As I described a few entries ago, I went from waking up in California to eventually finding myself at an exquisitely pristine white sand beach by the end of the day.

It was one of those days that you intuitively know you will look back on as a milestone for years to come. Enjoy!

I hope you enjoyed this photo essay! As always, all of the photos are included in the accompanying photo gallery. This time, the gallery is called Flight to Hawaii & Makalawena Beach. Enjoy

My first weekend in Hawaii was a shining example of this in action, and as we drove southbound on the Mamalahoa highway, I truly had no idea what I was in for. Not only would I see Devil’s Throat, a deceptively-massive pit crater, but I would also get the chance to see the raw, volcanic power of this island in a way that most locals never even get a chance to. I was about to visit Halemau’uma’u Crater, one of the most active volcanic areas on the planet, and all because I was in the right place at the right time (vis-à-vis couchsurfing).

Devil’s Throat

After having a relaxing picnic in a field surrounded by koa trees, we headed off to our first destination, a pit crater which is so young that it lacks a Hawaiian name. Our guide (a friend of my new Couchsurfing friend) had worked for the USGS in the past and led us deep within Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.

We carefully made our way down gravel paths until a massive hole in the earth appeared ahead. This was Devil’s Throat.

When it was first discovered in the early 1900s, it was so small that riders would often jump the small opening with their horses, never knowing that it was over 30 meters deep and growing wider with depth. Today, the size of Devil’s Throat is much more obvious, and according to the USGS, probably the best example of a collapsed volcanic crater in the world.

We rested there for a while, playing a logic game with rocks and seeing if we could decide which of ten rocks was different by only using an imaginary scale three times. It wasn’t easy, and if anyone is curious how to play, I can outline the rules in greater detail in a future article.

Halema’uma’u Crater: Home of Pélé

We returned to my friend’s cabin to retrieve the 3M gas masks that were required for the trek. In years past, access to the crater required no special protection, but recent activity within Mount Kilauea had been spewing out Sulfur Dioxide gas into the air around the crater. Without filtration, a simple change of the wind could result in us choking and vomiting from the volcanic gas.

We parked at a nondescript parking lot and began the long hike over to the crater. Thankfully, the path was shockingly level, and soon the ominous red glow of the crater was obvious.

Once the rock became rougher, our guide told us to look down to the volcanic glass, known as Pélé’s hair, that covered parts of the ground, arranged in weblike structures of natural glass that felt prickly to the touch. Our guide warned us to be careful as they could be sharp.

Carefully, we were led up to the edge of the crater. Closer and closer. Soon we would see the raw power of the Earth. Soon we would see Halema’uma’u, home to Pélé, the Goddess of Hawaiian Volcanoes. To many living on Hawaii, Pélé’s existence isn’t merely a legend—it’s a reality. For thousands of years, Pélé has been honored by the Hawaiians as a powerful being that is meant to be respected, and as we hobbled over to the edge of the rough path, the sight we beheld clearly illustrated why.

Below us was a football-field-sized lake of terribly magnificent fire. The lava lake roiled in unspeakable patterns which slowly changed as new cracks in the surface formed. We were hundreds of meters away, but even from a distance I could clearly hear the quiet roaring of the lava as it seethed within the crater. Never before had I seen an earthbound phenomena so positively mesmerizing, and in that moment I knew that the spirit of Pélé must be real.

Aftermath

We stood there for some time, marveling at the destructive beauty of one of the most active volcanoes on the planet. Thankfully, the winds were in our favor that evening, and after some coaxing, I removed my gas mask as the others had done earlier. Now, I could feel the faint warmth on my skin, the warmth of distant lava.

It almost felt like the sun.

Someone had brought wine, and in the midst of great gratitude toward my friend and our guide, we toasted to Pélé on the edge of the world.

More photos soon…

I was about to learn a lesson in respect.

I walked over to the beach to assess my condition, and there it was, not a cut but a kind of gash, undoubtedly made when my foot grazed one of the nearby volcanic rocks. It didn’t look deep enough to require stitches, but it was certainly deep enough to cause me grief for a good while.

Cursing in frustration, I gingerly walked over to my pack. My first day. My first damn day on the island, surrounded by the stunning Makalawena beach, and I make a stupid mistake like this. How could I have been so careless as to walk on these rough black stones? Even if I was being careful, it wasn’t worth the risk. My only consolation was how lovely the beach was. As you can see below, Makalawena beach (pronounced makala-vay-na) is breathtaking.

Thankfully, I’d brought a plastic bag with some food and some paper towel. After rinsing the wound, I wrapped it and then put my foot in the plastic bag. Hopefully, this would keep any blood from getting to my shoes. I had a long, rocky trek back to the highway, and the sun was setting fast. It’s not like on the mainland where there’s at least 30 minutes of dusk. When the day ends here, it ends with a suddenness that I wasn’t prepared for and no one had mentioned.

Along the way, a few kind people gave me some alcoholic wipes and a better plastic bag, but no one would give me the short ride back over the rocky trail to the highway. Literally everyone was going the other way. Damn.

Squish Squish

I knew the wound had bled beyond its wrapping now. I wanted to believe it was salt water that was making the sound, but my heart knew better. The bag was filling up with blood, and there was little I could do about it. I had to get to the highway. I had to clean this wound properly and get a real bandage over it, otherwise I would risk getting a staph infection (aka. Staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that can really ruin your month).

I pushed all of this out of my mind, and continued plodding along, feeling a slight squishing every time I walked. A feeling of concern swept over me again… No. I’d cleaned the wound with an antiseptic wipe. That was all I could do for now. Think positive. It’s going to be just fine. Just fine.

A half hour and a world of daylight later, I finally reached the highway and stuck out my thumb. I always disliked hitchhiking at night. It’s riskier, and you don’t get picked up as fast. Then again, I’d never hitchhiked in Hawaii at night before. Perhaps it was easier here.

It was. In a miraculous stroke of luck, in just a couple minutes a sports car pulled over and opened the door.

I slowly approached the car, paying close attention to what my intuition was telling me. Inside was a guy in his 20s who seemed friendly enough. More importantly, it felt right, so I sat down.

“What’s up, brah?”

His name was Russ, and he worked at one of the resorts nearby. He drove as if the roads were his own, taking serious turns at 50 mph or so, and the g-forces were palpable. “Just what I need,” I thought. “My heart rate to go up more…”

Yet despite his tendency to drive with a kind of reckless abandon that is normally reserved for off-road racing, we somehow arrived at my destination unscathed. In fact, I scarcely could believe we arrived as soon as we did. Maybe it was the blood loss at this point, but it was almost as though he new a secret route to the south end of the city.

I waved him farewell in abundant thanks and waddled into my Couchsurfing host’s house. I called out to see if anyone was around, and a melanin-bespeckled woman with a warm smile appeared at the top of the stairs. It was Julie, my host’s mother, and she graciously provided everything I needed to clean the wound, including a really cool hydrogen peroxide sprayer.

After taking a shower, I felt reborn, confident, and thankful to everyone who had helped me. Because of the kindness of people I had only recently met, I was patched up and on the road to healing. Julie and I talked until past 9PM, and the funny thing about it is that if I hadn’t gone out, I may not have stayed up that late and stumbled into the best introduction to Hawaii that I could ever ask for.

You see, just a little while after Julie went to sleep. A friend of my host stopped by and after talking with me for a while, she asked me a most wonderful question.

“Would you like to come on a volcano adventure with me?”

Turns out, her and a couple of her friends (who were also friends with my host) were going on a hike the following day out to the Kilauea Volcano, and apparently they had some “connections” to get closer to the crater than is necessarily allowed.

How could I refuse?

Continue —>

Many of you have been contacting me asking how things are going, so I thought I’d “kill two birds with one stone,” as they say, and briefly outline my first impressions of the Big Island of Hawai’i, as well as provide some teasers for what’s to come. (There are also more video-blog entries coming, as well.)

In short, it has been magnificent. This island really does have a strange kind of magic to it, and I can easily say that in all my travels I have never been to such an incredible place.

So far, the only downside has been that the sun sets faster (Hawaii being so near to the equator), and is obviously more intense. But with precautions, these differences are easily accounted for. The people also seem much more relaxed in general, although perhaps more superstitious. As I was soon to learn, Hawaii is the only US State where myth has been woven into the very fabric of the culture itself, often with fascinating results.

Day 1

Upon landing at one of the in one of the cutest international airports in possibly all the world, I exited the plane and immediately found myself outside. No tube was attached to the craft leading me into a confusing maze of terminals. Instead, I found myself walking down an attached flight of stars and walking across the tarmac—feeling not unlike the Beatles as they exited a similar-sized craft onto a similar tarmac so many years ago, although certainly not in such a tropical place.

My Beatles parallel soon shattered though. I looked back at the Alaskan Airlines plane still parked behind me and considered my situation. No one was here waiting for me, and no one was going to pick me up. Having gained 3 hours from Californian time, it was only 10AM, and my host wouldn’t be off from work in hours. Add to that the truly abysmal public transportation options leading out of the airport, and it left me but one option: Hitchhiking.

Now granted, there are various shuttles you can hire to get you down to Kailua-Kona from the Kona airport. But none of them are economical options, and my host assured me that hitchhiking on the island was, for all practical purposes, a cakewalk.

And so, I made my way down the long road that led to the main highway. I didn’t even feel like sticking out my thumb at first. After all, my last experience of hitchhiking had been on the mainland years before, and truth be told, I was still a bit nervous to do it.

I never even got the chance to stick out my thumb, though. After about ten minutes of walking, a shiny, clean car parked on the other side of the road. I walked over and after talking to him, I realized that he’d been on the same flight I had been on. He told me he’d been in my position before, and offered to take me into town. I studied him carefully, and my intuition gave me a green light.

Turns out, he used to work for Oracle and made some decent money in the stock market (although he beat himself up a bit about how he wished he’d sold his stock earlier). After a short stop at the grocery store, he dropped me off at my host’s place and gave me his card. I must confess it’s refreshing seeing someone with wealth have the empathy to pick up a hitchhiker. Yes, it does happen!

Later that Day

Since my host was still at work, I met my host’s brother first, a talented cook whose dream is to be a head chef someday. After talking to him and another friend who stopped by, hitchhiking to a beach and exploring it seemed to be the best way to spend the rest of the day, and within two short rides (the 2nd being from a lovely lady named Loana who was very sweet and asked me various questions to make sure I was prepared), I found myself at the entrance to the path to Makalawena beach, one of the most beloved white-sand beaches in the area.

The trail was rather ugly and long, but the reward was worth it. Within a half hour, I found myself at my own private white sand beach. No one else was in sight, and I began reacclimatizing myself to salt water. After all, it had been nearly a decade since I’d swam in it.

Everything was going so very well, and the sun was low on the horizon, reducing my need for sunblock. I even found that I was able to function nearly adequately without glasses if I squinted.

It would have been a perfect visit, if I hadn’t sliced my foot open just before I left.

Continue —>

No, not a “vlog” (that’s a silly word). This is most definitely a video log. A travelogue… log. This is also the first time I’ve ever posted a video featuring myself on this site. So if you were looking for a reason to get scared off of this website forever, now is the perfect time.

Still here?

Then BEHOLD!

Note

Also, to be clear, when I said it’ll probably be more fun for you than me, I was referring to the process of making these videos, not the actual trip itself. I anticipate that Hawaii will be a blast! Thanks for joining me today. To stay in the loop, be sure to sign up for updates!

Transcript:

Hi, my name’s Andrew, and I have almonds.

These almonds have provided the calories that have made this video possible. If you like almonds… they’re not paying me anything.

If you’re watching this video, you’ve probably read some of the words that I’ve put in various orders to make various articles on the various internets. I thought I would do something a little different. Something that would allow you to maybe to get to know me a little better or maybe just be more entertained because we all have a little side of us that’s kind of voyeuristic.

Video is very interesting, isn’t it? Everybody is making videos. Everybody! (Except for me.) So, I thought, “I’ve got to try this, and it’s probably going to suck, in the beginning.” (That’s why I never recommend anybody read anything I’ve written before 2010, because it takes a while.) And that’s okay.

In 8 days, I begin my adventure to the Big Island of Hawaii. (Hawaii! Where they grow nuts!) I’m trying to do this video in one take, so. *I cross my fingers in a really absurd way* (I wasn’t try to flip you off there. I’m sorry.)

Along the way, I’m going to be in San Francisco, for a little while, and then I’m going to land on the west side of the island and… yeah. This is journal 1, and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun—probably more fun for you than me, but… that’s what I’m here for.

So, that’s all I’ve got.
And I also have nuts!

Yet as I observe my actions over the past weeks, I must admit that it appears to be exactly what I’m preparing to do. (Fair warning: This short entry is going to be more personal and less actionable than of most of my articles. You have been warned.)

As a traveller, perhaps you’ll find my process (and progress) interesting as I prepare to head to Hawaii next month.

Last week, I woke up and realized that I had far more projects swirling around in my head than just those that I’d written down in my Next Actions list for the day. I needed to do a core dump of my brain, and I knew it.

A half an hour and 23 projects later, I was feeling a lot better. That’s not to say that I did 23 projects. I would truly be a superman if I completed that many projects in one day. Believe it or not, I’m not superman (or batman); but I did pin down exactly what needs to be done before head out on April 5th.

David Allen discusses this in his seriously bodacious book “Getting Things Done.” He calls it a mental sweep, wherein you write everything you feel you need to get done, every commitment, every to-do.

The effects of this mental core dump are nothing short of magnificent. Now that I have everything down on a piece of paper, I no longer have to expend any energy trying to remember it all. Too often, intelligent people like us think we can remember lists of projects and yet somehow still be spontaneous, creative, and in the flow.

Sound familiar?

But this isn’t how it works in practice, is it? If you’re anything like me, you have a sense of clawing dread at the back of your mind. Somehow, you know you’ve forgotten something…

Or maybe that never happens to you. Congrats! Perhaps you’re a god-human or something, but I’ve certainly experienced it.

Yet by doing the mental sweep, everything is changed. Our conscious minds are freed up to not worry about actions in the future, which frees them up to be spontaneous in the present.

And this ‘freeing up’ is what allowed me to write this article in the first place!

Just imagine if we could track true productivity, transparently and publicly. What if GTD practices were game-ified, and people could earn globally-recognized points for creating value and doing good work? The Gamification of Productivity is something that I’ve been thinking about recently, but that’s best saved for another article. And I guess you could say Twitter is already a game, of a kind.

Anyway, more news about the impending Grand Hawaii Adventure soon. I’m going to have to expand the Byteful Guide map at this rate!

A lot.

But only a very small portion of those people end up becoming friends. (And that’s fine. I go for quality over quantity, anyway.)

Yet I don’t even have to be on the move to come into contact with quality people. Sometimes I meet people through the ‘net that I feel I was meant to meet. Rox is one example. Tom is another. Anne is another. (I could go on, especially if I started listing good friends who don’t have websites quite yet.)

And today I’d like to point out how thankful I am for my travel-writer friend, Tui. (You may remember her from my interview of her last year.) At first, I was going to send this to her privately, but I thought you might enjoy it as well. Since I know she wouldn’t have any problem with me sharing this, I’m going to give this word-based present to her publicly.

You see, today is her birthday, and I’d like to dedicate this to her.

To Tui Snider, my long-time Texan friend:

Totally off the grid
I’ve heard you say you lived
Nearly blown up once, too.
Yet you could still forgive

San Juan Island Adventure
I’m so glad you survived!
The world needs your cryptic notes
And the resulting “Hypothetical Pie”

Thanks for being fully You
(And such a creative cook)
Your sunny attitude is uplifting
I look forward to your book!

Can’t believe a simple blog carnival
Is where from all this stemmed
I feel so blessed to know you
And call you my good friend

By the way, while you’re here, feel free to say “Hi” to her on Twitter. She loves hearing friendly twitter messages and is an all-around terrific human being.

And if you happen to catch this within a couple days of its original publishing date, why not wish her a happy birthday, too?

Even though it’s a pretty dark time where I am (in more ways than one), my mind continually gravitates back to an idea, well perhaps it’s more of a mindset, that non-attachment really is the key: to freedom, to joy, and to happiness in life.

In the past, I’ve written a bit about being non-attached when you travel, but I think that’s only the tip of the iceberg for what that mindset can do for you. I’ll say it again: non-attachment really is the key to freedom in life.

Of course, Buddhism has had this idea at its core since the beginning. But you certainly don’t have to consider yourself a buddhist to apply this idea into your life.

Take this video, for example. In the episode below of Beach Walks with Rox (incidentally, one of my favorite podcasts), Rox talks about what motivates us in life, but more importantly she addresses the foundational beliefs in us that result in our actions in the first place, suggesting that life is much more enjoyable if you look at it as a playground, a place to experiment. It asks: if you had a worldview where you didn’t feel you needed to prove anything to anyone, how would you live?

Even if you feel like you don’t have anything to prove per se, looking at life as a playground is a beautiful attitude to step into. So go ahead and watch the short video below, and then I have a surprise for you. Watching the video really helps you tune into her energy as she explains the idea, too.

Go Play, Experiment, Grow

Starting to feel what I’m getting at? Life is too short to spend it feeling like a victim or feeling powerless. You have the power. Use it to play and experiment in life. I’ve been saying a lot about how nothing is guaranteed anymore. That’s probably related to certain shifts that are going on in my own life right now, but it’s also incredibly true. It only takes two words to lose your job: You’re fired. It only takes two to lose a relationship: I’m leaving. And it only takes one bad accident to lose your life entirely.

I don’t mean to sound morbid here—only to remind you how fragile things are. Everything that allows you to read these words right now relies on dozens of servers all talking to each other, your computer having power to interpret the data, and your eyes being able to focus on the words. (Not to mention your eyes interpreting the 10¹⁷ photons entering your eyes per second.)

It truly is a small miracle that you’re even reading these words at all, and I am deeply grateful to have the opportunity to serve you today.

But ultimately, it’s all temporary.

This is why the concept of non-attachment rings so true to me. It is in alignment with reality, and the more in alignment we are, the less suffering we experience. Compared to what we traditionally encounter, it represents a profound change in outlook and attitude. Earl Nightingale used to say that “attitude” was the magic word. And once you really, foundationally, realize the transientness of all you can see, it has the power to affect your attitude in incredible ways.

And remember, life’s transientness also means that you have a powerful affect on what your life forms into, as well. And on this point, I believe Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve been asking myself that a lot lately, and the pieces are finally coming together.

(And yes, due to the surprising demand for them, I even whipped up a quote poster out of it. Surprise! I can’t believe it’s the first quote poster I’ve made in three years. Time flies doesn’t it?)

Or when the magic of a new place calls out to you.

The thrill of fearlessly delving into the exploration of a new place produces a kind of “high” in my mind that many of you can probably easily relate to. It’s a kind of thrill that can’t be achieved any other way. The act of truly studying an area that draws you in, exploring it’s hidden places, with caution at first and then confidence, like a lover beholding his love for the first time, revealing avenues of beauty that were heretofore never imagined.

It’s entirely possible to fall in love with a city, or even a building. (If you haven’t yet, it’s likely that the reason is due to the fact that you simply haven’t been to enough places yet.) And as I look back at the last few years, I must admit I was enamored with the city of Madison for a while, perhaps even idealizing it at times, but now that magic has gone away.

Perhaps I know that city too well. Or perhaps I’ve moved on, but I have reached a peace with it, and for that I am grateful.

Do we ever really know why we fall out of love? I mean really know. I’m not so sure.

Perhaps it was merely infatuation with the city, for we know that infatuation can never last. With humans, this “puppy love” phase either proceeds onward to a more thoughtful kind of love, or it falls apart into something that we don’t call romantic love. I can’t help but think that my relationship with cities, however absurd it may sound to you, isn’t so different sometimes.

You see, I have these memories, so many memories, of uncovering small mysteries, things that felt like messages hidden within the city. Memories of visiting the top of the Capitol Building with a good friend and seeing the entire square spread out before us, or the time I discovered a small, hidden pier along the shore of Lake Mendota. Quiet moments snapping together like magnets.

Once when I was cycling south from Tenney Park, I came across a small, laminated note hidden inside a bush telling me that, yes, I was welcome to the berries along the trail but not to make new trails as that would crush the daylilies nearby.

For some inexplicable reason, the feeling of that day flashes back to me now and then. I have innumerable memories of exploring that city, but my unconscious mind seems to mark that memory with a strange level of significance.

A Pretty Lovely Lady

Yet all of these are merely memories—tools I may use for my own journey of expansion and self-knowledge, just as your memories are to you.

Have you ever felt that a place was calling out to you from a great distance?

I have, and do. Yes, it’s true, I have yet to post-process and release 100+ photos of my life-changing East Coast Adventure, and you will see those. Rest assured, they are all in the queue. But these Wisconsin days have gotten to me, and I feel the call to move on. All will come in time… in time.

If you’ve been reading this site diligently, you already know where my eyes are set, don’t you? It rhymes with “Good bye! Eeee!”

RIGHT. I’m going to Hawaii in just a couple months.

I’m not going to say I’ve fallen in love, or that this will be easy. Good friends of mine are here, but I no longer see a long-term future for myself in Wisconsin. Sure, I haven’t even met Hawaii yet, but she definitely seems like a lovely lady, even from a distance. And she calls to me. Even more importantly, my intuition is giving me a green light on going there. (Although it stubbornly refuses to give me any indication as to how long, so I’m going to play it by ear. I’ve committed to 2 weeks, but we both know it’s going to be for longer than that.)

Here’s the thing: it’s not just that there aren’t any guarantees anymore. In truth, there never were. “Security” is always an illusion. We can create a measure of it in our minds, but it never exists anywhere else. It is purely a mental construction, a war waged with ideas.

Perhaps the reason we don’t know why we fall out of love is because we don’t really understand how we fall in love in the first place. So how do you keep the magic? Simple. You follow your intuition, run it through your heart, and then run it by your mind. When all are in agreement, you know you’ve got something.

Consider where you live now. Your space, your location, is the result of the sum total of many decisions you’ve made. It can be changed if you desire. Empty out every thought and breathe the air you’re in.

Are you in love?

It’s not that I haven’t done it on here before, but I haven’t done it as much as I’d like. Of course, I had my reasons. (Everyone has their reasons.) For one thing, I wanted to keep this site a purely inspiring, uplifting place. What I had overlooked (and have since embraced more and more) is that inspiration, and indeed joy and laughter, can also come from sharing our mistakes. Especially publicly.

So it is with a strange mixture of embarrassment and delight that I share with you a huge mistake that I’ve made here regarding growing this website as a business. A mistake that has been downright chronic.

The Mistake

About 95% of all of the links to products I’ve recommended were formatted wrong. This has huge ramifications.

If you’re not already aware, often when writers recommend a product they like, they use an “affiliate link” when they recommend it. This is a win/win/win situation, because if the reader ends up buying something, the affiliate link tells the commerce site who referred them. The commerce site will often then give the writer a little slice of the profits.

This does some cool things.

1. It gives readers an easy way to support blogs they love by using an affiliate link. (The price is the same with or without the link. And if it’s a blog they love, it’s likely they were going to buy the product eventually, anyway.)
2. It gives writers an incentive to create lists of products that have positively affected them, thereby driving traffic to the site selling the product. This also encourages writers to make easy links to buy the products instead of being afraid that off-site links will drive too many eyeballs away from their site.
3. On a decent-sized blog, it can provided much-needed supplemental income for writers who might not even have health insurance. (Just sayin’.)

The practical upshot to all of this is that I am a Capital-G goon.

There, I said it. I’m a Goon, or at least I was for not double-checking my research. I won’t bore you with hyperlink semantics, but let’s just say that, when linking to an Amazon product, do not just throw /yourname-20/ into any old place in the link. (You’ve gotta add ?tag=yourname-20 to the link.) But noooo; I thought I was smart. I thought I’d make a short, pretty link. Pretty useless, more like.

I’ll stop. I said I wasn’t going to bore you with semantics.

Here’s the short version: because I went ahead and trusted some frakking inaccurate site roughly four years ago, about 95% of the affiliate links on Byteful Travel were half-broken and haven’t given me credit at all for recommending products that have truly changed my life, such as the book Getting Things Done, The Master Cleanse, Personal Development for Smart People, or even my own book.

The Upshot

Because I didn’t double-check my research, I missed out on a sizable amount of revenue from this site over the last four years. Revenue that goes to support future journeys and better equipment (not to mention little things like food).

To be completely clear, I’m not complaining about this. I really have no idea how much revenue I missed out on, and I’m honestly not attached to the notional idea of the past. I’ve corrected all of the links now, and I’m simply offering this as a cautionary tale.

“It all makes sense now!” I thought. “No wonder the statistics have been so bad. My links just don’t give me any credit!”

Short version

Always double-check your research, and for the love of ‘zon make sure you format your affiliate links correctly. If I’m doing this, I can’t imagine how many other people may be formatting theirs wrong. Who knows how much extra revenue this small correction might bring in!

Think about it. Nearly everyone I see on social media sites is clamoring to get the word out about their latest album, article, blog post, photo… and yes, even book. This in and of itself isn’t a bad thing if it is done politely and with balance (i.e.; sending something other than promotional messages most of the time). But more and more, I see this undercurrent becoming stronger over time. It is almost as if people feel that they need famous in order to be successful.

But is this really true? What is success, anyway? Is it being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want? Is it being able to affect the people you wish to affect? Is it merely being able to feed yourself by doing work that you love?

Any of those answers could be true for you, or none of them at all, because if you look at it completely honestly, success is a highly personal idea.

If you feel like you need 50,000 twitter followers or 10,000 Facebook friends to be successful in your work, I encourage you to rethink your assumptions about what success is.

The truth is, we are all obscure on some level. Even Hugh Howey, one of the most successful independent authors of his era, would be completely unrecognized if he walked down the streets of Manhattan. The reality is that unless you’re one of the mega-famous people, you are straight up obscure to the public. So don’t worry about obscurity. Everyone has some level of it.

Fame isn’t the point; serving the people you want to serve is.

It has been said that it takes 1,000 true fans to support an artist, and while that idea has been met with some criticism over the years, it’s not far off the mark.

Do you really want to be famous, or do you just want to make a living off of what you love? It’s an important distinction, and how you answer that question will affect how you talk to your audience and how your audience talks back to you.

Today, I’m going to take you on an adventure through the gorgeous Red Rock Canyon, just outside of Las Vegas.

If you’re a newer reader, you may not know that last January, I attended Steve Pavlina’s Conscious Success Workshop, and last year I wrote a bit about the workshop experience itself. What I haven’t written about yet is a powerful experience which happened the very next day, during my return to Red Rock Canyon.

You see, people who attend Steve’s workshops are not ordinary people—not by a long shot. From my experience, they’re a heck of a lot smarter and more interesting than the “average” person you might run into, and many of them had planned to stay in town the day after the workshop in anticipation of any meet-ups that might occur after the workshop was over.

In fact, exactly one year ago today, that’s precisely what happened. And lucky for us, one of the workshop alumni, an awesome fellow named Dana, had an abundance of experience in search and rescue teams (as well as being an EMT-B), so we felt pretty confident letting him lead the way. Our explorations filled most of that day, so I’m only going to share the highlights with you here, including some of the most beautiful rock formations I have ever seen; a mysterious, abandoned house; a red, alien tree; and some very tiny caves.

Surprises Along the Path

Even though Red Rock Canyon is on the eastern edge of the Mojave Desert, the canyon area itself is quite different. Nestled between rock formations is a wealth of plant and animal life supported by the streams which can be found within, and the photo you see above was taken right before things started to get stunning.

Out of the 100+ photos I took that day, this is probably my favorite. A seemingly natural formation, these massive red boulders form a tepee shape. And look how colorful the rocks are below that. This place is a rock-lover’s (and climber’s) dream.

Along the path, we came across this intriguing echo of the past. The story goes that someone wanted to build a house here a hundred or so years ago, but soon gave up because there were no official roads leading so deep into the canyon. In the end, it proved to be a good place to take a breather, as my friends Robin & DT from the workshop so effortlessly demonstrate in the photo above.

Coming across this little mountain of sorts made my eyes feel weird. In a strange way, it was hard to judge its actual size. In any case, it reminded me of something from The Land Before Time movie.

Now here’s a bizarre little specimen. Instead of rough bark, this tree has a very smooth, red skin. It was so smooth, I can’t even describe it as bark. This tree has skin, most likely an adaptation to such dry air.

A hike around the canyon is not complete without incidental cave sightings. The whole area around this cave was surrounded by the small pebbles you see in the lower half of the photo, almost as if it were once the bottom of an ancient stream bed. Indeed, that is quite likely. And from the boulder on the bottom left, you can also see how almost all of the boulders in the area are made of sedimentary rock with layers of color buried within them.

To finish this visual tour off, I present to you the cutest cave I’ve ever seen, if it can be called such a thing. Apparently a natural formation produced by erosion, this little cave would provide a perfect shelter in the event of a sudden downpour. Remember, if you’re hiking around Red Rock Canyon and you need shelter, you can probably find a cave around if you keep a sharp eye.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief tour of some of the areas within Red Rock Canyon, Nevada. I invested a good amount of time in cropping and tuning the colors of each of the three dozen photos of this shoot to accurately reflect what we saw that day. So thanks for virtually joining me today. A huge thanks also goes out to everyone who made my time in Las Vegas awesome! (especially Kevin who hosted me and a few others who were going to the workshop)

And keep in mind, there were many photos that I didn’t include in this article. We also came across a trickling waterfall that had roughly 1 drip per minute, a mossy stream, pink cacti, rock climbers scaling a cliff edge, and mysterious roses placed alongside the path. You can find all of that in the accompanying photo gallery.