Stumbling toward apotheosis

It's been a long and winding road with more than a few bumps, but it's starting to dawn on me what it may have been all about.

Bookends, five decades apart.

This year, for the first time in my life, I finally got to spend a summer doing whatever the hell I liked. It was grand, but it did mean spending less time on Substack. Now that school has started, I’m back. We have a lot to discuss. We’ll get to that presently.

The Groms and I traveled a lot this summer. As we crossed the country a few times, visiting people and places that have meant something to me, I spent a lot of time thinking about the path from where it all started to where I am now. Good? Bad? Up? Down? Who knows? All I am certain of is that it’s been real. And the people I’ve met along the way have made even the worst parts of the journey worthwhile.

Nearly five decades ago, in the summer of 1976, I pulled off the first really cool thing that I ever did. It’s no exaggeration to claim that day changed my life. I don’t know that I would have ever developed the confidence to take on more hard things had that adventure not gone well. I was 20 then, and that day was when I first grasped that I was the biggest influence in my own fate. It was the day I figured out that one moves toward their goals, dreams, and ambitions one step at a time. You figure out what you want to accomplish, get out your compass, and get your ass moving. The first step is always the hardest. After that, it’s just effort.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, most of it good, though not all. But I have no doubt that adventures were necessary to prepare me for my current occupation: taking care of the four coolest things that I ever did. And though I think that there’s still plenty of road ahead, I like the idea of that long-ago day, my first time in the mountains, and watching my four Groms get on the same school bus for the first time a few mornings ago, as bookends on a shelf full of what I hope was not wasted time.

I’d really like to spend my final years thinking that I did some good, though I reckon that the jury is always still out on that until the end of your very last moment. As long as you are above ground, up, down and sideways are all possible. I just hope that wisdom is real.

Accomplishing hard things is less an epiphany than a series of small revelations—a step at a time in the right direction. It’s a bit Sisyphean, since the view that greets you at the top of your first mountain is of a much larger and more difficult one off in the distance. You can either rest on what you already accomplished or move ahead. If you go with what’s behind door #2, the boulder that you roll ahead of you grows bigger every time.

I used to think that hard things justified themselves. That climbing, writing, riding insanely fast motorcycles around racetracks, devoting years to figuring out physics problems, and screwing up the courage to walk out on a stage and play music were their own reward. I thought that adventure and accomplishment were an ecosystem that existed to make the banality and heartlessness of the rest of the world tolerable. I had no idea that hard things were training for things to come that were going to be even more difficult.

Soloing alpine climbs, as it turns out, has got nothing on soloing with the four kids I’m now responsible for shepherding towards productive adult lives. Fast motorcycles are not nearly as scary as the sobering responsibility of not failing kids that have already been failed. The discipline to study quantum mechanics has got nothing on controlling yourself after finding a nail driven into a guitar (don’t ask me how I know). It’s a slackline above the void.

If I’d parachuted into any of this without decades of prep, I couldn’t do it. But because of the road that led here, I think that maybe I can—as long as I take it a day at a time. It’s the Mountaineer’s Rest Step applied to the flat world. So far, so good.

But, back to why you are here. I’ll have a piece out on Monday concerning the bait and switch that is modern higher education. Science Friday will resume, albeit with the normally knackered schedule. It’s wonderful to be back. Thank you all for visiting with me here on Howlin’. Thanks for your comments, likes and restacks. There are lots of asshats out there. Let’s get after them.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on X at @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.