🏔️Wilderness Is A Nutrient

Gentlemen,

The sterile environment kills a man’s soul.

It zap’s vitality and life-force, as there is no need for such things in an environment that lacks uncertainty and danger.

You and I were not made for sterility.

We were not designed for arched backs, LED lights shining on our heads, waking up day after day to do the EXACT same thing, responding to the exact same stimuli, surrounded by the exact same environment, for an entire lifetime.

Did your ancestors fight tooth and nail, til death or close to it, for generations so you could live a life of predictable and abject frailty and monotonous misery?

I can’t answer that for y’all, but I’m damn sure my ancestors didn’t. My grandfather would roll in his grave if he knew I subjected myself to a languid life of risk aversion.

There are, without question, seasons which require us to put our heads down, weather more monotonous days, and not look up from our desks until the job at hand is finished. But that is not the entirety of life.

There is a pervading sense that “vacationing” or taking time away, or detaching for periods is lazy, undisciplined, and/or unbecoming of a successful man.

Wrong, it’s a necessary part of development.

JP Morgan would rest for 3 months per year... He was one of the world’s richest men when he was alive.

BEFORE he became president, nearly every year, Theodore Roosevelt would travel west to hunt and explore in an effort to take his mind off of work.

While building Oracle, not after, Larry Ellison would leave the helm for periods of time to explore other hobbies and travel… He’s now worth $210 billion.

It’s a misleading fabrication that you have to wake up at 4am, workout, go to your office, sit on your computer under blue-light for 10 hours everyday for the rest of your life to build wealth and become a successful man. It’s not even close to accurate.

That appears to be a morbidly uninteresting and unexciting life and I am convicted that it’s not necessary and is, in fact, detrimental to the quality of life for most men.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” - Henry David Thoreau

Quiet desperation can be replaced with soul-sucking monotony.

Wilderness, new stimuli, and novel environments are not just nice to have, they are a necessity.

Wilderness is a nutrient.

The novelty and required adapations of spending time in the wilderness are building blocks of your spirit. They are what much of the best parts of you are made from and molded by.

Wilderness is uncertainty; it’s unexplored territory. This could be the actual mountains, it could be a new city, it could be a new job, skill, or martial art. Wilderness is that which exceeds your current level of understanding and familiarity.

Wilderness calls you. It begs you to take part in its beauty. It pleads for you to abandon the chains of sterility and embrace that which makes you feel alive.

It yearns deeply for a willing participant in its exciting, sometimes terrorifying, and always rewarding game.

Will you heed the call?

Onward & Upward,

Nolan

Share this newsletter with friends and family with this link