Back in Mrs. Bissell’s AP English class, I met and fell deeply in love with the transcendentalists – Thoreau, Emerson, Longfellow & Co. In all the eras and genres of the written word, I was finally reading my people, and it was as if they were speaking to the deepest fibers of my being.

I clung to a few choice quotes from these literary luminaries so strongly that I wanted them immortalized in paint and in plain view on a daily basis. It was then that I commissioned my first pieces of art by a friend and artist, Gail Schellinger, all of which I have to this day hanging in my bedroom.

These pieces are near and dear to my heartspace and perfect meditations in color and word for a dreamroom. “Our life is frittered away by detail, simplify, simplify,” reads the one above my bed, echoing Thoreau’s finest.

Last Saturday at TEDxBoulder, my favorite talks were of the simple pleasures in life. Brad Feld talked up the wonders of a quarterly week off the grid, and Grant Blakeman’s talk on minimalism was a fast, furious and poignant graphical whirlwind on the importance of negative space in your life, echoing my own sentiments.

On Sunday, I watched the film 180 Degrees South, starring the Patagonia all-stars and some epic terrain. It’s a film about adventure and preservation, about lifestyle and and the journeys we choose to make.

In the film, Yvon says, “The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life, it’s so easy to make it complex. But what’s important is leading an examined life.”

The examined life leads to the realization that “True affluence is not needing anything,” as Gary Snyder said. In many respects, this is what I love about the hardcore adventurist spirit that is attune to a sense of deep ecology – this connection to what is most important in life, for life on the planet, and the conscious choice to live simply by simply doing what one loves to do. And there is a reflective depth to their understanding of the world, of the landscape, of their inner spaces that they carry with them as they go light. Ultimately, they see that walking an eco-centric path isn’t an option for practicing – it is the practice.

There is something about going out into the wild places, the backcountry, or any day hike for that matter, that is really a going in — it’s about the journey that takes place within yourself all along the way. The awe and wonder space itself sparks an awareness, a felt knowing of the phenomenological world, that has the power to shift one’s perspective about the relationship between self and other. It’s as if, in all that negative space under the big sky, one can begin to see clearly.

“It’s all about process. Part of the process of life is to question how you live it. Nobody takes the time to do things right. Same with mountain climbing. Nowadays, people are interested only in reaching the top so they can tell others they did it. So they climb Everest with a Sherpa tied to them by a 3-foot rope, one behind and one in front. Their beds are made when they reach camp. Someone has put a chocolate mint on the sheets. They don’t tough out their problems, and they say they climbed Everest. They start out assholes, and they end up assholes.” – Yvon Chouinard

(It’s not about camping at Pine Creek Lake, it’s about hiking 5+ miles up steep terrain in the last 3 hours of daylight with a partner who’s packing up a biochem textbook, setting up camp in the dark and straining the campfire flakes off your mac n’cheese dinner with a pair of thin socks before pretending that the noises you hear all night are not bears, and coming back with stories of the trek and a different perspective on things in the untold, felt aftermath of the experience.)

This viewpoint of this hearty group of souls parses through to the heart of life and quickly exposes what is most important – clarity of knowing where you are, elements of survival, and the interplay of relationships. These are folks that have peeled back the layers of the self, having spent ample time in immense spaces and quietude, faced with the power of nature, and the realization of the fraility of life’s flame.

They value something different. The vision they have for themselves is intricately tied to the land, the wild places, and the future of the planet. The simple lifestyles comes about not by chance but by a choice to live the examined life that knows the beauty and elegance of unfrettered negative space. 

“People say you can’t go back, but what happens if you get to the cliff and you take one step forward. Or you turn 180 degrees and take one step forward…. Which is progress?” – 180 Degrees South