Endless Pursuit of Trying Everything Once

We only get to live this one, short life. Right? Being realistic with myself, even at the less-than ripe young age of 33, I won’t be able to do everything I want, nor see every place in the world. It’s a sad realization, but an honest one at that. Will I climb Mount Everest, race the Leadville 100, or sail around the world? Who knows. Even though I won’t be able to check off all my goals in life, I am damn sure going to try to cross off as many things as possible. As my grandfather used to tell me, “Zach, ya know, you’re going to run out of things on your bucket list.” And would always respond with, “I am trying my best, Pop.”

This “revelation” of sort, came about a few summers ago, when I hit an all-time burnout, which inevitably lead me to quitting my job and really having to reassess my life as a whole. Up until that point, especially after moving to Utah, the number of my hobbies and activities has increased tenfold. Growing up, it was simple, in addition to schooling, I was only obsessed with one thing, lacrosse. But as I discovered the mountains and this chapter of my life I’m currently living, it has only snowballed into one new obsession after another. What started out with just hiking as turned into a dozen other ways to travel through and explore a landscape. And with the new activities come new skills to learn and tons of new challenges.

My friends and I in Utah all joke about the Utah tax. What I mean by that, is the cost of all the gear you need to buy in order to full experience everything that Utah and the Mountain West has to offer. What starts out with a pair of hiking boots, has now turned into mountain bikes, climbing gear, skis, snowboards, mountaineering gear, and now even fishing and hunting gear. Albeit, I benefited tremendously from my wife working at an outdoor retailer where we had significant discounts, but eventually I would have acquired all that gear anyway. And it’s not like I bought all this gear because I “had to”, I absolutely wanted to. One sport rolls into the next, and as the seasons change, there’s a whole new realm of possibilities. What starts out as a hike, turns into, well how do I climb that face I just hiked around to avoid. And then in winter comes, and the thoughts transition to, “How am I going to ski down that face, or how can I access further than just in the resort?” Sometimes it’s as simple as, “What if I want to cover dozens of miles to reach a far peak or technical trail?” Because I’ll need a bike for that. To be honest it’s all amazing.

And as I sit here, a decade into the latest journey of my life, I sadly realized that there isn’t enough time to do it all. As our short summers roll around, I always want to be in the best shape of my life so that I can run up mountains, backpack to far alpine lakes, mountain bike the most technical trails, road ride long distances through the hills, and oh yeah, all the while of doing everything else that is required in normal life like trying to be a good husband and excelling in my job so I can keep up this lifestyle. Of course, I can’t forget, summer is the only time we get to work on our cabin due to the amount of snow we received each winter. It’s exhausting just writing those sentences, and that’s exactly how I feel. I’m not writing some “woe-is-me” piece about how hard my life is, because realistically it’s not. Nearly all of my struggles are self-imposed in my strive to be better than I was the day before.

In my head, as every summer rolls around, I always have these grand ambitions that I’m going to be out in the mountains every day, at the peak of my fitness, riding bikes and running trails. The reality has other things in mind. Some years are much more active, while others leave me with a chain around my ankle tying me back to whichever project I told myself I needed to get down. But in those moments, when frustrations are at its highest, are normally when I fantasize about the next new thing for me to try. Because, in my head, that new thing is what’s going to make me find enlightenment. That new sport or activity will bring me so much joy, that I’ll be able to stop worrying about every thing else. At one point in my life that was climbing, then mountain biking, then skiing, then backcountry skiing. Now I daydream about sailing around the world or riding long distance motorcycles up dirt roads in the mountains. Neither of which have I ever done before, yet, in my head, that sounds amazing and will solve all my problems. 

Being realistic, that next thing won’t solve a damn problem I have, but I can’t wait to be a beginner again at something. New challenges, new gear, new ways to cross a landscape, and usually, new problems that come from that. Is it the fun of a new sport or is it my ego wanting to be the best at something, but only reaching about 80% before wanting to try something new? I’m not oblivious to how ridiculous most of this sounds, but I can’t imagine I’m the only one who’s ever felt this way. To make sure I wasn’t just spiraling into new sports to make a habit of it, I’d spend years just focusing on the sports I already have the equipment for, and I still found love and enjoyment in it. Of course, I’d always have to do something new, focusing on a new way to explore, going further rather than hitting the same old trails. Which just reaffirms that I really just love doing something new, and I think it’s just a whole lot easier to experience new things, faster, when you’re trying a new sport. 

To round out this cathartic experience of justifying why I love trying new sports, is because I find that life is just as much find out what you don’t like to do, as much as it is find out the things you love. With a last minute (heavily) discounted purchase of a small white-water raft, we found ourselves on the Colorado River in the Moab Daily section one summer. Neither my wife or I had ever navigated a white water section without a guide. And at first, I did not expect to like it. I thought it was just going to be a lot of sitting around like a lazy river when I wasn’t paddling with the oars in my hands. I thought it’d be boring and a waste of time when we could be out climbing or mountain biking in Moab. But willing to try anything once, and hopeful I was wrong, we set out. And I couldn’t have been more wrong. Sure, navigating the rapids is a blast, but getting to share the day with my wife, dog, and usually a friend or two on the same raft is by far the best part of rafting. We all get to have the same experience, at the same speed, and fun in our own ways. And the look on everyone’s face when you hit a rapid, whether your at the helm or getting thrown into the air from the bow, is a memory you’ll never forget. So who knows, try something new, you might find out you hate it, or better yet, you can never spend a week without doing it.