaneously, but many times one will need to be prioritized over the other. The mood was icy on the way back to camp, but after I mocked Dimitri for preferring his beer warm, the tension began to dissipate. Back at camp we enjoyed a few beverages—his warm, mine somewhat cold—and laughed into the night. With Dimitri ready to depart, it was a great sendoff. Our bond had been tightened, and I was feeling optimistic that maybe my time in Kentucky wasn’t going to be a disaster after all.
Dimitri took off the following morning, and while I was bummed to see him go, excitement was budding about what was next. Climbing opportunities were increasing, and after a rocky start, tent life was proving thoroughly enjoyable. That night I strolled up to the campfire to relax for a bit and I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. “Something smells good,” I quietly muttered. To my surprise, someone no more than a foot away turned to me, “Oh yeah? You want a hit?” Don’t mind if I do. The Captain and I struck up a conversation immediately. He had driven down from Ohio with some friends to climb for the weekend. He only climbed occasionally, but loved the opportunities he did have to get out. He was quite large, clocking in at almost six feet and carrying a few extra pounds. His personality matched, as he bounced from conversation to conversation with anybody that came near him. The Captain was clearly in the category of people for whom climbing was more about fun than anything else.
The crowd dwindled to about ten people. It stayed that way, nice and intimate, for the rest of the night. I don’t know how long it lasted; it was one of those instances where time sneakily seemed to bend a bit. The sky was crystal clear, there were a thousand stars visible, and the fire had a perfect burn. Most importantly, there was a group of people, nearly all of whom were complete strangers a few weeks, days, or minutes ago, sitting around the fire—some making small talk, some singing along to the guitar, some just reveling in the magic of the present moment.