I've never actually written a blog before, so...here goes nothing...
Growing up in San Diego, it's impossible to avoid doing outdoorsy things. Between Surfing, the beach, The River, playing sports, and all that goodness that can be attributed to the awesome weather, most San Diegoans/San Diegoans/San Diegites have at some point ventured out into "the wilderness" around the county. There's no way you can live in San Diego county (or Southern California for that matter) and be bored on a weekend, unless of course you're just lame and refuse to do anything, but that's on you. I love my town and everything in it, but sometimes having too many options is counter productive. We get distracted chasing the things that everyone says are things we should check out; "Dude new spot opened up next to Fluxx, downtown" "Bruh, massive SW swell, you hitting Blacks Beach?" "OH. EM. JESUS. You Haven't taken a picture on Potato Chip Rock?! Do you even HAVE an OK Cupid profile pic?" At what point do you find the things that YOU like to do, or the things that don't involve massive crowds? Don't get me wrong, i'm not advocating being a hermit, but I think you can't really find out who you are until you've made a path that doesn't have anyone else's footprints on it, but more on that in a later post I suppose.
My journey to the top of the states probably began in the Spring of 2015. Chris and Jan Self, two of my best friends invited me to go along with them on a trip to Yosemite National Park along with a few other friends. I'd been a few times in the past, but for some reason this trip ended up changing me. Maybe it was the fact that I was going to turn 30 later on in the year or maybe it was the fact that i went and actually bothered to be in the moment, but either way this trip would be different.
Mostly, we stuck to the touristy things, which is fine. Touristy things are touristy because they're awesome, but it wasn't really until Aubrey King Music and I won the 24 hour lottery to give Half Dome a shot, that Yosemite really began to work on me. For the sake of not writing a dissertation on this first trip i'll just sum it up by saying I was turned away from the summit of Half Dome for the third time. She is my white whale that I need to conquer. Weather and a shitty knee kept me and Aubrey from getting up to the top. Not to sound ridiculous or over dramatic, but back there after the 15 million stairs, in the midst of a crazy amount of sneakers and fanny packs, I found out that my soul, down the bottom just yearned to be free from the masses. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I ever really want to live in the middle of nowhere, but I think there's something inside the soul of every man that yearns to be wild. To see what the top of the mountain looks like. To walk away from the path for a minute. Half Dome in 2015 taught me that, I just hadn't realized it yet...