Essays From West of 98: Living Well, Living Strenuously
Life lessons from TR, Wendell Berry and...Daniel Tiger
📷: Miriam, Ruth, and I on Sunday morning, as they headed to “Bulldog Sunday” at church and I headed off to Colorado for a week.
Author’s note: this was written on Sunday, August 20, 2023.
I’m writing this from the road. Now, I’m no literary chronicler of travel like John Steinbeck (“Travels With Charley”) or Jack Kerouac (“On the Road”) but I did manage to dictate this with the wonders of voice-to-text while driving from Stamford to Colorado.
Two years ago, my friend Ed Roberson unveiled the idea of the “Strenuous Life Retreat,” a weeklong dedication to the guiding principles of Theodore Roosevelt’s life: physical exertion, intellectual stimulation, eating well, and sleeping energetically. The first retreat was held in September 2022 at the Medano Zapata Ranch in southern Colorado, adjacent to Great Sand Dunes National Park.
Last year, that retreat came at something of an inopportune time. It was scheduled only a few weeks after my family was unexpectedly displaced from our home by an electrical fire. I gave a great deal of thought to canceling, but my deeply-caring wife insisted that I go on the trip anyway. She rightly told me that I would forever regret canceling. She was correct. It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of my life and it was certainly the most exhausting, but in the best possible way. This year, the retreat is about a month earlier. There are no life crises this time, but I seem to feel drained and exhausted in a non-strenuous living manner. The summer heat certainly has not helped.
Our daughters are big fans of Daniel Tiger. He is a PBS character and the star of a children’s television show that does not drive adults insane. He also descends from the Mr. Rogers universe. There’s a song on that show that I have pondered, with lyrics that go, “sometimes you can feel two things at the same time, and that’s OK.” It is a great lesson to help small children learn to process their emotions. You can be disappointed about something while also being otherwise happy. I’ve considered how that might be a great lesson for adults too. Our human tendency is to label everything in neat boxes and make those boxes as simple as possible. It’s a Disney-esque false reality: everything is clearly good or bad, right or wrong, and there can be no complexity.
Now, as Alan Jackson once sang, “But here in the real world, it’s not that easy at all.” Robert Earl Keen further elaborated that “we live and die by shades of gray.”
Life can be exhausting, y’all. It is important to understand that we can do good work and pursue truly beautiful and important things, while occasionally being worn out and even frustrated. Sometimes that is bad timing. Sometimes it is bad luck. Sometimes it is a human tendency to make life unnecessary complicated and difficult for ourselves and everyone around us. I can be talented at that. We must fight the Disney-esque tendency to think that means something is wrong. Daniel Tiger knows better. Sometimes it is just life.
It is vital that we find ways to re-center and ground ourselves throughout the year, so that we thrive in our good work and pursuit of beautiful and important things without getting burned out by them. In the past year, we’ve greatly reduced the television watching in our house. I’ve spent much more time kayaking and gardening. Those have been very positive, but I still don’t have it all figured out yet. Wendell Berry’s most famous poetry works are collectively called the “Sabbath Poems.” They are just what they sound like: poems that he wrote after Sunday morning walks through the woods and fields surrounding his home. Reading those poems is extraordinarily peaceful and cleansing. One can only imagine the feeling from actually living the moments that created them.
As I wind my way into the San Luis Valley of Colorado for a week of strenuous life, I think about the downhill slope to the end of the year. We have just enough time to truly re-center ourselves to do the good work of rural revitalization or whatever else you individually are passionate about. Or, we can muddle through four months, look up on New Year’s Day, and feel like we’re still just in an exhausting slog.
I know what Theodore Roosevelt and Wendell Berry would do. They would make the most of the weeks and months to come, not in a chaotic obsession with productivity, but in living well, doing good work, and focusing on the most important things. May we do the same.
And may I conquer the trail and the climb to 12,000 feet and Zapata Lake!
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.