To.Hell.U.Ride
:::Jerry Garcia, John Mayer, and the Death of the Dirtbag:::
The following was borrowed from a talk I recently gave in Telluride, Colorado for an event put on by The Climbing Zine…
An old friend recently reentered my life. In many ways he never left. But as it goes with wide-eyed adventurers, we seldom stay in one place too long and as such I hadn’t seen my buddy in ages. We parted ways physically lifetimes ago. Him pursuing more technical climbs, a career as a writer and dreams of salvaging what remains of the dying culture of the dirtbag. Having myself stumbled into a fascination with eastern religion, medicinal plants, rare seeds and a curious love for solitude I had long ago left for the Himalaya somewhat secretly, without saying goodbye. Yet life has a curious way of bringing us all home again and as such, now blessed with a wife and daughter, the trail seems to have sneakily meandered back to Colorado.
Working now as some sort of unteacher at a little ethnobotany unschool nestled discreetly within the western slopes greenbelt my family was graced with a visit from my old wayfaring friend on what happened to be the final night of yet another “final” show of yet another iteration of the Grateful Dead. A nearby orchard was streaming the event. We decided to stop by. I’m glad we did. For as much as I carry a distaste for John Mayer, that controversial pop star who somehow managed to become the fill-in for the greatest guitar/songwriter/cultural visionary of all time, Jerry Garcia, I was nonetheless deeply moved in hearing Jerry’s timeless songs being carried through in a new way, preserved like well-tended seeds for a younger generation to hear. The whole ordeal somehow melted a part of my heart that I hadn’t realized had grown cold.
I remember when Luke and I first met. We were both pot-smoking deadheads from Illinois who had been ushered in from afar by the mountains themselves, requested by them to flee the Midwest and heed the call of a certain type of freedom only found when one releases familiarity and surrenders to the unknown. We both were then working a couple nights a week at a burrito bar, just enough to keep us fed and provide us with the essentials for life outdoors. Luke already knew that paying rent was for suckers and had been living under the stars for months when one night after work he invited me over to “his place” for a beer. When we arrived at his campsite and he told me that this was where he lived, my heart knew I had found a true brother. I quickly followed suit, packed what few belongings I had into my beat up 85 chevy truck, escaped from the claustrophobic confines of my apartment and set forth on a great lifelong adventure in relationship with both my new friend and Wilderness.
Luke taught me how to climb that summer. Climbing wasn’t cool then. And neither was living in your truck in off-the-map places. People found our kind to be a bit “off”. City people didn’t know what to make of us. We spent what little money we had on gear and only owned the few outfits we managed to score from dumpsters. Girls thought we were dirty and gross. We were! We loved it! We would spend days on end in dirt, lost in a timeless space of learning how to be simple humans in that special way only discovered when, well, covered in dirt.
The years flew by, as they do. And as it goes in America, eventually everything becomes commodified. Yoga, skateboarding, psylocibin mushrooms, the democratic party, climbing, adventure, the dirtbag lifestyle, indeed, even the aesthetic of being a part of a community. That tiny mountain town/base camp we wound up residing within and around was a real community in those early days. Everyone there was there because they had to be there. Whether paying rent or living in two tents, we all belonged to the peaks and valleys of that place. The mountains needed us as much as we needed them. We were all relatives. We took care of each other. We learned how to grow food and live in ways that supported not only us but the wilderness around us. And not on our terms, but Hers. We were at home, and it felt good.
That night in the orchard, while listening to John Mayer riff on Jerry, Luke and I reflected over our old home, over how we had felt when the millionaires came to town. Zipping through our beautiful realm by chance or design they found in us something that was missing from their too-busy, money-obsessed lives. Namely meaning, it seemed, friendship, and a deep relationship with Place. Once discovered, word spread like wildfire through poorly managed, over-developed lands amongst the super-rich that a new Aspen had been found and soon a curious new demographic began buying up the town. Navigating in the ways they had been taught, from that certain kind of modern, colonizer education now weaving its narrow-sighted tentacles throughout the world, they thought that maybe by cashing in on the allure of adventure, community, and connection with land that they too could have what we had. And in they came, with fancy gas guzzling toys, money making schemes, big trucks, big pockets, and shiny hipster corporate gloss. It wasn’t long before the entire town, and along with it the whole outdoor culture, began to transform. Suddenly “dirtbagging” in the mountains was cool!
Years later, the town now bears little resemblance to the mountain centered world we once knew. Prices of everything have soared far beyond reason to such a degree that the few remaining O.G. establishments are now hard pressed to find enough workers to staff themselves properly. Where once villagers’ time was filled with alpine adventures, now time is spent ferociously grinding 50-60 hours a week just to make ends meet. Laws have been put in place that make it illegal to live in the places we once did, in the ways we once did. And as the veils lift revealing untold stories of our checkered past, it wasn’t lost on my buddy and I, as we waxed nostalgic about bygone days the irony of how we too had been the invaders of another people, how once the Ute peoples called this place home and how, in ways far more disturbing than what we had experienced, they had also been forced to flee.
This new mountain demographic, as it turns out, doesn’t appear to actually be as into dirtbagging as they initially claimed. Oh, they appear to possess a mild taste for the mountains when it’s convenient for them, and occasionally donate to conservation causes, but in seeing their private jets, giant air-conditioned homes and heated driveways it seems as though this interesting new, rapidly spreading invasive species of sorts, isn’t as into the whole messy relationship with The Wild that we had once known, the inefficient, unprofitable kind that transforms you from within, the one required of all real friendships that truly mean anything. They seem instead to merely want to take pictures, drink cocktails, stay young forever; have their cake, and eat it too. They like the look of adventure, but not the cracked heels and frozen toes.
Since leaving that little shire, I have come across some of those same people throughout my travels abroad. It’s hard to shed views. We often carry them with us, far from whence we came. And as such, when I have bumped into these curious drifters overseas, they have tried to utilize the same tricks for finding meaning in foreign lands that they used back in that magical little village we once called home, once going so far as to try and convince me to convince my Nepali friends to fly them to the top of Mount Everest, which of course, like trying to purchase friendship and a place in a community, is impossible. You have to earn your turns. Community and friendship cannot be acquired simply because one buys a home in a cute mountain town. You don’t reach the summit simply by buying a ticket.
This tale of course is nothing new. As modernity stealthily pressures us into neatly packaging that which cannot be monetized, the heart of many a village slowly, quietly wanders off, far from the glistening, gore-texed, good intentions of empire, back into The Uncapturable Wild. Yet, as aging dirtbags grow nostalgic for a bygone time, hardened all too frequently by a retched bitterness aimed at ever new waves of “newcomers”, so-called “locals” would be amiss to simply grow grumpy and erroneously glance over the tricksters’ cracks where from within the old songs are still being sung, in a new way.
John Mayer is indeed a far cry from Jerry Garcia. Yet as I caught up with my old friend, I recalled what a student of mine had recently requested of me, that I not be so focused on preserving seeds in their original way that I prevent them from evolving into ways better able to adapt to the curious conditions of these strange times. Even Jerry kept alive songs he didn’t himself write and melded them with myriad different genres. Maybe thus there is a way still to find real adventure in this era of all-inclusive, ultra-luxury, fully guided, heated cat skiing trips into the backcountry. Maybe there is some sort of curious cross-pollination going on between those who are in the mountains because they must be and those who are there because it is fashionable. Maybe there are ways for us to forge unlikely relationships here that might lead us into never-before-seen places of an adventure far greater than what we innocently yearned for when we were young, on desolate desert crags and forgotten snowy summits. Maybe it has more to do with becoming friends with the supposed “other”, not conquering the mountain but courting Her, slowly. Lying gently and respectfully beside her ancient, grief-stricken heart and learning to love that which She loves.
I have been lucky. The friendships forged when we lived in rusty trucks alongside hidden adobes and lonely arroyos have only grown stronger over the years. The lust for adventure that started as seeds planted in the soils of ancient canyon walls has led to a life woven together by intercultural, interspecies kinships sealed by an intergenerational marriage with uncertainty. Where once I believed it was necessary to reach the summit, because, to borrow the arrogant and infamous words of George Leigh Mallory “It’s there”, the real adventure now seems to be found in the possibility that people possessing vastly different views can manage to find common ground, kinship and a deep love for this enchanted world that keeps us alive.
Days Between. Dead and Co. 6/17/23
*The Dirtbag is Dead image was created by Mike Handzlik. You can find more of his work by exploring the work of Luke Mehall.
Definitely captures a moment in time and this new one emerging as well. Love it