Most people—by which I mean most of us who grew up on the outskirts of the American Dream—meander through adolescence, get a college education, meet a pretty girl, then find a steady job, and then after time has passed, maybe marry that pretty girl, and have a few children.
Yet in reality I started working at the ripe old age of fourteen years old, fell in love numerous times since that first job, partied like a cliché, married a pretty girl, then divorced, twice over, became a father, and never managed to graduate.
In all sorts of other words, the order I have chosen to live my life is well on the opposite end of normal and a way of life that most, more than likely, will consider crazy as they come.
Crazy or not though, I have, since my younger years, even before surrendering my childhood to adolescence, been one that does not necessarily conform to the standard ways of life set forth by those generations before me. Conforming to petrified ideas have yet to break a chain, or freed a human soul for that matter, as far as I know.
It should be noted as well, that I have always despised the idea of working a 9-5 desk job, and yet, here I am sitting at a desk, trying to get a little work done on the dream.
Go figure, right?
But I mean hell, I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up. I found it fitting for my personality, all winded, flown, and all over the damn place. And probably a main reason why I have come to admire writing again so much over past few years, because these words, as always, carry my mind somewhere far away, while giving flight to my heart and soul.
Back to the point though.
THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
So, in my late teens and early twenties, after I had managed to burn a few bridges with those that were close to me back home in Alabama, and just as well as the local law enforcement, I was eager to find my way elsewhere, somewhere not so stagnant and filled with the murky dreams of those before me, and I wasn’t the only one who wanted to see me on my merry way.
And after much deliberation as to what I wanted to be at the ripe old age of twenty-three, I had not a clue. So, I decided to head west to try and figure it all out. I went in search of a place where I could find and be myself tried and true.
Yes indeed, I went looking for me and my dreams.
It was a simple, rather happy-go-lucky sort of idea: running away from everything that you’ve ever known, on the prowl for a freedom that had its roots firmly embedded beneath a long lost dream bound by a white-picket fence, pretty trees, and a few beautiful children running wild, all the while living a life so carefree.
But I soon found that I was at ease on the road to nowhere. Something about it felt like home. I was always in a relaxed state of mind, readily patient to find my slice of paradise, and live the dream, no matter how much—or little—effort, it took.
It was soon thereafter I left the south, I found myself forty-four hundred miles away from my boyhood home. The first leg of the search for myself had led me to Denali, AK, the summer of 2001. I had one best friend—the first romantic love of my life—at my side, only to be surprised as I stumbled upon numerous lifelong friends when I arrived.
I was, I’ll admit, still sort of terrified, yet very excited about not having any idea as to what my future might hold, or what I might find. And I didn’t really care to look to hard, just as long as I kept going and going through the motions of me.
That summer of 2001 is still etched with perfection amongst the canyons of my mind. The winds of a dream had carried me to the place I was supposed to be, and I was at home not knowing where I was going next, because it all felt so, ecstatically.
There was never anywhere to be, but everywhere to go, so I just kept shooting right along through life like an errant star shot silent through the night.
Little did I know though that I would soon find that place where my restless carbon dusted bones have been settled down now for quite some time.
Shortly thereafter that one summer in Alaska, I found my way to the place I have called home off and on for almost twenty years now, that being Lake Tahoe.
HOME SWEET HOME
There was a budding counterculture vibe taking root in Tahoe back then, still is, was long before I arrived, and probably will be, long after I’m gone. After all, Tahoe is the fountain of youth in my opinion.
It was a vibe though that swimmingly moved through the depths of my magnetic soul. I felt like a lightning bug shining its little butt for the world to see in the middle of the night. Hell, I could hardly contain myself. It was my kind of place and I didn’t ever want to leave.
So, I managed to lockdown a steady job playing chef at a little off the beaten path ski resort called Kirkwood, where I worked for almost a decade, just south of Tahoe, tucked delicately away in the beautifully serrated Sierra Nevada mountains.
Yes indeed, I felt like I found the place where my dreams could come true, I had discovered the fountain of youth. Life was headed in the right direction of everything love and light. I had found a place to call home. And it felt like absolute bliss.
WHY TAHOE?
People back home in Alabama would often ask me why Tahoe? What’s so great about Colorado?
My initial smartass answer usually is, first of all Tahoe, is situated on the border of California and Nevada, just above the elbow, and nowhere near Colorado.
But mainly I’m here because of the amazing weather. The perfect seasonal balance of snow, blue skies, chilly water, and sunshine.
I’m here for the wilderness that surrounds me, or what’s left of it anyway.
I’m here to chase infinite sunsets and endless chairlifts.
I’m here for the inspiration and enthusiasm of everything outdoors, especially fly-fishing.
I’m here for the pretty women dressed up in sundresses and cowboy boots, and snow pants and ski goggles.
I’m here for the informality of an island vibe, the anonymity of me, and the overall general lack of all things steeped in manmade traditional ways and means.
I’m here for the aura of spiritual clarity that I seem find easily when just getting lost in the surreal beauty that surrounds me when playing upon her shores.
I’m also here for the romantic aspect too.
Should I consider Tahoe romantic this day and age?
Absolutely. And nothing to be ashamed of really.
Because If reality and romance are both a matter of perspective, then the romantic view of Tahoe is as valid as any another place in time and history of the world—and a great deal more rewarding on a personal level too. Besides, have you witnessed a sunset here?
Yes, a place like Tahoe makes life an unpredictable adventure rather than a problematic equation. And to call this place home is quite an experience in itself.
More so than anything though, I’m here because I love it here. And the moonlight’s pretty cool too.
A HIGHWAY OF MOONLIT FIRE
And insofar as I can tell without much thinking about it, here, my dreams, as well as many others, are very much alive and well here, hence me pursuing one as you read the words that I’m writing as we speak.
Though, in all reality, and ultimately, I am here for the landscape, both my mental one, and the endlessly gorgeous one that surrounds me.
As a result of the weather though over the past few years, the landscape has been under the duress of a prolonged drought. The landscape has become arid, and because of a rather few stubborn wildfires, it has become a hazy grey panorama where objects organic, granite, and even concrete, have lately lacked any real well-defined edges, and have seemed to blend ever together, creating this perpetual scorched & blurred effect just upon the outskirts of me and my mentality over the past few months.
HMM...
It’s as if the Man Upstairs, after creating Heaven on earth, lost a bet with the devil down in the basement because of one helluva poker game, and let him have his way with the fiery hell he’s known to create. But then, earlier spoken of spiritual aura, and/or Mother Nature—with the help of many firefighting men, women, and the weather alike—stepped in to put an end to the misunderstanding between her two squabbling children and went all in to protect our little slice paradise with every last bit of her might.
And as I sit here today, that grey area is now gone and has been replaced with blue sky and sunshine for four whole days in a row now. Which is, in itself, nothing short of a miracle, and a record for this summer so far. And one that helps me, with more and more each passing day to see things, well, a lot more clearly.
But that smoky grey area, it had been lingering about pretty much the entire summer. And it had worn me quite thin. Hell, three out of every four days since the summer solstice have been saturated with smoke and ash, if I may be mistaken and somewhat exact. And that can, and most likely will leave a man with a sort of mental rash, and lost in a lingering state of foggy doubt.
But in the deepest darkest recesses of my soul, at the heart of me, where an internal nuclear winter kept on blazing nearer and nearer, destroying the places that I have come to love over the years, and as the horizon, day in and day out resembled the smoldering campfire of hell for months on end. Somehow, I just felt that I had to believe, I had to dearly hold on to the hope for a better day, full of clarity, and I did, I held on to a dream.
So with that said, I soon began to realize that no dream or journey carries one as far as it extends into the fiery landscape around him, but instead, as far as one is willing to go within the hellish wilderness within himself.
So before I continue this creative journey, now is the time that off the beaten path, these written thoughts of mine must go…
OFF THE BEATEN PATH
See, all throughout time, yet not so much as of late, man has been eagerly pursuing the everlasting dream, ever so curious about the precise whereabouts of his very own “Heaven on Earth.” This exact curiosity could, and should be applied to ole Christopher Columbus. When he set sail upon the ocean blue, he went looking for bliss, in search of a different kind of dream, and by God, he found it.
And while the pilgrims slash white man, brought with them bits and pieces of purity, scattered about goodness and spirituality, they also brought with them violence, genocide, and white supremacy.
Let’s be honest, Plymouth Rock stood as promised with the poise of paradise and white man was going to call it his own at whatever cost a lost soul could afford to accept as it as moral. And after they did that, they made it a point to make sure they quickly institutionalized paradise, so they, of course, created a bank, a university, and probably a casino.
But all the while, quietly in the shadows of the search, spiritual men, sacred clerics, Native American elders, and drunken poets throughout history have long believed without needing much knowledgable material—even going so far, as to warn those men on the eternal hunt for the desire of something else outside of them—that to be aware of the certain structure to an inner Heaven was the foundation to the idea of everlasting dreamlike freedom long built within a man’s own heart and soul.
THE SHADOWS
And to live that dream fulfilled, man had to travel to all ends of the earth, just to find himself in the places he was most terrified to look, his own self.
Though it's just as well—well at least I think it was—that Augustine once spoke of the path, “it is not with steps, but from the experience felt within,” in order for one, to truly find one’s self immersed in his own dreams.
CREATING THROUGH EXPERIENCE
So I guess the overall experience a man feels, my friends, is, after all, a creative's most valuable asset when it comes to seeing the creative dream through, and come to life. It gives the breath of life to everything he has ever created.
CREATING THROUGH EXPERIENCE
And creating through the experience‘s that he’s been through is the only real way one can afford to convince his dreams to sway away from such stagnant, smoke ridden nightmares, and toxic imagination, and maybe somehow restore his, and the reality around him back to its own rugged beautiful health.
Because in our dreams, we see that we will always make the same journeys we seem to make in reality, over and over again. But off the beaten path of normal pattern—the new experience, if you will—is the one in which we see the things that we want to see, and that we must go through hell to get to Heaven in order to see our very own reality for its worth.
To see what we want to believe, and what makes it important to believe in.
We see the faces of our past, the past lives, the memories, the unconditional love, the love lost, our ancestors, the elders, our children, the surreal landscapes, the spiritual clarity, the disasters, the pain, the terror, and the fall.
Hell, we see it all, we see absolutely everything in our dreams, and that’s what makes us rise back up from the ashes of ourselves to make sure that the dream will come all the way back around as something very much alive and real, even in the depths of hell, because we are living spirits, we are not shadows, we are all just lost souls looking for something that makes us believe in a better day, and believe it or not, we—just like our dreams—are indeed, indestructible, and neither are really ever going to die.
Because that’s thing about dreams, there will always be nightmares in between, they are scary as hell, but those nightmares don’t stop us from waking up and trying our hands at making our dreams come true, now do they?
For now though, here's to you Tahoe, here's to getting lost in your sunshine, blue skies, and all of your amazing clarity once again my old friend.
Til the next time.
Ryan Love
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