Where Will You Go When the Pandemic Ends?
The band Alabama’s song Mountain Music opens with an ominous harmonica playing a sweet, short tune. The harmonica fades out to the sound of an old man’s monologue, “You see that mountain over there? Yeah, one of these days I’m gonna climb that mountain.” The song then launches into nearly four more minutes of foot-tapping music fresh out of Appalachia. The song itself is fine enough, I suppose. I personally prefer Song of the South, I’m in a Hurry, or If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band).
The intro to the song comes and goes so quickly, that unless you stopped to consider it, the message was likely lost upon you. “You see that mountain over there? Yeah, one of these days I’m gonna climb that mountain.” Innocuous enough. Then you think about it for a moment. This is an old man, far too feeble to do anything at all. He’s been saying he’s going to climb that mountain all of his life. And now here he is, on death’s door still with every bit as much aspiration to finally follow through on the thing he’s been putting off all his life.
Before there was a pandemic I saw a paradigm shift in my world. At 29 years old I got pancreatitis from drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, lack of hydration, poor diet, minimal exercise, and a longing for death. I awoke in the hospital to see my favorite person in the world, my cousin Lilly (at the time 15 years old) at the foot of my bed. Several days later, I sought a second opinion from a different doctor who minced no words in telling me, “if you keep this up, you will die.”
At the time, I’d seen a lot of cities in the US. Mostly on abbreviated drinking tours around this nation’s thriving bar scene. I lived in a high-rise apartment on Rainey Street in downtown Austin overlooking Town Lake. I made more money than I’d ever made before after having some successful quarters as a Fortune 50 salesman. I owned two vehicles outright. I had all of the things our society says you’re supposed to need and I was miserable. No longer suicidal anymore, but close enough that I didn’t care if I was alive or dead.
On April 18, 2015, after a night of drinking with my friends in town from Oklahoma City, I drove myself to the hospital, vomiting bile out my car door along the way. Following a $21,000 IV, nightgown, and super restful overnight stay, I drove myself back to my apartment to assess my situation. Lonely — check. Depressed — absolutely! Optionless — never!
I wondered what had I done for fun before I drank. I really didn’t remember the before times, because ever since I was in college all there was to do in the south was drink to make life in such a shitty place tolerable. I’m not sure if anyone reading this has ever gone through a crisis in which they realize their entire identity has revolved around holding an alcoholic beverage, but I can assure you, reinventing who you are just before the age of 30 can be difficult and confusing.
Particularly being told I could pretty much die whenever really opened my eyes to the things I’d seen as important. I loved my massive sectional couch, but it was time to go. The high-rise I lived in was filled with pretentious transients whose parents were paying their rents. Austin’s entire culture was based off of its “weirdness”, which really hadn’t existed for at least a decade prior to my arrival. Keep Austin Weird had truly turned into Keep Austin Commercialized by 2015.
I decided the job wasn’t serving my purposes, I’d only made about 5 friends in the year and a half I’d been there, and it was time I saw more of the world, for tomorrow, I could die. As my lease expired that November, so did my time at Dell. I’d reached out to my friend Drew in Colorado, whom I’d met only once 8 years prior at his condo in Steamboat Springs. I wanted to be a ski bum for the winter. He informed me that he was going to Southeast Asia. I said that sounds good. I sold what I could, gave away what I couldn’t, and downsized my life to an 1/8 of a storage unit.
I landed in Tokyo, Japan on December 7, Pearl Harbor Day. I’d set off to be a minority and escape my comfort zone. My brother and sister were worried I would come back in a casket. All I knew is I’d rather be dead in Asia than barely alive in America. I’d left an office where I was surrounded by people who spoke the same language as me, yet never understood me at all. Why not try somewhere we knew few of the same words, but actually cared to connect with one another?
I saw 8 countries in my two months in Asia; Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, The Philippines, and Hong Kong. Drew, myself, and a woman we’d met on the bus whilst crossing into Thailand chartered a boat to the Koh Phi Pi Lee Island which featured Maya Bay, where they’d filmed the Leo DiCaprio movie The Beach. On the opposite side of the island the rock faces burst out of the ocean over 1,000 feet into the air, surrounded by 80-degree aqua blue water. It was there I jumped off the boat and swam upon the shore of a 100-foot long beach. Running aground, my hands squished through the sand that melted through my fingertips. I rolled over onto my back, staring up at the sheer monstrosity of structure looming above my body. I scooped two handfuls of this magic sand, looking back down to watch as it slowly seeped away. In that moment I had an epiphany, “Oh yes. This. Is happiness.” I found my favorite place in the world thus far, on an island almost exactly half a world away from my birthplace, and most certainly the exact opposite of the flat, landlocked southern United States I’d spent the first 30 years of my life.
I tried psychedelic mushrooms for the first time with my ex-girlfriend at a Full Moon Party on a Thai Island for New Years 2016. We rented scooters and drove around with glee. We stayed in a floating hut in Surat Thani, a Mountainous Jungle Lake. I drove the scooter to the killing fields outside of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where a genocide had occurred until 1979, leaving 3 of the countries 8 million inhabitants deceased, their bones still protruding up through the earth from the mass graves in which they’d been buried.
I was shaken down by Cambodian police who stole my sunglasses. I learned to stop stopping when they attempted to pull you over on foot. We bathed elephants in Chang Rai, Thailand. I wept as we landed in Vietnam 50 years after my father had had his life altered forever by a senseless war. We stayed in a bird cage hotel & smoked weed on its rooftop patio no more than 100 miles from where my father had taken the lives of a Vietnamese family of five. We bought weed from a leather jacket-wearing Vietnamese man in Hanoi, who insisted he give us a pack of cigarettes in exchange for money 36 feet away from 37 policemen.
And then we went to stay on a houseboat in Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay is an archipelago of nearly 775 islets sprung up in the middle of a vast sea. Some islands have caves to explore. Others have waterways to kayak through. One had a grand staircase to climb and see the grandiose views of the tops of the other islands from above. The climb consisted of 440 feet up to the top. We passed person after person who simply didn’t have the breath to make it. Gravity is an equal opportunity discriminator. All races of various ages seemed to be struggling to make the trek Sidnee and I were conquering, weed lungs and all. Mostly though, it was old, white people. Recently retired and off to see the world. Except they couldn’t. They’d given their bodies, minds, and time to careers, and now, when they wanted the effort repaid, their bodies betrayed them. It was right then and there that I vowed to live before I died, because I might not have the opportunity to enjoy these things when I’m older, and I might not make it to older.
Since returning from Asia, I’ve lived my last five years like a bucket list. I moved into the southern California home of my sister and her family whom I’d never met until 2014. I worked as an outside Sears salesman whilst living in an upper floor efficiency with an ocean view in Hermosa Beach. I took a job at a tech startup in Boulder that was dog-friendly with unlimited PTO so I could raise a dog in the office. I moved to Manhattan to usher in that same cousin Lilly as she moved away for the first time to attend Barnard. I took a job as a driver for a flightseeing tour around Mt. Denali (the tallest point in North America) in Alaska for a sensational summer. And that’s just job-related things.
I’ve been to 47 states, 25+ national parks, 20 MLB stadiums, 19 countries, etc. I’ve attempted to overcome my fears, living uninhibited, while also cautiously seeking to extend my time on this planet. There’s very little on this earth I enjoy more than seeing parts of this earth I haven’t seen before. The United States alone is mesmerizing. Canada and its vast remoteness are unlike anything you’ve never seen. Fuck, just go to Oregon and tell me you don’t want some more of that shit.
I hope that when the opportunity is available again that you too will seek your truth. Long before we couldn’t go anywhere, I attempted to be a cheerleader for anyone looking to expand their lexicon. I will certainly continue once it’s over. Happy travels.
