The life of a solo traveling boy can be oh so lonely, and also oh so glorious.

I rarely check a bag these days, but I do check one for this BiGTRiP to Nevada and Utah since I’ll need my tent and sleeping bag for four campouts across four national parks. It’s a relatively new goal within a goal – not only visiting every national park in America, but also camping at each one. By the end of this trip I’ll have hit 31 of 63 on the former goal; though probably only 10 of 63 for the latter. I have some catching up to do in the camping department.

My first campout of the week returns me to Zion National Park, a park I visited eleven years ago during my “Running To” road trip around North America. Back then I camped out in the backcountry, a grueling and isolated ten-mile hike that was more than I bargained for. This time, I’m literally “hiking” across the visitor center parking lot to the nearest campground in the park.

But first, Angels Landing – one of the most famous hikes in America, certainly the best named, a narrow ascent that towers above Zion, including sections of trail with chains bolted to the rock face. Hold on tight, lest you slip and plummet and pray the angels catch you.

I didn’t hike Angels Landing eleven years ago. This time, I’m delighted to win the lottery, literally, after entering my name for access in the park’s lottery system, which limits the number of hikers on this popular trail. I imagine my odds are easier than, say, a family of five who need all five slots to hike the trail. I’m a solo traveling boy, after all.

I hop the park’s first shuttle amid the 5am dark, and Zion’s first sparks of color split the sky as we cut deeper into the park. It’s like straight out of Jurassic Park, this place. I swear I can hear John Williams and the screech of a T-Rex if I crane my ear.

I set out for Angels Landing, the same trailhead that led to my backcountry campground over a decade ago. I remember this ascent, weaving back and forth up the mountain with a glorious view of Zion. The chipmunks are everywhere, and they’re aggressive, not put off by humans, even encouraged by them, skittering by hikers’ boots, one pouncing on me in search of some nuts and dried mango that I munch along the way. I discover one sluggish squirrel with a literal pot belly, and Zion must be where rodents go to retire.

I hike to the peak alongside a family of four, two parents with a teenage son and daughter, and I immediately spot their Philly accents. The son is wearing an Eagles cap, and we chat a little at the top. They’re from Bucks County, my home county, even the same town where my aunt lives. The world is small.

The dad asks if I would be so kind to take their family’s picture, and I gladly do. And I feel my first pang of sad on this trip.

Beyond this Philly family, I also can’t help eyeing this trio of college students, as I latch onto their conversations along the trail. They’re on their own national park tour across Utah, only in the reverse direction of mine: starting in Moab, home to Arches National Park on the eastern side of the state, and finishing their way westward to Zion. I smile, thinking about how I’ll be in Moab and Arches by week’s end. I watch them cheer together as one guy lies on his stomach and cranes over the edge of a cliff with his phone pointed thousands of feet down, the other two guys pinning his legs and feet behind him.

The pangs hit me harder with this group. It’s a sadness mixed with loneliness, but this feeling is less about yearning for a couple other people here with me on this hike, or in this park, or on this eleven-day road trip; it’s more about yearning for a couple college friends to have joined me on such a hike, in such a park, on such a road trip back when I was in college.

I don’t know if this complicated feeling has a name — some posthumous yearning for what could have been and simply never will be. It’s the finality of it all.

One of the college friends sees me taking a selfie on the peak. “Would you like me to take your picture?” he asks. I feel invaded, my chosen solitude intruded upon, but I accept. For this fleeting moment, my phone in his hands, all four of us atop this landing where angels gather, I am a friend amongst them. Upon receiving my phone back, I never see them again.

Back at my car, I’ve packed some ready-to-eat meals that require only boiling water. I unpack my jet boiler and fire it up in the parking lot. Only after boiling my water do I realize I’ve forgotten my outdoor cutlery set at home.

How am I going to eat this chicken teriyaki rice meal out of the steaming bag? I scour my luggage and every crevice of the rental car, searching for a fork or some fork-adjacent item. I go to my toiletry bag and find my toothpaste. I squeeze the paste down the tube to the closed end, now sturdy enough for scooping rice and chicken like a little spatula.

The life of a solo traveling boy can be oh so glamorous.

That night, I set up my tent at my site but the temperature remains over 90 degrees even after sunset. Lying alone in my tent with no airflow, it’s kinda miserable.

To add a chef’s kiss to the moment, my newly purchased inflatable sleeping pad deflates after just twenty minutes. The gravely ground welcomes my back, the air still sweltering around me, and I escape the prison of my tent for the freedom of my rental car twenty yards away. I roll down the windows and lean the driver’s seat all the way back, and somehow I find sleep.

An hour later, I’m awoken by powerful gusts, the wind whistling through the parking lot. I frantically think about my tent, which I’d left unpegged, and I rush back to find my tent overturned in a bush, nearly into the neighboring camp site. I strip the poles and bunch up the tent, throwing it in the back of my car to deal with tomorrow.

Only I don’t.

The next night at a campground in Bryce Canyon National Park, I see no point in rebuilding my tent when my sleeping pad still has some hidden hole that I don’t want to waste time locating. How would I even patch it? As with Zion, I sleep in my car for the second straight night.

So glad I checked a bag for this trip.

Like Zion before it, Bryce Canyon is inundated with visitors. So. Many. People. It’s the value and also the price of a national park tag; nature can be a bit of a drag.

But Bryce is beautiful. I’m refreshed by the sudden influx of green amid the orange-saturated landscape of southern Utah, and I’m wowed by the army of hoodoos, these spindly, otherworldly rocks that have undergone generations of weathering. They stand in rows in the park’s central amphitheater, not technically a river-cut “canyon” as the park’s name suggests.

This park, this amphitheater feels more like a sanctuary. Dozens of hoodoos align in what’s called the Silent City, as if a quiet choir, ready to sing.

I’m convinced these particular rocks will be the first to cry out should we humans ever lose our way.

The next day I venture further eastward to Capitol Reef National Park, my third national park in as many days, and one of the most low-key national parks I’ve ever visited. It’s the most inland of Utah’s five national parks, the most obscure, clearly the least visited. There is no entry gate, and no enforced fee, unless you go by the honor system at the visitor center. The red rock walls stand just as mightily as Zion and Bryce, only with a more tangible, sacred hush.

No summer crowd is divine.

My campground at Capitol Reef neighbors a fruit orchard, one of several in the park, and visitors are encouraged to pick fruit when said fruit are in season — which, sadly, they are not. How lovely is that, though? Several deer frolic freely through my campground, and I can’t help feeling like I’m catching a glimpse of Eden.

The temperatures more favorable, I decide to pitch my tent tonight after spreading my limp sleeping pad on a picnic table and actually locating the hole fairly easily, patching it with some medical tape from my first aid kit. I shake my head; I get oh so stuck in my head sometimes.

I sleep soundly this night. Perhaps the checked bag was worth it, after all.

I wake up before sunrise and drive through the 5am dark a couple miles away to a place called Sunset Point. It’s named for the opposite time of the day, but I figure this spot will do. I brew a cup of coffee with my jet boiler and walk out to a rocky ledge and sit.

I watch one of the best sunrises of my life — just me and my coffee and the sun and the Lord and the red rocks of this national park. Just another morning in the life of a solo traveling boy.

Yeah, the loneliness is there. I notice it. I feel it. I resist the engrained impulse to update my Instagram story amid this eleven-day stretch without social media.

I sit with myself, I sit with Jesus, and I survive.

Beyond the loneliness that follows me from Vegas into the wilderness, I also feel the spark of possibility in each new day of traveling solo. Of seeing more of this epic creation. Of driving roads I’ve never traversed while thinking and praying words I’ve never thought or prayed, as yellow lines snake before me and beside me, mesmerizing me mile by mile.

I feel more connected to myself, my actual self, not my projected social media self. I feel more connected to Jesus, better able to articulate my fears and angers and sadnesses with him. I am not editing or edited out here. I am as raw as the weathered rocks of Utah. It’s oh so lonely and oh so intimate.

I travel solo to see more of the wonderful things out there, and also those things deep within, the beautiful and the difficult, and to survive, and to return home more integrated, more alive.

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There’s something glorious about seeing epic, beautiful places for the first time, but there’s something particularly magical about returning to those epic, beautiful places. The more improbable the return, the more magical.

I mean, St. George? Of all the inconspicuously glorious places to relive.

Isn’t that the beauty and utter tragedy of traveling in this life? You might be back one day — and you may never again return.

An older woman, surely at least in her seventies, sits with a floppy hat and shades drawn on a lawn chair atop Dixie Rock. Not a care in the world. I want to be her when I grow up.

I’m shirtless because, firstly, southern Utah is no joke in mid-August. My entire week across the state will see afternoon temperatures regularly hitting 102, 103, 106. I’ll aim to do most of my hiking before noon this week, but I also won’t sacrifice my limited time in certain cities and parks as I venture around the state.

Case in point: my one afternoon in St. George – even if it’s quite hot.

But “quite hot” hasn’t prompted me to remove my top in the past. Particularly in public. Most of my life, I’ve clung to my shirt however unbearable the heat is. Because there’s always been a more unbearable level of unbearable.

I was a runner in high school, so I was and never have been overweight. As an adult I’ve experienced what’s known as “skinny-fat,” where my fat goes straight to my belly and sides while the rest of my body maintains a skinny, almost underweight appearance. Not muscular. The proportions way off.

Or perhaps that’s just my self-critical nature. I’m sure many of us find plenty “wrong” with our bodies despite nobody else’s ever seeing (or saying) a thing.

I’ve probably looked pretty average most of my life. I imagine most people wouldn’t bat an eye if they saw yet another skinny-fat white boy’s shirtless frame hiking in the wild.

But body dysmorphia is real. Body image is a beast.

Despite the fears, I often feel this push to work out my demons far, far away from where anybody knows my name. Thousands of miles away from home, here in the privacy of a park in southern Utah, cut off from all social media for the week, with no pressure to “check in” live, a place to simply be, I remove my shirt.

I’d be far more reluctant to remove this article were I back home in Asheville, or otherwise somewhere someone familiar might see me. I’d feel their scorching eyes on me, hotter than the sun, either admiring me uncomfortably or outright criticizing me — my probably uneven proportions, my definitely uneven tan.

Because I hardly remove my shirt in public, or compromise with tanktops, I have such a farmer’s tan. I’m insecure about all these graduating tan lines from my shoulders to my elbows to my wrists; all the skin between my neck and waist feels uncomfortably pale.

These tan line rainbows with my upper torso’s paleness viscerally remind me of my lifelong battles with body image. It’s not as bad as my acne-ridden middle school days, but I still dislike staring at myself in the mirror when I see my skin tone.

Honestly, one of my lower-end goals for this year’s BiGTRiP in Utah, beyond dismantling the distraction of social media, is to even out my skin tone. And what better way to even things out than to hike completely shirtless under a clear Utahn sun – with no security blanket of a tanktop.

I am loaded up on sunscreen and electrolytes and deep breaths for the week.

Beyond this tangible physical goal, I am also hoping to grow more comfortable walking around in public without a shirt. That even if someone were to look at my shirtless frame and think, “Ew, that’s an unpleasant sight,” I could still move on with my life reassured that I will never see that person again. They’ll probably forget about my odious body in about thirty seconds anyway.

But what if they actually find my body desirable? That one is harder to stomach.

Throughout my week in Utah, I will be hiking shirtless almost every day, and every day I will feel my body clench whenever I intersect another hiker on the path. Thankfully, I’ll also be wearing sunglasses and a hat – accessories to mask my masculine insecurities. I will breathe easier after they pass, where I can be shirtless and free and uniquely masculine me once again. It gets a little easier every day.

I set a timer for a shirtless picture of myself atop Dixie Rock, and I think I look good – really good, actually. A thought I rarely have about my body. I’ve been hitting the gym harder and eating better than I ever have over the last year.

Honestly, I look and feel the best I ever have in 38 years. I have muscles now I didn’t know I could grow. This makes me smile. Autoimmune issues aside, am I aging like wine? Not like fine wine, but maybe some upper-middle-tier Trader Joe’s wine, at least?

I’m not on social media this week, but I face a future dilemma while staring at my newly acquired shirtless picture: do I post it after this BiGTRiP ends?

I take a few other shirtless photos throughout the week, and I feel simultaneously reaffirmed by my physical progress and also enslaved by my second-guessing, lodged like an arrow I can’t remove. I’m assaulted by all the questions this social media age has spawned.

Do I owe it to myself to post these pictures? To be proud of my hard work? To delight in this body after so many years, decades, of feeling demoralized by it?

But what will people think? And what will I think about what people think?

Will they think I’m vain for posting these pictures? Or will I just think that they think I’m vain?

Will they think I’m ugly?

Or. Will they think I’m hot?

Will they like my photos? How many people will like them? How many likes is not enough likes, and how many likes are uncomfortably too many likes?

What if they don’t like the photo? What does that mean?

Will they leave a comment? Will I want them to leave a comment? What if they leave uncomfortable comments? Should I just turn the comments off?

Will they unfollow me?

As an unmarried queer man of faith who doesn’t anticipate ever having a sexual romantic relationship with any human, where can I receive a healthy spark of bodily affirmation that may normally come from a sexual romantic partner? Who will appropriately spark delight in my male body?

Surely, social media is not the outlet. Existing in Nevada and Utah for eleven days without social media, I feel free from the overthinking and constant comparison traps.

Despite all the good social media does, I often wonder whether we’ll look back on this age some decade or two from now and ask ourselves: Why did we ever think that was a good idea?

Returning home from Utah, I meet with a couple friends on separate occasions after not seeing them for several months. Each of these straight guys responds similarly to the sight of me. My body.

“Whoa, Tom, you got big,” one says while walking up to me – the first words out of his mouth.

“Dang, look at those triceps,” another says, reaching across the table to give my arm a playful squeeze.

The spark. I feel it.

I don’t feel it often. And it feels really, really good.

It’s been a painfully slow 38 years. But I think I am growing more comfortable in my skin – skin with new muscles that has become more evenly toned, and growing more secure beneath this epidermis.

I am wandering across Utahn wilderness to discover more of my masculinity. With every step, I am becoming the old lady with a lawn chair atop a mountain with little to no effs to give.

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Have a thought? Wander over to The Shadows Beneath this Epidermis and leave a comment!

Detachment is often understood as letting loose of what is attractive. But it sometimes also requires letting go of what is repulsive.

— Henri Nouwen

I am fleeing distraction by flying to the most distracted city in the world.

I have a strange relationship with Las Vegas. Including BiGTRiP V, I’ve now been to Vegas five times, and it’s never a place where I want to spend an extended amount of time. It’s loud, it’s bright, it’s ridiculous; in many places, obscene.

And it’s always hot, no matter when you visit. Las Vegas in mid-August is an ungodly level of hot. That heavy heat where every step feels twice as belabored, like you’re walking through Jupiter.

Yet something about Las Vegas is also weirdly appealing. Something unexplainable in me wants to be immersed in this spectacle of a city for about 24 hours every couple of years. When I started planning BiGTRiP V and this national parks tour across Utah, I knew I’d have to fly into nearby Vegas.

And something in my soul leapt with a little delight. Vegas would be my starting and ending point for BiGTRiP V, hardly 48 hours there, and this felt like just the right amount of time for a sugar rush on either side of Utah’s dusty wilderness next door.

Flying into Las Vegas is an experience. You look out the window for miles and miles, hundreds maybe, with no signs of life. It’s just rock and desert in a sprawling nothingness – and then, a city appears. Roads, neighborhoods, hotels and casinos – even one that’s a pyramid rising after the desert.

My car rental requires not one but two shuttle rides from the Vegas airport to the car rental hub to one of the only car rental agencies in the city that isn’t at the car rental hub. While approaching the second shuttle stop, I stand behind a large Lebanese family of all ages. The dad of the group pulls out a plastic bag from his carry-on and starts handing out these bright green cucumbers, one by one, to his parents and siblings. He eyes me and this other white woman in line, offering her a cucumber first.

“Oh, no thank you,” she says with a smile, shaking her head.

He turns to me with the same outstretched cucumber, and for reasons I can’t quite explain I find myself extending my hand to accept this strange vegetable from a Lebanese man I’ve never met. I smile and thank him, laughing at the ridiculousness of this moment. I think my laughter encourages the white woman to change her mind, because she accepts the Lebanese man’s cucumber as well.

“Cheers!” I say, raising my cucumber in the air to her and to him, to all of us, to Vegas!, and we all chomp down while waiting ten minutes for our second shuttle to arrive.

This Lebanese family is from Michigan, and they vacation to Las Vegas together every year. What a trip this must be for them.

“We are going to the In-N-Out for lunch,” the dad says with a distinct accent in between bites of his cucumber.

And oh. My. Goodness. I had completely forgotten In-N-Out even exists in Las Vegas until he speaks these words of life to me.

Suddenly, I’m hungry for more than a mere cucumber. I also know where I am going for lunch and what I’m ordering there: double-double with onion, animal-style fries. Always. It’s the only thing I’ve ever ordered from In-N-Out, and if it isn’t broke — and it certainly isn’t — why fix it?

I reunite with the Lebanese family at the closest In-N-Out after acquiring my rental car, and it’s a delicious, nostalgic meal, reminding me of my move to southern California as a 23-year-old still finding his way in this world, still discovering new wonders like the sight of the Pacific Ocean and the taste of animal-style goodness. It will be my first of four In-N-Out visits over the next eleven days.

I stock up on water jugs, Gatorade, and salty snacks from the Target next door, already trembling from the 100-degree walk across the parking lot. I’ve packed a cooler bag to keep each day’s liquids reasonably cool, and I pray it’s enough to sustain me this week.

I intend to explore six national parks over the next eleven days, five of which I’ve never set foot. I figure to awaken early each morning to get my hikes and other park explorations before the peak and heat of the day.

But I will also be ready to sweat and groan and cry out to God this week.

I drive down the Las Vegas Strip and check into my hotel – you know that aforementioned pyramid on the south end? The Luxor? It’s where I’ll be spending my first night of BiGTRiP V.

This big black pyramid of a hotel-casino has been a bucket list stay for me since 2012, the first time I saw it, the first time I visited Las Vegas. Entranced is a good word.

While booking my already inexpensive flight to Las Vegas, I had the option to add on a hotel at a discounted rate, and the very first suggestion that popped up was the Luxor. And I knew. I just knew. I booked a room there on the 27th floor, one with a slanted roof and slanted windows overlooking the colorful Camelot-themed Excalibur hotel-casino next door.

It almost felt appropriate, like some geographical equilibrium, standing in that golden lobby decorated with giant sphinx and obelisks, checking into this gaudy hotel with the backdrop of dozens of slot machine lights and jingles, all as I prepared for ten days on the road, in the literal desert, surrounded by red and orange rock, sleeping on the ground, camping out in the tent I’d packed. Tonight will certainly balance out the next more rugged nine.

I ride the Luxor’s “inclinator,” a slanted elevator straight out of Willy Wonka, riding along the face of the pyramid to my room on the 27th floor. I feel so jazzed wheeling my suitcase down the long hallway as I peer carefully over the exposed edge, down at the food court in the center of the pyramid way, way below.

I feel excited that I’m actually staying here tonight, and I also feel lonely.

This would be a lovely moment to share with someone, even with an Instagram story for my followers. But I’ve deactivated Instagram for this whole trip, intending to trek as undistracted as I can for the next week and a half.

The national parks tour, the hundreds of miles of driving, the hiking, and the camping out – I genuinely enjoy doing 95% of that stuff all by myself. Basking in blessed solitude. Discovering new space for reflection and inspiration. God speaks to me when I get away and get alone.

But here in this city, in this hotel, in this long hallway overlooking a pseudo-Egyptian world below, I do wish I had someone else beside me. Someone to share in this wonderful weirdness.

I enter my room and almost immediately crash onto my bed, napping until dusk. The jet-lag wears off, and it’s perfect timing. I step outside to explore the Strip when it’s “only” 85 degrees, the oppressive sun gone for the night.

Since my last venture to Vegas, I know Sphere has become a thing – this massive glowing ball of a music venue. I set out to find it, passing by a family with a baby who I saw in the Asheville airport earlier that morning, strangely enough.

I catch the fountain show at the Bellagio, where I also find Darth Vader and Bluey and mostly naked showgirls wandering the sidewalks.

I recall a previous Vegas blog, almost wishing I could get turned on by the sight of such revealing women. But they still do nothing for me. They flirtatiously approach different men, putting their hands on their shoulders, pleading for a souvenir photo (and a generous tip, of course). I’m already prepared with my response if any showgirls approach me: “You’re barking up the wrong tree, sister.”

Thankfully, I never have to say those words and resume walking.

I find a roomy Starbucks on the Strip to replenish my fluids on this sticky night and take even one small step to get undistracted in this Dopamine Dystopia. I’ve packed Yes Theory’s book, Talk to Strangers, which chronicles the story of these famed YouTubers known as Yes Theory, a group of friends who pursue courageous tasks like approaching strangers on the street or traveling to new countries or jumping out of planes and helicopters.

One of Yes Theory’s mantras is “Seek Discomfort,” because growth never happens inside your comfort zone. I’ve taken this phrase to heart in recent years. A value I hold dear.

I’m already hooked by their origin story in the first few pages, this group of four young men from four different countries finding one another in the same city at the same time. They started their YouTube channel with a challenge to do 30 uncomfortable things in 30 days, and the rest is history. This group of friends now boasts a worldwide audience and community – a movement of millions.

The author also writes vulnerably about his conflict with the group and his journey of walking away from Yes Theory. I’m both sad and inspired. Inspired by his vulnerability with his friends, and with his readers. I’m also sad for his walking away, for all good things coming to an end.

Sadder still that he remains on good terms with his cofounders, reminding me of my own story.

I think about Your Other Brothers a lot as I read Yes Theory’s story, a similar origin story of these young men from various geographic corners finding each other at just the right time. Our organization still exists a decade later, now under the pending nonprofit ministry of Your Other Family, and yet I’ve seen most of my cofounders walk away, one by one, no longer in relationship with the community. No longer in relationship with me.

I’m responsible too, of course. I didn’t pursue my brothers after they left. Drifting away felt easier than reconciling differences.

Years removed, their departures still echo. Those first schisms literally sent me to therapy for the first time, a weekly task I still practice, and while I’ve come a long way in grieving and reconciling and owning my side of the fence, I still wince at the memory. Especially now in comparison to these Yes Theory guys who remain on good terms, despite their own schisms.

How does a group of secular and religiously diverse men continue in friendship with one another despite their differences, and a group of supposedly spiritually united Christians does not?

I close the book and set out once more from Starbucks for Sphere, and the curving venue pops amid the black backdrop of a desert night sky. Its big bubble shape glows red and green and yellow and practically every color, along with various designs like the Death Star and a smiley face. The Backstreet Boys are performing there tonight. I wonder what it’s like to be inside the thing, illuminated on all sides by one continuous screen while these aging Gen X’ers perform like ants on stage.

Is it a magical experience or humanity’s death knell? Will more and more glowing screens in our pockets and watches and eyewear and vehicles and living rooms and workplaces and city streets and hotels and casinos and concert venues be our ultimate doom?

Will we start over one day, looking back with incredulity that we ever inundated our lives with this much distraction? These countless screens and polarizing social media that does more to disconnect us from one another and tear us away from

this

present

moment?

I return to my pyramid after a couple hours of wandering, my fill of Vegas amassed for the next couple years, ready to flee this city and start anew in the wilderness tomorrow. The journey eastward begins. Utah, national parks, camping, driving – my annual BiGTRiP escape from distraction.

How I wish the wilderness to have its way with me.

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Have a thought? Wander over to Let’s Get Distracted and Lonely in Las Vegas and leave a comment!

I take these big trips by myself, and while wandering solo I often ask myself: How can I affirm all the things I’m doing well in my life right now, and where can I tweak or perhaps discard some other things altogether?

I bring a journal and open a running notes doc on my phone, and I pour out my heart.

I do get lonely at times on these solitary escapades, but I also find gratitude in being able to go where I want to go, do what I want to do, and be who I am without any other voice speaking into the trip. I’ve been challenged in recent years to find opportunities to travel with people on a smaller scale, because relationships are two-way streets where you always give up something to get something else — your agenda, your way, for our agenda, our way.

Shared experience can be a beautiful thing.

But BiGTRiP is annual adventure just for me. Once a year, I’m reassured by this blissful chance to escape the noise. This world is so, so loud; it only gets louder each year. Whenever I look ahead to ponder my next BiGTRiP location, I ask myself: Where can I truly escape and return to nature? The roots of civilization and soul?

It helps that I’ve become a national park nut in the last decade with a goal to visit all 63 in this country, and perhaps a bunch of parks in other countries, too.

BiGTRiP has taken me to some glorious locations these last five years: the “other side” of California from lush Lake Tahoe to sweltering Death Valley, the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, the Maritime provinces and national parks of Canada, and all over freaking Alaska. Gorgeous, all of these places.

I’ve seen a lot in five years, and I’ve learned a lot. I’ve become a better man every time I’ve left my laptop at home, and paused my work and mindless scrolling alike, growing even a breath and a step more present in my wanderings.

This year for BiGTRiP V, I flew to Las Vegas to rent a car and drive all over Utah and eastern Nevada to visit six national parks — a new personal record for park visits in such a span of time. I booked this trip several months ago without giving much thought to some logistics – namely, that mid-August temperatures in this region would top out at 105 Fahrenheit.

Oops.

No matter, I reassured myself; I’d just treat this year’s BiGTRiP as a literal wilderness journey. I stocked up on water jugs and electrolytes and salty snacks, and I got the supersized spray sunscreen bottle.

This year, more than any other, I would escape to the undistracted wilderness and return to civilization a different man.

…or would I?

I know I haven’t been blogging consistently on my website for a while. My first blog of 2025 is finally coming in…September? Good heavens. Don’t tell 2011 Tom.

My goal for the rest of this dwindling year is to return to some sort of form – just one of my takeaways from BiGTRiP V. I want to write about my wilderness journey from Vegas to Moab and back over a series of posts, and I also want to flip the calendar back to March of this year when I embarked with my church to the Dominican Republic, my first-ever missions trip experience. I’ve already written about that week on my laptop and simply need to fine-tune some stories for this blog.

I want to end 2025 by stepping back into what brings me life: telling my stories, especially those stories I find when I leave what I know for the unknown.

Because magic happens when we un-distract ourselves.

Alas, the question is always: Will we allow ourselves the discomfort that comes with un-distraction? The new silence, the overtaking restlessness? What if magic is waiting there for us in that awful stillness, eager to be found, if only we’ll wait one more moment?

Wouldn’t that be something to behold?

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Have a thought? Wander over to Journey of No Distractions: An Intro to BiGTRiP V and leave a comment!

On September 21, I left Asheville for a road trip to visit family and friends across Pennsylvania.

On October 2, I returned home to a hellscape like nothing I’d ever seen — well, maybe in the movies.

Midway through my trip up North, a tropical storm blazed through my mountain town, an unassuming 500 miles from the Gulf of Mexico where it had formed. “Tropical storm” makes it sound like a mere dark, rainy day worthy of a good book and a London Fog.

But 60 to 70 mile-per-hour winds and the constant sound of trees falling will make it difficult to enjoy a book. She may not have been a hurricane by the time she reached the Blue Ridge, but Helene could have cared less what we called her. She was relentless.

“What’s going on in Asheville?” my aunt asked me when I visited her in eastern Pennsylvania, the day after the storm had hit.

I’ll admit, I was in a London Fog state of mind three states away. I’d assumed that Asheville had simply gotten lots of rain: a tree or two falling here, a river rising there. I recalled one of our riverside parks flooding a couple years ago. The bordering road was shut down for a week, maybe less. But then all was well again as the waters receded to normal height.

This was my faraway visual for Helene: one flooded street by a park, safely removed from any homes or businesses. Human lives.

But the footage I’d soon find online from the state of Pennsylvania put me in a state of disbelief for days to come. Biltmore Village, the quaint collection of shops and restaurants just across the gate to the Biltmore Estate, had gone entirely underwater.

Summit Coffee, one of my favorite working spots in town, had been pummeled in our trademark River Arts District, its roof and walls torn and gutted with mud. Our two rivers, the French Broad and the Swannanoa, had crested to about 25 feet, eclipsing records set by the infamous Flood of 1916.

I walked through the River Arts District years ago, noting an odd-colored brick painted high up a building which had marked the height of the river back in 1916. I remember thinking then how fantastical it was for the river to climb that high; how absurd it would be for our river ever to reach that brick again.

To see a new odd-colored brick that will be painted even higher than that brick of 1916 will be a sobering, unthinkable sight.

Unthinkable — and yet all too thinkable. Not a day has passed since the storm when I’ve not been forced to think about the storm — or what followed. The “storm after the storm.”

No power. No internet. No running water. Hardly any cell service. Not for days, not for weeks.

Terms like “potable water” and “non-potable water” entered the Asheville vernacular. Where to find working outlets for phones and laptops became daily treasure hunts. Finding wifi anywhere in town was like the dopamine hit of a metal detector going off in the Sahara. People anchored themselves to library parking lots with their laptops and phones just to get a long enough drag.

Friends and family encouraged me not to return home in the aftermath of the storm. I was not ignorant of the fact that I’d be returning to a near-apocalypse. And while I had a bounty of places I could have wandered — how wondrous! — I felt in my soul this need to return home.

Truthfully, it wasn’t even a decision. Another Tom of yesteryear would have leapt at the chance to live on the road again, hopping couches and guest rooms in this thrill of life on the move.

This Tom of today, however, grew wearied by the notion of additional wandering after eleven days already wandered in Pennsylvania. The thought of another week or two away, or even three or four, exhausted me more than the stark reality of returning home to an apartment without power, without internet, without running water.

Deciding my non-decision, I smiled at my discovery: I now have a home in this life where I yearn to be.

Even a home as diminished as Asheville.

I returned home six days after the storm, taking an extra hour or two to weave my way back, the main interstate collapsed by the floodwaters. I found trees — gigantic ones — downed at every turn, their massive root systems exposed like brains from cadavers. Power lines laid dangled in the streets. Dust and dirt and thick, black mud caked the shoulders and even centers of roads. Darkened traffic light after darkened traffic light adorned belabored four-way stops from intersection to intersection.

Eventually I returned to my neighborhood, now arched by power poles bent at 45-degree angles. My heart leapt as I drove up the hill to my apartment complex. I found two lower-level units emptied of their carpeting and furniture, flooded by the storm, including one which I had the opportunity to select when I first moved here two years ago. My second-level unit was unharmed, save for a few picture frames blown over from two windows left open.

Transferring luggage and supplies from my vehicle, I heard a perpetual hum of chainsaws and helicopters. Fallen trees dismantled down the street; devastation examined from the heavens. I heard this hum for days. We were in a perpetual ground zero.

Driving around town, I saw more than a few trees smashed atop roofs of homes and vehicles alike. I heard reports of dozens of lives lost, with dozens yet accounted for.

I started experiencing this eerie sensation of “survivor’s guilt.”

I should have been here, I thought over and over. Why was I permitted to miss the storm while away on another of my ridiculous gallivants?

I felt guilty that my apartment was spared while two others in my immediate vicinity were not. And why were so many others hurting from loss of property, even loss of life, while I merely had a few picture frames to rehang?

That first day back, I departed for Biltmore Village and the River Arts District, these beautiful places whose devastation I’d only seen online. I needed to see it, live it for myself. Biltmore looked like a bomb had gone off, the roads barricaded and still brown with dirt. Restaurants were in collapsed ruins.

I parked in the River Arts, and I walked for hours. Sidewalks were cracked and slanted; chunks of road had fallen away and were straight-up missing. Plastic bags and trash hung from the trees like ghosts in the breeze. Everything smelled of mud and wet garbage.

One of my most frequently visited restaurants with family and friends, White Duck Taco Shop, nestled along the French Broad, was gutted. All the outdoor tables and chairs were swept away. A school bus was upside down 50 yards away.

I felt the shallow breathing of sadness, along with this growing guilt for missing this first storm. I resolved not to abandon my home for the second — this storm after the storm. Coming home with giant jugs of water, canned food, propane tanks for my camp stove, and other snacks and drinks and supplies, I wanted to ride out this new storm with my city and help as I could.

The first few days home, I pooped in a porta potty outside the fire station down the road. I didn’t know you could still flush a toilet without running water — as long as you could refill your tank. Those first couple weeks after Helene, finding flushing water was just another part of my daily rhythm, along with finding power and wifi to do my writing and other work.

It took a few days to summon the stamina, but I finally emptied my darkened fridge and freezer of all the rotting food — a couple hundred dollars worth, I’m sure. Each evening I cooked canned vegetables and chicken breast over a camp stove in my black kitchen lit by candles.

You know what’s humorous? Upon leaving Asheville in September, I’d ordered a 6-pack of Brita filters to arrive when I returned home, ready for use. That Amazon package never arrived; its contents would have been useless anyway.

Our city’s primary reservoir got annihilated by Helene, and officials have continually said it’s going to be a weeks-long return for drinkable running water. The Y outside of town started offering free showers to members and non-members alike, and I showered there every other day — a 20-minute drive well worth the cleansing of body and soul. A dear church family whose house operates on a well also let me shower and do laundry at their home one day.

When I first got home, I was told my power would return in two days. I naively believed the power company, felt my patience pushed to the brink when two days turned to sixteen.

Millions of people around the world don’t have the bliss of a light switch, I kept thinking. Why am I so spoiled?

By day twelve or thirteen, the power company finally found their way to my street. I tell you, it was like seeing the cavalry. I can’t tell you the joy of finding my lights on when I came home that sixteenth night. Internet would still take another week to come back, however — my first-world patience pushed even further.

Running water returned after three weeks, though not safe for drinking or washing dishes or brushing teeth without first boiling. So, every three days I’ve boiled a giant chili pot of water for such use. Yet another normalized rhythm to my new life.

As of now all of my utilities are back, sans potable water. The water is starting to look less yellow, though.

Hey, I’ll take it.

I’ve returned to Beaver Lake for my morning walks, a somber yet peaceful place with less tree covering than it used to have. Giant, empty spaces now adorn several bends in the dirt path around the lake.

In all my walks around this lake, and in all my walks and drives around town, as I’ve absorbed the weight of physical and emotional devastation at every turn, I’m struck by an unshakable detail:

Entire trees have thundered to the earth … and still their leaves held.

Where 70 mile-per-hour winds brought 70-year-old trees to splintered knees, their leaves like fingers remained attached to their branching hands.

Isn’t that something?

Winds and rains powerful enough to rip a tree from its foundation, crush roofs, and destroy a reservoir and power lines requiring weeks to repair —

— but not so powerful to rip a leaf from the branch.

When everything else is falling, spirits and trunks alike, the leaf does not.

Not yet. Not then. Not for a leaf in late September.

Not when autumn’s call had yet to sound.

It’s poetry, isn’t it? Even a horrific storm like Helene has her limits.

Even evil has its limits. Evil powerful enough to steal a child’s innocence, or slaughter people in war, or bring a community, a city, an entire region to tears.

But not so powerful to quench the light. To halt humanity’s response. To halt the church’s response. To resist a hurricane-force gale of supplies and manpower and love. Neighbors chopping trees, businesses serving free meals, churches becoming distribution centers.

The leaf still holds.

Goodness persists through the dark.

Help is on the way.

Help is here.

Our leaves hold tight, and hope remains.

It doesn’t erase the devastation. Debris will remain scattered about the Blue Ridge for months. Hearts will wince for many years longer. The hurt is near when you look out the window, drive down the street, breathe in this new murky air.

But look at the leaves.

Only now in October, November — all these weeks after Helene as leaves on still standing trees have turned yellow and orange and fiery red — only now have they been given permission by their Maker to fall.

Not from a storm in September.

But from autumn’s long-awaited whisper.

Evil often disrupts our earth, but it cannot break the inevitable. The call of autumn is the reminder that good will win. The sad things will become untrue. The leaves will hold until it is time for them to fall.

I walked back through my front door six days after Helene, and it’s been a wild portal to reenter these last few weeks.

I’ve returned home to a splintered city, yet one that feels more bound together than ever before. Free hot meals at every turn; bottled water as far as the eye can see. Beyond food and water, I see hearts holding one another, giving space for us to grieve. People helping people; souls helping souls.

Even through autumn, our leaf still holds.

If you’d like to give toward Tropical Storm Helene relief efforts here in the Blue Ridge, consider making a donation to my church, Fellowship Asheville.

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Have a thought? Wander over to After Helene: And the Leaf Still Holds and leave a comment!

Being “active” in life need not always equate to flashy and crazy, but passivity is generally my tenor. I consider myself an adaptable person who finds a way to handle what’s thrown at him, a valuable skill to master, to be sure, but I’ve grown self-aware of my need to make life happen more often. My introversion is a great example of this, as I must force myself into interactions with people lest I naturally remain isolated.

A storyteller I follow refers to his growth in the numerical unit of past iterations of himself. “That was eight Robs ago,” he’d say of himself, back when he used to believe one thing or behave a totally different way. I’ve started viewing my own growth in this vein, thinking about all the Toms that have existed in this singular Tom, particularly with regard to this active-passive dynamic.

My passivity has run especially true in matters of relational conflict. Given the option to fight a conflict or flight a conflict (please excuse my incorrect usage of a noun as a verb in the name of symmetry), I will flight nine times out of ten.

Ah, but then there’s always that one instance . . .

I recently attended a men’s conference at a church separate from mine here in Asheville. I wasn’t particularly inspired by the event’s website, one of those stereotypical evangelical men’s conferences titled with bold, capitalized font and loud colors, a single paragraph description for “men” which, if you read between the lines, felt more like a conference for straight and married men.

I didn’t think anything offered at this “men’s” conference would be for me as a non-straight, non-married man; as such, I didn’t want to go.

But, I reconciled, I’d be going with a couple friends, and it was only a 4-hour commitment, not too far from my home, and if nothing else wouldn’t it be active and outgoing of me to step out of isolation for an afternoon?

It’s not like this melancholic gay introvert’s social calendar is ever bustling.

So, I went. And the conference started out okay. Nothing great, but nothing awful. It was lovely just to sit between two new friends while the first speaker delivered his big masculine hoorah. I’ve gotten to know and love and appreciate these guys over the last year, and my life wouldn’t be the same without them in this city.

After that first speaker, though, the conference took a hard turn. Midway through his message, the second speaker started espousing some pandemic conspiracy theory as gospel, as if we were all blind if we didn’t also believe it, and I’m still unsure what relevance (let alone appropriateness) that held to being a man of God. What, real men of God don’t trust their government or facts?

Maybe the host church didn’t know this guest speaker would say something so ridiculous? At least, that’s how I rationalized the idiocy I’d just heard.

After this guy spoke, though, the emcee of the event — the pastor of the host church — double-downed on the speaker’s claims. Rather than refute nonsense, he reaffirmed it. He actually took it further, blaming our government for mask mandates and social distancing and the like.

My entire body clenched. I couldn’t believe such overt politics and conspiracy-speak being preached at us from multiple men on a church stage — one of them a pastor. That their comments were of the extreme conservative bent made no difference; I’d have also felt uncomfortable with liberal politics being preached in a church building. I will admit, though, feeling particularly triggered in this idolatrous, cultish conservative age of Trump.

As we broke for lunch, I could have brought up my discomfort with my two friends on either side of me. I had plenty of opportunity. But also . . . passivity.

I remained quiet, reconciling to myself that surely nothing else nonsensical or offensive would be said. I went outside with my friends to enjoy a catered lunch from my favorite BBQ restaurant in town, assuming the worst was behind me.

Foreshadowing enough?

Later in the conference, the host pastor introduced a panel segment with the day’s three speakers, including that pandemic conspiracy dude, inviting the audience to ask them whatever difficult questions we could muster. Among several potential topics he rattled off, he invited us to inquire about the rise of gay identification in our nation’s youth.

My body once again clenched, my gut churning, this pastor’s prompt dripping with contempt for this rise, contempt for LGBT+ people. As if this were a problem to be fixed? As if more young people coming to grips with their sexuality were a bad thing? As if a 16-year old’s feeling far safer coming out in 2024, versus 1924, or even 1994, were so repulsive?

Thankfully, nobody in the audience did ask about this topic. I can only imagine the summersaults and nosedives my insides would have done. But this pastor would also make an utter doozy of an anti-LGBT+ comment to close the conference, which I’ll get to momentarily.

Comment after out-of-bounds comment, immersed in a crowd of a hundred of the straightest-of-straight Christian men, I felt pushed to the brink, no longer expecting to “get anything” out of this conference. This was sheer survival mode now, taking me back to teenage isolation and bully-evasion, staring at the clock with only a longing to go home.

I hadn’t felt that out of place in a church building since those middle and high school years. It’s a blessing beyond words to have found such a solid church home here in Asheville, but also in my previous church homes in Charlotte and Southern California. Whichever church I’ve joined from my mid-20s to my mid-30s, I haven’t just had to survive as some dimensionless heterosexual façade of myself.

I’ve actually been able to thrive in these three churches as the real me. The real introverted me who doesn’t fit neatly into an extroverted church culture, who needs structured times to connect as well as times away to recharge. The real melancholic me who needs to feel what many often ignore, who needs others to feel the brokenness with me.

The real me, a man attracted only to men, who needs his church not to tell me to stay quiet about my sexuality, not to turn me away, but let me in — all the way in with them.

I left that men’s conference with renewed appreciation that my sexuality hasn’t just been tolerated at these three churches from California to Carolina, but welcomed. And yes, there is a supreme difference.

I’m convinced more than ever that God has led me to each church, along with the circles of people within each church, through my adult journey. The gratitude is more tangible than ever.

But back to how this conference ended . . .

After four hours of unchecked politics and conspiracies, along with homophobic sentiments, I just wanted to leave and do my best to forget all about this awful event I never even should have signed up for. I started to see the light as the worship team assembled for some final songs, including an altar call for men to step down and receive prayer.

And then, in his closing prayer, the host pastor cried out to God that “we have a man wearing a dress in our nation’s health department,” referring to an openly transgender official currently serving in our government.

This bully pastor’s prayer set me off like nothing else I’d heard that day, like nothing I’ve heard in a church in 36 years.

A transgender person in our government is the epitome of our nation’s woes? The fiercest threat to masculinity? Are you the kind of man I’m supposed to be?

Are you fucking serious?

Notwithstanding yet another brazen political overstep, Bully Pastor’s words were utterly devoid of any shred of humanity. The person he cried out against may have just as well been a mutant, a monster — not a fellow human created in the image of God, His most prized creation.

I struggled to believe all of this was even real. Surely I was having the funkiest dream, struggling to awaken from an unwakeable sleep. Did an actual pastor of an actual church really say such a horrid thing for a hundred people to hear?

I opened my eyes for the rest of his closing prayer, blinking quite a few times. The more I understood his words, the more I considered the ramifications, the angrier I got in my seat.

What if that invoked official were in the room? Or a loved one of hers were present? Would any of those people be drawn nearer to Jesus in that prayer or hell no?

Or how about this actual possibility: what if someone in that sanctuary, a room that included teenagers, definitively experienced gender dysphoria, or simply didn’t know what they were feeling in this dissonance with their sex and gender? How else would anyone struggling with their gender identity interpret such a pastor’s prayer of disgust for a trans person in our government but that they are also the epitome of all that’s wrong with America? Simply for existing and struggling and not fitting into his straight, macho-man mold?

Did the Gospel advance in that closing prayer and in that entire conference? Or did someone — multiple someones — leave the church that afternoon feeling worse than they felt that morning, worse perhaps than they’ve ever felt about their body and the state of their soul, their very relationship with God?

Did Jesus or shame win the day?

As someone with a G to offer my LGBT+ siblings, I can say that if I were 16 in the room, or even 26, shame would have handily defeated me. It nearly won over me at 36.

Nearly.

After the conference I did indeed race home, leaving my friends, sick to my stomach. My passivity beckoned me to “forget about it” and move on with my life; pretend it didn’t happen, and never go back to that church again.

Two or three Toms ago, I’m convinced this is exactly what I would have done.

But not this Tom.

I spent the next few days in literal stomach-churning debate about what to do. I embarked on a solo hike for three hours, following a solitude assignment for one of my men’s groups. The assignment encouraged me to ask God to “search my heart,” according to the psalmist, listening for His voice with every step. And then after this searching, the naming — what does God see in me?

I teared up on that hike as three words emerged:

Empathy.

Boldness.

Justice.

I care deeply about my fellow man, particularly my fellow sexual minorities.

I will tell my story, both for myself and for those not ready or not safe to tell theirs.

And I will call for accountability and integrity in ministry where neither is intact.

I left that hike convinced of what I needed to do. The action I needed to take.

While at that men’s conference, I failed to stand up to this bully pastor. Part of me regrets not finding him after the conference, or even storming the stage or shouting at him mid-prayer.

I was angry, but I was also scared. Terrified, actually. He was so much bigger than me, both physically and emotionally. How could I possibly speak confidently or coherently to his face? Was going home to write him something the cowardly or ultimately wiser move?

A friend recently affirmed my levelheadedness, for showing restraint at the conference and granting myself time to collect all my thoughts. I appreciated his affirmation, also thinking there’s probably an uncomfortable middle ground in there somewhere — some form of “reactionary restraint.”

What would this bully pastor have had to say, how far would he have had to push the line of ignorance and bigotry, before I could no longer stay silent in my seat? Surely, there’s a line.

Nevertheless, collect my thoughts I did for the whole next week.

I spent that week writing this pastor with, I hope, a proper balance of direct criticism with open invitation. I shared some of my story and offered my perspective as a sexual minority in the room, and I also called him out on the multiple inappropriate, if not awful things he said that day. Things that sounded nothing like the Jesus I follow.

Beyond the harrowing reality of what this pastor said that day, the perhaps scarier realization is the permission he gave a hundred people in the room — a hundred Christian men — to deride and shame queer people in the name of Jesus. After all, if a pastor can say what he said on a church stage, isn’t every believer allowed to name-call their leaders, their neighbors, their children’s classmates, or even their own children?

I cannot even imagine what a father with a gay or trans child will do next after that conference. Or if a father from that conference will one day have a gay or trans child, how will he react to their coming out based on this pastor’s words? It’s a horrifying thought.

I sent this bully pastor my honest feedback on his men’s conference, and while I’ve yet to receive a response, an uncertainty lingering in the air, I also feel greater peace and resolve for this life I’m living, including a budding confidence in who I am. Those first couple days after the conference, I regretted going. I regretted not trusting my intuition about the event.

But now I’m grateful to have attended, to have experienced firsthand what so many queer and SSA people experience in churches across America and around the world: a place where it isn’t safe to struggle, to bring their sexuality or gender identity into any speck of Christian light. A place where their bodies and identities are attacked, shamed, and deemed the epitome of our nation’s depravity, that they themselves are depraved in God’s eyes.

After the conference, my introversion led me deep into isolation. My melancholic spirit prompted me to grieve viscerally. And my sexuality, driven by my empathy and boldness, propelled me to action, to seek justice.

Back in middle school, I wouldn’t dare stand up to my bullies. I took their verbal beatings or ran away from them whenever they got close.

But that was eight Toms ago.

This Tom will make life happen when life happens to me. This Tom won’t as easily tuck his tail and run.

What I experienced at this church was deflating and disgusting.

And I won’t stand for it.

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Have a thought? Wander over to That Time I Stood Up to a Homophobic, Transphobic Bully – Also, a Pastor and leave a comment!

But then other years I haven’t followed through — most notably, my doomed YouTube video to kick off 2021, in which I envisioned writing my first song via guitar, learning Polish, juggling, and doing a handstand. I still haven’t returned to that video with a concession on how miserably I failed all those goals that year.

Oh, the shame.

I don’t make videos as much any more, and I’ve often wondered if that failure has anything to do with it. I’ve actually thought a lot about that video the last three years, wondering why I didn’t succeed with my intentions. I think they were good, specific and measurable, and I practiced something like accountability by speaking them out, creating a sense of expectation beyond myself.

I’d done the same thing with my Year of Flights to kick off 2018: a measurable goal, clearly announced to my newsletter subscribers and social media followers — that this would be my life for the next twelve months, and so it was.

I don’t know what was more magical: seeing those twelve lovely places or the setting of a bold intention as I followed through on it.

Sometimes we speak things out, and they become true. Like we’re wizards spinning magic into this world; our wands as our pens and mouths, created by a Creator with the same capacity to write and speak and do. Create.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

– Genesis 1:3 (ESV)

And then other times we declare bold things for our stories that do not come true. These goals, these new stories, these fuller versions of ourselves — well, they don’t form as we hoped, if even they form at all.

Looking back on the last few years, I don’t understand why I could board twelve planes in twelve months — a solid dent into my budget that year — but not learn to juggle. How much of a time investment would the latter have required? Five minutes a day for three hundred days? A hundred days, maybe less? Far less of a cost than the financial investment of twelve flights.

Last January, I kicked off 2023 with the ambitious dream to re-release Struggle Central for its 10-year anniversary come April. Initially, I felt amazing about setting that intention — but a solid stretch in February left me unsure if I’d actually follow through. Relearning how to format headers and footers and page sizes for not one, not two, but three different versions of a book proved a literal headache.

Oh, and there was also the matter of writing a new afterword that felt relevant, along with recording this new section for audiobook. Another task, another headache altogether.

Setting that intention in January was lovely. I’d been thinking about it for two or three years leading up to that 10-year anniversary year.

But following through? Would all the work required — with only a couple months to do it — be worth it?

I languished.

After an apathetic February, though, something happened in March. This thought arrested me:

I decided I couldn’t not rewrite this book. Because I knew I’d look back on my 2023 with piercing regret: a 10-year anniversary window only ever opens once.

The pain of that future regret was greater than the present pains of writing and reformatting (and rewriting and rewriting).

So, I got started one day in March. I started writing, reformatting, and rewriting. I felt like I was back in college for a couple months, staying up late that final week, like completing a research paper the morning it’s due.

Life sucked for several weeks in March and April. I doubted myself and wondered if anyone else even cared if I wrote this book again.

But I also felt more purpose than I’d felt in years. I cared about something, even if nobody else did. The more time I invested and the closer I approached my deadline, the better my pain felt. Like finding that groove in mile 7 of a half-marathon.

The pain was (eventually) worth it.

I think that’s the secret to following through on any goal or intention, whether you speak it out or keep it to yourself — realizing that the pain is part of it, makes the yet unattained thing what it is: magic waiting to be made. New creation.

Beyond the simple wave of a wand, however, true magic requires a cost. As humans we’re prone to take the path with much less cost. Why suffer the road with potholes when the newly paved one runs parallel to it?

But what if not following through on an intention is actually your road with potholes? What if this road of apathy is actually the one with greater longterm cost?

If I look back on my failed intentions of 2021, the pain of not learning to juggle was apparently not greater than the pain of investing five minutes a day to the task. Same with the handstands and the Polish and the songwriting.

Like, yeah, it would have been really nice to accomplish all those things that year.

But really nice doesn’t cut it.

I was never pained that I couldn’t, pained that I didn’t.

Therein lies the secret to new creation, be it books or songs or David-esque sculpted bodies.

What will be the cost of creating this new thing? And what will be the cost if I don’t?

Because there’s a cost to both: the cost of doing something and the cost of not. We only have so much time, energy, and money. How will we use — and not use — our finite resources?

As I’ve started mapping out my 2024, I’ve flipped to the back page of my agenda, the one opposite December, to write down what I want my life to look like across several arenas at that juncture: physical, relational, spiritual, financial, and travel goals among them.

They’re written down. They’re spoken out. Step one is accomplished.

But now for the cost assessment: what will be required of me to spin this new magic into my life?

Because unless I count the cost of both the doing and the not doing, I doubt I’ll accomplish many of them. My life will look very similar a year from now.

Quite frankly, it needs to hurt later if I don’t take some uncomfortable steps now.

I need to feel the stab of not having upped my gym attendance from twice a week to thrice a week.

I need to feel the sorrow of not traveling outside America for the first time since that fabled Year of Flights six years ago.

I need to feel the sting of stifling those whispers in my soul, as if they were the caring calls of a friend — call him Holy Spirit or Future Tom — being sent to voicemail, again and again.

Some of the whispers may sound silly to anyone reading. My life will certainly go on if I “only” go to the gym twice a week, all year long. Or if I don’t escape America during an election year.

But I know I’m capable of more. I know international travel enriches my mind, expands my appreciations for diversity and creativity. I know pushing my body also strengthens my mind, which also improves my capacity for emotions and relationships.

So do I, or don’t I, want these greater expansions in 2024?

Absolutely, I do.

Okay.

Well.

There’s a cost.

When will I go to the gym a third time a week? I already go on Monday and Wednesday evenings. But my gym isn’t open any other time I’m currently free — except Friday and Saturday mornings.

Morning workouts?? But . . . I prefer evenings.

Alas. Either I change my schedule, or I wake up early to work out one additional day a week.

When will I flee America this year, and how much will that trip cost? How much will I have to DoorDash that month to compensate for the flight, the public transport, the food, the lodging, and any recreational exploits I get myself into?

It would be easier, for now, to stick with my twice-weekly gym sessions and not travel outside America this year.

But if I push through these complications, this here-and-now discomfort, I believe these investments into me will pay off this year. And beyond. As will the twenty other intentions I’ve set for the year ahead.

I’m in my mid-thirties now, and I know it’s easy to feel the shine of a new year only to lose focus of the luster within a few months or weeks. It’s still early into 2024, and I’ve already made solid progress on my intentions for this year.

I know the discomfort, even the pain, is coming. But still the whispers persist. I want to continue counting the cost and heeding those holy whispers all year long.

And when I reach that December page of my agenda, I want to look back on my 2024 with a new appreciation for this one life I’ve been given.

That I counted the cost to create anew, and that this cost of new creation was so, so worth it.

I’d love to learn what sort of things you hope to create in your life and in the universe this year. Care to share below?

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He stepped into caretaking for my grandfather after he had his stroke, moving in with my grandparents until my grandfather passed, remaining to assist my grandmother in her final years. He developed cancer amidst all his caretaking, a health situation that never resolved the way any of us wanted it to.

I’m relieved my uncle is no longer in pain. But I admit remaining rattled by the injustice of it all: I can’t help thinking of numerous celebrities and politicians who get to keep living their awful lives, well into their seventies and beyond; meanwhile, my humble uncle is gone.

I imagine I’ll be wrestling with the Lord for a while over how things “should” have gone for Pat. It’s perhaps my closest-to-home example yet of how this broken world makes no sense sometimes.

And yet whether Pat lived to 68 or 98, I cannot deny his legacy, particularly the one word that surfaces again and again when I think of him.

Servant.

The servant sentiment is all over his obituary’s guestbook page and infused in all of our family’s conversations with one another. Uncle Pat served others. He constantly did things for people — his parents, everyone. Gifted in carpentry and craftsmanship, he particularly shined when it came to home repairs and renovations, particularly amidst my aging grandparents and their aging house.

Uncle Pat was as faithful as they come, loving Jesus and loving people, devoting his life to whatever God called him to do. He put his life on hold for nearly a decade to care for his ailing parents, the last decade he’d live on this earth — although I’m sure he’d disagree with that “on hold” descriptor. Despite whatever other dreams he may have had for the rest of his life, I’m also certain he never felt his life was paused or wasted.

Uncle Pat had a crystal-clear sense of responsibility and love, and he was always right where he felt God wanted him to be.

Toward the end of 2014 I was traveling the country in a Mitsubishi Galant, and I stayed with Pat and my grandparents in Pennsylvania over the holidays. When discussing New Year’s plans with my friend Katie in Georgia, we decided it’d be swell to spend the night in Times Square. My poor Galant filled to the brim with all my life’s belongings, Pat offered to pick up Katie with me from the airport, and she and I did indeed acquire that life experience.

Time and again on numerous visits to my homeland, Pat also transported me to/from the airport and train station, regardless the time of day, never complaining or feeling obligated despite his health challenges these last few years. He recruited me for help readying my grandparents’ house for sale last year, and he always insisted on paying me.

One December years ago, Pat took me and my sister to an incredible old church in Philadelphia for a Christmas Eve service. Afterward, he spontaneously decided to take us to nearby Nottingham, home to a famed Zuniga family Christmas story, where my grandparents and their children spent their first Christmas in Pennsylvania after moving north from Texas. Pat drove my sister and me right past their old house, delighted that we could see it for ourselves after reading about it for years in my grandfather’s yearly emails.

Not once did anyone else in my family ever think to take me to the old Zuniga Nottingham house until Uncle Pat did.

Pat never married or had children, and this has long inspired me. Now in my mid-thirties, I don’t foresee marriage or children for my life-story. More than any sort of “lack” this present-future elicits, I am better seeing my singleness in the gainful sort of way Paul wrote about in Scripture. I feel emboldened by how Henri Nouwen lived out his own singleness in service to the disabled and countless others, and I view Uncle Pat in the same light.

Of course, sometimes I do peer ahead at the next thirty or fifty years and wonder where the purpose — or the love — will come from. Will anyone surround me on my own deathbed?

With assurance and comfort, I can now look at Uncle Pat: a man who lived with incredible purpose and love until his dying breath. My beautiful parents took him into their Georgia home in his final months, and he was visited and surrounded by his family until the very day he died.

I got to visit Uncle Pat mere hours before he passed. It pained me to see him gasping for breath, his eyes clasped shut, his spirit clearly drifting. I had written him a letter the week before, a letter I’d hoped to send him or read for him in the months to come. I thought I still had a few months to perfect my words.

I didn’t know months would be days, that my drafted words would forever be left imperfect.

I never got to send or read him that letter, though I stammered a few of those recollections in my final moments alone with him. Perhaps writing that letter was more for my soul than his. Maybe I’ll fully tell him all he meant to me one day in eternity. How I hope for that day.

Pat deeply cared about his parents’ legacy — our family’s legacy. I can see why this mattered to him as someone without any children of his own. I think about that, too: what will I pass on? To whom? Who will care?

He’s entrusted me with some of his belongings, including a slew of letters, documents, and photographs. I told him I’d steward our family’s legacy well, providing a generational conduit of the story God wrote in my grandfather and grandmother to my nieces and future nephews and hopefully generations yet to come.

But when I tell the story of my grandparents, I want to tell the story of Uncle Pat, too. For his own story is worthy of a legacy: a man who walked his father to the bathroom and fed him and talked with him even when he struggled to talk back, day after day, night after night for six long years. He continued to care for his mother and share precious time with her, including Jeopardy! five nights a week for the next three years until her passing.

Recalling my Edenesque childhood with Uncle Pat, I think instantly of his old Jeep Wrangler. Our drives around Langhorne in his zipper-down plastic windows. To this day, I see a Jeep and think of Pat; the two are forever intertwined.

He often walked me and my siblings to the 7-Eleven down the street for nectarous Slurpees. How it makes me smile to have treated him to a Slurpee this past spring before we sold my grandparents’ house.

One precious memory of Uncle Pat is one I can’t fully tell, and that’s okay; it’s a memory for he and I to share. He had been arguing with his brother who also lived in my grandparents’ house, and he said something admittedly out of character. Knowing I was in the neighboring room, unavoidably listening, he apologized to me, confessing he’d let his emotions get the better of his tongue.

My uncle’s humility that day shaped him with renewed strength. And he was already one of the strongest men I knew. I also couldn’t help noticing his bond grow with that aforementioned brother during some difficult transitions in the years ahead.

“I wish I had an Uncle Pat,” my dad said with teary eyes on a family-wide Zoom call just a couple weeks before his passing. We were discussing Pat’s fated prognosis, funeral plans, and all the other awful things you must discuss when someone’s life is flickering before your eyes.

And yet despite the gloom in the Zoom room that day, there was also unspeakable light. My dad spoke of the spiritual influence his brother had had on his three kids, along with the emotional investment in each of us. Pat cared for his parents, he cared for his brother and other siblings, he cared for his nieces and nephews, and he cared for his grandnieces and grandnephews.

Pat just cared. A measured sincerity in his voice made you feel special.

He’s gone too soon, and I really, really hate it. I dreamt of countless adventures for him in a life beyond caretaking and cancer. He’d hiked the Appalachian Trail and enjoyed many-a-campout, and I always hoped he’d venture down to the Blue Ridge to visit me. Perhaps we’d have shared in an epic outdoor trek. I lament that we never did.

And yet despite the tragedy on this side of eternity’s curtain, I can only imagine the bliss he’s discovering on the other side — reunited with his parents whom he served so well, and reuniting with other family members, no doubt eager to connect the generations there as he did here.

I became an uncle six years ago, and Uncle Pat has always been my template for uncling. Because everyone needs an Uncle Pat. Someone to remember them on their birthdays, buy them Slurpees, ask about their lives, and drive them around on special journeys.

If my nieces or future nephews ever have anything positive to say about their Uncle Tom, it will be because Uncle Pat showed me how to uncle well. His legacy will live through me beyond a box of photographs.

Of all the earthly injustices, another is that many people do not have an uncle Pat in their lives. I thank God in His grace for sparing me of this injustice. How grateful I am never to know a life without such an uncle in mine.

I can’t wait to see how he fixes up the Zuniga corner of Paradise’s mansion.

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He looks at me with shock, even disbelief, as if I’d just told him I ran a marathon on Antarctica or perhaps the moon. I nod with a smirk.

Yes. I traveled all over Alaska all by myself.

What, like it’s hard?

Here’s a multi-faceted realization I’ve found in recent years: I absolutely love to travel solo — and most people absolutely do not. Traveling solo doesn’t daunt me; indeed, it ignites something primal and wondrous in me.

Comparing myself to how most other people travel, though, is another mountain: Why are they not like me? Why am I not at all like them?

Left to my own wanderings, I feel no fear or shame in venturing to faraway places by myself. I just wandered across Alaska for two weeks, and I’ve done it across 48 other states and 6 provinces for nine months on the road. These past two years, I’ve taken solo trips to national parks in California and Washington, getting off the grid with the Lord, a journal, and the blessed open road.

Have I felt lonely at times? Sure.

But have I felt despondent, mired in solitary misery throughout these journeys? Not at all.

On the contrary — something leaps within me when I’m alone in a place I’ve never been. Or when I’ve returned to a place I love, for that matter. It’s as if hope takes tangible form before my eyes: every dash in the road, every peak beyond the horizon, every park, every city, every cup of coffee in a local café.

Alas, our comparisons to other people induce a terrible conflict. How we look, how we dress, how much money we make, how many friends we have, and pertinent to this post . . . how we travel.

When I peek beyond my wandering bubble and hear of friends and loved ones sharing special trips with one another, my heart sinks. Social media does us no favors here.

But my heart doesn’t stay sunk; it bubbles back to its usual place in my chest amid the tension of many other feelings.

I want what they have; also, I do not.

Because back to my bubble, I enjoy traveling solo. I really do. It’s thrilling to wake up every day with only a vague sense of what’s coming. I’ve learned to love traveling spontaneously within a skeleton of structure (ie, I know where I’m sleeping each night, but the next 16 hours of daylight are up for grabs!).

Back outside my bubble though, I wonder: Am I intentionally missing out? Am I robbing myself of other joys? Why do I look back on fifteen years of travels as an adult, mostly travels without people but also some with them, and more fondly recount the trips without?

I put Alaska right up there — one of the best trips of my life. I’ll be reliving that solo trip for quite some time.

Here’s the thing, though, about my solo travels: it’s rarely entirely solo. I’ve long enjoyed using Couchsurfing as a way to find not just free lodging but full-fledged connection with like-spirited hosts who volunteer their homes for story-seeking travelers. And there’s nothing like a hostel to bring together eclectic wanderers from all corners of this planet. Both modes of lodging are great for a budget, but even better for a story.

So, yes, I traveled solo across Alaska for two weeks. And also I didn’t.

~

In the mountain-cupped island paradise of Juneau, accessible only by air or sea, I stayed downtown in a hostel for three nights. There, I connected with this young German guy named Leon who was taking a summer trip around Canada and the Pacific Northwest. As my big trip was just beginning, his was nearing its end.

We bonded over our nightly shared misery of another roommate’s horrific snoring — nay, wheezing — as well as our shared love for solo travel. We even bumped into each other at the airport on our ways out of Juneau — he to Seattle and myself to Anchorage.

I told Leon that Seattle is my favorite city, besides Asheville, and I gave him a list of my favorite places there. We followed each other on Instagram, and I experienced a precious joy upon following another human’s story once our pages finished overlapping (for now).

The rest of my Alaskan adventure, I enjoyed seeing where Leon’s southward journey went as my own continued northward.

~

I stayed with an older guy in Anchorage via Couchsurfing. I learned that he’s an elected government official, serving his third and final term for the city of Anchorage. He and his friends took a last-minute weekend trip the day before I arrived, but he still let me crash at his house while he was away. He gave me the code to his back door and everything.

“Make yourself at home,” he messaged me. I certainly took him up on that.

For most of my two days in Anchorage, I had that house to myself. It was the only rainy stretch I encountered in Alaska, and it was lovely to settle in after some poncho-ridden explorations of the city. I did some laundry and watched some Phils games, emotionally and physically refueling in this middle part of my trip.

My host returned home on my last afternoon there, and he was just as lovely in person as he was via messaging. He treated me to dinner and volunteered to drive me high into the foothills for a grander view of Anchorage — a view I’d have never found without a car, certainly, but also a view I’d have never even known existed without a local’s telling me so.

That’s the magic of Couchsurfing. It’s more than a free meal or a free door; it’s a window into living somewhere. It’s the uncommon kindness of hosting strangers but also the common hope that we can all share this same vibrant air.

My host dropped me off at the train station the next morning with a hug, and I’m still touched by his hospitality — whether he was home with me or not.

~

Arriving by 7-hour train at Denali National Park, I started feeling sick: headache, fever, general wooziness. I took some meds and pitched my tent at the campground, deciding to settle in for the evening rather than explore the park until 10:30 sunset. It was a bummer not to make the most of my limited time there, but I’ve been learning to listen to my body when it’s in pain — something that doesn’t come naturally, for whatever reason.

My body was sick, and yes, my soul also felt alone.

I was reading a book at my site’s picnic table when a young man from the neighboring campsite started stepping my direction. I had noticed him earlier with his large family over there. Now it was just him by himself, and I started wondering why in the world he would be walking over to me.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t mean to intrude. But we made an extra baked potato for dinner over here, and I was wondering if you’d like it?”

I smiled, graciously accepting Ryan’s potato. He even brought over tubs of butter and sour cream to complete the gesture. I told him a little about my solo trip across Alaska as he shared about his family’s trip to Denali. He explained that his fellow adults and the children were all out exploring while he manned the camp with his sleeping infant.

Eventually, that sleeping infant started to cry and Ryan fled to tend to her. But for a few lovely minutes, sickly though my body remained, my soul felt a little less alone in Alaska.

~

Back down in Anchorage for a night, I connected with another Couchsurfing host: an eccentric guy named Mark who unfortunately had a car accident the day of my train ride. No worries though, he assured me; his mom would pick me up from the train station instead.

Yup. His mom. And she was such a mom, too.

Barbara was her such-a-mom name. She sported short, gray hair and glasses, and she drove a Subaru SUV. She waited patiently for me in the train station lot while I waited impatiently for my luggage to come off the train. It must have been at least thirty minutes, and she never appeared put off — by the delay or with picking me up in the first place.

She gladly drove me to her and her son’s house, where I met Mark. I was going to treat him to a meal that evening if all the timing of things had worked out, but that’s the area I love to grow when it comes to solo travel especially: things change; you must adapt.

“Maybe you could help me remove some slugs from my potato plants?” Mark offered instead of that meal.

Like I said, eccentric.

Barbara showed me how to work the coffee the next morning, inviting me to fix some eggs and toast for myself before I left. Mark drove me in his mom’s SUV to the bus station the next morning for the next leg of my journey.

“We didn’t have much time together,” he said on that twenty-minute drive, “so tell me one travel story before you go.”

And so I did. Reached back to 2014 and told him one of my favorites.

~

These last few years of solo traveling, I’ve been on high-alert for local art that stirs something in me. I’ve started filling my home with art pieces of cities and parks, manifestations of the memories I found traveling there. In Juneau I grew enamored with the mountains and glaciers surrounding that city, and I wanted a piece of artwork to remember that visual always.

I wandered into a downtown art gallery with an elderly couple at the cashier’s window, and I perused the walls of that place adorned with work from a dozen artists. I gravitated to one wall featuring imaginative/nature artwork by a college student in Rhode Island. A sign on the wall with his short-haired picture read that any purchases of his artwork would help support his college endeavors.

My heart leapt; I couldn’t not support this guy. One of his pieces was of Juneau’s Mendenhall Glacier, and it was exactly what I was looking for.

Just to be safe, though, I waited a day to peruse other art galleries in the city. No impulse purchases. Even though my impulses are generally pretty good (I think).

After confirming my initial impulse, I returned to that gallery the next day, the elderly couple behind the desk replaced by a younger guy with long hair. I didn’t think much of it, walking to the back wall to retrieve that glacier artwork. I went to checkout, and the guy behind the desk smiled at me.

“That’s actually one of my pieces. I hope you enjoy it!”

I laughed; of course it was him. Alain, the artist, signed and messaged the back of his art for me, and it now hangs in my home alongside paintings of the Seattle skyline, Oregonian mountains, and more. I hiked to the Mendenhall Glacier the morning before the afternoon I left Juneau, and Alain’s artwork of the place makes it all the more memorable.

When I look at his piece now, it brings me back to that trip. His message on the back connects me not just to an artist with a smiling face, but also to a whole crop of people who made this solo adventure across Alaska so special and not so solo.

~

For two weeks in Alaska, my heart soared across four cities and two national parks via train and bus and plane and boat. I saw bald eagles with their teenage chicks; I saw puffins soaring over the sea; I saw glacier melt rivers that shimmered grayish green through long canyons; I met strangers who wanted to talk to me; I got sick; I healed; I couldn’t get enough — then, I had enough.

After two weeks, you know, I was ready to come home. Ready to return to my bed, water my thirsty plants, resume work at my usual coffee shops, and otherwise reconnect with the beautiful people of the Blue Ridge.

Asheville is my favorite city, after all.

Even though I do love traveling solo, how it fuels me like few things do, I love my people-time too. Maybe I require more time away from others than most. Maybe my cup gets filled more easily on the road without them around. Maybe I’m just weird like that. Maybe it’s okay to be weird.

But despite my affinity for solo travel, I also recognize this other vital truth.

I need regular souls in my circle. Souls who know my name, souls who know my broken tune.

I need the thrill of an open road to walk alone from time to time, and I need the return to a lighted doorstep.

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Fifty states. Who can say they’ve been to all fifty states? And not just to them, mind you.

In them. With-in them. Frolicking about inside of them. None of this driving-through-a-state-and-“counting”-it nonsense.

And so, I started pondering a weeklong trek to Alaska later in the year — say, August or September? I got so excited. Forty-nine states to my name, soon to be fifty — I even made this my “fun fact” when I was announced as a new member in front of my church that February of 2020.

Well. We all know why that trip didn’t happen.

And it’s been plaguing me ever since. Three and a half years of longing for Alaska.

Until now. I refuse to long any longer.

Building back stamina from an autoimmune disease that ravaged both my body and my finances, and now clear of a pandemic, I’m finally following through on that fun fact from three years ago. Forty-nine states visited and lived are about to become fifty.

And oh am I giddy.

There is something epic about completing this list with Alaska. This upcoming trip would have a different vibe if I were finishing with, oh, Connecticut. Could you imagine? My planning a weeklong journey into the heart of Stamford?

(Stamford is a lovely town, by the way.)

I’m sure I’d have made the most of it, made it “epic” in its own right, but that I get to celebrate the big 5-0 with a flight to Juneau, another flight to Anchorage, trains to Denali National Park and Fairbanks, busses and shuttles into the heart of the glaciers at Kenai Fjords, maybe a boat or two along the way — well, I just feel more excited for this trip than any other I’ve taken in quite a while.

I get a charge from traveling. Sometimes I share these journeys with a companion, but more often than not it’s just me out there: boarding planes, staring out windows, winding lines mesmerizing me in the road. National parks and city skylines and coffee joints. Thinking, feeling, breathing.

Solo.

Don’t get me wrong, I love people. I’ll be staying with a few Couchsurfers way up there. Sharing some lovely meals and drives, I’m sure.

But I also love this solo escape. I love it over and over. This getting off the grid. Talking to God. Listening for God. Seeing God in nature and in people and in all the connecting steps I’ve taken to get to this point and place.

I love this sacred chance to exhale both my breath and my heart’s deepest yearnings. To journal and pray and marvel and, sometimes, weep, unfettered. With God.

Traveling solo is an intimate experience. It’s rarely lonely.

I don’t know how to explain it other than I often feel “off” when I’m not traveling and “on” when I am. Something clicks on the road. Something connects. I feel as if I’m doing what I was ever ago crafted to do. To see more, hear more, experience more.

And then to tell about the stories I find, the stories I live.

Alas, I’ve had to learn that not traveling can also grant me life. I think I’ve “seen it all” here in Asheville after seven years now; whereas I know I haven’t seen anything in Alaska. The wonder is already unfurled for me up there like a red carpet, the moment I touch down.

But gosh. As exciting as it is stepping off a plane and breathing new air for the first time…there’s also not a feeling quite like returning home, setting down your things, and falling back into a bed that’s yours. Seeing your friends again. Hitting up those same old coffee joints.

That’s a sacred, special feeling, too.

It’s a balance I’ve been learning since my epic 9-month life on the road ran its course from 2014 to 2015: this practice, this art of movement and stability. Of traditions old and new. Of people and places foreign and fresh, and faithful and true. We need people and things to stay the same, and we need people and things to change.

We need both in this life.

I’m excited to experience a slew of new things soon: the mountains, the waters, maybe a moose? Some quirky hostels and a Denali campout. Sunlight at midnight. A chance for my screen-saturated eyes to blink and breathe afresh.

And then after two weeks of Alaskan frolics, to return to Asheville and appreciate my home anew: the cozy bed, the cozy coffee, the cozy people. The coming and the going, and the blessed coming home again.

And then…the crafting of a new travel bucket list.

I’ve already got a hunch of what comes next.

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