Sic Vita Est

High Sierra Crossing (Mineral King to Whitney Portal)

Story by Tobias Hayduk // @tobias_indi // @juniperridge

Photo by Colin McCarthy // @colinnnnn

My friend had been missing for three days and we didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I stood alone on the John Muir Trail, looking west toward Crabtree Meadow, back the way we had come. For the first time in three days I allowed myself to think about the possibilities. I pictured his drowned body, broken and battered, trapped against boulders in Big Arroyo. Maybe it washed down to the Kern River, and would be found by hikers weeks from now, trapped under a bridge. If he was alive, but injured, he would be cold and lost.

In reality, as I allowed the worst possibilities to flood my mind, he was okay. His body and ego were bruised, he had spent a few miserable nights wet, cold, and alone, and he had lost his phone (and with it his only maps) in Big Arroyo, but he was alive. He would be found, hobbling back towards the trailhead, by hikers that had been alerted to his disappearance. They in turn notified Park Rangers. We would be made aware of his safe discovery that evening, eight hours later.

Weeks prior I had imagined standing in this very spot, the massive wall of the Sierra at my back, Mount Whitney and Discovery Pinnacle towering over me. Guitar Lake was as I pictured it, a perfect mirror of the cloudless azure sky. I had thought I would look up at the highest peak in the lower forty-eight States and feel triumphant: weary and trail-lean, but ready to summit the world. Instead I felt complete and total failure. 

Three of our group had flown over 5,000 miles from Germany to write a story for their magazine and it looked like that idea had been shot to hell. Another team member had twisted his knee in the Kern River Valley the day before, and had wisely opted to be airlifted out by the response team that had flown in to interview me about our missing friend. 

We had foregone planned rest days in order to make it to Lone Pine in time to get the Germans to LAX for their international flight, and we still had to make it up and over Trail Crest in the next hour or risk hiking down the icy 99 Switchbacks in total darkness. My breath caught, and I felt cool tears on my sunburnt cheeks. I had never felt this utterly defeated in my life. And I had never felt more free.

On our last morning together, we gathered at the Alabama Hills Cafe not as a group of dejected, sunburned failures, but in ecstatic, joyous reunion, brimming with love for each other. We had experienced what we would all agree were eight of the most mentally and physically exhausting days of our lives, and we wouldn’t change a moment of it. 

It was precisely because of those trials, the weariness, the fuckups and poor planning, that I was able to discover the freedom that exists just beneath the surface of our workaday lives. In the midst of that exhaustion, in the center of the most breathtakingly beautiful landscape I have ever seen, having done all we could do with no recourse to further help, the only option left to me was to surrender. Surrender to my own mortality and to the futility of worry. Surrender the false sense of control we fight so hard to maintain in our daily lives. Surrender the egocentric idea that this world, this planet and universe, this reality, life, is unfair. Because it is decidedly not unfair. But then again neither is it fair. It is not cold, nor cruel, and it doesn’t play favorites. It just is. Sic vita est.

Already, seven months since returning to my “normal” life, I find myself slipping into old routines. The chains of social convention aren’t dropped on our shoulders all at once. If that were the case, we would be crushed under the weight, or immediately rebel. Instead we build them ourselves, one link at a time, and fasten them around our own necks.

What can you do when you feel the oppressive weight? Travel. Set aside the shackles for a moment and open yourself up to possibility, to being uncomfortable, to being scared, to meeting a stranger on the road and recognizing that you are meeting yourself for the first time. And the more you travel, the less you will want to pick up those chains when you return. For every journey must have an end, but each end is only a new beginning. 

Petroleum Decay

Motorcycle maintenance and moments of love

Story and photos by Scott Hathaway and Sharah Yaddaw

On the Alaskan highway, by some act of fate or chance, our paths crossed. One path on a bicycle and the other on a motorcycle. We made a fire and drank coffee in a rainstorm watching the morning mist rise over the Wrangell-St. Elias mountains. Two years later with one refurbished XT 600 and one tried and true, we left our garden and home behind, stacked our motos to the sky with gear, kicked over our shiny re-built engines, and hit the road together.   

Motorcycle adventures are a love-hate experience. Riding these old single cylinder bikes destroys your body.  At the end of a day of riding, we have become lumps of jelly. Our heads are buzzing, our hands are numb from vibrations, and we are exhausted. All we do is eat, sleep, and ride. These days add up to what we like to call a state of “petroleum decay.” 

The bikes require constant attention but they tractor along like immortal machines carrying us down dirt roads, across streams, over winding mountain passes, and through forests of cactus and coffee alike. We care for them, and they save us when we pop a wheelie on a sketchy cobblestone hill or hit a pothole that descends to China. It is a symbiotic relationship and our motos are as much a part of our journey as we are, like good friends along for the ride and up for the challenge. 

In a state of decay and motorcycle maintenance, we have ridden the wild roads of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and back. We have spent weeks living with local families and immersing ourselves in the cultures of different places. Simple places with rooster serenades and pigs wandering the streets. With wonderful people who have a healthy closeness to the land and the earth and strong families who embrace you and shower you with kindness, acceptance, and love. 

In Guatemala, we slept on the slopes overlooking Guatemala City and awoke to visions of the apocalypse. Volcán de Fuego was cracking and grumbling, sending up huge plumes of ash, and the night sky was illuminated red with the glow of lava. We rode down to the base of the volcano to witness our first eruption and stopped to talk to anybody standing around. One bicyclist who grew up in the city remembered the eruption in 1974 when pyroclastic and lava flow took out most of the agricultural land around the base. He reminisced, “When I was a boy, my father took me to see the lava flowing through the ‘Barranca Honda.’ It’s the volcanoes that make this land so fertile.” As he started to bike away, he kicked at some cans in the ditch and said, “I love my country, it’s so beautiful here. Now if we could only do something about all this damn trash!” 

A true adventure is not really romantic or easy or always fun. A true adventure will test you. You will sometimes want to quit. You will wonder why you are doing this. It is painful, it is hard, and it can bring you to tears that are born from the very depths of your heart in a multitude of emotions. But it is worth it. You will never be the same. A real adventure teaches you about yourself in a true way. There is no room to construct false ideas of who you are. We take this on, we embrace it, we change, and we see the world in a new way.  

Read more at yamahammer.com

The Road, Alone.

A Life Settled in Motion.

Story by Lauren De Vine // @laurendevinebev

Photos by Randy P. Martin // @randypmartin

I have crossed thirty state lines from July to October this year.

In perfect conditions, I like to open a beer and watch the sun bend a thousand shades of violet before it is just me and the darkened sky and whatever critters take the stage to sing it down in my temporary corner of the universe. With any luck, the people I meet in my last day-drenched hour will be kind and humble, like the Vietnam vet named Larry who sold me firewood tonight from his small silver Nissan truck. His last words to me, the last human words I heard this day on earth were, “I am just here to help.” He meant in life. I keep an atlas shoved heavy with hand drawn maps and notes, a short library of books gifted to me along the way, fireworks, and a small amount of mushrooms in a matchbox. 

I am settled in motion. I need the phenomenon that road people know where the air moves past you in intermittent warm and cold pockets, expanding and contracting with changes in the topography around you — a respiratory system all its own. I take two lane highways and dirt roads and chase rivers that I haven’t passed in years — making good on promises made from a bridge above, out the window of a van while on tour long ago.  

This isn’t a vacation. This is simply my life, happening across multiple locations. Much of my work is done remotely, and because I have been at it for some time, I complete projects in large batches, freeing up greater concentrations of time to pursue the explorations of my choosing: time in the wilderness, my relationship with fear, and other mental real estate. I don’t identify as someone who is “seeking,” I am just “being.” 

I am a woman. Being a woman on the road alone is big enough in the minds of many to even perceive my choices as “extreme.” My gender asks that I explain my freedoms differently and certainly requires a lot of additional conversation. I answer the following questions: 

Aren’t you scared? 

How did you get so brave? 

Do you have children? 

It must be hard to maintain a relationship. 

I wish I could do that. 

So you carry a gun?  

I don’t get mad at the people asking me these questions in the way that I don’t get upset by people telling me they are praying for me because they are the same thing. The conversation always rolls back and forth between congratulatory and all-out panic. Also I am always the calmest one in the room. Statistically, as a woman I am safer on the road and mostly outdoors than if I were living in a city full time. Animals don’t kill people: People kill people. I stay safe and responsible with my choices. I drive well and understand my vehicle. I watch for others on the road as well as animals and always motorcycles. I am in constant conversation with my instinct, and avoiding it is a non-option.

I keep practices that lessen the probability for trouble. For example, I don’t go to bars alone on nights where I will be camped in my van. I also stay at established campsites the majority of the time rather than renegading, but I have my spots and know when the time is right. 

I have been flagged off the road thinking I had a headlight out and asked to dinner twice in the last month, and sometimes men suggest some local camping information and invite themselves to roll out for a beer later. For the record, none of those things are cool and I am always going to go the opposite way. 

This summer I was followed in eastern Wyoming by a man I had met at a gas station. After the third time he approached me as I filled up, my instinct went off and I gave him a ten-minute lead before climbing on the highway. Fifteen minutes down the road I saw him waiting for me on top of an overpass. I confirmed my suspicion by slowing to half my speed when he pulled next to me. I allowed a few cars to get between us so I could maneuver out of the situation. I was thirty miles from Sturgis and a whole lot of loved ones that put up with zero shit moved in my direction. 

I have had a neon life full of travel, creative and professional success, confusion, waking dreams, fuck ups, and an endless train of friendships. I am grateful for all of the forms that luck has taken and continues to take as I make my way through this turn as a human, doing my thing as I was meant to. 

Ultimately, being a woman on the road in my thirties is beautiful because I am fully aware of who I am, and no longer bear the weight of living “in spite of” anything. I am totally happy and exactly where I am supposed to be. In motion. Just being. 

Hand-Powered Lettering

Learn the basics of hand lettering by one of our favorite adventurers Adam Vicarel (the tree hugger below).

Thursday, August 2nd, 6:00 pm – 9:00pm
Tillamook Station, Portland, OR

"Adam will go over the fundamentals of drawing letter forms, speak to the differences of lettering and calligraphy, as well as share his process for conceptualizing, designing, and lettering words or phrases for any use such as branding, advertising campaigns, poster or t-shirt artwork, wedding save the dates, invites and cards."

Photo by Evan Schell