On Risking One's Life to Nourish One's Soul, and One Logical Conclusion Thereof.

“To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.” —Jean-Paul Sartre

In recent years, my wife and I have taken up multi-day camping by backpack and kayak. These are pursuits that force you to take full responsibility for your own survival in potentially harsh environments. Absolutely everything that is necessary to keep you alive must be carried on your back or in your boat.

In the course of these excursions, we have: come close to running out of water in hot, mountainous terrain; risked falling to our deaths down rocky slopes and sheer cliffs; encountered bears and wolves and gone to sleep with them just a couple hundred feet down the beach from our tent; and, just recently, paddled through dangerously rough seas along jagged, rocky coastline. By the time we realized how bad it had gotten, the only way out was through. We made it back to port, but it was touch and go for a bit there.

A naive economic calculus would say that these were poor decisions even if we were lucky enough to survive them, because the expected value, when weighed against the negative-infinity of dying, is still negative-infinity, whatever the odds.

But this assessment misses something fundamental yet ineffable about human nature: we are not meant to be a domesticated species, bereft of all risk and consequence.

Though many lack the words to describe it, the modern consumer existence, free of danger, stripped of its highest highs and lowest lows, is abhorent to the free spirit and intrepidness that characterizes this marvellous species that we are so priveleged to be members of.

Those who have lived their entire lives in the artificial environment of cities may find resonance with Morpheus’ quote to Neo early in The Matrix:

“What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

There is a natural time in one’s life for peak adventure and risk-taking, of course, and it is probably most appropriate in the late teens and early twenties, before you have children (should you decide to do so). In the modern city environment we (young men, especially) find surrogate outlets for this call to adventure and risk-taking: we drive recklessly, we take up extreme sports, we experiment with drugs, we engage in petty crime merely for its entertainment value. Not all of us, of course; each of us feels the call differently, and have different outlets, healthy or otherwise, available to us.

I have engaged in all of these surrogate activities to varying degrees, and more. My twenties were a rough time. I didn’t know why I felt called to do these things, or that there were healthier options available, I just knew that this safe and convenient existence in the glass and concrete jungle was bullshit, and that my soul cried out for something more, a reality that could shake me and kick back.

It kicked back plenty: scrapes and sprains (mountain biking), broken bones (parkour), a totalled vehicle (no one else was involved, thank goodness), a criminal record (trafficking; now suspended, but never truly gone), the list goes on. Years of my life seemingly wasted in a vague pursuit of… something more.

In more recent years I have come to forgive myself and no longer see those years as purely a waste. Could they have been better spent? Without a doubt. But I worked hard throughout, learned much, and still have some fond memories from that time, all the chaos notwithstanding. I have many regrets, but I don’t wish to erase that portion of my life. I am what I am, and that was part of what made me.

A few years ago I started to get restless again. Now in my thirties, happily married, and with a solid career, the need for something more arose once again. I tried to explain to my wife but couldn’t find precisely the right words; the best I could come up with at the time was that I was craving some “danger” in my life.

Surprisingly, she took this in stride and booked a session of bungee jumping for me and a friend around my birthday that year (she’s not too fond of heights, so did not wish to attend). It was, of course, exhilarating, and I’d happily do it again. Standing at the precipice, overlooking a rocky gorge hundreds of feet below, one must do battle with millions of years of evolved survival instinct and overcome it by sheer force of reason (there’s also a fair bit of trust that one must place in the equipment and the people operating it).

Shortly after, we acquired the necessary gear and started backpacking, and that has been one of the most worthwhile endeavors that we have jointly pursued thus far. We have found it to be a spiritual experience, in which we push our bodies to new limits in the majestic spleandor of the pacific northwest, all while taking complete, unmitigated responsibility for our own lives.

Each journey is transformational, as we come to understand our natural environment and ourselves better, and each time we come back with a renewed appreciation for the amenities of modernity. A hot shower can be a mundane part of your daily routine, or it can be the most divine ritual of cleansing and rebirth, when it is the first one you have had in four days and you are filthy and aching and exhausted.

“Once in each lifetime, there should be a great Hajj, a great pilgrimage. To know our Lord better, yes, but to know ourselves as well.” (Source unknown)

Someday, hopefully not in the too distant future, we hope to take responsibility for our lives in a new way: homesteading. A life of self sufficiency (to the extent that that is possible, for no man, and indeed no family, is an island) where we grow, raise, prepare, and preserve as much of our own food as possible. Where we barter and trade goods and services with likeminded, self-sovereign people. Where we are masters of our land and of our tools, producing value for ourselves and our neighbors without the prying hands of meddlesome middlemen seeking to skim an unearned surplus off our labour.

This is the dream. It is a humble one, not seeming too much to ask for in the grand scheme of things, and yet in this corrupted modern fiat rat race that we find ourselves born into, even that first step, acquiring a decent piece of land upon which to build our life, is proving more elusive than previously anticipated. But we will persevere. Freedom awaits for those with the strength and stamina to reach it, and we have both.

May you all find the strength that is required to reach the freedom you deserve.