Micron

About Micron

Travel, exploration, surviving self-employment, raising five children, and living with autism as an adult. micron.fm (https://micron.fm?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Ron Stauffer

Category

business · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

6 Jul 2020

Latest episode

2 Mar 2025

Latest episodes

28 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   2 Mar 2025

   Crossing the Bar

   There are a few choirs I’ve been listening to over the past couple of years that have really challenged me, blessed me, and have taken me deeper in my faith. Most of these have been Mennonite choirs. Hearing the pure human voice—men and women together, usually unaccompanied, singing sacred music in multi-part harmony, reciting uplifting words about Jesus and our hope in the future despite our difficult circumstances here on earth—this was just what I needed when surviving the darkest years of my adult life (so far). My little brother’s death (https://micron.fm/p/your-brother-is-dead?utm_source=publication-search) in 2020… My wake-up call in an emergency room (https://ronstauffer.com/blog/its-time-for-me-to-get-deadly-serious/) with a heart event in 2021… Being diagnosed with autism (https://micron.fm/p/a-life-changing-diagnosis-at-37-years-old?utm_source=publication-search) in 2023… Dealing with a cancer scare in 2024… And choosing to finally reject suicide for good (https://micron.fm/p/wanting-to-die-was-easy?utm_source=publication-search) later that same year, and the full-blown midlife crisis (https://micron.fm/p/yes-its-a-midlife-crisis?utm_source=publication-search) I’ve been dealing with in the midst of all of that… This has been an extremely difficult season, yet their music has given me strength and hope to keep going. Without knowing it, their voices have been the soundtrack to my life for the past four or five years. They’ve been singing to me this whole time, totally unaware of who I am. And they also don’t know that I’ve been singing along with them. Some of the groups I’ve treasured most are the West Coast Mennonite Chamber Choir (https://open.spotify.com/artist/318POadHDSBkuGVxsG3nCD), Oasis Chorale (https://www.youtube.com/user/OasisChorale), Laudate Mennonite Ensemble (https://www.laudatemennonitensemble.com/), and Antrim Mennonite Choir (https://melttheheart.com/brands/Antrim-Mennonite-Choir.html). I found the West Coast Mennonite Chamber Choir’s album “Through an Open Window” by accident when I was at the height of my darkest moments, closest to ending my own life, or at least wanting to. Of course, I know this was no “accident.” It was, in fact, a miracle. Playing that album flooded me with so much emotion, it revived my spirit, which had felt nearly dead for years. It was a genuinely spiritual experience. Hearing the words (sometimes in German), and being moved by the music which has a connection to my own family’s Mennonite heritage, was such a big deal that I found Dr. Larry Nickel’s contact information and emailed him to tell him what I thought. He got back to me and thanked me for sharing my story. Then he shared another story about how that same album affected someone else he was unaware of: Interesting story about “Through an Open Window”; We found a church out in the country that had those wonderful acoustics. Two blocks down the street was a hospital. A couple on holidays was driving down the highway and the husband had a heart-attack - ending up in the hospital. The wife, in a state of shock, took a walk and came upon the church. She heard singing (we were recording that particular album) - and tried to enter the church. My wife was in charge of guarding the doors to be sure our session wasn’t interrupted. She saw the woman at the door and sensed there was something wrong, so she said, “Come quietly and sit with me”. Long story short, the man died and the album was played at the funeral. The woman became a Christian. I’m telling you, music saves lives. Sometimes literally, sometimes spiritually. Just a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon another “accidental discovery.” While scrolling through YouTube, I noticed a video by Laudate Mennonite Ensemble called “Crossing the Bar” that I had somehow never seen before. That was strange, considering it had been uploaded a year and a half ago and I had been subscribed to their channel for a few years. Intrigued, I pushed play. Instantly, tears welled up as I listened to the angelic music and saw those men and women singing sacred music in that holy space. I was impressed at how they had thoughtfully arranged the lighting, ensured the acoustics were just right, and carefully captured this rehearsed moment with a high quality camera and microphone on what was probably a rolling tripod or gimbal. I was happy at what I saw and heard. But I was also saddened. I thought about how much I miss singing in a choir, and how participating in the gift of music with other people (https://micron.fm/p/06-rediscovering-the-magic-of-christmas-f83?utm_source=publication-search) has been one of the greatest joys of my life. Sometimes, in more intimate settings, I’ve sung with people while holding hands in a circle just like this: I’m not saying it’s exclusively a Mennonite practice (of course it isn’t), but growing up, there were a few families we knew that would hold hands in a circle and sing with my family when they would visit us and it was time to say goodbye… and as far as I can recall, they were all Mennonites. A few years ago, one of the more conservative families that attended the Mennonite church I grew up in was driving through Colorado and decided to stop in at my house. Not my parents’ house this time, like they had when I was a child, but my house—I was a full-grown adult now and had my own family. It was totally surreal to see the woman (the only woman I recall from our church who always wore a dress and a head covering) who used to be my Sunday school teacher now talking to my wife and children. When it was time for them to hit the road and say goodbye, they asked us all to hold hands and sing, so we did. We stood in the front entry of my house, singing (I don’t recall what song) in a circle and holding hands, then we said goodbye and they left. “Wow, that was kind of weird,” my wife said after they drove off. I didn’t really think it was, but I guess she’d never done that before. Well, as a family we had done that before: every night when our children were young, as part of their bedtime routine, I would pray over them, then we’d hold hands and sing The Doxology: Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise him all creatures here below; Praise him above, ye heav’nly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. But my wife was right, I guess, that as a married couple, we’d never done this with people outside our family, and I guess she didn’t grow up with this tradition, either. But anyway, back to the video of “Crossing the Bar” on YouTube, I found it again earlier this week and looked into a bit more. The funny thing is, it turned out I was wrong about almost everything I originally thought about it. The building isn’t a church. It’s a secular event space and wedding venue. The video wasn’t planned at all. It was captured at the last moment, almost accidentally. The audio/visual gear was literally just a smartphone and nothing more. There was no gimbal to stabilize that smartphone either; it was just held by a person. WHAT?! Not only that, the song they were singing isn’t even a hymn at all: it’s a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a man hardly known for being a songwriter. And Laudate Mennonite Ensemble, one of the choral groups that helped me think about being alive and staying alive—they were singing about death! But wait… the story gets even stranger! This spontaneous recording by a Mennonite choir, of a song that was about dying, was unplanned, unpolished, not even a hymn, and not sung in a church, was recorded in Coatesville, Pennsylvania. Coatesville, Pennsylvania is around 50 miles away from Upper Salford, Pennsylvania, where at least five generations of my Mennonite family members lived, died, and are buried. That’s kind of cool right? …and a little bit coincidental? But wait… the story gets even stranger! I dug further and further down the rabbit hole, and found an even more bizarre connection. That wedding venue used in recording this song used to be a church (as you can plainly see from the architecture). Today, it’s been remodeled and is called “The Arches,” but it used to be St. Cecilia Catholic Church. St. Cecilia Catholic Church used to be part of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia oversaw the churches that my Irish Catholic grandmother (https://micron.fm/p/05-from-ireland-to-america-finding-626?utm_source=publication-search) (and her mother before her) went to. My great-grandmother, Brenny, is laid to rest at a cemetery owned by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in Yeadon, Pennsylvania. Yeadon, Pennsylvania is also around 50 miles away from Coatesville, in a different direction. If you map out all three of these locations—Coatesville, Upper Salford, and Yeadon—they make a nearly perfect triangle. Okay, am I making WAY too big a deal out of this? Perhaps. But my goodness, there sure are a lot of strange connections and coincidences here. Maybe I’m just feeling a bit Irish today, overly sentimental and looking for meaning in the mystery. Come on, though, isn’t that nuts? A Mennonite choir recording a song right next to where my Mennonite ancestors lived when they came to America around 1698… and I found it randomly on YouTube? And somehow, I am genetically, physically, geographically, and spiritually connected to all of this 325 years later? That’s amazing. Now, watching this recorded song, I am moved even more than I was before, and I was mistaken about all my assumptions the first time. It hits me even harder now. So, today, I felt like sharing this. If you’d like to experience this beautiful song in the fullness of its glory, put on some nice headphones, press play on the video above, and read along with the “lyrics” of the poem below. I hope you are blessed by it like I was. “Crossing the Bar” Alfred, Lord Tennyson Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar. Watching this video and listening to this song once more, with tears in my eyes yet again, I am struck by a final, profound thought that made me speechless just now: In heaven, I do hope to see my Pilot face to face, and I believe I will. I also believe I will be singing hymns while holding hands with my own family Mennonite choir: Daniel and Catherine, Abraham and Eva, Abraham and Maria, Joseph and Catherine, Isaac and Lucy Ann… They’ll all be there, and we’ll be holding hands and singing praises, when I have crost the bar, as they already have. Micron is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. By the way, I highly recommend you check out Laudate Mennonite Ensemble on YouTube and subscribe to their channel (https://www.youtube.com/@LaudateMennEnsemble). Song Credits - Crossing the Bar: * Words: Alfred Lord Tennyson * Music: Rani Arbo, arr. Peter Amidon * Video Credit: Myron Eby Get full access to Micron at micron.fm/subscribe (https://micron.fm/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

2. 

   24 Dec 2024

   Christmas in Canada (60 Years Later)

   Think fast: when I say “Canada,” what immediately comes to mind? If you’re like many people who are only familiar with some of the most basic, obvious stereotypes of North America’s coldest country, you might immediately start imagining giant evergreen trees, massive mountains, loads of snow, and rodents of unusual size (beavers, that is). Above and beyond its rugged, natural landscape, though, you might also think of some of its more symbolic elements: the Maple Leaf flag, these weird things called “Provinces,” coins with Queen Elizabeth on them, hockey, of course, and, if you’re aware of the weird foods they eat above the 49th parallel, deep fried pickles, poutine (french fries covered in cheese curds, and brown gravy), and ketchup chips. But if you’re like me, and probably a few hundred million other Americans, when you think of Canada, well… nothing comes to mind. Because you don’t think of Canada basically ever. I hate to offend the good people from the Great White North, but pretty much all day, every day, I don’t even remember that Canada exists. It’s like that meme I see on the internet from time to time, taken from the TV show Mad Men, where two men are in an elevator. The younger man says: “I feel sorry for you.” The older man says: “I don’t think about you at all.” That’s what Canada is like for me. Sometimes, I’ll be clicking around on the internet, reading a breaking news story about a tragedy unfolding in America in real time, perhaps something involving guns or private health insurance, or guns AND private health insurance. Random people with Canadian flag emojis in their profiles will start commenting about how infinitely superior their country is to mine. And that’s when it will hit me… “Oh yeah! Canada exists! Canada is a thing! I completely forgot about Canada! I’ll be darned.” Now, I will give our frozen friends a point here: they are indeed the superior country… in precisely one manner: they are literally above us. But only literally. Canada is superior to America in the same sense that Lake Superior is superior to the other Great Lakes. That is to say, it is above Lake Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. But that’s it. As far as the nation of Canada being superior to the nation of the United States of America? Don’t make me laugh. The USA has an economy that is almost 13 times larger than Canada’s, and three of our states have a larger GDP than their entire country (that’s California, Texas, and New York, in case you wondered). And although we have almost the exact same amount of raw land as each other, just the state of California matches Canada’s entire population, stilling leaves us with 49 states to spare. So… where was I? Oh yeah, Canada exists, and I forget that sometimes. That’s right. Now, to be clear, I have nothing against Canadians personally, and every Canadian I’ve ever met has been delightful. But it’s such a weird phenomenon: I almost never find out their true nationality until after I’ve known them for a while. Over the years, it’s happened to me a few times where I have a friend, or perhaps a coworker, and he or she (let’s say he, in this case) is just an all-around great guy, and we get along just fine. Then weeks, or perhaps months later, the truth about this guy’s identity eventually surfaces, and it’s always jarring when it does. Finding out that someone I know is Canadian is kind of like finding out someone I know has spent time in prison. It’s not necessarily something they should be embarrassed of, but it’s still such a shock when I find out about it. You know? Many times, I’ve had conversations that go something like this: * Me: “Wow, he’s Canadian?” * Someone else: “Yep. Crazy, huh?” * Me: “Yeah, but he seemed so… normal.” * Someone else: “I know. You wouldn’t be able to tell just by looking at him.” * Me: “Why didn’t he tell me himself? I feel weird now that I know the truth.” * Someone else: “Yeah, I wouldn’t mention it if I were you. Might be awkward.” Okay, I’m kidding… but only halfway. First of all, I am kidding about being surprised because Canadians are actually easy to spot from a distance. Not because of how they look but because of how they talk. Every man or woman I’ve met who came from the Land of Loons fails two basic American shibboleths: * They say “Eh?” a lot. (And don’t ever let them gaslight you and tell you they don’t, because they absolutely do. This is not just a stereotype—it’s the truth.) * They pronounce their “Oh” sounds really funny. They say: “aboat” instead of “about,” “prohcess” instead of “process,” and so on. If I were an American soldier in an old black-and-white war film, and it was up to me to determine who the good guys and bad guys were without having the benefit of spies or special technology, and if we were somehow assuming that the Americans and Canadians were at war (with each other — I know this is a really big stretch, but just go with it), I’d make every soldier line up and give them a test. “Okay everybody, one at a time, repeat after me: ‘Oh, I’ve got a round about process for brewing beer.’” Down the line, I’d go, listening to each man repeat my test phrase until, eventually, one man would say: “Oh, I’ve got a roaned aboat prohcess for brewing beer, eh?” Knowing I’d got my man, I’d ask one more question to be sure: “Is that right? You do?” and he’d do himself in: “Oh, yeah, you betcha.” Boom! Canadian: bad guy! It would be so easy. They can’t hide. Second of all, I’m not kidding about being surprised because aside from those verbal tics that give them away, Canadians pretty much look and act like us in America. And almost all of the Canadians I’ve ever met—I met here. They’re here because they left Canada to come to America. Which, of course, makes me wonder, “If Canada’s so great, why did you come down here?” But when I do meet folks like this, I don’t even think of asking such normal-looking-and-acting people: “Hey, are you actually from here?” I just assume they are, like everybody else. And they pretty much are like everybody else: they fit in just fine. What does all this have to do with Christmas? Hold your mooses; I’m getting to that. Canada is… an interesting place. It’s been in the news quite a lot recently. Right now, as I write this, there’s a huge buzz online about the USA potentially taking steps to annex Canada and make it the 51st American state. There’s so much talk and cross-talk about it that I can’t even tell fact from fiction anymore. I don’t know who first suggested it, but it sounds like some people in America think this is a hilarious joke, while others think it’s a serious suggestion. It also sounds like a small minority of people in Canada welcome this idea, as far-fetched as it may be, while many more think that it’s a very bad idea and insist that it’s not even funny to joke about something this serious at all. Which, to be honest, makes it even more hilarious. The more they keep saying it isn’t funny, the funnier it gets. (And on a side note, when did Canadians, the people who have given us some of the funniest comedians in the world, lose their sense of humor?) So, to recap: my point here is that Canadians are a funny people who talk funny, and who used to be funny in the past but right now really aren’t all that funny, at least when we say funny things back to them. THE DRAMA! O, Canada! America’s hat… where the people drink milk from plastic bags and live in their hoases doan by the moantains… perhaps someday our 51st state… a country so easy to make fun of. All right, all right… so maybe I’m too harsh on Canada. Maybe I am sometimes guilty of directing an unfair amount of ridicule to the country that is home to Dudley Do-Right and his fellow Mounties, those wacky policemen who ride on horses and wear muskrat fur stetson hats and scarlet tunics. Maybe I am too fond of teasing the people who still somehow claim allegiance to the monarchy of the United Kingdom in one of the strangest, most antiquated acts of useless nostalgia an American could possibly imagine. Maybe I am biased against a nation where every single government document and official communication in the entire country must be spoken and printed in both English and French, despite only 3% of the population outside Quebec speaking French as a first language. But c’mon, Canada, you make yourself too easy a target! Bringing up Quebec is a perfect example: while America is currently joking about taking Canada in as another state, Quebec is still very seriously just waiting for its chance to finally declare independence from Canada once and for all. You hear that? Not even Canada wants to be part of Canada! Quebec has been trying to leave Canada for 45 years and just barely missed achieving total independence in 1995, with a vote that lost by one-half percent! (Note: If Quebec were granted independence today, Canada would immediately lose 23% of its population. That is the exact same percentage the USA would have lost if all the Confederate States had won the Civil War and successfully seceded from the Union. Can you imagine?) Okay, enough ragging on Canada. Let’s say Canada is actually a wonderful place and is home to some really great things—things to be proud of. Things that I can point to today and say: “I have to give Canada credit for that.” To that end, I tried an experiment to find out what those things would be. I asked an AI chatbot what things in my life it could pinpoint that I have personally benefitted from, have, hold, use, or eat, etc., that are clearly, conclusively, and uniquely from Canada or Canadians. The results were… interesting. At first, it gave me a list of 10 things that were mostly irrelevant. Things like: * Hockey: Obviously, it’s Canadian, but I don’t play it. * William Shatner: Wow, really? The actor? I had no idea. Are you sure he’s actually Canadian and he’s not just a prisoner? * The Canadarm: The big giant grabby arm thingy used in the NASA space shuttle. Okay, these were true, but this was getting ridiculous. None of these things had anything specifically to do with me. I refined my parameters and tried again. * Maple Syrup: Okay, you got me there. I love real maple syrup. I’m a big fan, although I’m pretty sure most (or all) of the maple syrup I buy comes from Vermont or New Hampshire, but still, I’ll concede a half point. * The Blackberry Smartphone: Wow, this one was a surprise. I did indeed own a BlackBerry Curve 8310 once upon a time—it was my very first smartphone. I had no idea the Blackberry was from Canada, so they definitely get a point there. * Insulin: Well, I’m not diabetic, and neither is else anyone in my family, but I have had friends with diabetes over the years. So, I guess I can be thankful that Canada gave us insulin, especially in the event that I should ever develop diabetes in the future. So, I’ll give them half a point here as well. In all, my AI chatbot experiment didn’t convince me that there’s anything directly or explicitly in my life that I have, hold, use, or eat that I can give full and complete credit to Canada for. But wait… You know what? Now that I think about it more, there are a few things that I have to give Canada credit for. Yes, digging much deeper into my memory banks and thinking more abstractly, I can actually come up with at least three on my own. YES, I CANADA! The first is Rush, the rock band from Toronto. I first discovered Rush when I was 18 years old, and from the very first time I heard the song “Tom Sawyer,” I was totally hooked. I liked them so much that I gave my firstborn son “Rush” as a middle name. So I can give Canada credit for my son’s name. Although he only hears his middle name when talking to government officials or when he’s really, REALLY in trouble. The second is the memories I have from my trip to Canada I took when I was in my teens. I went on a canoeing trip in British Columbia when I was fifteen, and that’s when I discovered just how beautiful nature can be. I think the most breathtaking outdoor scenery I’ve ever seen anywhere in my life was the wilds in and around Bowron Lakes Provincial Park, where we spent two weeks canoeing through glacier-fed lakes and portaging through muddy mountain trails. (And this is where I learned about ketchup chips and poutine.) On a side note, this trip was also where I discovered just how snippy some Canucks get when you say “American.” At a McDonald’s on our very first day in Canada, I told the lady behind the counter: “I only have American money. Is that okay?” She seemed remarkably offended by this and snapped at me. “We’re Americans TOO, you know!” No, I did not know. That didn’t make any sense to me at all. She was Canadian; I was American. What was she even talking about? My country was literally called “The United States of America.” Her country, which I had to leave “America” to visit, was literally called “Canada” and definitely not called “America.” (Well, again, that is until it becomes the 51st American state.) I felt this was exceptionally weird, so I asked some of the adults in my group what her deal was. They discerned that perhaps she meant that Canada is part of NORTH AMERICA, the continent. Oh man… that was just so dumb and so pedantic. Seriously, do Mexicans want to be called “Americans” too because they’re also a part of the North American continent? If so, I’ve never met anyone from Mexico who has ever asked for that. Either way, I learned that a better way to phrase this was, “Do you take ‘U.S. currency?’” — This somehow placated people despite the hilarious fact that while we both technically use “Dollars,” my American—err—U.S. Dollars are worth more than their Canadian Dollars. So, fine. Knock yourself out, Canadian McDonald’s lady: I’ll agree that you’re an American just like me if that makes you happy. But I’m the one laughing: I only had to pay 64 cents of my dollars for every one of her dollars. Not bad, eh? The third is the biggest and the main point that I’ve been slowly building to this whole time but keep getting distracted: CHRISTMAS! That’s right. There is, in fact, one big, huge, enormous thing that is a major part of my life that I have to give total and complete credit to Canada for, and that is the Stauffer Family’s Christmas Eve Tradition. The funny thing is, I didn’t even make the connection until a week or two ago. With all this talk about Canada in the news and the upcoming Christmas season, I finally put two and two together for the first time. So, you want to hear the story about the Canadian tradition of eating food on the floor at Christmas time and how my American family has done this since before I was born? Okay. Here goes. In 1964, my grandpa, Ron Stauffer, a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, was stationed at the Ernest Harmon Air Force Base in Newfoundland and Labrador to help work on America’s Distant Early Warning Line, which would protect us from sneak attacks from Soviet bombers. He was transferred there from Langley Air Force Base and took along his wife and children, including my dad, Ron Stauffer, his firstborn son. Although they only lived there for two years, the stories my dad and my uncles have told us over the years are truly amazing and, at least to me, sometimes terrifying. I heard stories about the mind-numbingly cold weather: something like 20 degrees below zero in the winter and up to 40 degrees below with the wind chill. I heard about so much snow falling that the roads would sometimes have walls of snow up to 9 or 10 feet high on the sides. I heard about snow piling up so high it would sometimes cover up the sides of a house so you couldn’t even open your door, and it would reach all the way to the rooftop, so kids could jump off or ride their sleds off the roof into the snow, safely, just a few inches below. I heard about nighttime being so cold that people who had to drive to work in the morning would have to use a “block heater” (whatever that was) to keep their car engine from freezing up (whatever that meant) and, failing that, how some people would even let their car run in their driveway all night long in order to ensure that they could actually drive it away the next morning. I heard about how my uncles would throw snowballs at each other and hike around in the nearby forests and joke about how they were running away from “Newfies” — the local people they almost never interacted with. (Being Americans stationed on a military installation didn’t offer much in the way of interaction with locals). I heard about seafood being so cheap and plentiful that sometimes, they nearly had it coming out of their ears. My grandmother would have freezers filled to the brim with giant glass jars of frozen lobster meat — much more than they could eat. Aside from all the seafood, Newfoundland sounded like a horrifying place to me—about as bad as I could possibly imagine, and I couldn’t understand how any human being would ever choose to live there. Maybe for my dad and his brothers, it was a blast, but I don’t like snow or cold and never have, so no amount of tobogganing down a hill behind the house would make me want to live there. The fact that Newfoundland was an island where you couldn’t drive away from it in a car, even if you wanted to, made it that much worse. However, there is one thing that Newfoundland gave my family that I will forever be grateful for, and it all started, in fact, due to that legendary, hostile, frozen weather. In late December 1964, the weather was so awful due to a massive snowstorm that the Air Force told everybody to stay in their homes and not leave. Being confined in the house didn’t seem like such a big deal, though, since it was Christmas Eve, and Grammy and Grandpa had preparations for a special family Christmas dinner. The boys and my grandparents, the family lore goes, were preparing for dinner, listening to the “Merry Christmas” album by Johnny Mathis. The Christmas tree was decked out in jolly fashion, and everyone was in a great Christmassy mood. Then, all of a sudden, in the howling snowstorm, the house lost electricity. Everything went dark. The lights went out. The oven shut off. The music stopped. Grandpa found a flashlight and took out a small transistor radio he’d gotten in Japan when he had been stationed there before and tuned it to the local station to listen for weather updates, music, and whatever else they could get on this one tiny little device. Well, now, Christmas was about to be completely ruined. Without power, the oven didn’t work, nor a microwave (if they even had one), so Grammy couldn’t even finish baking whatever she had planned for dinner. But that was okay; they just reverted to “Plan B” — pulling out all the cold foods from the fridge that didn’t need to be heated. Bread, meat, cheese, pickles, olives, crackers, cookies, and more. They wouldn’t let Christmas Eve be canceled by a little thing like losing power. Lighting candles and finding flashlights, they sat at the table while Grandpa tried to heat a pot of beans over the candle’s flames. When that didn’t work, he gave up, and they just resigned themselves to only eating cold food. Now, for whatever reason, situations that adults might call a “crisis” often come across to children as exciting and magical, and this was one of those moments. My dad, for whatever reason, came up with a brilliant idea. “Hey, Mom and Dad, can we go sit on the floor over by the Christmas tree… and eat our food there?” he suggested. And for whatever reason, they obliged. So, the family moved dinner from the table to the living room floor. Sitting in a circle on the ground, with candles lit and the lights out, their dinner of simple, cold snacks from the fridge began. Right after they started, however, just as suddenly as it had gone out, the electricity came back on. The whole house instantly lit up again. My grandparents, being the adults in the room, of course, said: “Hooray! The lights are back on. Now we can go back to the table.” But the boys were having too much fun. “Nooooo!” my dad pleaded with them. “Please, turn the lights back off! This is cool—let’s stay here and keep eating on the floor!” So, Grammy and Grandpa agreed and turned off the lights again so they could keep having Christmas Eve dinner on the floor around the tree. But since the electricity had returned, they could augment their candlelit evening: the Christmas tree was now fully lit with mini-lights, and the turntable worked again, so they could turn the music back on. Once again, Johnny Mathis was singing “O Holy Night” while the kids chomped down on their “whatever we could find in the fridge” dinner, and the candles flickered into the night. The next year, still living in Newfoundland, the electricity worked just fine, yet when Christmas came around, my dad asked once again: “Can we have Christmas Eve on the floor again?” and at his insistence, Grammy and Grandpa decided that what was once a response to a catastrophic weather event could now become an annual event. And so it did. On Christmas Eve, 1964, a family tradition began entirely by accident in Newfoundland, Canada. And that tradition has continued to this very day, when, on Christmas Eve 2024, four generations of Stauffers spread across the United States of America will spend Christmas Eve eating on the floor for the 60th year in a row. This special way of celebrating Christmas is so ingrained in my mind and habits that when I was younger and found out that some people didn’t eat Christmas Eve dinner on the floor, I wondered, “What’s wrong with them?” For me and my siblings, Christmas Eve is actually the most wonderful time of the year, to the point where Christmas Day is actually boring in comparison. It’s funny: when you grow up doing things a certain way your entire life, it’s easy as a child to assume that everybody else does, or, if they don’t, you find what they do to be inferior. When I found out that other people don’t do much to celebrate Christmas Eve, but instead, their big day is Christmas Day, and they celebrate it by eating dinner at the table, I thought, “Wow, that’s just… lame.” So, over the years, from the day I was born until today, I have spent Christmas Eve sitting on the carpet near our Christmas tree, just like those early days. Everyone in our family does it slightly differently. At my parents’ house, we usually had sandwiches made with “Dutch crunch rolls” filled with pastrami and melted Swiss cheese. Since I got married, my wife and I usually don’t go to the elaborate lengths of making fancy sandwiches but mostly serve basic cold finger foods like hard salami, Triscuits, olives, pickles, sliced Cheddar, etc. One thing that’s certain, though, is we still all always drink Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider, and we always play Johnny Mathis at every get-together, no matter whose house it is. Many of us also play “Home For Christmas,” an album by Amy Grant, which is a close second in terms of Christmas albums. And, of course, we’ve gone from playing vinyl LPs to CDs to now streaming MP3s on Apple Music. What’s funny about this is that over the years, I’ve noticed that when people outside our family learn about our floor-sitting tradition, they’re intensely curious about it, and some people I know who aren’t Stauffers have even copied it. A few years ago, my wife was part of a women’s bible study, and as Christmas came near, the leader asked everyone to share what their family’s special traditions were, if they had any. My wife told the room, almost embarrassed, about how we eat on the floor by the tree (I say “embarrassed” because, if you don’t have enough time to fully explain how this came to be and how it actually works, “eating on the floor for Christmas” can sound really strange). But the response from the ladies in the room was almost over the top. “Oh, wow! That sounds so cool!” they said. One woman even told her: “I want to try that!” A few weeks after Christmas, that same woman—a single woman who had never been married, had no children, and had always lived alone—did indeed try it… all by herself. She was thrilled to report back to my wife: “I did it! I had Christmas Eve dinner on the floor by my Christmas tree! It was so fun!” How funny. How funny that sixty years ago, on one random night during the Christmas season, the power went out across the city of Stephenville on the island of Newfoundland. And now there are dozens—and perhaps soon to be hundreds—of Americans who are still enjoying fantastic family holiday memories, and making new ones, because of it. When I hear the song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” I can’t help but smile when I hear the lyrics: “There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago.” For that’s precisely what we do every Christmas. Aside from watching “The Muppet Christmas Carol,” there are no scary ghost stories in our house… but each year, as we gather around the tree, sitting in a circle, someone, a young child, a family guest, or a new addition to the Stauffer family, will ask: “So what’s this all about anyway? Why are we sitting on the floor?” And I’ll smile as I once again tell the “tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago,” where it all began. So, thank you, Canada. You’ve given my family over half a century of wonderful, unique holidays and special, happy memories. Merry Christmas, eh? Micron is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Micron at micron.fm/subscribe (https://micron.fm/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

3. 

   14 Nov 2024

   Backpacking With a Terrorist in the Rocky Mountains

   For almost all of my childhood, growing up as a homeschooler was extremely lonely. My family knew very few families that homeschooled as we did, and I lost contact with the few we did know in California when we moved to Colorado when I was around 14. After we relocated from the west coast to our new home on the other side of the Rockies, just about everybody I knew that was my age either went to public school or private school, so I was almost always the odd man out. This was exceptionally frustrating and depressing: feeling like an outsider everywhere I went—always—really bothered me, especially because I knew that A) it wasn’t my fault and B) there was nothing I could do about it. Being a teenager in a conservative, homeschooled family with precisely one social circle (a church youth group) where we had almost nothing in common with everybody else in the group made things feel even worse. When we left California and moved to Colorado, our parents decided we would start going to a Baptist church, probably because they simply couldn’t find any Mennonite churches in the nearby area, and they figured that was as close as we’d be able to get. But it really wasn’t close at all: the kids at the Baptist church were nothing like us. They had never even heard of Mennonites before. When I told my new peers about the church I grew up in, they were completely clueless. “Huh? You’re Mormons?” more than one person asked. “No, Mennonite,” I’d insist. “Dude, are you saying your family is like Amish or something? Do you drive around in a horse and buggy carriage?” It was extremely embarrassing. So, we were already in the minority purely from a denominational perspective, and now, adding on the additional embarrassment of being homeschooled was just icing on the cake. The low-intelligence insults abounded: * Hurr, hurr… so you’re saying your mom’s your school teacher? Who’s your principal? * Will you take your sister to the school dance? Will you be the homecoming king and queen? * What happens if you get sent to the office? Do you have to go to your bedroom? * Are you the valedictorian of your house? Har har… But it wasn’t just that our lifestyles were different: our family’s values were extremely different as well. Everybody we knew was far more liberal than we were. I still don’t know why my parents chose to keep going to that church, but it was what it was. At least for the first year or two, my siblings and I were the only homeschoolers we knew in our entire group of friends, but I participated in everything the youth group had to offer despite the stupid jabs from the jerks I met because I was so desperate for friendship and connection of any kind. Some of the kids I met in Colorado were kind, but almost all of them were public schoolers who had lots of friends and who lived what seemed like fabulous lives that revolved entirely around themselves. They mostly came from very small families, often with just one or two kids, lived in big houses, participated in expensive sports and music programs, and spent every waking moment of their lives obsessing over shallow, vapid things like dating, wearing fancy clothes, watching tons of TV, and gossiping about everyone else they knew. When I compared my life to theirs, the thing that stung most of all was that almost every kid I knew, upon reaching driving age, was given a car as a present by their parents. There was just so much about their lives I couldn’t possibly understand. They went to dances at school, held hands, kissed each other, called each other “boyfriend” and “girlfriend,” watched movies I wasn’t allowed to watch, listened to music I wasn’t allowed to listen to, and were utterly, completely infatuated with “fitting in” and “being cool.” They were extremely concerned about fashion trends, knowing the top radio hits, reading the right magazines, and going to movie theaters as soon as the hottest new movies came out. I never understood this or cared about any of it, and it always bothered me that I felt like I didn’t belong in or around the one group of kids that I was supposed to spend time with. I wouldn’t say I hated these kids my age, but I was certainly unimpressed and often disappointed in them. I couldn’t understand how people could be so completely shallow, so easily amused, and yet be so impressed with themselves for doing so very little. It often seemed like everybody I knew who was my age just fantasized about growing up to be a cast character on the TV show “Friends.” When I completed the eighth grade and was now high school aged, I remember looking around at all the kids I knew and asking myself: “Do I really think I’ll still be friends with anybody here when high school is over?” The answer to that was, clearly and sadly, “no.” I was completely different in almost every way from all the kids I was surrounded with. I couldn’t imagine what their lives were like as carefree, “normal” public schooled kids, and none of them had a clue about what my life was like as a homeschooler. Until one day, when out of the blue, a stranger showed up at our church: a young man I’d never met before who finally seemed to have a few things in common with me… who gave me some hope. One random Sunday, I met Shane, a relative of one of the boys I already knew in the youth group. His family, for some reason, decided to start coming to our church. Shane was about a year older than me, about my height, had my same build, and even combed his hair to the side just like I did. He had a baby face that was COVERED in freckles, and he was socially awkward, but there was one thing about him that changed everything for me: he was a homeschooler. A HOMESCHOOLER. Just knowing that I was no longer the only homeschooled kid in the youth group (aside from my siblings) made him immediately noticeable and interesting. Whether he and I had much in common personally or not, I was absolutely going to get to know this guy. We were now the only two homeschooled boys in the youth group, and that alone meant I already had more in common with him than anyone else. Finally, I could talk to someone else who did his schoolwork at the kitchen table. Finally, I’d have a kindred spirit who knew what it was like to be done with school by the early afternoon, reveling in freedom long before everyone who went to public school was even released. Finally, I knew at least one other person who could also make fun of all the weird jargon public schoolers used. Strange words like: intramurals, mock trial, forensics, magna cum laude, hall passes, pep rallies, study halls, enrichment, advanced placement, international baccalaureate diploma programs, and all manner of bizarre concepts that all seemed like foreign language gibberish to me. I immediately struck up a friendship with Shane. And it seemed promising… at first. Like most other people I knew at that time, Shane came from a relatively small family: just four kids, which was just under half the size of my family, which had nine kids. That wasn’t that big a deal, but I noticed that he did seem odd in a way I could never quite put my finger on, and he had a weird sense of humor, but I was just finally relieved to meet someone else close to my age who lived in Colorado and who knew what it was like not having taken ACTs or SATs or not even knowing what those were. After we got to know each other over the course of a few months, he invited me to his house for a sleepover, and it seemed like my life was forever changed. His family lived in an enormous, beautiful home on acreage in the Colorado mountains. They had all kinds of toys: a jacuzzi, ATVs, BMX bikes, and lots of other things that made their lives seem incredibly exciting compared to mine. I could barely believe my good fortune in finding a new friend like this. He and I weren’t a perfect fit when it came to our friendship, but it seemed like we had enough similarities that it still made sense to be friends. Or that’s what I told myself. I think if I were being honest, I was actually feeling like a woman who’d been asked out on a date by a man who wasn’t especially handsome but who drove a Corvette. If I had said it out loud, I would have been embarrassed to admit it, but it was simply the truth that I was determined to develop a friendship with this guy, if only for his stuff. I wanted access to this kind of life. Whenever Shane and I spent time together, I always tried to make sure I went over to his house rather than having him come over to mine. Even comparing our houses felt embarrassing. He lived in what seemed like a luxurious mansion on a sprawling grassy property in the mountains that had a collection of incredible gadgets. My family lived in a decent-sized house, but it was also filled with people and was on a cramped lot in the city. And we had nothing like ATVs to play with. His house in the hills had a natural pond out front, complete with a wooden bench next to a giant evergreen tree, and stocked with Asian Grass Carp. In my mind, it looked like it could have been a set for a romantic movie. My house in the city had a figure-eight-shaped “koi pond” in the basement made of concrete and painted brick that was built in the 1970s and had been completely dry and abandoned for decades. It looked like it could have been a set from a wacky Woody Allen film or a documentary about people with hoarding disorders. I wanted so badly to leave our house and live in a house like his. Everything about it was exciting and fun, and I couldn’t imagine how much better his life was than mine. That first summer after I met Shane, I spent as much time as I possibly could at his house. They had an enormous fish aquarium in their massive living room, a huge back porch with an amazing mountain view, and a hot tub for soaking in late at night and looking up at the stars. They had a video game console (which my family had never owned), and they even had a DVD player, which was something I’d never seen before. Shane showed me just how sharp and clear the picture quality a movie could have on their ginormous flat-screen TV they had that probably cost them $5,000 or $10,000. All of this was intoxicating: I nearly felt drunk at the possibilities I never knew could even exist in this world and just how extravagant everything was. His family seemed nice, and they were so permissive compared to my family that it was almost unreal. His parents let us stay out late at night, chopping firewood, building our own campfire, and sleeping on the top floor of their chicken barn. I was almost deliriously happy with finding my new friend. His best quality, as someone older than me, was a total game changer: the fact that he owned his own car. And not just any car: he had a Jeep Wrangler. All of this coolness was almost too much for me to take in. Was it a dream? Was this an illusion? I now had a friend who lived in the mountains, who could now drive me around without my needing to ask my parents to pick me up and drop me off? Having a Jeep was far cooler than simply owning a car: he had four-wheel drive, and sometimes we’d go off-roading in the mountains around his house. This was a total blast. I hadn’t turned 16 yet, so this new development in my life meant freedom. Having a friend with all these capabilities: spending time in the forest, staying up late, driving to and from youth group events without needing to ask my parents for a ride, cruising across rivers and rocks in the mountains in a Jeep with the top down… it all seemed too good to be true. And, over time, the honeymoon phase ended. I started to realize that, aside from having some similar interests and background, Shane was really nothing like me. And his family was really nothing like mine. As I got to know him more, I slowly started to develop a feeling about him that was…eerie. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it if you had asked me, but I did sense that there was something about him I just didn’t trust. It was never anything big—just occasional side comments he made every once in a while that would catch me off guard or small actions he took that I found slightly disconcerting. I kept spending time with him anyway because I was so desperately lonely, and spending time with him, as awkward as it might have been, was still better than being stuck at home. One of the biggest differences between our families was how his parents were so much more laid back than mine, to a level where it almost seemed absurd. For one example, he was allowed to watch outrageously inappropriate movies like “Austin Powers.” The sheer number of jokes and quotes he shared from that disgusting movie made me feel sick. He laughed and laughed about some guy named “Fat B*****d” and a scene where one man apparently drinks another man’s diarrhea out of a coffee cup. Yuck. I never wanted to see that movie, even if I had been allowed to, and I couldn’t understand why he did. The way he took advantage of his parents’ hands-off approach caused me concern at times, too. One weekend, late at night, Shane, his brothers, and I all went to the back side of their property and lit a fire. They had a very normal-looking fire ring where they’d clearly had fires many times before. But at least on this night, one of his brothers took a gas can and poured gasoline all over the logs they were going to burn. In the process, though, he also spilled gas all over the rest of the ground, apparently thinking this would be a very funny way to start the fire. A lit match was dropped onto the firewood. WHOOSH! Everything in the fire pit went up in flames… as did all the little trails of gasoline that had been splashed all over the ground. Long lines of fire shot up all over the place in a labyrinth pattern, including where I was standing. We all jumped up in fear and ran away as the fire ripped right past us, between our legs, and all over the surrounding area. The other boys guffawed, falling over with laughter at how hilarious it all was. I was terrified that they might have accidentally burned down the entire forest surrounding their house. At a minimum, I thought we’d get in trouble for being so careless. But nothing happened. To his family, it was apparently no big deal. Their parents never even came out to check on us at all. I thought this was extremely weird. What kind of parents let their teenage kids play with gasoline and light crazy fires without supervision in the backyard late at night… when they live in the forest? But nothing bad happened, so I put it past me. One thing that impressed me about Shane was his ability to provide for himself financially, though I could never quite make the numbers work in my mind. For example, the fact that he was able to buy a Jeep at all was surprising to me because he didn’t even even have a job. He would sometimes babysit the neighbor kids, but he only got $10/hour for that and it was very part-time. I asked him how much he paid for it and was stunned when he told me it cost him $7,000. “Wow,” I said, shocked at such a large amount of money for a young man who was barely old enough to drive. He said he bought it used from a friend, which obviously explained the relatively low price for such an amazing car. But I was still confused: how on earth could he afford something at that price, whether it was a good deal or not? “All I can say is,” he told me, “it was an answer to prayer.” Well, his prayers must have been far more powerful than mine were; this big, beautiful Jeep Wrangler was the biggest answer to prayer I had ever seen in my life. When winter came, Shane invited me to go camping with him in the mountains with just the two of us. As a young teenage boy, I had gone camping before, but almost always with my dad and never without adults. “Really? You mean just you and me?” I asked. “Yeah, just us,” he said. “It’ll be great. I’ll drive. We can go backpacking on Mount Evans. Have you ever gone backpacking before?” I never had. Well, I had brought a backpack with me on camping trips before, but I’d never gone backpacking. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. “Do you have a rucksack?” he asked. “A what?” I wondered. I’d never heard of this before. He told me a rucksack was like a fancy backpack for people who want to go hiking a long distance in the mountains. It’s built in such a way that it distributes the weight high on your back, so it’s not so heavy, and feels less fatiguing. “I don’t think so,” I told him. All I had was a camouflage-colored “tactical” backpack that I’d gotten at an army surplus store. “That will work,” he said. “Just make sure to only bring the bare necessities. We’ll be carrying everything in and out on our backs, so we want it to be as light as possible. I am ruthless when it comes to weight: I even cut the twisty ties on my plastic bags in half. Whatever you can do to reduce the weight, do that.” Not having gone “backpacking” before, I didn’t appreciate the full weight (pun intended) of what he was saying, but I would soon learn. He invited me to come with him for a long weekend: Friday night, Saturday night, then Sunday night, then we’d come back Sunday afternoon if memory serves. So we’d essentially be gone for three days. Shane said it wasn’t really worth going all the way up to the mountains for less time than that. It was so much work just to get there and back that we’d want to have as much time as we could actually backpacking. I asked my dad for permission to go, and when I told him our plans, he almost blew a gasket. “You want to be gone for THREE DAYS?” he almost shouted at me, incredulous. I was confused about what the big deal was. “I don’t even know this guy. He could be a criminal, for all I know! No, you can’t be gone for that long. You’re not old enough for that. Let’s try one night to start and see how that goes. Maybe you can take a longer trip next time.” Well… that was really embarrassing, but I accepted it. I called Shane to tell him I could go, but only for one night. He wasn’t happy about this at all. “Oh, come on, what’s the big deal?” he ranted. “Your dad sounds like a real control freak!” In the end, he decided it was still worth going anyway. So, he picked me up from my house, and we hit the road. Driving up the highway from the city to the mountains in a Jeep with the top down was an unforgettable experience. The autumn chill was in the air, the cool breeze zipped by our faces at high speed, and the view of the trees and valleys we drove past was simply breathtaking. At one point during our drive, we had a really awkward moment: somehow, in the course of our conversation, we found out that we both had a crush on the same girl. I had been smitten with one girl in the church youth group—and always that same girl—since my family first moved to Colorado, and we started going to that church. I don’t exactly know why it took me by surprise that he was interested in her as well, but I didn’t expect it. Let’s just say: the tone in the Jeep changed immediately. We’d been chatting up a storm the whole ride so far, but this unexpected news created an unwelcome tension between us. Silence passed. I looked at Shane not just as a friend now but as a competitor of sorts… almost an enemy. Part of me wanted to tell him: “How dare you! I was here first!” as though that really meant anything. But another part of me said, “Hold on, Ron, you’re not in a relationship with her anyway, so calm down.” But the fact that he told me he’d recently made a pass at her was galling. Who did this new kid think he was, butting in on my plans to pursue the prettiest girl in the group? A few miles down the highway, we carefully worked past the uneasiness of this potential rift in our friendship and moved on to other topics. I realized at that point, though, that Shane had always felt like a bit of a threat to me. And not just because he wanted to start dating the girl I was secretly in love with… it seemed like he always had a strange anger management problem: I suspected there was a rage quietly simmering under the surface of his otherwise pleasant demeanor. We kept driving, and the sun started to descend in the sky. I could feel the air get colder as we drove higher in elevation. We kept talking, and at one point, I brought up a topic that really bothered him. “That really CHAPS MY ASS!” Shane shouted angrily in response to whatever it was—I can’t remember what—that clearly ticked him off. This outburst completely shocked me. First of all, I had never heard this phrase before. “Chaps my ass?” Oh my goodness, what a naughty phrase this was! Second of all, I saw his anger here for the first time, and it scared me. It wasn’t even directed at me, and I was thankful it wasn’t. But I was nervous about ever doing something to make him angry at me. How would he act then? I didn’t want to know. I felt even more uncomfortable when I realized that he was driving, and I was now completely at his mercy. I couldn’t even drive a car yet, I didn’t own a cell phone, and I was about to go deep into the mountains, completely off-grid, to spend the night somewhere I’d never been before, with just myself and this new friend I’d recently made who was only a year older than me. As we headed up the steep mountain passes, I pondered all of this. Dad was right, I thought. I was glad we were only going for one night. There were many things he said on that road trip to Mount Evans that made me more and more concerned. I started telling him about one of the other girls in the youth group, Sarah, who was a good friend of mine. “Sarah?” he interrupted me. “Who’s that? Oh, I know her… she’s got nice legs!” What? This interjection made me lose my train of thought, and I couldn’t even finish my sentence. Why was he talking about Sarah’s body like that? I had never really thought of her like that before… and even if I had thought of her in a romantic way, I certainly hadn’t noticed her legs before… and I definitely wouldn’t comment on them. What was that about? Why was he talking like this? Worse, when talking about another girl in our group, he told me how he’d seen up her dress while she was sitting down on a bench during a church potluck. “She wasn’t wearing any underwear!” he snickered. What? Once again, I was nearly tongue-tied, trying to take in what I was hearing. Here I was, thinking I’d found a fellow conservative homeschooler from a Christian family who was just like me… yet, it turned out, he was actually nothing like me. This guy came across as a creepy, sex-crazed maniac who liked dirty jokes, looked up girls’ dresses, and constantly commented on their bodies, and was somewhat of a pyromaniac. I started to regret coming on this trip at all. I realized that there had been some warning signs about his strange behavior a few weeks earlier. I had a flashback to where we had been sitting in church on a Sunday morning. As the pastor droned on during a sermon I wasn’t paying much attention to, Shane, who had been sitting next to me, gave me a nudge. “Psst! Hey, hold out your hand,” he whispered. Confused, I held out my hand in compliance and watched as he brought his closed fist above mine, then dropped some small, heavy items into my hand. Bullets. Staring in utter confusion, my brain tried to comprehend what I was now holding in my palm. Why had he just given me a handful of bullets in the middle of the pastor’s sermon? Why did he even have bullets with him in the first place? He was just a teenager barely older than me: what purpose could he possibly have in bringing bullets with him to church, and why did he drop them in my hand without warning? I looked at him, mystified, and saw him smiling with a big, goofy grin. “Where did these come from?” I asked him, annoyed, almost outraged. “It’s no big deal. I had them in my pocket,” he said, snatching them back out of my hand. He put them back in his pocket, where, I presumed, he probably had at least a few more live rounds. The way he was still smiling and giggling as though it were so hilarious made me feel very uncomfortable. My mind started to worry… did he have a gun with him as well? He really seemed to like surprising people with this sort of dangerous “shock factor” humor, but I found it odd and unnerving. I had originally told myself it wasn’t a big deal, but by now, all these incidents were adding up and making me more and more concerned. At the end of our drive, we finally arrived at a trailhead and parked the Jeep. We took our gear out of the Jeep and put everything we had on since it was getting cold: hats, gloves, hiking boots, sunglasses, and, of course, our backpacks. Shane had his fancy, expensive, lightweight rucksack, and I had my squat, heavy Army surplus bag overloaded with way too many items. Trekking up the trails, we walked for what seemed like hours in the pristine, cool mountains. Breathing heavily in the crisp, thin air, we stopped for water breaks, panting as we gulped from our water bottles. “I made a mistake,” I told him as I took off my backpack during one break. “Oh, I know,” he said, chuckling. “You brought way, way too much stuff.” “I didn’t realize how heavy my pack would become! It didn’t seem so bad when I first put it on, but now…” breathing so hard, I couldn’t finish my sentence. “You have to learn to live without things if you want to go backpacking,” he said. “I only bring the essentials, and I even cut things in half when I can.” “I know,” I replied. “But I wasn’t sure what to bring. I didn’t have any dried food, so I brought cans.” “You brought CANS?!” he almost shouted. “No wonder your pack is so heavy!” He laughed at my idiocy but then gave me a surprisingly generous offer. “Here, gimme your backpack. I’ll carry it for a while. Take mine,” he said, handing me his rucksack. “Wow, thanks!” I said, surprised at such a kind gesture. How nice. He didn’t have to do that, I thought. We hiked and hiked deeper into the mountains and stumbled into a grove of aspen trees. I’d seen aspen trees before, but not up close like this: we were entirely surrounded by hundreds—maybe thousands—of beautiful aspen trees partially covered in patches of snow. The sun was no longer directly overhead but cast a sideways glint on the trees. I noticed that one big section of the aspens looked very strange: they were all crooked. They looked curved, almost like a fish hook or a shepherd’s crook. I asked Shane if he knew why this was. “Oh yeah, it’s because we climb them and ‘bend’ them down. It’s a lot of fun.” “What? You ‘bend’ them?” I asked, shocked. “Oh, it’s a blast. You have to catch them at just the right time when the wood is still soft: you climb up to the top, and because it can’t hold your weight, the whole tree starts to bend over like that, and then you jump off. I’d show you how, but it’s the wrong time of year for it.” I was incredulous. “Wait, you mean you bent these trees?” “Oh, yeah. Well, not just me. All of us. My brothers and I come here all the time and climb them. Lots of people do it.” “So they just stay this way? Isn’t that kind of… destroying them?” I wondered. “Huh? Not really,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt ’em. Look at them: they’re still alive.” “Yeah, but they’re all… deformed now. Do they ever ‘heal’ and go back to normal?” I wondered. “Uhh, no? I don’t think so,” he said. “And you’re okay with that? You’re just out here deforming dozens of trees out in the forest like that?” I challenged him. “I guess,” he said slowly, irritated at my question. I didn’t like this at all. I didn’t understand how someone could just damage whole swaths of nature and laugh at it like it was a joke. It bugged me a lot, but there was nothing I could do, so I just let it go as we put our packs back on and resumed hiking. Eventually, we reached a clearing in the woods where we decided to make camp. After cleaning up the ground, we pitched a tent near the base of a tall tree in a spot that had a nice overlook of a river. It was all so beautiful. We started a fire and made dinner. Sitting here, next to a fire, eating from a can, by myself, with just one other guy around my age, I felt like I was now finally approaching manhood. My dad wasn’t here. In fact, there were no parents or adults here. It was just two teenage boys out in the mountains, doing what young men do. What a freeing, inspiring, manly experience. The sun finally set, and the sound of the river combined with the crackling of the fire was soothing. We talked late into the night. Shane told me how he loved coming out here to the mountains and wanted to move to the woods someday if he could. He dreamed of finding a wife who would live in the wilderness with him, completely off-grid, in a place that looked just like where we were. I couldn’t imagine a life like that: I was happy to be there, in that moment, for a time. But to make a life out of it? That seemed almost impossible. And good luck finding a wife who’d be willing to do that, I thought. I told him it would be hard to find a woman who’d want to leave all the comforts of home behind to live out in the wild like this, but he immediately disagreed with me. He told me how his own mother would have signed up for something like that. “How do you know?” I asked. “When my parents got married, the first thing they did was take a ten-day honeymoon out in the wilderness just like this.” Ewww, I thought. No showers, no running water, and no electricity for your first ten days as a married couple? I rebuffed him: “Going on a honeymoon for a week and a half is a totally different thing than actually living that way forever.” It was hard for me to understand his desire. He lived in a big, luxurious house, with a hot tub, and all the toys a young man could desire. It was the best of both worlds: he already had a mountain view but also lived close enough to town that he could hop in his Jeep and run down to a local Walmart to get whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. Why would someone with a life like that want to leave it all behind? I wanted what he had so badly and couldn’t understand why he didn’t appreciate how amazing it was. There were a lot of things about Shane that confused me, and now, some things even started to make me feel self-conscious and self-loathing, but also… jealous. For one thing, Shane was a real outdoorsy-type guy. This was obvious from the simple fact that this was the first time I had ever gone on a camping trip like this, while he apparently did it all the time. He loved the rough, tough mountain life: camping, hunting, hiking, fishing, being outside, shoveling snow, off-roading, and just exploring out in the wild far away from everyone else. I didn’t like almost any of that, but ironically, my dad did. I always had a feeling that my dad was disappointed in who I was because I didn’t like the same things he did. Spending time with Shane on this camping trip made me sad: I felt like he was the kind of young man my dad had always hoped for in a son. The very idea of hunting sounded awful: I couldn’t imagine spending money on a tag, freezing my butt off in the mountains, sitting with a gun out in the wild for days on end, hoping the right kind of prey walked past me, or potentially going home empty-handed. But I knew that if my dad had come along with me on this trip, he and Shane would have had a blast together, while I would have reluctantly followed along simply to be included in the group. My dad had always said his favorite movie was “Jeremiah Johnson,” the 1972 Robert Redford film about a man who left the world behind to live alone in the wilderness. I never wanted to be like that, but I knew that Shane did. So the fact that they had this in common, even though they didn’t know each other, made me feel awful. Why did they both crave this wild, grizzled mountain-man life so much? What was this obsession with living in the forest far away from people, shooting animals, wearing their furs, and spending every night in a sleeping bag? What was so wrong with living in the city and having running water, store-bought food, and toilets that flushed like I wanted? As the fire died down and we retired to the tent, I wondered about all this silently. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I actually had almost nothing in common with Shane at all. Nothing bad happened between us in the mountains, and (aside from our strange discovery in the Jeep that we liked the same girl), not a cross word was spoken between us the entire time. But I had a sad realization that this guy, who I originally thought was like me, was so irreparably different from me that we actually weren’t even friends. We were just two people who knew each other. When I met him, I had hoped I’d found a best friend, but I had misjudged badly. The next morning, we woke up, stoked the fire, had some breakfast, and then set out to do some exploring. The river right next to our camp was half-frozen: there was ice on one side while the other side had free-flowing water. I walked around on the frozen side, exploring the ice while Shane busted out his fly fishing rod and tried his luck at catching some trout. I found a beaver lodge and wondered if there would be any live beavers in it. I spent probably half an hour pulling up logs, wondering if there were any beavers actively living inside. I was astonished to see just how tightly those fat little suckers can build a shelter: it was very, very well constructed. Log after log, I kept pulling it apart, hoping to find a family of beavers deep inside the giant, muddy mass of denuded tree branches. I became so physically exhausted that I stopped to take a breather and realized just how silly my actions were. If I pull the roof off of this beaver house and I actually find beavers in here, what would I do with them? For some reason, I hadn’t thought of this before. What if they are angry at me for destroying their house? Would they run after me and attack me? I knew that beavers had gigantic front teeth: could they bite me? I realized that I had been ripping apart a wild animal’s house for the pure sake of fun and curiosity and that this was exactly what Shane had done by bending the aspen trees. This made me feel hypocritical, so I stopped. I walked over to where Shane was fly-fishing and watched him. I asked about the weird, fat orange string he was using and wondered how that didn’t scare away the fish. He gave me a detailed explanation about how fly casting works, and while everything he said made sense, all I could feel was that I was in the wrong place. I didn’t really want to know about fly fishing, and I couldn’t imagine wanting to. I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to learn to fly fish at all. And after an hour or so of watching him fly fish and not catch anything, I felt like this whole trip had been a waste. I didn’t want to be in the mountains anymore. I knew we had to hike back to the car, and I’d have to carry my ridiculously overloaded backpack that was super heavy all the way back. But that was okay: I just wanted the trip to be over. I felt so out of place. I looked all around me at the mountains. It was all so beautiful. But it also felt… so empty, alone, and depressing. I was so far away from civilization, and it was so completely, overwhelmingly quiet. This day wasn’t like yesterday: today, the sun was nowhere to be seen. It was just cold, overcast, and gray. I thought about how I didn’t like the vast, open remoteness of the mountains. …or backpacking. …or hunting. …or fishing. …or Shane, really. And I felt embarrassed by that. All I wanted was a friend—finally, a homeschooled friend—who I could talk to and hang out with. I thought I had found one until I took this trip and realized that all I found was someone my dad would have wanted to be friends with. We went back to our site, broke camp, and hit the trail back to the Jeep. It was a much quieter hike heading back to the trailhead than it had been on our way up here. I was just ready to be done and go home. I was really glad that my dad said I couldn’t go for longer than one night. I felt like even this one night was too much. When we got back into town, Shane dropped me off at my house, and he went back home. And that was it. As far as I recall, I never went on another trip with him anywhere. But I did ponder my relationship with him and this whole weird experience of meeting someone who almost became my friend but never really did, and I thought of what might have been but wasn’t. A few months later, he told me his family was moving to another state. He was really, really excited about this because they were going to live in the mountains. The vast, deep, remote, rugged mountains. I was genuinely happy for him. I did not want to move deep into the wilderness like he was going to. But he did, and so that was fine by me. I wasn’t angry at him, and when he left, I had no feelings of “good riddance” or anything like that. I was only relieved that, with him gone, now I could pursue the girl I had always had a crush on like I always wanted to. I never did, though: one of the other girls in the youth group told me that my crush was “too preppy for me.” I had no idea what that meant at the time, but I sooned learned that this was essentially code for “she’s too rich for you.” That really hurt, but I think it was actually a fair assessment. All the kids seemed richer than me. So, once again, I learned a new concept from public schoolers about unwritten social rules that I didn’t understand because I wasn’t like them. A few years passed, and I never heard from Shane again. I started wondering what he had been up to since I last saw him. Was he finally living his best life as a mountain man with a wild mountain wife somewhere with a wild mountain child, homesteading, completely off the grid, out in the middle of nowhere, shooting animals for dinner and sleeping by campfires at night? I was dying to know. So, one evening, I got online and searched for his name to see if I could find out what became of him. Maybe we could connect on Facebook or something. Nothing could have prepared me for what I discovered. Shane had indeed gotten married. Good for him. He had indeed had a child. Good for him. But no, he was not living in the remote reaches of the vast, uncharted wilderness. He was in prison. I gasped out loud as I saw pictures of him on my computer screen. An FBI mugshot. An orange jumpsuit. My friend, in handcuffs, in a court room. This young man I’d gone camping with had been arrested and was now serving time in federal prison for crimes related to domestic terrorism. His rap sheet included a long list of unbelievable charges: * kidnapping * conspiracy to commit murder of federal officials * solicitation to murder * conspiracy to kill officers and employees of the United States, including law enforcement officers * …and more. WHAT ON EARTH?! My head spun as I tried to make sense of it all. What? Why? How? What had gone wrong? All I ever wanted was to find someone I could finally have something in common with as a conservative homeschooled kid in my teen years. I thought I had found one, but, in fact, I had started a friendship with a strange person with creepy habits who had turned out to be a domestic terrorist, and is now serving more than 25 years in prison. I don’t know what to make of all of this. I had—and have—so many questions. If Shane were here today, it would be hard not to just unload on him. * What on earth were you thinking? * Are you out of your damn mind? * Why couldn’t you just be normal? In addition to just being angry, though, I think I’d also vent about how I felt hurt: * Why didn’t you ever call or email after you moved away? * Did you miss me at all? * Did you even think of me as a friend, or did I just imagine it? I think I’d even have some questions for myself if I’m really being honest: * I knew something was wrong… should I have said something? * What could I have said, and to whom? * Could I have stopped him somehow from going down this destructive path? I don’t really know the answers to any of these questions. What I do know is that the only camping I’ve done since that trip to Mount Evans is with my sons. I carefully watch them when they light the campfire, and we don’t use gasoline. I’ve still never gone fly fishing, I still don’t own a rucksack, and I’ve never disturbed a beaver’s lodge ever again. I’m extremely cautious of people who give me bad vibes, and I listen to that eerie, uneasy feeling. I really trust my gut now, even if I can’t fully explain my reasons. I make it a point to meet all the friends my children want to spend time with, and I try to keep close tabs on who they are and how much time my kids spend with them. And I will never… ever get close to someone who jokes about looking at teenage girls’ private parts at church. It’s been a strange, lonely road since high school. I like to go on trips by myself these days. And I constantly try to remind myself that it’s okay that I didn’t turn out the way I believed my dad wanted. I’ve still never gone hunting, and I don’t want to be Jeremiah Johnson, and I’m not jealous of Shane anymore. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve never been convicted of terrorism. And I’m not in prison. 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