#vancraftedwords

Recently, our friends at United By Blue asked us to design the markings for one of their new Made In America axes.  The answer was a resounding YES!  

With so many beautiful colors to choose from, we immediately began looking through photos from our adventures for inspiration.  Would the axe reflect the jagged mountains at Sawtooth Lake, or the Grand Canyon during a rain storm?  We finally chose one of our favorite photos from a BLM camping spot in Idaho where the sky just before sunrise looked a deep blue, the van and stars pure white, and the buttes beyond a dark brown.

I had never swung a full-sized axe before, only using our small hatchet and a mallet to split wood throughout the journey.  Brendan has taught me to swing the Shea Axe (he graciously allowed it to be named after me!), its weight empowering in my hands.

We get outside twice-a-day to split wood for our little wood stove.  Sometimes it takes me upwards of six swings to successfully split the log in two.  Sometimes I miss the target altogether.  More often than not, the axe gets stuck about half-way through and I awkwardly half-fall over trying to kick it out with my foot.  I hope that only the birds are watching, though sometimes Brendan catches me in a not-so-graceful moment.

But no matter how many tries it takes to split a single log, it’s an activity that makes you feel alive and self-sufficient and competent.  It gets you outside on cold days and proverbially warms you twice.

“Stand clear of the closing doors please.”

The New York City subway lies to the extremes of, but rarely settles between, intriguing and loathing.  A place for all people to commute, perform, and live — each subway car concocting its own emotion-rich stew.  

The train slams as the tracks bend toward Manhattan, eluding any semblance of grace.  Each face, buried in book, phone, or thought, seems to be unwittingly connected to its body as it’s drug toward its destination.  Mine is no exception, I may have headphones in, but there is nothing coming out of them.

——

My mind is back on the beach in Rhode Island; those epiphanous slices of time are usually followed by ones of heightened banality.  

A trip outside of the city always brings with it some comfort and unease, but to be back riding this train to go pick up a hard-drive to repeat an edit I’ve done 5 times before for a new set of content that lacks any originality in the first place while feeling my compensation is well below what is fair for the amount of time I’ll be…

…here we are again.  How many times have I ridden this train of thought before?  It’s not as though we all can always do what we want, when we want to, and be compensated fairly…even two of three is considered a huge victory….but the frequency of this thought has ceased intermittency and become an ever-blinking dot on each day’s radar.  

A flood of thoughts pour in and the ability to decipher the cacophony of synapses firing off in my brain at that moment was, is, and will continue to be far beyond me.  Small flashes of words, objects, and places are all I can even begin to remember from what was happening — perhaps that large iced coffee was a bit aggressive on this particular morning, but how could I have known there was an uncontainable charge within me and that adding caffeine to it was like dropping kerosene on a wildfire.  

“Hey dude, what are you doing here today?”

I looked up…somehow I was already off the train, 10 blocks from the station, past security, and up two floors exiting an elevator.  

“Uhhh, just picking up a hard drive.”

I very quickly exited this conversation, still unaware of how I was here.  I kept my head down and navigated through modernized dividers that this company likes to call “pods” to avoid the negative perception of cubicles.  In less than 60 seconds the hard drive was in my bag and I was in the elevator down.  

This time, I will make sure I am aware of my movements…the last thing I want is to meet the outside of the M14 bus’ grill.  

——

Between my silent headphones these pieces of thoughts began to filter into something that might resemble sense.  I had already allowed myself to fall back into the exact thing I had reconciled against over the weekend: complacency built upon adequacy.  

What gets it going though?  What kicks things forward?

I rip the top off the kerosene bottle and squeeze as hard as I can, my brain ablaze with different combinations of interests creating incalculable outcomes that began stacking onto one another — theoretical Jenga that tips and sways but never quite crashes over.  I began moving rapidly among all this - sliding out of one and onto another; up a flight of thoughts and cruising down a new possibility; turning the corner to find…

…I did it again.  I was on Kelly’s block, my phone in hand, ringing.  

We had talked about it the day before, but in that far-off dreamer sort of way - starting a company, a creative company where we do only what we are passionate about and make the best stuff we can.  We would get a Westfalia, I know how much she loves them, and go on a road trip across the country.

“Hey, whats up?”

“Come downstairs.”

Am I really doing this?  

I slam the buzzer.

“Coming!”

Everything was a fury, but as the door opened it all settled.

“Do you want to do it?  Am I being crazy?”

It took me hearing the words spilling out of my mouth to realize exactly what had been happening…and just how insane this all was.  Did I really just ask her to leave New York, move in together into a van, and start a company?  How could I…

“Yes.”

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