“The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.”

- Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

Howdy y’all,

Thanks to those who’ve reached out and please excuse the belated letter. September has been one of my fullest and wildest experiences of a month.

It started with the release of 17 Ideas That Changed My Life. A project on and off the backburner the past three years (and energetically poured into each December abroad). Letting it out into the world felt like finally finishing a statue carved from a heavy slab of stone I committed to carrying everywhere I went until completed. A few dozen print copies have been ordered, hundreds have downloaded the digital versions, and I’ve received some super kind and thorough feedback. I’m grateful and relieved to have it rocking and rolling about the world — you can download both digital versions (desktop and mobile) totally free here if you haven’t yet.

Just two weeks later began WONDER WANDER 2025, the sixth annual dozen person “potluck of experiences” I host. This year, in “The Domes” perched high up above the desert in the green mountains east of White Sands National Park. Every year I go into throwing WONDER WANDER, I second guess myself. “Who am I to…” “Is this really going to work…” “What if (insert a hundred unaddressable until they arrive in the present variables)…” Yet like every gathering before, holy wow, does it more than magnificently work out.

I could dive into rich description of each individual who showed up and what I learned from them and their offerings — the circulating of small circular mirrors to match one’s eye to another’s, the prologue of The Universe Story read under unobstructed Milky Way (see photo atop this letter), renewed awareness of how wonderful it feels to live in alignment with my values, my first euphoric experience of breathwork with tears of joy streaming the sides of my face and coming back to all these beautiful beings among the idyllic, high-ceilinged, clear natural light of “The Domes,” and learning to trust myself to speak deep from heart’s center with an epic four hours of circled group affirmations our second-to-last night — to name a few of my favorite things. I also learned of new places I want to go, books I want to read, and further clarified the ways in which I want to be.

Everyone bought in, opened up, went deep, and (I’d bet) walked away with similar sentiments from this year’s gathering. Mixed in with sunsets from the spacious mountain-perched deck, walks and runs on roads and trails together, and an incredible monsoon sandstorm rainbow sunset in White Sands made for (what I’ve admittedly thought every year) — the best WONDER WANDER yet.

During that sandstorm in White Sands, a girl ever-so-oddly appeared and knocked on the window of our car to ask if anyone was from Arizona. She was soon to start hiking the Arizona Trail and was trying to go north from Tucson the exact day WONDER WANDER ended and I’d be driving back through. I dialed my number into her phone, she thanked me, and without even exchanging names she ran off into the blowing sand.

Two days later, WONDER WANDER ended and I got a text. We arranged for pickup at a Starbucks along the I-10 in Tucson. She was twenty years old and had run away from a Second Coming of Christ prepper cult she was born into just two years ago. Wise and brave, she was exploring the world, working seasonal jobs via CoolWorks to fund her explorations, and learning as she went via direct exposure and experience of reality — the same approach yours truly intuitively took for five years of his twenties.

A surreal serendipity immediately echoing out from WONDER WANDER, we spent the two-hour drive and another five hours that night enrapt in unpacking the informative experiences of our lives, swapping golden threads we’d grasped, and shaking our heads in awe at our akinness. She crashed on my couch, walked a mile to the Greyhound Station the next morning, and is now probably camping out somewhere among Northern Arizona’s endless expanses of dry grassland and sky. It is a gift to get to spend time with someone mid-adventure really sending it, willing to go out and live life so directly, so fully.

Friday night, two days out from WONDER WANDER, in that post-gathering glow, I had just ordered a sweet batch of 17 Ideas prints and caught up on most of what I missed on the real estate photography business front. My roommate and I were in the backyard, lighting up a little ganja at sunset and it dawned on me, “Dude, these projects I’ve been focused on for three years (17 Ideas) and six months (WONDER WANDER) are complete. Holy mackerel, I have bandwidth again! It feels like an anvil off my back.”

He’d mentioned that a new Leonardo DiCaprio movie just came out, and in celebration of me finally having a moment to relax, we decided to go see it tomorrow.

When we walked out of the movie theater Saturday night, we glanced at our phones, each other, and laughed with perplexity. A text to us both from our neighbor read, “Hey are you guys home and okay?” It made zero sense to us. As we walked to my car, we noticed it had rained and joked that our house had probably been destroyed in some crazy monsoon storm. We drove home, and turning onto our block, entered a state of disbelief: the entire back porch and a third of the roof had ripped off and flown over the house, crashing through the front fence, hitting my roommate’s car, and like a full-on natural disaster scene was strewn across the street:

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the destruction of the “Pale Blue House,” but it’ll be a few months before the place is livable again. After over four years of rented residence, my time there has come to a dramatic end. I found a sweet, little low-priced studio in the heart of downtown Phoenix this week, moved in this weekend, and am writing this letter tonight from my new pad.

To end, I’d like to call your awareness back to the quote atop this letter:

“The upshot of all this is that we live in a universe whose age we can't quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don’t truly understand.”

All these stories and experiences we live occur in this unfathomably vast, unknowable mystery. It can be a dream sometimes to live our stories. It can be a nightmare sometimes to live our stories too.

As I go about my days these days, I often forget about the mystery and get caught up in whatever story I’m living (I wrote a book, this client is trying to take advantage of our business, WONDER WANDER is rad, our house blew down etc).

Regardless, I return my awareness again and again to the vast mystery. Because, as story-living chimps on a space rock, mystery is not only the most wondrous thing, but the realist thing we’ve got too.

Breathe it in deep my friends!

With love & stoke,

Ethan

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