A haiku about living now.

We are dreamers.

We dream not just when we’re asleep, but when we’re awake. We dream not just as individuals, but as a group. We’re so good at dreaming that we can hardly distinguish between dreams and the ground on which we dream.

Yet, one can wake up in the middle of a dream.

One of the greatest gifts of writing online about things that matter to you (that rank in Google searches) is that others interested in those things find you.

Sometimes they send you heartfelt notes out of the blue that make your day. Other times, you get to meet them and go on hikes or hang out in view of city skylines as you mutually discover deep connection and conversational depth that lifts your spirit for weeks. The best of times — if you can work up the courage to do something like invite a bunch of them to hang at a cabin in the middle of the desert — you can pull together a collective of individuals with resonance unlike you've ever experienced and find yourself amid the most fun, fruitful idea/experience/philosophy swap of your life to date.

This is what happened at WONDER WANDER 2021.

The year is 2021 and we are more than two decades into mass adoption of the world wide web. We have devised brilliant ways to surf the hundreds of billions of pages that compose the internet by keyword, category, and recentness. Have you ever wondered, though, why are we unable to browse by best?

No search engine or social media site has yet to truly solve the problem of prioritizing quality. Not Google, not Facebook, not Tumblr, not Pinterest, not any other site.

On my end, 2019 was a year of re-centering, transition, and adventure.

Reeling from the realizations of a ten-day meditation retreat at the end of 2018, I spent the beginning of the year splitting rent and a bedroom with my brother in Flagstaff, AZ attempting to ensure my values—not some image I have of myself—were at the helm of my life. Then, called by curiosity, excitement, and what I could confidently call “inner-pull,” I began again: ventured about to Nepal and Cambodia, built the backbone of a book, and made a most life-directing decision to attend flight school.

At the end of three of the past four years (2015, 2016, and 2018), I’ve taken the time to step back, reflect, and attempt to see the big picture. While a year is just a human construct pinned to an arbitrarily chosen point in a lap of the Earth around the sun, that point makes us want to pause and reflect. I believe that an urge worth using.

For the past five years, I've been doing my damnedest to avoid paying rent. Given, I'm quite nomadic and largely avoid leases for the purpose of geographical freedom, but you might be surprised just how much time rent can cost you in a year.

I don't particularly love articles full of numbers and perhaps you don’t either, but these are eye-opening numbers. Bear with me as we begin with a little math.

For the purposes of this article, let's say your rent, utilities, and other housing expenses total $800 a month. This is a pretty frugal figure, as the average cost of rent alone for one bedroom apartment in the United States these days is over $1,000. So, at $800 a month, you're well under that mark, and you managed to work your utilities into that number too. Well done.

From September 21st to 25th I hosted WONDER WANDER 2018, a gathering of adventurous and creative humans at The Range Rider's Lodge—the stunning, old log-cabin lodge I run in the summertime a mile outside Yellowstone National Park.

Never have I hosted such an event before, I had no notions of how it would turn out or who would turn up. What transpired was different, and better, than I ever imagined.

It took almost a month, but I have finished converting my Honda Element into a tiny home on wheels!

As someone who works seasonally and uses the majority of their year to travel, read, and write, the nomadic "van life" has always appealed to me. With no rent to pay, the ability to move home anywhere at any time, and the resulting focus of such minimalism, I intend my near future to be a rare combination of adventure and productivity.

Stop, just for a second, and ask yourself: "When's the last time I did something I had never done before?"

Really think about it... Do you have an answer?

Back in May, I went for a run in the heat of a summer afternoon in Phoenix. The sun cooked me as I coaxed myself along a six-mile route I'd run many times before, but never in such oppressive heat. Halfway through, I became woozy, increasingly unsure I could keep lifting my feet. I slowed to a walk, feeling like I might faint and immediately my face and hands were overcome with a tingling sensation of pins and needles. I staggered along for what must have been a couple minutes until the feeling subsided, then finished running the last few miles. It was the closest I had ever been to overheating. I've gone for a thousand runs, yet I'd never pushed myself that hard. I'd never experienced anything like it before.

There once was a city with a big mountain in the middle. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of people climbed the mountain every day.

When the sun went down, though, a funny thing happened. The top of the mountain became the most beautiful place in the entire city, but nobody knew because nobody climbed the mountain in the dark.

People didn't climb the mountain in the dark for a couple of reasons. One reason was that everyone believed hiking was meant to be done in the daytime. The second was that the city decided it was too dangerous to climb mountains in the dark and would fine anyone caught a large sum of money.

So when the sky got dark and the spectacular electric grid of the city turned on, stretching for miles and miles and miles in every direction from the top of that mountain, nobody climbed up to look.

Every once in a while, when walking around the incredible lodge I live and work in, my eyes, a window, and one of the surrounding mountains perfectly line up. As I walk towards the window, the angle of my view through it rises, and my view of the mountain climbs higher and higher and higher... and HIGHER???

By the time the top of the mountain is in view, I'm shocked. I'm reminded of how majestic, how huge these surrounding peaks are. Every time this alignment of eyes, window, and mountain occurs, I stop and stare in amazement for a second.

The mountains surrounding Silver Gate, Montana are multiple thousands of feet higher than the town on the valley floor. They climb so high, so fast, and from so close that their presence just looms, towering over the valley. I was constantly moved by these mountains when I first arrived at the beginning of the summer, but over time, I got used to them. In their constant presence, I looked up less and less to appreciate their grandeur.

Work trade organizations like WWOOF and HelpX make experiencing anywhere around the globe remarkably affordable. In exchange for part-time work, hosts will provide you with food and a place to stay, leaving you with next to no expenses virtually anywhere on earth!

To give you an idea of how cheap we're talking, I spent two and a half months WWOOFing in Hawaii for $669 (including the plane ticket). I worked 20 hours per week, got my own cabin, and our hosts took us around the island quite frequently on days off. However, I met other WWOOFers that summer who picked weeds for 30 hours a week and in exchange for nothing more than a place to pitch a tent.

It's absolutely vital to go over the specifics of your work trade arrangement with your hosts before you go. Know exactly what to expect before you commit to insure you end up in a situation you love – not loathe.

When I was sixteen, I was bitten by a mosquito. That mosquito infected me with a rare virus that causes swelling of the brain and spinal fluid. I had a stroke, many grand mal seizures, spent three days in a coma, and nine days in the intensive care unit of Phoenix Children’s Hospital. It almost killed me. Towards the end of my stay, a speech pathologist came into my room at the hospital and held up an apple. She asked me what it was… and I couldn’t answer.

The stroke caused damage to the output area of my brain. It most prominently affected my ability to speak and my hand-eye coordination. The recovery process was drawn out, difficult, and embarrassing. At first, I could barely talk. I’d constantly lose my train of thought or get stuck trying to pull a simple word out of my head.

Time and speech rehabilitation proved fruitful. After six months, I probably had two thirds of “the old me” back. As far as I could tell, the last third came slowly, over the next couple years. Around the time I was starting to wonder if I was fully “back,” I had a simple, yet profound realization – I almost died. Everything almost ended for me at sixteen years old, yet I hadn’t really done anything of personal significance. I’d spent my life passively existing, jumping through hoops, and putting things off for someday in the future.

As time passed, I continued to gain unique insight and perspective from my stroke at sixteen. Of all the understanding I’ve gleaned, here are the four most important lessons I learned:

Life implies death. The very fact that we're alive today means that someday we must die. A hundred years from now nearly every human currently walking this earth will be gone, cleared away for a new generation to come. It's nothing new. This change-over has gone on for billions of years and will continue to do so.

Most people can't stand this thought of death and try to bury it. It's understandable. Nobody wants to die and considering the temporariness of our existence can be mindbogglingly devastating. Pushing all thoughts of death away isn't going to help us live any longer though. Contrarily, we can use the thought of death to our advantage.

Over the summer of 2015, I spent 72 incredible days living on the Big Island of Hawaii. In a work-trade deal through WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), I worked 20 hours a week on a small lush Hawaiian farm in exchange for room and board.

Here's a list of everything I brought to the Big Island.

*If you don't plan on backpacking to remote sections of the island, you won't need most Backpacking Supplies.

Today, I'm officially coining the term “adventure fundraising.”

Adventure fundraising is doing something extreme and/or adventurous to draw attention to a cause. It's going the distance, pushing physical limits, or doing something outrageous enough to make your fundraiser and cause stand out. I've had much success going the extra mile, with two fundraisers I've raised over $100,000 for two incredible non-profit organizations. I'd love to see more people do the same for a cause they are passionate about.

When you are presented with an opportunity is your initial reaction to ask yourself "Why" or "Why not?"

This is a big deal because "Why?" is a limiting question and "Why not?" is a liberating question.

Let me explain.

When we ask ourselves "Why?" we need a good reason to do it. If we don't come up with one, our default response is to NOT DO IT. When we ask ourselves "Why not?" we need a good reason not to do it. If we don't come up with one, our default response is to DO IT.

Read that again, and let it really sink in...