A few nights ago, I stepped outside to take out the trash. Spring has arrived in fits and starts this year in Utah, and the evening was beautiful. The sun was just beginning to dip behind the Oquirrh mountains. I stood there for about a minute — just breathing in the air and letting the breeze hit my face.
Time’s passing.
Over the last 30 days, I’ve stopped more often. These small pauses feel like something inside me finally has room to speak. Or maybe I’m just getting better at listening.
Inside the house, the usual rhythm. My two youngest were laughing about something. The dishwasher was churning through a cycle. A few dishes stacked by the sink. My watch buzzed — another Teams notification.
Not chaos. Just life.
And from somewhere in the back of my mind, the familiar thought surfaced again: maybe I need a break. An actual long hike. A cross-country drive. A locked office door. A different job. Some kind of “escape.”
But I’ve learned something as I’ve walked, climbed, and stumbled in the canyon — something been settling in slowly, like the light from a hidden sunrise: freedom doesn’t live on the other side of disappearing. It doesn’t require distance. It doesn’t wait for you or want for you to abandon everything.
This 30-day climb started because I was looking for a way out — out of burnout, out of overload, out of a version of my life that felt like a performance without a purpose.
And in some ways, I did leave some things behind.
But the more I walked and the more I wrote, the more I realized: the canyon isn’t a punishment. It’s not a prison. It’s just where I’ve been. A landscape shaped by my choices, by pressure, by patterns I didn’t always question. And while I didn’t choose every circumstance, I chose a lot of them.
I ended up where I was because I didn’t make a decision to be somewhere else.
That realization hit hard.
And that changes things.
When you realize you’re not trapped, you stop trying to escape. You start climbing differently. It’s not a frantic scramble to find a way out. You find more purpose in the climb. Direction replaces dread.
The canyon can hold a lot of things. Old expectations and stories. The grind. The guilt. The mistaken belief that you have to earn your worth every day or risk being forgotten. But it also holds people I love. And the work I’ve chosen. The reasons I said yes in the first place.
I used to think freedom meant getting out. Total autonomy. A schedule without meetings. A career that didn’t depend on anyone else’s timeline.
But now I’m starting to believe something else: Freedom, more and more, looks like staying. Staying with my values. Staying present in my home. Staying aligned with what matters, even when it’s hard.
Staying, but with the choice not to be stuck, just grounded.
Honestly, this is the part I’m just beginning to understand and accept: the canyon isn’t home. It’s not where I’m meant to stay. But it’s also not where I’m meant to run from in fear. It’s the place I go because I have people to provide for. The ones I love the most — my wife, my kids — they’re not the reason I want to escape.
They’re the reason I go in.
And they’re the reason I come back out again.
My wife will sometimes ask, “Are you leaving me?” when I’m headed out for a business trip or a long day at the office. I always say the same thing: “No. I’ll be back. I’ll just be gone for a while.”
That’s the rhythm.
That’s going into the canyon and climbing back out again.
It’s strange how it works — that we so often leave, for a while, the ones we love in order to care for them. But that’s what providing looks like. A lot. And if I forget that, if I stop returning, if I stop remembering what I’m doing this for — that’s when the canyon becomes a trap again.
But when I remember? When I hold home in my view, even when I can’t see it from here?
That’s when I move differently, and make it back with the best parts of me still intact.
This climb has taught me something I didn’t expect: that I don’t need to escape the canyon to be free. I just need to know why I’m climbing through it.
Some days, freedom will look like folding laundry with my wife while the kids wrestle in the other room. Or pausing mid-sentence in an email to listen to one of my kids tell me about their newest discovery. Or letting got of a to-do list that might continue to grow because of guilt and a weird sense of obligation to solve everyone’s problems. Then, I remind myself that it’s not about achievement. It’s about attention.
It’s not about how many miles I can log in the canyon. It’s about presence.
The kind of freedom to be fully here is the one I didn’t know I was missing.
I still feel — pretty much every day — like I have to earn rest. Like the only way to deserve peace is to push harder, prove more, stay later, always saying, “I’ll figure it out.” But that belief has already cost me more than I can say. And I’m learning to let it go.
I’ve chased so many versions of success that were never really mine. I’ve hit milestones and barely acknowledged before asking, “What’s next?” I’ve outrun joy because I didn’t trust it would wait for me to catch my breath.
That’s why I’m asking different questions now.
What if home isn’t the reward for finally getting my life together — but the place where I can fall apart a little (or a lot) and still be loved?
What if freedom doesn’t live in escape… but in choosing to return?
That’s the plot twist. A twist that I knew a long time ago.
But then I forgot.
I didn’t reach the mountaintop, sit down on a rock, and find enlightenment. Instead, I stopped — I’m learning to stop — seeing the canyon as something to escape. I’ve started to see it as a place where I’m learning how to walk, climb, and sometimes crawl with more honesty. With more attention and intention. More presence.
More of who I actually want to be.
For most of our lives, we move in and out of the canyon. I’ve spent a lot of years clawing my way out, feeling desperate and empty. But my vision’s changing. A lot of who I am — some of the best parts — I developed while I was in the canyon. Those are things I want to carry with me — the insight, the grit, even some still moments, progress.
What I’m working on remembering, however, is that home isn’t in the canyon, but the path to it runs through the canyon.
And the best part is — I’m learning to bring more of the best parts of me back home.
Not the version who needs to impress everyone. Not the one who only shows up when he feels successful. Just the one who’s still becoming. Who’s learning to be here. Who’s trying to love his people more.
I’ll still stumble. Still forget what I’ve learned.
But I’m not walking in circles as much anymore.
Some days, that’s enough.
And some days, it’s even more than enough.
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