Don’t Forget About the Blackberries

Posted on August 22, 2024 by scottytang

We live in a world where it becomes increasingly difficult to get along with people. Social media has given us the means to share our thoughts and opinions like never before, which creates a whole slew of arguments and debates that more often than not leads to a lot of anger and hostility towards our fellow people. Whenever some controversial topic comes up, we rush to our phones to make our opinion known on the matter, and then proceed to call everyone an idiot who doesn’t see it the same way as us. The underlying theme of it all always seems to be fear. We fear the world moving in a direction that we don’t want it to. A less free, less moral, less just, illogical, senseless world. The world will always be a scary place, and the scariest part of it all is, for the most part, it is out of our control. So how do we live in a scary, hostile world where people are just becoming more and more divided and angry with each other?

Every year, my in-laws do an annual summer vacation in Santa Cruz, CA. And one of my favorite things to do is, first thing in the morning, get my cruiser board and skate to one of my favorite coffee shops – Cat & Cloud. The morning air is always so refreshing. It’s always misty and foggy and a little chilly. The first part of the trek is all downhill. The faster I go the more the air makes my skin tingle, popping my board over all the cracks in the sidewalk. Carving down the hill like I’m on a snowboard. After the downhill, it goes flat for a while, and then it’s uphill. I always opt to pick up my board and walk this part, but because I am walking, I stumble on a grove of blackberry bushes, and the berries are ripe and ready for picking. I stop and pick at them for a bit and think, “ahh, nature’s food, what a delight.” Then I get up the hill and continue skating, popping over the cracks, dodging a couple people on the sidewalk, and looking out for cars that are turning, which is all part of the fun. Then I finally get to the shop, get my coffee, take the first sip, “ahh just as good as I remember it.” Hop back on my board and start skating back. I pass a guy on a bike going in the opposite direction that shouts out, “good morning!” I yell it back, and think, “what a refreshing human connection.” I get to the downhill, and this one is bigger and steeper than the one I rode on the way in on. As I start picking up speed, I start crouching down, grazing my fingers on the pavement like I am surfing a wave, which just adds to the fun, and before you know it I am back at the house. I sit on the balcony overlooking the beach, sipping my coffee, and just reflect on these simple pleasures of life that often go unnoticed.

One thing that occurs to me as I am on the balcony is that freedom doesn’t always come from governments. No matter who the president is, or what the latest controversy is, no one can ever take the simple pleasures away from us. Picking blackberries off the side of the road, yelling “good morning” to a stranger on a bike, feeling the air on my skin as I fly across the pavement, all of which are pure freedom that transcends any government or controversy. Seems like we get so wrapped up in the plight of the world, the politics, the controversies, the moral trajectory, that we forget about the simple joys of life that really make life worth living. Cruising down the street on a bike or a skateboard, swimming in the ocean or the river, having a human connection with a stranger. It’s easy to forget about our fears and concerns about the world when we are wrapped up in the joy of the moment. The world is going to go where it is going to go, and there is not a whole lot we can do about it. We spend a lot of energy trying to prove to the world that our side of the argument, or our political stance is the right one and everyone else who doesn’t agree is an idiot. But one day we will be gone, and all that energy we spent getting all worked up over frivolous arguments and opinions will mean nothing. I hate to see people getting so mad at each other over things that either one can do little to nothing about. So why all the anger and hostility? It is out of our control. Don’t let the worries of tomorrow steal the joy of today. And most importantly, don’t forget about the blackberries. 

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Almost Didn’t Make It Out

Posted on July 5, 2024 by scottytang

I did a backpacking trip recently from the Eagle Lake OHV area up to Old Man Mountain, which is the mountain that looks like a shark fin when you first come up over Donner Pass on I-80 going East. The first day was 12 miles, which took me up and around the back side of the mountain, which was the easiest and safest way to get there. But on the way back, I had to try going down the more difficult way that was supposed to be a “shortcut,” which may have put my life in jeopardy.

Looking at Old Man Mountain from the south, it looks impossible to get up to it. When I was doing my research on this mountain, I read a blog about all the ways to get to it. And one of the ways was from Fordyce Jeep trail, which is on the southern end. It would not be my first choice, and looking back on it, I’m not sure if the person who wrote this ever got up the mountain from this side or was just saying, “in theory,” that is a way. So after spending the first day hiking 12 miles along this route that seemed unnecessarily long, I spent most of the second day at Phoenix lake, which is at the base of Old Mountain on the north end, just a couple hundred feet from the summit. Once I decided to start heading back, I made the bold move to try and get down the south end and take fordyce jeep trail back to my car. The temptation here was, I can almost see the Jeep trail, and it looks totally doable to get to. But as often happens with things like this, it was not, and it damn near killed me.

I start making my way down, and at first, it’s just granite rock, which is not bad. Then it turns super brushy, which leads to ending up in a creek, and the only way onward was to walk through the creek. Everywhere else was so brushy, it would have been very difficult and slow going to do anything else. One piece of fortune here though is the one time I decided to bring flip-flops, I needed them to walk through the creek. About a half mile along the creek, I see what seems to be a massive waterfall approaching. I’m thinking, “well, it may be time to start looking for another way down.” Sure enough, it was. I take a little break at the top of the waterfall to put my boots back on, and the search to find a safe way down begins. At this point, it is either steep rocky cliffs or thick brush all around, and I have no idea how I am going to get down this mountain. So I walk along the side of the mountain heading west, which is the general direction of my car, and I finally see a “safe” way down. It is not steep granite cliffs, but it’s all brush all the way down the mountain. Not the best scenario, but at least I can make it down. So I’m getting cut up and tripping over these bushes the whole way down, just hoping I don’t twist an ankle or lose any of my gear. If I get hurt out here, it is going to be really hard to make it out or be able to have someone find me and get me out.

I finally make it to the bottom of the mountain, which is its own kind of relief. The anxiety and focus it took to just get that far took a lot out of me. At the bottom it is mostly woodsy, so not a lot of brush, which was a nice change. From here, I just need to make it to the jeep trail and it should be easy going the rest of the way out. I make it to the jeep trail without too much hardship, and when I do, I am filled with relief. I notice Fordyce creek though is to my left, and on the way in it was on the other side of me, so I’m thinking, “no biggie, there must be a bridge at some point that crosses the creek.” So I’m walking calmly along the jeep trail for a while and I get to the point where I am supposed to cross the creek, and lo and behold there is no bridge. It’s a jeep trail, so now I know they expect all the jeeps to just drive through it. It is prime snow melt, so the creek at the deepest end would probably be up to my head, and it is wide, fast, and frigid. There is no way I am making it across this creek, I doubt even the jeeps could make it across at this time. I remember on my map there being a foot trail that goes along this side of the creek to a footbridge that I used to cross the creek on the way in. So I look on my map and walk over to where the foot trail is supposed to be, and with back-to-back setbacks, there is no foot trail. The only way out of here is another 4 miles of bushwacking and climbing over granite hills to get to the bridge. That moment was some of the most despair in the wilderness I have ever felt. I could not believe the string of hardships I had gotten myself into, and it was at that moment that I really started to wonder if I was going to make it out of here. I just spent so much energy climbing down a mountain I shouldn’t have been, and now I have miles of more bushwacking to do? I wasn’t sure if I had the energy or the wherewithal to deal with this. So with no other option but to keep going, I began the trek along the creek.

Through the brush and climbing up and over granite hills I went. At one point I came across some bear scat and tracks, which made me a little nervous, but luckily never saw the bear those belonged to. At another point, I had to get way up above the creek because the granite cliffs were so tall, which was its own drudgery, and then I also ran out of water. This was the scariest moment for me, I am fatigued and dehydrated to no end, I have no water, and I can’t find a way down to the creek. I collect water and filter it out of the creeks, so all I had to do was get back to the creek, but every time I tried to make it down, I came to another cliff, and I had to go back up and around and keep going up high. One of my biggest fears in moments like this, when I am fighting fatigue and mental fortitude, is losing my wits. Whenever I hear about people getting lost in the wilderness, a lot of the time it starts with the mind going haywire, which leads to hallucinating, losing track of where they are, and where they are going, and before you know it they have wandered off to nowhere and nobody can find them. So when I was way up high, dehydrated with no water and no way of getting any, I kept saying to myself, “please God don’t let me lose my wits.” In this moment, I had many thoughts of, “damn, I may not make it out of here.”

I finally make it through the cliffs and get back down to the creek, another huge sigh of relief. I couldn’t seem to get to the creek fast enough to drink a ton of water. As I am approaching, I see signs of somewhere people have camped before. There is a ring of rocks near the creek that look like people made to use for a fire, which tells me I must be close to the trail and the footbridge. By the time I get here it is already 7:30 at night, and I am exhausted, so I decide to set up camp, eat some food, drink lots of water, and finish the trek in the morning. I was a little worried the bear whose scat and tracks I saw not too far from here would appear, but luckily, it never did. Slept through the night just fine, took my time in the morning, and off I went to hopefully make it out without any more mishaps.

The last day was pretty easy. The rest of the way to the trail and then to the bridge was a breeze. Clear, open areas the rest of the way. When I finally saw the trail and the bridge, it was like I struck gold. I have never been more happy to see a bridge. Walking on a trail at this point felt like a luxury. It was like I forgot what it was like to walk on a clear path. As I was getting closer to my car, I started seeing people venturing out, and one guy stopped me and asked me where I camped at, how far it was, and how the weather was. He was going somewhere he could drive to and camp next to his car, and in the back of my mind I’m just thinking, “man, you have no idea what I just went through.”

Whenever we read something like this, it always begs the question… Why? Why would someone willingly put themselves at such risk? Why wouldn’t I just take the safe way back that I came in on? The short answer would be because I am curious. George Mallory, a famous mountaineer who climbed Mt Everest, was asked by a reporter once, why he wanted to climb the Everest, and he simply said, “Because it is there.” To relate this to my own experience, I would say there is something in me that has to see what is possible and explore my curiosity. I just had to know what it would be like to climb down the other side of the mountain. I think all of us are always looking for something new and fresh, and being the extremist that I am, I find myself risking my life at times to find it. Do I regret taking the sketchy way home? Absolutely not. Would I do that exact route again? Absolutely not. Will I take another risk one day that puts me in a similar situation? Most likely yes. Maybe that makes me a thrill seeker, but what it really comes down to is that I have a need to satisfy my curiosity, even if it puts my life at risk. This is the essence of adventure, if everything was safe and went according to plan all of the time, it wouldn’t be an adventure. That would just be a walk outside. It is the hardship, the working through setbacks, and figuring out how to survive and make it out that is a part of the appeal. I’ve heard it said before that “adventure is when you are in it, you wish you weren’t.” It is the difficult ones that are always the most memorable. I’ll be an old man one day, thinking about the stuff I did in my youth, and this trip will always bring a smile to my face.

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When Things Go Wrong

Posted on June 20, 2023 by scottytang

I do a lot of backpacking trips by myself, and when I talk about this with people, they often look at me like I am crazy. Then in one way or another ask me what I am going to do if something were to go wrong? I haven’t had a lot go wrong, but this time I did.

The objective was to do the southern end of the Sinkyone Wilderness trail, which is an area just north of Fort Bragg along the Northern California coast. I did the northern end of this trail a month prior and this was going to be my trip to complete the whole thing. It is a little more than a four hour drive to the trailhead from my house. Once off Hwy 1, it is seven miles on a sketchy dirt road to get to where I will begin the hike. I get to where I think the trailhead is, get out of my car, pull up the digital map on my phone, and I notice that I passed it a little bit. So I get back in my car, go to start it to drive a little closer to it, and lo and behold, it doesn’t start. I am tens of miles from any cell service, so I know that if I can’t get my car to start down here, I am going to be in a real pickle. Not only that, but the road was so rough getting in here that I am not sure if a tow truck would even be willing to come down here. I had a feeling it was most likely my starter, so I decided that before I started trying to get help I would wait about twenty minutes and try again and see if it would start, so I do that a few times, and I still can’t get it to start. So as I am sitting there, letting the reality of my situation settle in, I think, “ok, I know there is a trick where you can hit on the starter and get it to start, so I’ll try to do that before I start calling for help.” Only problem is, I don’t know where the starter is, so I’m going to have to find someone that knows a little about cars. Luckily it was a Sunday, so there were quite a few people down here. I stop someone in a big Toyota Tundra who seemed to know quite a bit about cars and agreed to try to help me. We try to jump it just to make sure it is not the battery, doesn’t work, and he looks around a bit to see if he can find my starter. He can’t find it and just gives up and says, “sorry man, I’ve done all I can.” He drives off and now it is starting to seem more bleak. I had just gotten a satellite communicator a month prior and had hardly used it, and at this point, I think to myself, “well, I think it’s time to pull out my satellite communicator and see if my wife can try to get someone to help me.” I send her a message to call Sinkyone State park to see if they can get a Ranger out, and the message isn’t going through, so now I am starting to panic a little bit. I’m sitting in my car with my hood up, and another guy driving by in a Subaru sees me, stops and asks if I need help, I tell him what’s going on and he starts to try and figure out where the starter is to see if we can bang on it to get it to start. He finds it, it is at the very bottom of the car and we have to pull off this plastic covering at the bottom to get to it. We get it off, he bangs on it while I try to start it… nothing. I am thinking now, “well, I have done all I can to try to get my car to start, my messages to my wife aren’t going through, I don’t know what else to do now, how long am I going to be stuck down here before I finally get out.” The guy in the Subaru is super empathetic and says, “dang man, I was really hoping we could get it to start, if I had room in my car I would give you a ride out of here.” I’m thinking, “I have plenty of food and water to last me a while, my best option would be to get a park ranger or a police officer down here to try and find a tow truck that can get me and my car out of here.” So I tell him, “thanks for all your help, I’ll be alright, if you can just call the sinkyone state park or the police and let them know I’m down here that would be helpful.” He says, “Ok yeah for sure, as soon as I have cell service I’ll call them and let them know.” He leaves, and I am thinking, “I guess all I can do now is hope that guy gets a hold of the right people to get me out of here.” I look at my satellite communicator and it says, “unable to send message, make sure device has clear view of the sky.” So I put it on my roof, and then finally the message goes through, and I’m like, “aw thank God, finally some good news.”

I am finally able to communicate with my wife, and she is able to get a hold of the state park to send a Ranger to me. It takes about two hours until the Ranger comes, I tell her what has all unfolded, and she says, “there is one guy who is willing to come down here and get your car out, he is expensive, but he is the only guy in the area that will do it, and he also kind of does it at his own convenience.” The price tag didn’t bother me too much, I figured whatever tow truck that was willing to get me out of here was going to be expensive, I was just thankful there was someone willing. It’s starting to get kind of late on a Sunday, no mechanic shop is open right now anyway, I have the means to stay the night out here, so I tell the Park Ranger if she can see if the tow truck driver can come in the morning. She says, “yeah I can get service not too far away, I’m going to drive to where I can get cell service, call the tow truck driver and I’ll come back to tell you what he says. Try to stay in this area.” So she drives off, and I have to just sit and wait for her to come back. It takes about an hour for her to return, and she tells me, “I got a hold of the tow truck driver, he will come in the morning to get you, I will tell your wife what is happening and get her in contact with the driver, she will have to coordinate with him to find a mechanic shop in Fort Bragg to tow it to that hopefully has the soonest availability to fix your car.” I thank her, and I am ever so grateful we were able make it as far as we did. She drives off and that’s it for the day. Now it is time to make camp somewhere, try to get some sleep, and see what adventures await in the morning.

The next morning I wake up at sunrise, which is about 6am, make some coffee and reflect on the events of the trip thus far and what the rest of this adventure may look like. I anticipate the driver may be here around 8 or 9, so I want to make sure I am at my car around then with all my stuff packed up and ready to go. I spend all morning sitting around and wondering if and when this guy is going to show up. 9:00 rolls around, no sign of him yet. 10:00, no big deal yet, 11:00, then 12:00 rolls by and now I’m starting to worry. Left in the middle of nowhere with very little communication with the world, all I can do is sit, wait, and hope. Close to 1:00 he finally shows up. My first thought is, “oh thank God, he’s here.” My second thought is, “we will be at the mechanic shop so late now there is probably a very slim chance my car gets fixed today.” Albeit though, I am at least so thankful to finally be making it out of here with my car. Getting into the cab of that tow truck and starting the drive out was such a surreal feeling that I will never forget.

It is a two hour drive to the mechanic shop in Fort Bragg, so we end up getting there around 3:30 – 4. I say bye to the tow truck driver, tell him “thank you so much, I’m so glad I made it out of there,” then go talk to the mechanic, and he tells me what I am already suspecting, “we won’t be able to fix your car until the morning.” Which means, “its time for a new adventure of finding somewhere to sleep.” I have all my backpacking gear, so maybe I’ll just find a campground? Do I really want to spend money on a motel when this tow and repair is going to cost me an arm and a leg? I walk to a few campgrounds that were near the mechanic shop and the cheapest one I could find was 45 dollars, which seemed steep to me, so I decided to just keep walking. I spend my whole evening just walking around Fort Bragg looking for somewhere to sleep like a homeless person. Every time I walked into a store with my big ole backpack on with my sleeping bag hanging on the bottom, I felt like people were looking at me like, “who is this guy? Is he homeless? Some kind of drifter, vagabond?” It was a strange experience. After walking around for hours, I settled on a spot at a disc golf course close to the beach to spend the night. I spent my time here a little anxious that I was going to have the cops called on me and told I can’t camp here and get chased off, but luckily, none of that happened.

The next morning I woke up and decided I would make the most of my time here and walk around all the beaches of Fort Bragg. I had never been to this part of California so I was excited to see what the beaches were like here. As I am walking around the city, there was always a suspicion that maybe it wasn’t the starter that was the problem with my car and what if I end up having to spend another night here? So the whole time I am walking around the city and the beaches, I am thinking to myself, “ah man, if I end up having to stay another night here, I’m staying here for sure.” Living like a homeless person in the unknown of what my next couple days were going to be like became exciting, and I began to thrive in it. And the sights I got to see that day were amazing, I loved all the rocky, cliffy beaches that are in that part of the State. But that afternoon, I got the call from the mechanic shop that my car was done, and the adventure was coming to an end. I got my car, it started beautifully, and I decided to hit a couple waterfalls in the Redwoods near Fort Bragg that I had a found a while ago on my way home, and that was it.

So I didn’t have the adventure that I thought I was going to have, but I still had one. I heard the founder of Patagonia say in a documentary, “many people think of an adventure as taking a nice trip somewhere or having a fun experience in nature, but no, an adventure is when things go wrong.” I have never forgotten that quote, and I am always reluctant to use that word – adventure, because of it. The moment I went to turn my key and my car wouldn’t start, I thought to myself, “well I guess I am having a different kind of adventure.” Not knowing how or when I was going to make it out of the Sinkyone Wilderness, the uncertainty if anyone was really coming to get me, the unknown of how long I would be stuck in Fort Bragg, and where I was going sleep every night that I was there… that was an adventure. That was a trip I will never forget, and all the feelings that came with it that made it such a roller coaster of a ride will always be with me. My first couple days home, there was almost a longing to be back there, back in the thick of the unknown, for there is nothing like it.

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Take Care

Posted on June 7, 2023 by scottytang

Living life with a stutter, there are certain things that people like me just have to get used to. Once I begin stuttering in a conversation, usually with people I am talking to for the first time, it is not uncommon for people to laugh because they think I am playing some kind of weird joke, Or make some comment like, “you alright?” like I am choking on my lunch or something. Many times in my life, I have to shake my head after a conversation and think to myself, “gosh, the things I have to deal with.”

The other day at work though, I had an experience I have never had before. I manage a coffee shop in a suburb of Sacramento, and a customer that had been sitting in the lobby for a while came up to the counter to ask me a question, and I started stuttering so bad that I couldn’t answer the question. Working in customer service with a stutter isn’t much of an issue most of the time, but in this moment it was. My coworker seeing me struggle for a while, finally comes to my aid and answers the question and continues the conversation with this guy while I slip away with my head down feeling embarrassed and ashamed. That part of the experience is normal, I am used to feeling those things after a rough bout with my stutter. The part that isn’t normal though, is later he comes back up to the counter, gets some things to-go, and hands me a note that says, “I apologize, didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Take care.” The thing about this is, I am used to making myself feel bad because of my stutter, but I am not used to making someone else feel bad because of it. As I am standing there, taking in what just happened, it occurred to me that we can all agree that it is sad that some people are born with speech impediments and have to have hard experiences with people because of it. But I think the even bigger tragedy here is, is that here is a man who feels responsible for the struggle I found myself in, something I was born with that I have had to deal with my entire life. All he did was ask me a question, nothing malicious, and he feels like he did some wrongdoing that he has to atone for. This is sad to me, sadder than me being asked a question that I can’t answer because I can’t get the word out. Growing up with this condition, I have gotten used to seeing the worst in people, as anyone can imagine, I got made fun of a lot as a kid. Something I am not used to though, is seeing something so empathetic. It made me feel bad for feeling embarrassed and ashamed for stuttering. Like maybe I should get outside of myself a little bit and not feel so bad or be so hard on myself when speaking gets rough.

What makes this story ironic, is just the day before, I went to Lassen National Park and had the opposite experience. I went through the front gate, paid my 30 dollars to get into the park, and when I got to the trailhead that I wanted to do, there was too much snow. So I decided to just leave the park and do another one I found just outside of it. When I got to the gate, I approached the ranger that checked me in and asked if I could just pay the difference to get the Lassen Annual pass, which he said, “sure, just drive back around to the front of the gate and we’ll take care of it.” We handle the transaction, and just as he is about to hand me my pass, he pauses and says, “well… there is another option.” Which he goes on to say, “for people that have any kind of handicap or disability, they can get a FREE pass to EVERY national park for their ENTIRE LIFE, and all they have to do is sign this form that says this disclaimer above applies to them, no questions asked.” First I’m thinking, “What?! is this really happening,” and second, “he must have heard me stuttering in the course of our conversation and felt that this qualifies.” So I sign the form, get the pass, and as I begin to drive away I almost start to cry. It was like all the being laughed at and being made fun of, feeling embarrassed and ashamed, became worth it. It was the first time that I was thankful for having a speech impediment, and felt like something good came to me because of it.

And to backtrack to the previous story, the following day when this customer asked me a question that I couldn’t answer, and found myself feeling embarrassed and ashamed as per usual, I thought to myself, “well at least I got my free National Park Pass for my entire life.” Like it gave me this feeling that all those experiences that I have had to endure throughout my life were not in vain. It took away some of the sting that often gets under my skin. I have heard people say a lot in my life that, “all things work together for good; nobody suffers in vain, etc etc.” Things that are supposed to make us feel better about ourselves and our situations when bad things happen, which often feel like meaningless words that I can’t really know if they are true. I hope things work out for my good, but until I actually see it, how can I really know? It was inspiring to me to see all those sayings actually be true, and have a tangible experience that I can look back on and point to and say, “see, all things do work together for good, and people really don’t suffer in vain.”

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Peace

Posted on May 1, 2023 by scottytang

I recently went backpacking in Humboldt County, sleeping on the beach in some of the most beautiful and remote places along the Northern California coast. Lots of tall rock, lush green cliffs along the beaches that are incredible. One problem I had though on this trip, was that the nights got really cold and windy. My tent would shake violently and make it hard for me to sleep, and I spent a good part of the night paranoid that some of my stuff would get blown away. Many times after a big gust of wind, I would get worried and check outside my tent to make sure my stuff was still there. I sleep in a bivvy tent, which is like a cocoon that only fits a body, so I can’t put all my stuff inside with me. The first night wasn’t too bad, the wind kept me up a little bit, but I was still able to sleep. The second night though was horrendous. The wind blew so hard there were times it felt like it picked me up a little bit; and my tent would flap so loud and aggressively that it was impossible for me to fall asleep, and of course there was the panic from time to time that my stuff was going to blow away. After laying there for 2-3 hours, hoping it would eventually die down, I decided to get up in the middle of the night, pick up all my sleeping gear, and try to find an area that was protected by trees or something that would shield me from the wind. I came to a place that was at a slight incline, so I had to fight sliding off my sleeping pad through the night, but it was surrounded by plenty of trees to protect me from the wind, and I was finally able to get some sleep. One downside to this though, is that being surrounded by trees gave rise to a new fear that the wind would cause a branch or a tree to fall on me while I was laying there. Every time a big gust came and I heard the trees creak or sway, I would think, “please God don’t let a branch fall on me.” To top it all off, I had forgotten my jacket on this trip, so the mornings were a little rough as well. I dreaded getting out of my tent in the morning to deal with the cold winds.

In this area of California, as soon as you get off the beach, it is a lush redwood forest. I spent my last day hiking back to the campground where my car was parked, which was in the middle of the redwoods, and the best part about spending the night in the redwoods, is that there is zero wind. It was such a relief knowing that I wasn’t going to have to spend the night fighting with the wind. As I was approaching the campground, and getting myself mentally prepared for staying the night here, I thought to myself, “well its not the most scenic place I’ve slept on this trip, but it’s peace.” And it occurred to me in that moment that isn’t that also true about home? It’s not the most exciting, scenic, beautiful place we can be in the world, but it’s peace, and that is something I can appreciate.

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Where Does My Worth Come From

Posted on December 11, 2022 by scottytang

Where does our sense of worth come from?

For me, which can’t be healthy, has often come from the things I create. For a large part of my life it was making skateboard videos, now it is landscape photography, writing blogs, and playing the saxophone. When I was a sponsored skateboarder, I worked harder at producing content than probably any other rider, because for me, it wasn’t just about making videos, it was about proving the worth of my existence. With every video I created, I was earning my value and gaining my stamp of approval that I am worth being in this world. I do the same thing now with getting out in nature and taking landscape photos. Unfortunately for me, if the things I create aren’t well received, then I feel like I have failed at life, my life has no significance, and there is no point to my existence. My sense of worth hangs by a thread.

Where else does one find their worth? From their family? Most the time I feel like I don’t really have one. From God? Maybe it does, but more often than not, Drawing our worth from God feels like lofty words that have no practical meaning. I find myself in this Black Forest often, and all I can ever seem to do is describe my surroundings, I can never really find the way out.

Does awareness help? Whatever content I just put out into the world didn’t get the love and appreciation that I thought it would, here comes the self-worth crash. Being able to see it for what it is, observing it, and letting it pass, is that all I need to get through? Is it just a passing storm that we have to wait out? Life is full of these various types of storms isn’t it? Knowing what we are dealing with and being aware of what is happening is helpful. Otherwise we are doomed to think that a little rain falling from the sky is the end of the world.

How does one find their worth? If it isn’t coming from family, and I can’t rely on my hobbies, and for the days where God feels too “out there,” what can I do? I think the only lasting, sure thing is my community. I have to remember that there are people in the world that look forward to seeing me, and miss me when I am gone. My job functions smoothly and my boss has a lot less stress because I am there. I guess it all comes down to seeing the truth about our self isn’t it? To think our life doesn’t matter and is insignificant wouldn’t be true. There are enough people out there lying to us everyday, we don’t need to lie to ourselves on top of all that. Our community, our friendships, our workplace, like having us around. Don’t sell everyone short by thinking they don’t.

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Storms… They Pass

Posted on August 21, 2022 by scottytang

I recently spent a couple days backpacking in the mountains, and something that’s always in the back of my mind every time I decide to do this is, “what if I get stormed on?” This particular time, it’s getting late in the day, I am almost to the spot that I want to set up camp at, and I can see storm clouds are starting to roll in. It starts to drizzle a little bit before I get to where I’m hoping to camp and I start to get nervous. By the time I get to my spot, the clouds are thick. I start to weigh my options of what I should do. Should I just start walking back to my car? I am probably about 7 miles away. Can I wait this out? I had just read the day before how John Muir would often go outside during storms because he felt more safe outside in the rain rather than being under a roof, and he enjoyed the effect storms had on the trees. So with the inspiration of John Muir, I decided to just wait it out. So I put my jacket on, made sure all the zippers on my backpack were zipped tight, put my pack under a small pine tree, hoping the pine branches would give it a little extra shelter, and I waited. The winds picked up, and I can feel the storm is about to start. The rain begins to fall, and I am thinking, “ok, here it goes.” It lasts for about 15 or 20 minutes, the rain stops, the winds calm, the clouds start to dissipate, I begin to see the sky, and it’s over. The funny part about all this is, at its worst, it was nothing more than a heavy sprinkle. After all that fear and anxiety, I think to myself, “wow, that was it? I can’t believe I almost started walking back to my car for a drizzle.”

It occurred to me in that moment how often we do this in life. We get ourselves all worked up over some dreadful thing we think is coming. We start feeling like, “buckle up everybody, it’s about to get really bad.” Then it comes, it passes, and at its worst, it was nothing more than a drizzle. All our fears and anxieties almost never pan out the way we see them going in our heads do they?

The thing about storms is… they pass. And more often than not, they’re not as bad as we think they are going to be.

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That Old Familiar Tune

Posted on August 10, 2022 by scottytang

Grief often feels like a broken record. The same song plays over and over again, and it’s not just any song. It’s a song that evokes feelings and past hurts that I thought I buried and had moved past, but I have to rehash and deal with these every time it plays, and nothing is ever resolved. The thing about grief is that there is nothing we can do about it than to just bare it. The only remedy seems to be to get outside and get my mind off of it. No matter how many times that I have told myself that I have gotten over it, forgiven, moved on, it always seems to come back and I have to deal with it all over again. When someone has caused us pain in life, we don’t just forgive them one time and then we’re done with it. We have to spend our whole life forgiving them. For there is always that part of us that wants to be angry, that part that wants to slam our fists on the table and yell, “how could you!” But I am a person of peace and self control, or so I tell myself, so I am going to let it run its little course. Take a walk outside, drown my sorrow in sunshine and remind myself that I am going to be ok and am not going to be given to my anger. It may go away for a time, but it always comes back. I am never done with it. That broken record always starts playing that old familiar tune again. Most of our issues, wounds, hurts, are never resolved in this world are they? It’s just a matter of how we cope with it.

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It Will Be Ok

Posted on August 3, 2022 by scottytang

There is something about being in the mountains that brings some kind of clarity. On July 4th, just a couple weeks ago, I had to work in the morning till about 2 or 3, and all day at the coffee shop where I work I am hearing about all the gatherings with family and friends that people are doing later. I didn’t think I would be as bothered by this as I was, but all day at work, I ask people what they are doing, and they ask me back and I tell them, I don’t think I am doing anything. By the time I got off, I was feeling like I had nobody, like I was all alone in the world. I get home, and my neighbors are having a barbecue with some family in our shared backyard, and I am so down in the dumps by this point that I can’t bear hearing people being together. I had to get away from my house and I had this sense that I just needed to get to the mountains. So I went to this spot along the north fork American river that I haven’t been to, and as I am hiking up the river I find a real beautiful part where the water is really clear and deep and looks incredible. I swim for a while with my goggles and I can’t believe how beautiful it is underwater. All of the sudden I am overjoyed and am as content and satisfied as I can be. As I begin the walk back to my car, I get this sense, which was probably God, say, “You see, what are you complaining about? You like this better anyway.” And I began to weep a little bit. What do I have to complain about? It was like I was beckoned by God to come to the mountains and see the truth about myself.

There is a Lumineers song that I can’t get enough of right now that goes, “where we are, I don’t know where we are, but it will be ok.” Those words do something to me for some reason and I get a little emotional every time I hear them. whenever I am in the mountains, I get this feeling of, no matter what happens to me, no matter what state my life is in, no matter how many friends I have, no matter what my family is like or what growing up was like… I will be ok. No complaining, no “woe is me,” no short end of the stick, no one to be angry with, no “why couldn’t things have been different….” Just all smiles. For everything will be ok.

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Irony in the Wilderness

Posted on July 31, 2022 by scottytang

I think all of us wrestle with feeling like we have a lack of people around us. Whether that be family, friends, community, etc. Most of us, if not all struggle with feeling alone in the world without a solid supporting cast.

I recently did a solo backpacking trip in the Tahoe forest, and as the day is winding down, I have my camp all set up, and I am sitting alone with my thoughts, journaling and reading a book. It occurs to me then that I am holding a book my wife got me, writing with a pen my friend Jon Wagner got me, and having an overall experience that I couldn’t have done without my friend Mark Johnson showing me how to do. Suddenly I realize that how could I ever say I have nobody? It is quite ironic that it is when I am alone in the wilderness that I have the most clarity with what great people I have around me. Life is funny like that sometimes.

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