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Hey! It’s summer again! I know, it comes around every year and is to be expected, but perhaps because I was raised in the desert, hot days and warm nights are a gift that radiates to the depth of my being. I hope you’re excited as I am. May has been an odd, scattered sort of month on my end. A time of transition, indecision, and a variety of things to attend to, the present has kaleidoscoped so fast, changing in ways that could have led me far in different directions, I’m excited to just breathe for a few days now that the whirling has slowed. In regard to transition, after six weeks in Nepal and Cambodia returning to the States has been fascinating. Though I’ve explored other places longer, the experiential chasm between those two countries and the USA was much more vast. I see much of home in new light. Most pronounced is the wealth and economic power of the USA. We have massive, finely tuned systems here — more than a month has passed and I still think about the differences in our transportation style and speed, the size of our paychecks (and the cost of our things), and the cleanliness of our surroundings on an almost daily basis. Culturally, Nepal and Cambodia felt meshed and communal, in comparison, the States feel isolated and individualistic. Culinarily, it became obvious that the protein of meat and dairy is costly and that grains and that carbohydrates fuel humans in less bountiful economic systems just as well (though people are notably not as musclebound). In regard to indecision, the question lied in where and how to spend this summer. At the end of last month’s letter, I asked if anyone might have a good place where I could work on a book proposal. I had a few remarkably generous responses. One was a house in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, along the Ohio River, “just pay utilities and stay as long as you want” some very kind wonder wanderers offered. I accepted and planned to take a deep dive into myself this summer, in a sort of intentional isolation, to just throw myself at this book idea and see what happens. However, two days before I planned to leave for Ohio, I found myself working out in my parent’s backyard in Phoenix, watching all these planes go by overhead, and had an epiphany: I want to fly. Seriously: airplanes. There’s a backstory to this, and it starts a year ago when my brother told me about how cool he thought it would be to be a pilot. Perhaps three months later, Holden, a reader of these letters who had recently earned his private pilot license, reached out to ask that if he landed at a nearby airport, would I be up to go fly with him? Of course I said yes, and he introduced me to the magic of cruising in a Cessna 172 over the snowcapped peaks of Southwestern Montana. After our flight, I drove away from the airport pumping my fist out the window of my Element paralleling his takeoff into the sunset in a moment closer to Tom Cruise’s best moment on a motorcycle in Top Gun than I thought I’d ever get. As time went by brother and his friend got increasingly serious and finally decided, “You know what, let’s actually do it. Flying would be the coolest job ever.” And they invited me to join them at flight school this fall. I’ve been waffling on it ever since… As with anything, there are pluses: you get to fly, solid wages, travel, the sense of wonder. And minuses: many pilots seem a bit square to me, environmental concerns, you can’t do any drugs, opportunity cost etc. A week after returning from Nepal, I took a “discovery flight” over Phoenix. It was simultaneously serene and scary, free and philosophical. A world in which I never dreamed I could venture. Like writing, flying airplanes for a living was not exactly something on my radar. Like writing a daily blog on a cross country bicycle ride, it took accidentally bumping into and experiencing this to go, “Woah. I really enjoy this…” So yeah, I was pressing 95lbs over my head, watching the planes fly by in my parent’s backyard, and suddenly realized that flying, that adding a Z axis to my ground-bound human X and Y existence would be the strangest of adventures and a wondrous way to support myself. And just yesterday, I put a down payment on flight school. I don’t mean to yammer on about the flying here, but this feels like a pretty big decision, and I want you to know this isn’t a backing away from this obsession of mine. I could go on about some of my favorite authors who flew, how in Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert so effectively argued for supporting our art instead of demanding it support us, and how yes, I am dragging my feet and still on the same damn topic still, but that I want you to know that this does not signal the end of this relationship nor the end of my writing by any means. Rather, the intention is to support and enrich my literary endeavors by flying people and things across the sky. In fact, I’m still moving forward with the book proposal. Last week, I took over the last couple months of my brother’s lease in Flagstaff and I’m writing this month’s late-night letter to you in his old room with ever-expanding piles of index cards and post-it-notes scattered throughout. I’m trying to sort a tremendous amount of ideas and information into something organized, palatable, and perhaps, eventually, profound. It’s a crazy scene and I don’t know exactly where it’s heading, but I feel it. We’ll see where the internal tug pulls. I should probably wrap this up and I’ll do so in reference to the quote atop this letter. It’s an idea I instantly recognized when I first read it as I’m weird and breathlessly mouth these same sentiments to myself all the time, though perhaps not as eloquently: “How did I get here… Wow… Holy crap… etc.” all pointed at the same idea: that this is pretty damn crazy and wonderful. That’s an easy sentiment to have in the Himalayas or taking control of an airplane for the first time or something, as those are reminders that roar for awe and attention. The real question, though, is can we bring it home? Can we learn to see the mind-boggling miracle of all of our experiences — water coming out of the showerhead, how gravity pulls us down instead of up, the connection we can make with another being — can we find that wonder not just in life’s peak moments, but find it woven throughout the entire fabric of our reality? It’s in this moment. It surrounds you. The question is never if it’s there, it’s always can you see it? Til next month! With love & stoke, Ethan P.S. The first article below got really popular in Reddit’s LifeHacks section in a controversial, fascinating way. The comments make for an interesting study.
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