Aaron McHugh, Author at Aaron McHugh

Trip Report: Below the Rim at Bryce Canyon National Park

Description: Bryce Canyon National Park’s infamous crimson-bandit hiding hoodoos and endless vistas remnants of erosions sculpting. I drove our 1974 VW Joy Bus from Colorado to locate a trail that my mother hiked in the 1960s. My only beta, a picture of a slide and a faint recollection of a family road trip story.

Length: One to three days

The rewards: Although the rim’s views are stunning, the real immersion experience of Bryce Canyon exists below the edge. A few hours to multi-day backcountry routes, get up close and intimate with this desert southwest bizarre landscapes. Find them under the rim trail guide here.

Season: Spring, Fall, Winter

Keep going-

Aaron

Snapped on a brief below the rim wandering, my mom’s 1960-era trail recollection was faint. Finding this Bryce Canyon trail became my mission.

These mighty giants commanding presence were inspiring. Very little water, enclosed by a hoodoo fortress, the hidden life of trees in Bryce Canyon.

I’m not certain, but my mom’s 1960’s trail had some similarities in this region of the park. Guess I’ll need to go back to certify my find.

As with any wild place, the further you get from the car, there are fewer people. Fellow explorers returning from a multi-night backpacking trip via Navajo Loop.

Bryce Canyon’s contrast of hoodoos and lonely pine trees is somehow a parable.

A Breathing Space

I tend to cram too much into most days. Especially if they are what I’d consider “good things”. “More must be better” is my non-essentialist mantra when I’m trying to do it all. Judy Brown’s poem Fire articulates the necessity of the space between, to create room to breath. When I’m at my best, I’m prioritizing the space between, transitions and pauses.

Where is too much of a good thing packed in?

What makes a fire burn
is space between the logs,
a breathing space.
Too much of a good thing,
too many logs
packed in too tight
can douse the flames
almost as surely
as a pail of water would.
So building fires
requires attention
to the spaces in between,
as much as to the wood.
We only need to lay a log
lightly from time to time.
A fire grows
simply because the space is there,
with openings
in which the flame
that knows just how it wants to burn
can find its way.
-Judy Brown

Keep going-

Aaron

Cowboy camp near the Arkansas River. Less is more.

Trip Report: After Dark at Arches National Park

Description: Arches National Park invites the artist, historian, and road tripper into sandstone, massive gardens, and geological improbabilities. North of Moab, Utah, shouldered by the Colorado River and home to more than 2,000 natural sandstone arches. Insatiable features like Devils Garden, Landscape Arch spans 480 feet, long and thin, Delicate Arch, inviting the gateway to the Wild West. Trails, towers, buttes, caverns, canyons, and vast beauty away.

Length: One to many days

The rewards: Very few roads with endless trails leading to lost places on the edges. Winter and Spring are my favorite seasons to visit Arches NP. Here’s a full list of must see arches and accessibility.

Favorite memory: Father-daughter pairs, we hiked in at dusk as hikers departed. Our microadventure, Delicate Arch by headlamp under a full moon. Arches National Park is a International Dark Sky park, galaxies visible without light pollution.

Season: Spring, Fall, Winter

Keep going-

Aaron

Being in spaces enormous enough to make you dizzy looking up. Arches National Park contains scale photographs cannot accurately retell.

Delicate Arch at sunset waiting out the moon’s arrival.

Thanks Idletheorybus Instagram feed for this inspirational night time shot of Delicate Arch

Indian Jones and the Last Crusade filmed here in 1989 as the young Indiana Jones espaces with treasure reclaimed from thieves.

The Fisher Towers, outside of Arches National Park, infamous desert rat rock climbing bucket list.

Leaving the car behind, with a pack full of water, and a curious mind will yield endless arches discoveries.

Explorers Manifesto

Thirteen of us just completed our maiden Explorers journey. Our bakers dozen, explored the frontier edges of big questions through a combination of Zoom virtual sessions and an in-person adventure weekend in Colorado. At the conclusion of our shared exploration journey, I shared this manifesto attempting to synthesize the key waypoints we navigated.

Three big questions framing our exploration

Earlier this summer, while hiking the Colorado Trail, three profound yet straightforward questions occupied my heart and mind.

Where am I?
Where am I headed?
Who am I?

“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given and sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life. ”
-Saint Paul

Explorers Wanted Men wanted. Hazardous conditions. Uncertainty. Pushing into foreign territory. Prioritizing discomfort and questions over answers. Drawing back to see. “To see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel.” Return transformed.

Number one. Taking small actions often proceed our belief and mindset shifts. Behavior first, small steps lead our hearts forward.

Number two. Our attention must be reclaimed from the pings and notifications of our distracted world. The shallows of life-our distracted living– contribute to disconnection from those closest to us. God’s voice exists in the silence and stillness. Impact and intimacy require our attention.

Number three. Building awareness of our reactive tendencies creates more choices in the moment. Exploring the old stories that drive our reactivity empowers us to reclaim that negative energy charge and pivot. Be lucid in the moment. “In this Now Moment, I know where I am.” Be your creative best.

Number four. Adventure creates an escape hatch from the mundane of life. Learning to live outside our comfort zone enlarges and strengthens our identity. Remember David Whyte’s advice, “If we can place our identity at the edge of discovery. Then we have the possibility of a vital life.” Get hungry, get lost, refuse the tyranny of a life of extreme comfort.

Number five. Our lives, vocation, and souls are sacred. Approach your life and work as a tenacious craftsman planting trees transforming the terrain of your domain. Stay on the path laid out for you. Walk with beauty the ground beneath your feet. Remember Jesus’s invitation, “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.”

Number six. Listen to your life. What can you NOT DO for reasons even you cannot explain? Deepen your resolve to listen intently- all of your life is speaking. Frederich Buechner “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

Number seven. Our relationships are assets in our wealth management portfolio. The grass grows wherever you water it. The better question- the ones we should ask is not how can I be better, but what is it that they need or want from me? How might I contribute to them thriving? Remember Dave and Sue.

Number eight. Start at the end and work backwards. Write your eulogy. Our eulogy is a window into the desired Future State of our life. You are leaving an impact today, is it for good or not. By working backward from the sunset of our lives, gaps are illuminated in our desired outcomes and today’s priorities, choices, and behaviors. The end is coming. What story are you authoring with your life?

Number nine. Men need friends. Thoreau lamented, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Refuse isolation as a mode of travel in this journey of life. Two are better than one. Choose friendships – even occasionally – go deeper past the plastic veneer and puncture together something real.

Number ten. The making of a brave man requires a whole heart – integrated, awake, “fierce with reality.” Exploring your frontier must become your default setting on your operating system. Life – your life – is waiting to be lived, experienced in vibrant intimacy with God and those entrusted to your care. Wake up. Choose an abundant abiding mysterious life.

Keep going. This is good for you. You can do this.

-Aaron

Explorers in the alpine air of Colorado summit crest of Sentinel Point, CO

Navigating a boulder field before we left treeline.

Touching the sun above the frosty clouds below. Explorers engaging our trifecta questions of Where am I? Where am I headed? Who am I?

Our summit block, lesser known Sentinel Point, CO on the back side of Pikes Peak.

The rewards of exploring our frontier?

One guy wrote this summary about his experience, ready to live forward with more vitality.

“I used to be overwhelmed by the tyranny of the urgent.
Now, I’m learning to prioritize what is important over what is urgent,
I used to hide myself, thinking I was small and worthless.
Now I am learning to be myself, and go the whole way.
I used to bury my grief.
I am now learning to deal with it when it arrives, and be not embarrassed by shedding tears.”
-Explorer

It’s Love That Wrote the Play

In times like these, it’s easy, even sensible, for hope to wane. How long can hope wait before cynicism wins?
I’ve been singing this anthem of hope to myself when I sense the shadow of dreams faltering. I find comfort in David Wilcox’s words for the fragility of hope in this season. May his stories encourage your heart to hope and remember that it’s love that wrote the play.

Keep going-

Aaron

“You say you see no hope
You say you see no reason we should dream
That the world would ever change
You say the love is foolish to believe
‘Cause they’ll always be some crazy
With an army or a knife
To wake you from your daydream
Put the fear back in your life
Look
If someone wrote a play
To just to glorify what’s stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?
He’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the evil side will when
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins
It is love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way
Now the stage is set
You can feel your own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best
We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel’s eyes
For it’s love who mixed the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Though it looks like we’re alone
In this scene, set in shadows,
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love will show the way”

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: David Patrick Wilcox
Show the Way lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

The Master in the Art of Living

My friend Sam has this quote from James Michener in his Hawaiian home on the hillside above Waimea. His playful life disrupted mine more than a decade ago. I didn’t know it was possible to live an integrated experience. Go ahead, attempt to make a distinction between work and play, love, and God. “He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does.”

I am an apprentice in the art of living.

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.”
-James Michener

Keep going-

Aaron

Start Close In

Poet David Whyte writes,
“Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.”

The first step is the hardest to take. We don’t know what will happen next.

We wonder, What if it doesn’t work?
What if I’m wrong?
Maybe I should wait and see what unfolds before I commit to action?

Perhaps those are true.
Perhaps the next step will become more apparent after we start close in when we begin with the first thing, “close in.”

Friend, I encourage you to take the first step.

Keep going-
Aaron

Go Sleep On a Hill

Adventure comes in any size. Make it-the smaller, the better. One mini-adventure that I’ve practiced is to sleep on a hill, any hill. That’s right, leave your house and find a hill you want to sleep on for one night. You don’t need a bunch of gear or a lot of planning. You will need a bit of courage.

Scout on google maps a place you’d like to visit: pack enough warm clothing, a sleeping bag, and a ground cover. Recently I bought a sleeping bag at Walmart for $8 and a ground pad for $25. Make it simple, and go.

Here is the upside, friends. You can experience a new place or an old place in a new way. Keep your plan simple and close to home. I’ve slept in parking lots, behind a woodpile, on a dock in Alaska, in my suburban neighborhood. You can do this. Make it happen.

Waking up to a cup of coffee after a cool night sleeping on Soldier Mountain

How Do You Define Adventure?

Years ago, sea kayaking in Scotland, I asked our guide, Tony Hammock, “How do you define adventure?” His first response was laughter, “I’m not sure I’ve ever bothered.” A perfect response from a professional adventurer. For those of us with computer hands, a subscription to Outside magazine, and unlived lives within us-we want to know.

I pressed him, warming him with my curiosity. While setting up his rainfly, a day’s paddle from his driveway, he began his muse. (Listen to the full podcast from 2015)

Aaron:
How do you define adventure?

Tony Hammock:
I think it’s about being somewhere special and it being some challenge to get there and the feeling of being a bit out on a limb.

So when you’re there, when you’re in that special place, there’s always that, well, are we going to be able to get back? Are we going to be able to get back on time, or is it going to be a bit hairy on the way back? And then the Hebrides and the islands (west coast of Scotland) around here happen a lot. You quite often get there thinking the weather forecast will give you a window to get back and then find yourself fighting the elements on the way back.

So I think it’s where you are, and the nature of the journey to get there and get back again defines it for me.
-Tony Hammock

Tony Hammock our guide giving us instructions on adventure and water rescue.

Aaron:
When you say “to get out on a limb.” What does that do to the rest of your life?

Tony Hammock:
It very much changes your perspective on the rest of life. Things that seem significant and crushing and very important to you and in your real life-Your real-life where you’re earning your living.

When you get out into a landscape like this and realize the age of the landscape and feel your part in it and participate in that journey, it gives you a longer view of your real life.
-Tony Hammock

I used to be involved in the automotive industry. And I can remember during the week we would be obsessed with the vehicle evaluation score, our quality measure, and then I’d get out of the weekends, and I’ll be out with the seals (sea kayaking) and gannets (birds), and on the landscape and you think, ah, “it’s not so important (work and stress).” Then you get back to work on a Monday, and you’d find out that it damn well was and everybody else made sure that you knew it was.

But it still gave you that chance to drawback and take some bit of peace to look your life from a distance.
-Tony Hammock

Adventure is the escape hatch from the normal, predictable to draw back and gain new perspective.

A tip of my cap to Tony Hammock for this wisdom

“I’ve been a paddler since the Beatles made the White Album and I got my first coaching qualification the year that Bill Clinton became president!
I topped out on qualification with Level 5 Coach status in 2012, but I still feel like every paddling day is a new experience and I feel very lucky to live and work in this world-class sea kayaking area.
As a level 5 coach and 5 Star leader, I can guide and coach pretty much any aspect of sea kayaking in anything from mirror like conditions to Force 5+ and strong tidal flows
I seem to have become a bit of a specialist in:
Building confidence
Sea kayak safety
Long term development
Moving seawater and tide-race paddling
Converting pool rolls to real rolls
Alaska!”
Sea Freedom Kayaking UK

The Books That I’m Ingesting This Year

This morning, feeling the crispness of autumn breeze through my window, I started to see a loose form, a blurry but distinct outline. My stack of books starts animating in pithy nuggets.

Parker Palmer’s Quaker voice surfaced, “Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?” David Brooks’s soulful New York Times Op-Ed promise that the second mountain in life, after the valley, is where the real treasures are hidden “When I meet people leading lives of deep commitment, this fact hits me. Joy is real.”

The smell of Walt Herrington’s Acts of Creation distracted my attention. As scents of fresh pine and alder cut clean from razor edges affirmed my resonance with the spirit of excellence. “Fine craftsmen crave the exhilaration of touching excellence every day in their work.” Irresistible again, the voice of love, Jesus, “Get away with me and recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.”

Lacing my running shoes, James Clear’s pragmatic promise of Atomic Habits “becoming 1% better by never missing twice”, my small experiment with low bar tiny actions fuels my 200-day 1-mile running streak. Tuckered, I retrieve my mental permission slip to power down from Steven King’s On Writing, “Afternoons are for naps and letters.” Resisting another refill of box wine Nir Eyal’s annoying Indistractable truth haunts many of my evenings, “the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior.” What discomfort am I attempting to avoid?

My friends and mentors shape my life’s form and function, like water carving a riverbed, polishing, and disrupting Norman McClean’s “basement of time.” Their truth and questions collide with my homeostasis, elevate my hope, myth-bust my assumptions, to elongate my resolve.

The outline I see is me, the person I’m becoming. I ingest books. And my traveling companions, they are friends.