Solitude and Adventure
I’ve been watching Andrew Cross’ YouTube channel for awhile now. I’ve always admired his fascination with nature and particularly with finding and exploring ancient American sites. His passion for the outdoors reminds me of my own in my twenties.
I’d be out there every weekend, looking for some interesting spot on Google Earth/Maps, and planning a little expedition to that site. I used to love visiting old mining sites; capturing a glimpse into how these people lived in such rugged mountain terrain always made my imagination run wild. Now that I am unable to engage in such strenuous activities, I do so vicariously through content creators like Cross.
There’s nothing more fascinating to me than to watch people like Andrew come across an ancient site with pictographs everywhere, signs of children toys and playful activity, 800 year old corn cobs, and fingerprints in grout from an ancient individual’s structure perched high above a desert valley floor.
There’s something about the solitude and beauty of nature that captivates so many young men: Christopher McCandless, Everett Ruess, Henry David Thoreau, Brett LeCompte, many a miner and explorer. Such wanderlust has often been the death of so many of these people. They go off to join the mysterious vanishing legends of those who inspired them, and are looked upon as sages who hold a sort of deep wisdom and connection with something primal about our existence.
The Siren’s Call
Like everything in life, there’s a continuum of manifestations of this sort of wanderlust. Everything from the most extreme like Ruess, who mysteriously vanished and whose own writings state his intention to do so when the time came, to those like Thoreau who intentionally set about a hermit life in the wilderness, only to later return and share his experience with the world.
I think of Cross (and others like him) as sort of modern versions of Thoreau, albeit less extreme in their quest for solitude and adventure, since their travel into the forgotten is temporary and with the intent to record and share with a broader global audience their experience in these places. There’s a sort of romanticism with it all, that calls to a primal instinct in man; a sort of siren song that upon hearing it, seduces the next generation of sonder captivated individuals to answer.
But even in the less extreme manifestations of this romantic call to adventure, the sirens bring tragedy. Even as modern technology has lowered the barrier to entry and the risk of these adventures, there is nonetheless new avenues to tragedy, as Andrew Cross is currently fighting for his life after a horrific car accident in Grand Junction Colorado upon his return from another adventure into the less traveled. His wife Evelyn shares an update on his channel…
A Peculiar Thing
Sudden tragedy is such a mysterious thing to experience: A person is there one moment, then gone or unavailable the next. I’m reminded of my late friend Paul’s motorcycle accident in 2015, or my Uncle’s in 1994, and how peculiar it is to suddenly have no access to a person who is right in front of you; their body there, but the inability to interact with their being is palpable.
I hope that Andrew can recover, but if not, I hope that his loving wife finds peace, and to know that his spirit, like those of adventurers before him, can be experienced in the solitude, wonder and exploration of nature he loved and admired so much.
Along I will follow the dark trail, black void on one side and unattainable heights on the other, darkness before and behind me, darkness that pulses and flows and is felt. Then suddenly, an unreal breath of wind coming from infinite depths will bring to my ears again the strange, dimly-remembered sound of the rushing water. When that sound dies, all dies. — Everett Ruess