#653： The Dirtbag's Guide to Life
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Summary
If you ever dreamed of being a rock climber living in a van or becoming a rafting guide through hiker, world traveler, or some other kind of nature loving adventure seeking wanderer, my guest has written a handbook for making it happen. His name is Tim Mathis, and he s the author of The Dirtbags Guide to Life Eternal Truth for Hiker, Trash, Ski, and Vagabonds.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast if you call someone
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a dirtbag you might be insulting them for being dishonest or you might be describing their
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lifestyle the pursuit of an outdoor passion at the expense of more mainstream options and
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commitments if you ever dreamed of being a rock climber living in a van or becoming a rafting
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guide through hiker world traveler or some other kind of nature loving adventure seeking wanderer
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my guest has written a handbook for making it happen his name is tim mathis and he's the author
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of the dirtbags guide to life eternal truth for hiker trash ski bums and vagabonds tim and i begin
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our conversation what it means to be a dirtbag the origin the term amongst the early rock climbers
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who explored yosemite in the 1950s and 60s and why tim thinks the lifestyle embodies a countercultural
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philosophy tim then offers a window into why others might adopt this approach to life by sharing his
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story of how he personally became committed to dirtbagging from there we turn to the brass tacks
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of embracing a life centered on outdoor adventure and exploration beginning with how much money you
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actually need to make it happen and the kinds of jobs and careers that are conducive to it
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including perhaps surprisingly the field of nursing tim also shares how he responds to criticism that
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being a dirtbag isn't a responsible way to live we then discuss the effect dirtbagging can have on
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someone's relationships and whether this lifestyle is viable if you have a spouse and kids and at the
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end of our conversation we discuss how even if you're living a more freewheeling lifestyle it's
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important to have a sense of meaning beyond traveling around and doing cool stuff and the three
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elements that go into finding that kind of meaning which apply to dirtbags and non-dirtbags
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to life after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash dirtbag
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all right tim mathis welcome to the show yeah thanks brett it's good to be here so you are the
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author of a book called the dirtbags guide to life eternal truth for hiker trash ski bums and vagabonds
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so i think most people they've heard the term dirtbag but they heard it as a pejorative like
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that guy's such a dirtbag but this book's about dirtbag is actually a lifestyle for those who aren't
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familiar with dirtbagging what does that entail you're right the term dirtbag i think it initially
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originated as sort of pejorative and it even in sort of the way it's applied in the way that i use it
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it was initially applied to people in a pejorative way and they've sort of embraced it and and run with
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it as so often seems to happen but yeah the basics i think if i think people who are familiar with sort
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of outdoor sports in the outdoor community will have heard the term dirtbag as a reference to
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like a certain type of person in the outdoor community they're the type of person who i think
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traditionally if you thought about these people they're the people who basically quit their jobs
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and go pursue their their sport so they're either climbers who quit their job and go live in yosemite
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for the summer or they're through hikers who go hike the appalachian trail or the pacific crest trail
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keep sort of low level bartending jobs or something in between hikes or they're like the the ski bombs or
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they're the the sort of rafting guides those people get referred to as dirtbags a lot they're the people
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who i guess pursue their love of of the outdoors and their love of a particular activity in the outdoors
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to the at the expense of other aspects of their life whether that's like their jobs or their career
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paths or money or whatever it might be i also think like one of the one of the things i talk about in
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the book as you mentioned it's sort of a there's a lifestyle element to it but i i also think that
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one of the things that i came to realize as i was writing the book is that it's also i think it's it's
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fair to label it as a counterculture it's like a group of people who are rejecting a lot of the
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mainstream ways of pursuing life in favor of a different path so they're kind of in the tradition
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of lots of other types of countercultures like the hippies and the the punk rockers and those sorts
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of things these are people who are forging their own path and and rejecting the the traditional options
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that are offered to them and what's the history of dirtbagging is this a recent phenomenon or is
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this something that goes back a couple decades yeah well it's pretty interesting once you start
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digging into it one of the questions i was trying to answer with the book initially was where did this
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concept come from and who were the first dirtbags who were the how long have people been using this
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term in this sort of way and there actually is a there's a pretty you can you can kind of kind of
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piece together the history of it the first people who it seems like were really referred to in this
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way and and sort of embraced it were a group of climbers in yosemite in the 1950s and 60s there's
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actually a a decent actually a really good film about these guys called valley uprising that really
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tells the genesis story of this dirtbag community that i'm talking about so these were these were
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essentially hippies in the the 50s and 60s they're like the proto hippie like jack kerouac types who
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were very intentional about the fact that they were like disappointing their parents by like not
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pursuing and not pursuing a real job but were going and living in like camps in in yosemite and climbing
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all the time and these were these were rock climbers and these guys put up a lot of the the original
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roots in yosemite they're kind of legendary in the the climbing community it's guys like royal robins
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and yvon chenard who was the founder of patagonia is another guy who's associated with those early
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stage dirt bags and his book let my people go surfing is another origin story about sort of how
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this dirtbag culture was developed and his his story is really about a trip to patagonia and pursuing
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surfing at the expense of other things and just sort of the beauty in that it's a term that we're not
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really sure i'm not really sure anyway who used the term first actually yvon chenard gets credited
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with it there are some some quotes from early on like in the 60s or something where he he like
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mentioned that these guys in yosemite get get called dirtbags and they are a bunch of dirtbags but
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but probably like he wasn't the first one to to use the term but he was one of the people that
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that definitely was influential in the concept spreading so there's climbers i think like a lot
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of times climbers will be kind of protective of the term like it's they own it or whatever but it's
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times gone on in the last couple decades really well i mean it's been it's been 60 years now i guess
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really people from all different aspects of the outdoor community have lived the same lifestyle i
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guess you know my my introduction to dirtbagging has mostly been through through hiking and trail
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running and through hikers are consummate dirtbags because they're people who you know to hike the
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pacific crest trail or to hike the appalachian trail it takes it takes five or six months for a lot of
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people so you kind of have to organize at least one year of your life around it so these are people
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who quit their sort of traditional path and pursue this sort of love of the outdoors and people do
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that you find across all the all the outdoor communities there's dirtbag mountain bikers rafting
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guides are classic dirtbags i think they're another group of people that primarily you know they work
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summers and sometimes they they chase summers around the world ski bums also are like the classic dirtbag
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types right there are people who are just kind of chasing powder chasing winter around the world
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they're sort of organizing their whole life around this outdoor sport so what i think has happened is
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like a lot of people with similar interests pursuing it in a slightly different way have all developed
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a similar approach to life for similar reasons and i think the term dirtbag has gotten applied to all
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of them at different times um and in in sort of writing the book and looking at these different groups
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thing that i kind of came to was the idea that this is really it's best if you think about this
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as sort of a counterculture even if a lot of the people in the counterculture wouldn't have
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necessarily identified that themselves well so you mentioned you you've become a dirtbag yourself
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you weren't a climber you got into the the counterculture of dirtbagging through through hiking
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uh when did this happen like and when did you like why did you decide was it sort of like a
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saw on the road to damascus you know instant conversion or did you like slowly find yourself
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becoming a dirtbag yeah that story is kind of as long or as short as you want i think there's a
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couple different things i would say about it one is that i think that the outdoors and just kind of
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playing outside has always been important part of my life you know i grew up in the country in southern
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ohio so very much farm country not the kind of place you would associate with rock climbing or mountain
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biking or hiking well i mean you know we did a little bit of hiking but you know not a lot of
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this sort of like west coast rich white people type outdoor activities but was a lot of the playing in
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creeks and like shooting guns with my friends and we did some hiking we did some camping we did some
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fishing all those those sorts of like midwestern outdoor activities were always a big part of my
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life when i was young and then an important genesis point was we went my at the time
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fiancee who's now my wife did an exchange program in australia for a quarter during her undergrad and
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i went over there and we basically dirtbagged around for about a month while i was there on
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the east coast of australia and that was very much sort of an eye-opening experience for sort of a kid
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from the small town midwest that the world's a really big place and there's a lot of cool places in it
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and you could spend a whole lifetime exploring so so that planted the seed after that we um we did a
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lot of different things we moved to new zealand after we graduated from college and we spent a few
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years there and did a lot of hiking and i did a master's degree that was focused on science and
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religion that was really focused in a way i wasn't thinking of it in these terms at the time but in a
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way it was focused on this it was really the question of like how people find meaning and purpose
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in nature and the the world around them so so that you know i kind of got into it academically
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we got into trail running after we moved back to the states after the degree that was um that was in
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2005 we we moved to the seattle area and we got really into trail and ultra running ultra running
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itself is basically a lifestyle because in order to train for for races that take all day you basically
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have to spend all your time that you're not at work running so so you know we got in the lifestyle
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of it there and then i think the story i want to tell though is is that sort of genesis moment when
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i sort of connected the dots that this was a thing i was gonna i was focusing my life on versus just a
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thing that doing for fun in 2015 is sort of when when the dots connected we'd gotten into into trail
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running and had been pretty seriously into it for about five years by 2015 and we'd done a lot of
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really long races we've done 100 mile ultra marathons and a lot of sort of self-supported
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stuff and we're just kind of looking for next steps and in the trail running community there's
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a lot of overlap with the through hiking community you know there's a lot of people who love being
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outside and love going long distances so it's pretty it's not surprising i guess that you also meet
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people who've done that for extended periods of time on on these longer through hikes like the pacific
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crest trail or the appalachian trail or the continental divide trail or what have you and so
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we we met a fair number of people who'd who'd hiked the pacific crest trail i mean it sort of planted a
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seed for us and in 2015 just sort of our lives lined up in a way that we were at a place financially
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where we could quit our jobs we were both nurses so career stability was not really that much of a
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concern like great thing about nursing for this kind of lifestyle is you kind of quit a job and
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and come back to another one and so anyway in 2015 we decided that we were gonna take the leap
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and quit our jobs and go hike the pacific crest trail we never done much long distance hiking like
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that the longest i think we'd been out was probably three or four days before that but this was a great
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next step for us after feeling like we'd done our thing with ultra running and looking for what's next
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so we got our we got our schedule together and we were gonna leave for the trail in april of 2015
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and everything was all prepared you know i was heading towards my last day at work and i got a
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call one day while i was at work that my dad had collapsed at his job and had gone into a seizure
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my dad is not someone who'd ever had seizures he was he was 62 at the time and he he never had a
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seizure in his life and if you know anything about brain health if you if you haven't had seizures
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early in life and you start to have them later it's a really bad sign there's essentially no good
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reason that that would happen i mean it's it's likely either a stroke or a tumor or something really
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serious it took him it took him hours to get him out of the seizure in the meantime i was like
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planning flights back to ohio which is where he was at the time long story short in that bit we found
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out that he had glioblastoma which is a really it's both the most common and the most malignant
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type of brain cancer it's a cancer that there's no there's no remission for it's it's universally
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fatal there's some treatments that can stretch out life but there's no cure for it so that was
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obviously a major shock that came at the same time that we were planning this trip you know it was
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within weeks of when we were planning to leave and so we sort of were thrown into this this crazy
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what do we do now kind of mode essentially what we what happened is my dad ended up getting a surgery
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that the doc said was was largely successful they were able to get most of the tumor out they felt
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good about his prognosis it was in a part of his brain that wasn't required for for life-sustaining
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functions you need your brain no matter um no matter which part of it you need it but there
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are some parts that you can survive without and some you can't his was in the front and so
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he got the surgery the docs felt good about his prognosis they felt like he was going to be around
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for a couple more years i've been consulting with him and my mom we decided that we were going to
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continue and go on to the pct like they were pretty insistent on it actually they'd been they'd always
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been part of this my parents are very supportive right like they've always been part of this
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process and so they wanted us to go they didn't want us to cancel plans for them they wanted us
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to go so that's what we did so we started the trail and they actually took us to the took us to the
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start and it ended up being really the last time that i saw my dad healthy this was about like i said
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this was about a month after his his initial diagnosis and so just a few weeks really after his
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surgery but he was up and and well enough to to drive us from las vegas to the start but anyway they
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dropped us at the start of the trail and we did the normal stuff you do on on a through hike which
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is realizing how hard it's going to be i'm getting into the grind getting into the the rhythm of like
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sleeping outside every night figuring out how you resupply and you keep yourself fed and watered you
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know we walked through the california desert and we were kind of in the process keeping track of what
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was going on with my dad and things were things were progressing but not they didn't feel great
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right like he was he got through his chemo all right he had some nausea and stuff it wasn't
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too terribly bad but he was doing the things you would expect during like chemo and radiation he was
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sleeping a lot he's feeling tired feeling kind of miserable but generally things looked like they're
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supposed to look i guess you know we talked to mom and she'd always be like non-committal about how
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he's doing and he would he would put on a brave face when we had talked to him as well so we just
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kind of kept plugging along and keeping track of what was happening at home with them the the day
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after we hit the midway point for the pct we were you know the pct runs through the mountains so very
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frequently you don't have cell phone reception so the day after we hit the midway point we were walking
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towards the highway where we were going to hitchhike into town for our next resupply and we started
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you know we turned on our phones because we're getting back in cell phone service and just started
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getting all these dings and that's actually pretty ominous in that situation right because we'd usually
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get one or two messages in this case we're you know there's like 15 or 20 there and so it was it was
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immediately just had sort of this this sense that things were off essentially that there was a series
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of of text and voice messages telling us that the the cancer was back and the doctors had suggested
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another surgery and they were they were wanting to let us know and i think in that time like when
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when that that series of texts came in i just kind of knew that our trail was over like i that was sort
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of the sign when when the cancer came back that we were going to get off trail so we hiked our way
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into town we made a series of phone calls we talked to the doctors and i think as a family decided that
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it didn't make any sense to put dad through another surgery because the surgery wasn't gonna it was gonna
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make the quality of his life worse he might not make it through it and there was zero chance that
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it was gonna solve the situation it was at best gonna give him another month of life or something
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like that that would have been miserable and he would have had a sort of healing brain during that
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period so he wouldn't have been even conscious during it so we basically made the decision that
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that he was you know we were not gonna treat and um we made our way this was in we were sort of in
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central california so we made our way from central california to reno and then took a bus from reno
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down to las vegas where we spent the what ended up being the last couple weeks of my dad's life
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with him again the doctors initially had given a pretty optimistic prognosis i think saying that he
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you know could he might have six more months or something like that but what actually ended up
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happening is he passed away within a couple weeks you know we were we were there during that process
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obviously and that was obviously i think you know for anybody who's who's lost a parent you know it's
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there's there's a weird sort of transition that happens for everyone when that happens it's there's
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nothing that shocks you or hits you in the same way and that's that's kind of what what we were going
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through you know alongside trying to support my dad through his suffering it's like the loss of this
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my parent and in the meantime we're in the middle of this giant hike so after my dad passed away we spent
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a few days with my mom and we we talked to my mom about next steps and and once again like our initial
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plan was that we were gonna just stay there in vegas and talking with my mom she was pretty insistent
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that we were not gonna do that and that we were gonna go back on trail we made a plan together that
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she was gonna she was gonna take us back to the start of the trail and then she was gonna she was
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somebody who had always kind of wanted to do this kind of thing in life but had never really done it so
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she made a plan that she was gonna train and get herself in shape and meet us at the end of the
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trail she was gonna hike in to the end of the pct and meet us it's about um one of the funny things
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about the pct is the actual terminus of the trail the northern terminus of the trail is at the u.s
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canadian border but the the exit the nearest road is still eight miles beyond there so you have to hike
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another eight miles once you get to the pct before you actually finish so my mom decided that she was
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gonna train and go on her first backpacking trip ever and meet us at the end of the trail and
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basically that's what she did we got back on trail and because um we'd had the delay with going down
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to be with my dad we really had to like book it so we we took on really got back our ultra running
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shoes on and and spent two months hiking about 25 miles a day minimum to make it to the end of the
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trail by the time the snow fell and so it became this major like big epic quest i guess that that
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finished the way i guess we'd planned it right like we made it by the end of september my mom
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borrowed some some backpacking gear from some friends she um enlisted my uncle to join her and
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she hiked in sort of her first overnight backpacking trip and met us at the northern terminus
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we sprinkled some of my dad's ashes there and then we uh we came out of it so this was sort of
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obviously a big life experience right and i think like there's there's a couple different things i'd
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say about it the first is that i've been thinking about through hiking a lot and about like the way
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it sort of shapes you and traditionally i think when people went on long walks like if you were to put
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all your belongings on your back and hike for five months at the end of that you're going to be in a
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very different place from where you started right like that's that's really migration right like
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that's not just a thing people did recreationally that's migration and i think there's something
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probably there's something hardwired into humans that when you do something like that you just come
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out of it expecting that you're going to be changed by it and that you're going to sort of be in a
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different world than than the one where you started and that's that's something that i think it
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happens pretty naturally and most people i think they're who's through hike will will tell you that
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they were changed in some way or another by it but the fact that this happened in the context of my
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dad dying and dying pretty young i think the way it changed me was to get give me this sense that
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life is pretty short and it's not guaranteed at all i mean my dad had previously been entirely healthy
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it'd probably been a decade since he'd been to the doctor before this right and so he it just really
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came out of nowhere and it just hit me and and my wife as well i think in a way that just just made
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us feel like we had to do the things we want to do in life we have to like think really hard about
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that and and pursue it because nothing's ever guaranteed and that was really the experience that
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sort of comprehensive experience is what led us i think to be more intentional about pursuing the
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things that we love to do and and ultimately that's come down to travel and it's come down to
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these sort of outdoor pursuits like hiking and we've taken up some kayaking and trail running and
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learning to mountain bike and sail at the moment so just just sort of pursuing those things as more
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central things in our life i think that that was you know there's almost a literal road to damascus
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thing there right like but it was it was pretty conscious at that point like like i said previously we
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hadn't i hadn't really thought in those terms it was just stuff we're doing for fun but after this
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it was just sort of a very conscious this is the lifestyle i'm going to pursue well and you also i
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mean it's interesting with that story um thanks for sharing that that you you you talked to other
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people who are dirtbaggers and they had a lot of them had similar stories of why they became dirtbaggers
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themselves they had a a big experience someone died they got a sickness they overcame they lost a job
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whatever and they decided that was the thing that kind of i don't know shook them and said i gotta start
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doing the things that i i really enjoy and they end up being a ski bum or a through hike or whatever
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and it's amazing like the different like people from all walks of life it was you know people who
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were once you know corporate ceos or people who were just they started doing that when they were in
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college and kept kept going we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show well let's let's talk about let's get so this is this sort of big picture
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like why people become dirtbaggers you know might be a big life event that happens or they're trying
00:23:07.840
to pursue uh there's a certain lifestyle they want to live philosophy they're trying to live out
00:23:12.560
but what i love about the book is how brass tacks you get with it because i think a lot of people
00:23:18.440
they they see those folks who are you know through hiking they're just camping all the time they're
00:23:23.880
skiing all the time they think man that would be awesome but i can never do that and the first
00:23:29.820
reason people give for not being able to you know do that you know basically just make their whole
00:23:34.560
life an adventure is money specifically that they don't have enough money to live a life of adventure
00:23:40.280
but this book you just say you don't actually need that much money so how much money do you actually
00:23:44.880
need to live a dirtbag lifestyle yeah yeah you're you're absolutely right that's sam it's it's a good
00:23:51.720
question and it's it's a very common reason people like look at these these sorts of lives and say
00:23:57.380
like you know must be nice to be able to do that or must be nice to be able to afford that but
00:24:01.220
the one of the big driving points of the book one of the big driving motivations is that it shouldn't
00:24:07.620
it shouldn't you shouldn't have to have a lot of money to have a good life and to put together a good
00:24:11.540
life and one of the big things that i think i've i've learned as we've sort of pursued these types of
00:24:19.780
of things like traveling or through hiking or whatever is that you can actually you can do it on as
00:24:25.160
as small of a budget or as big of a budget as you want right the thing i've sort of talked about is
00:24:30.100
like really the goal you know sort of lifestyle talked about in the book is is about exploration
00:24:34.880
right it's figuring out like how to sort of experience the world in its fullest and connect
00:24:40.120
with the natural world around you in a in as direct a way as possible and you can do that in a lot of
00:24:45.080
different ways so you can do that in the context of working a job and going out and being a weekend
00:24:49.900
warrior or you can do it in the context of drifting around central america or whatever and
00:24:55.040
and surfing there's a million different ways you can do it so really there's a million different
00:24:59.020
budgets you can do it on it's it's very individualizable maybe the most just just to
00:25:04.400
give a little bit of concreteness to this there actually are some pretty cheap ways that you can
00:25:08.840
you can travel and adventure through hiking for us was a nice sort of nice wake-up call in that regard
00:25:15.040
because it really only costs about most people estimate it's about a thousand dollars
00:25:19.980
a month to through hike on a on a pretty normal budget that's it's not nothing but it's also
00:25:26.600
actually not that much you would spend most people in their day-to-day life are going to spend well over
00:25:32.200
a thousand dollars what happens is if you choose to live a life where you you sleep outside every
00:25:37.120
night and you eat out of grocery stores and that's really your only expense like that actually
00:25:42.800
narrows down your cost pretty significantly so through hiking is a pretty accessible way to travel and
00:25:49.140
adventure financially another thing is is a big part of our sort of adventure story is is always
00:25:55.440
been around traveling and there are a lot of places in the world where if you can if you can save up to
00:26:00.600
get a ticket you can survive on not much money at all once you get there we spent about four months
00:26:06.880
traveling around latin america after we hiked the pct and and again it was our budget down there was
00:26:12.820
really only about a thousand dollars a person a month so that looked like essentially bussing around
00:26:17.720
staying in airbnbs or hostels checking out beaches going on hikes doing low-key stuff but just doing
00:26:23.420
it in cheap countries so again that thousand dollars a month is is like a good number for somebody who
00:26:29.760
if you're you know i'm not we're budget travelers but i'm not like crazy budget travelers so i think
00:26:35.500
that's very doable a lot of it really depends on where you're going and what you're doing i talk a lot
00:26:40.140
about career and and sort of how you earn your money as well and one of the things to think about is that
00:26:45.080
going on adventures and these sort of big epic trips are not exclusive of work either i think
00:26:51.240
that that's a sort of misnomer is that people just play outside all the time and that's that's
00:26:55.780
typically not the case right like people are typically working when they're doing this and
00:26:59.500
you can the world is populated by hostile working like 22 year olds with no money at all who are
00:27:05.800
surviving basically just on on room and board from the hostel and and checking out like bolivia or
00:27:12.660
whatever while they're doing it you know ski fields are populated by ski bumps who make a
00:27:17.340
couple bucks an hour running lifts or whatever but get the perk of being able to do what they love on
00:27:21.820
the weekends or on their time off there's costs associated but there's also ways that you can
00:27:26.080
figure out how to do it even if you don't have you're not starting with much money at all well
00:27:30.740
yeah i love you you in the section about finances you lay out some like rules that i think they're
00:27:35.140
they're not only apply to like you know allowing to live you the dirt back life they're just good
00:27:38.340
financial rules like for example you know start with what you have rather than what things cost
00:27:43.140
instead of thinking about i need to buy i need to go to rei and buy all this cool stuff it's like
00:27:47.660
well what do i got already in my garage that i can use other other great tips go where you can afford
00:27:53.760
you're talking about that it's no brainer things simplify cut other things you don't care about
00:27:58.540
i mean this this not i mean what i love about it was not only applicable to you know live in a
00:28:02.560
dirtbag lifestyle but this is just good financial advice for just your life in general
00:28:06.580
honestly most of our financial savvy came from my wife and my wife was raised in a relatively i mean
00:28:14.240
both of us were raised very like sort of working class but she was she was raised in relative poverty
00:28:19.220
and she learned from like her grandma who was a bank teller her whole life and raised a family on
00:28:24.900
that income like how to get the most out of the money you've got and how not to to waste it you know
00:28:31.160
and so really honestly most of the financial advice in the book was stuff that that basically we picked
00:28:37.840
up along the way from just the experience of of having to do that you know a million things you
00:28:43.080
can take from people who figure out how to how to get through life without much money that you can
00:28:47.820
apply in in a situation that's that's focused on trying to adventure more right well it was going
00:28:53.360
back to this idea of career so some dirtbags they find careers that suit their their their adventure
00:28:59.500
choice so if you're into skiing you become a ski bum you work the ski lifts if you're a surfer you
00:29:04.520
become maybe a surf instructor then you can surf whatever but besides that what are some other ways
00:29:09.000
that you saw that people were you know making money having a career while still embracing this
00:29:15.080
life of adventure yeah totally because you i mean you have to get through your life right you know
00:29:19.260
you you have to figure out how to make money and career is basically that i think one of the
00:29:23.980
things i think is important it's been important for me anyway is to think about career
00:29:28.180
and sort of what you want to do in life as separate entities they overlap sometimes but
00:29:33.180
they're not necessarily always the same thing sometimes your career your job is just the way
00:29:37.320
you make money and if you're wanting to like figure out how to make money while also spending a lot of
00:29:44.300
time taking a lot of time off spending a lot of time exploring you you can think in a lot of
00:29:49.180
different directions like you said you can do the obvious thing and become a guide and do that for a
00:29:53.400
but sometimes you don't want to you know sometimes that kills it anyway so some people just aren't you
00:29:58.300
know not really people persons they don't necessarily want to do that so you think about like finding a
00:30:03.120
career that is going to be it's not going to raise eyebrows if you take a lot of time off or that's
00:30:09.380
contract based and it's sort of built in that you're going to have time to yourself to do other
00:30:14.140
things and there's a lot of different there's a surprising number i think of of jobs like that you know
00:30:19.420
when we're living in the seattle area there were just a ton of tech workers who were kind of in that
00:30:23.420
boat right like they take microsoft contracts and they'd work on a project for a year and a half and
00:30:27.720
then they'd they'd you know be done and they could do whatever they want before they took their next
00:30:31.640
contract i work like i said i work in nursing and health care is fantastic for that there's there's so
00:30:37.860
many jobs and so many different types of contracts you can take that it's it's pretty normal to take a
00:30:44.100
three-month contract and and then take some time off afterwards like there's a whole culture around it in
00:30:48.980
nursing and and in lots of different health care fields i've known people who are various types of
00:30:53.640
of health care techs who've done that sort of thing the first time i actually encountered this kind of
00:30:59.940
approach to life was like when i was working construction for a summer after college and i met
00:31:05.800
a bunch of union electricians who they would have you know they would have jobs intermittently so
00:31:10.880
they'd be working on a job for you know eight months or whatever and then over the winter they
00:31:15.060
wouldn't have any work and so they would fly somewhere cheap they would like fly to thailand
00:31:19.600
or they would fly to mexico or whatever and they would just hang out there for a few months waiting
00:31:23.940
for their their next job because it was like one it was it was an amazing life experience and two it was
00:31:28.780
like actually cheaper to do that than to stay at home there's a lot of different there's a lot of
00:31:33.200
different jobs that are actually pretty well set up for this kind of thing there definitely are some
00:31:37.920
that are better than others right like i mentioned that i did a master's degree and i was thinking
00:31:41.440
about academics and one of the whole reason that i quit that track is i realized it was going to
00:31:45.260
absorb my whole life and i didn't want my whole life to be devoted to my job there are some jobs
00:31:49.440
that it's harder to do this with than others if you're young you've got an advantage because you
00:31:53.880
can pick a career path that's going to be more amenable to doing the things you actually like and
00:31:58.240
the lifestyle you want well yeah and so yeah you have to think outside the box here when it comes to
00:32:02.700
your career it's like you know if you want to be a trial lawyer i mean probably going to be hard to do
00:32:08.260
become a be a dirtbag and that do that at the same time but that's okay i mean because you find
00:32:12.720
something you want to do all right okay so i think another reason and you talk about this in the book
00:32:16.440
that people feel squeamish about becoming a full-time adventurer is that it like doesn't feel
00:32:21.440
responsible like you're becoming you're becoming a bum right like you're just skiing that's all you do
00:32:27.400
what's your response to this reluctance yeah i think this is a big one right people think about
00:32:34.260
like responsibilities it's a really vague term right like you're like i've just got i've got too
00:32:39.340
many responsibilities like what does that even mean and there's there's a couple different things like
00:32:44.740
i think it's it's worth pointing out one of them is that a lot of the things that people think of as
00:32:50.800
responsibilities are actually just social expectations and they don't actually they're not
00:32:56.480
actually things that you should or have to do this gets right into that concept that like dirtbagging
00:33:03.100
these people are basically part of a counterculture because the counterculture in a way is critiquing a
00:33:08.620
lot of like traditional notions of what it means to be a responsible adult being a responsible adult
00:33:14.640
doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have you have to own a house or you have to have nice clothes
00:33:21.800
or you have to pursue a certain type of career or you have to provide all the best in terms of
00:33:28.580
financial and material things for your kids like those things aren't responsibilities in the sense that
00:33:34.080
they aren't things that you actually should or have to do and i think actually some of those social
00:33:40.040
norms that are thought of is when people think of the term responsibility are actually super destructive
00:33:47.620
not just for like individuals but they're there's they're part of what's driving
00:33:51.660
the destruction of the the natural environment that we live in and over consumption and you know
00:33:58.380
this sort of disconnect from from the people around us and the the environment around us like
00:34:03.360
some of those some of those responsibilities are actually things that i think are healthy to to kind
00:34:09.060
of attack and critique and one of the things i talk about and one of the ways i think about this is that
00:34:15.560
dirtbags are kind of like monks and nuns in the sense that they're the people who are practicing
00:34:22.000
this approach to life in the most extreme ways right and they're sort of learning things and
00:34:27.560
communicating things that other people can learn from they might you know quitting your job and
00:34:32.520
traveling for two years might be something that most people aren't going to do but the people who do do
00:34:38.140
it they learn things about life that are going to be really valuable to other people around them so
00:34:43.700
so that's one of the ways i think about like how this sort of lifestyle can be responsible is it's
00:34:49.300
it's actually communicating something important to the world and you're you're learning important
00:34:53.320
things about life that other people gain from another way another thing i talk about though is that
00:34:59.020
the stuff that you actually should be responsible for you know there are things there are things you
00:35:03.680
should do in life treat other people with respect you should you know meet your financial
00:35:08.380
obligations if you've got debts you should pay them off if you you know you should be a decent
00:35:13.220
person you should contribute to your community all those sorts of things but there's no reason at
00:35:17.760
all that you can't do those things in the context of also like pursuing your passions if exploration is
00:35:25.420
your passion like pursuing that is an entirely responsible thing to do that you can that the
00:35:31.660
world will gain from gotcha so okay i think that's a good distinction make sure you make a distinction
00:35:35.960
between actual responsibilities and just social conventions but yeah that social convention that could
00:35:40.660
still be hard to overcome right because your people are just like man this doesn't this is not what
00:35:45.420
you're supposed to do but you know who says right i think it should feel weird to you know live
00:35:52.920
live in like a way that critiques the sort of mainstream approach to life like it should feel weird
00:35:58.820
because those things are the things that are ingrained and it's a hard thing to do and it's never
00:36:03.400
it's never clear there's a lot always a lot of fuzziness what are the shoulds in life i think all of us are
00:36:07.880
trying to figure that out as we go along all right let's talk about relationships and living
00:36:12.620
the dirtbag lifestyle so these early dirtbaggers they're probably bachelors they had their buds but
00:36:17.820
they i imagine they weren't married or had girlfriends or whatever is dirtbagging conducive
00:36:23.580
to relationships yeah i mean that's that's another that's another big one and i think in the book i
00:36:29.140
definitely there's a little bit of a reality check with that one where i'm like yeah actually
00:36:33.520
if you choose to go pursue some path in life that's that's focused on that's going to take
00:36:41.100
you outside of normal social circles it's going to take you you know you're going to travel a lot
00:36:45.900
and those sorts of things it is going to impact your relationships and and there's some some
00:36:50.260
relationships that won't survive that and that's i think that that just is a reality it's a thing that
00:36:55.900
i've experienced myself as we've moved around you do just lose some connections the internet has made
00:37:01.360
maintaining connections across the distance way easier but it's still you know you're still not
00:37:06.480
seeing the same people on a day-to-day basis but i mean the flip side of that is when you do this
00:37:12.120
sort of stuff you also meet other people who are doing the same i think of it in a lot of ways like
00:37:16.780
any interest if you become an engineer you're going to meet lots of other engineers if you become an
00:37:21.300
adventurer you're going to meet lots of other adventurers so one of the things i talk about in the
00:37:25.600
the book is the concept that cool but gets cool the the general idea is if you do cool stuff and
00:37:32.140
if you pursue stuff you're passionate about you're going to meet lots of other people who are doing
00:37:35.940
the same and you're going to build new relationships with them and you guys are going to inspire each
00:37:40.920
other to do even cooler stuff talk a little bit about marriages and relationships and that sort of
00:37:46.320
thing and and those are tricky ones like family relationships i think are the trickiest because
00:37:50.600
you don't necessarily you don't always have the same interests as your family members and i've been
00:37:55.000
i've been super lucky that angel my wife and i both are really into this kind of thing and so we've
00:38:00.740
spurred each other along it's one of the reasons i think we've been able to build our life around it
00:38:05.900
in a way that a lot of people wouldn't we both kind of want to do it you know it's true there's some
00:38:11.560
people who their their partner really doesn't want to they don't want to spend all weekend every
00:38:16.560
weekend running ultra marathons or like they don't want to take six months off and go bus around europe
00:38:22.120
or whatever it's just not their thing and so those are trickier to manage and then if you had kids into
00:38:27.780
the equation it's a total crapshoot at least with your partner you know a little bit about them before
00:38:32.360
you've formed a relationship with kids who knows what they're going to be like it is true it it impacts
00:38:37.220
you and it is i think it is um it's one of those responsibility things too i think that i think that if you
00:38:43.020
have kids and it's best for them to be in a situation at home or continue with their school
00:38:49.500
or whatever you know it is irresponsible to not provide that support for them so there are there
00:38:54.120
are ways in which relationships should and do impact on on the choices you make but that doesn't
00:38:59.600
necessarily mean that you don't spend don't focus your life on on the things that you care about and
00:39:04.220
think are important and figure out how to do those in in different ways it just means that your life
00:39:09.340
looks different well and speaking about the kids you actually encountered people who were living
00:39:13.920
the dirtbag lifestyle with kids i think there's like a lady i think i think she might have been a
00:39:17.920
single mom had like six kids or something and she was like hiking a through trail with like all her
00:39:23.740
kids and like she's making it work like hey good for her yeah it's it's our friend amy who we actually
00:39:29.440
we just kind of met her actually randomly in seattle we didn't meet her through through hiking but
00:39:33.860
she hiked most of the appalachian trail with two twins and so two young sons and then two daughters
00:39:42.420
and one of her daughters has down syndrome so she's she's figured it out right like if she can figure
00:39:47.500
that out i think her sons were six or seven when they started the trail one of them finished one of
00:39:52.960
them didn't but if she can figure out like a lot of people can figure it out we have friends who
00:39:57.400
right now are are traveling around with two young sons and they they basically don't have a home base
00:40:04.220
they just kind of travel to different parts of the world for like a month or two at a time and they run
00:40:08.520
an online business and and they're raising their kids on the road another woman who i actually grew
00:40:13.480
up with in ohio i found out after i wrote the book actually has been traveling in an rv with her i think
00:40:21.340
she has three kids and her husband for for years just different parts of the country homeschooling
00:40:27.640
living on the road so there's people who figure it out you know more power to them and and i we
00:40:32.560
haven't had children and and it's definitely made decisions less complicated but people clearly do
00:40:37.680
figure it out and every family is going to have different strategies that are good for them and work
00:40:43.720
for them but but yeah totally people figure out how to live some pretty crazy lives boat people are great
00:40:48.360
for that too you know hang out hang around a marina and you're going to meet families full of people
00:40:52.120
who are like sailing around the world and doing all kinds of crazy stuff well so okay dirtbagging can
00:40:57.240
have adverse effects on your pre-dirtbag relationships like friends family before you're just going to lose
00:41:03.440
touch with them you're going to be gone all possibly be gone a lot but as you said you're going to be
00:41:07.560
introduced to a new community and like that community of dirt fellow dirtbaggers they can help you
00:41:12.520
make like the like kind of ease the financial burden right because then you start sharing stuff with each other
00:41:17.140
and they start sharing tips or they you crash at their place or whatever along when you're visiting
00:41:22.420
them so that community that that's there can actually make this easier for you i think that
00:41:27.720
that's that's one of the things once you start meeting people who are into this kind of thing you
00:41:31.900
know it's it's a very supportive community it's a web of people around the world really after the
00:41:37.080
after the trip to latin america in 2016 we've like spent most of our our time with a general base in the
00:41:44.600
pacific northwest and seattle and then tacoma but we've we've been on the road for as long as much
00:41:49.800
as we we've not and we tend to crash at people's houses that we know we we either free camp or we
00:41:56.040
crash at people's houses and so the amount of money i've saved just from having cool supportive friends
00:42:01.480
it's it's it's been in the tens of thousands of dollars just over the last few years just because
00:42:06.360
people are supportive and we try and do the same thing we can let people borrow our house or our car if
00:42:11.240
we're not using it like we're gonna do it because yeah i think it's it's part of the way that you
00:42:16.340
support each other as people are trying to live cool lives like i said when you start doing this
00:42:21.200
like some of the coolest people i've met have been through through hiking we met lots of other cool
00:42:24.920
people through sailing events we've sort of gone along for you just meet people who live cool lives
00:42:30.700
and as you start to do that you build a network of people all over the place that you can connect in
00:42:35.080
and stay with well let's circle back so one of the things that you talked about earlier in your story
00:42:39.380
becoming a dirtbag was um one of those points was your master's thesis on finding meaning in nature
00:42:46.680
and you have a section on this about how to build a meaningful life around the dirtbag lifestyle
00:42:53.600
and it sounds me like oh yeah i'm gonna go and live my passion and whatever be out in the outdoors
00:42:59.080
doing things that i love but you highlight there's sort of a dark side there can be a dark side to the
00:43:04.300
dirtbag lifestyle um for example i read this article too you highlight there's the national
00:43:08.780
geographic talked about in ski towns there's like been an uptick in suicides from you know there from
00:43:15.600
just people guys who guys who identify themselves as ski bums what's going on there like what do they
00:43:20.340
think that's going on there personally i i kind of experienced this myself so i mentioned that we
00:43:26.480
hiked the pct in 2015 and in 2016 we took an extended trip to latin america and when we weren't
00:43:33.800
there we were we're mostly traveling around the american west and after a year a year or so i just
00:43:40.900
really felt pretty empty and just this sense that we were i was like spending my life drifting around
00:43:46.160
looking at pretty things which is is great for a week or two even a month but after a while you start
00:43:51.400
to feel like like what in the world am i even doing with my life like why am i doing this and i think
00:43:55.620
that's one of the big traps with with pursuing something that's like a passion or recreational
00:44:01.020
or even something that across time you're gonna lose your ability to do like it's one of the things
00:44:06.300
with being and those types of sports as you get older you just physically lose the capacity to do
00:44:11.620
it either you get injured or you just the natural process of aging and if you've been centering your
00:44:16.140
life on that stuff that can trigger some pretty intense midlife crises if you hit a point where this
00:44:20.820
thing that you really have centered your life around you can't do anymore it's it's true
00:44:25.480
that i the national geographic article said there was data saying that there's like suicide rates are
00:44:30.380
higher in ski towns and kind of conjecture on my part but i would imagine that that's basically the
00:44:35.140
dynamic you have these old ski bombs this has been their life and now they can't do it so they they
00:44:39.600
don't figure out how to make the transition and one of the reasons i wanted to talk about that in the
00:44:44.720
book is because i actually think it is it is an essential the book itself is really focused on like
00:44:49.800
how do you manage to live a good life and do the things that you really need to do to survive
00:44:54.560
in this context in a sort of dirtbagging context and and i do think that actually having a sense of
00:45:00.560
meaning and purpose in life is is an essential because eventually you'll either give up on the
00:45:05.680
lifestyle or you'll just give up on life in general and neither one of those really is is
00:45:10.180
neither of those is a good outcome there's a really good book that i i used as a framework for my
00:45:16.340
chapter by a writer named emily s fahani smith that's called the the power of meaning and it's
00:45:22.820
it's basically about this concept it's about the question of like how do human beings develop a sense
00:45:29.360
of meaning and purpose in life and the thing i like about it is a lot of times when you think about
00:45:34.020
like meaning and purpose it all is very like ethereal it's like spiritual and like it doesn't mean
00:45:40.080
anything the book is basically based on a series of interviews she did with people who reported
00:45:46.020
having a strong sense of meaning in life and she looks at the things that they did and have that
00:45:52.320
helped to produce that and so she gives some really practical guidelines and directions and and i think
00:45:58.940
like the the things that she comes to are really useful to think about and they're true for anybody so
00:46:03.940
they're true for people if they're sort of working their nine to five and they're just as true for
00:46:08.500
someone who decides to sit out on the ocean and spend their life sailing you know between pacific
00:46:13.980
islands so the thing she talks about for the ways that people maintain a sense of meaning
00:46:18.440
are one they have a sense of community connection so they have a sense of belonging and a place in
00:46:25.040
the world building a community of people even if you're even if you're sort of drifting around
00:46:29.320
building a community of people that you feel connected to and and having a clear sense of how you fit
00:46:34.140
into it then there's also a need to feel like you have a purpose and in a very specific kind of way
00:46:40.080
right like uh you feel like you're useful to the world like i think that's a that's a thing that i
00:46:44.560
come to a lot is if you're feeling like just not sure what your direction is in life you just figure
00:46:50.680
out ways to make yourself useful it's having that sense of that you have a purpose in the world that's
00:46:56.540
like very concrete like you're doing something beneficial for the world she talks about a sense of
00:47:00.580
transcendence which is uh the sense of having a connection beyond yourself you know again
00:47:06.040
transcendence that's a very like sort of very very kind of word but really what she's talking about
00:47:10.100
is feeling a connection to the world around you whether that's your community whether that's
00:47:14.280
the natural world whether that's like some sort of religious connection people who feel like their
00:47:19.240
life is purposeful have a sense of connection to transcendence and like personally i think this one is is
00:47:24.400
very natural to a lot of people who are in the community like the sort of outdoors community a lot of
00:47:29.660
people go out into the wilderness and in the mountains or into the woods on a regular basis
00:47:34.320
because they have this sense of bigness and transcendence and they're part of something
00:47:38.560
that's much bigger than themselves so that's one that i think outdoor recreation is it's so popular
00:47:44.660
because it gives people that sense of transcendence in a way that a lot of other things don't then
00:47:48.740
finally she talks about like storytelling basically she's just saying you have to be able to think
00:47:53.700
through your story your own personal story and place it in the context of the world you have to be
00:47:59.380
able to make sense of how your life if fits into the bigger picture and that's really what telling
00:48:05.980
your own story is about is like it's being able to make sense from a story perspective of like how
00:48:11.260
you fit into the world so so all those things i guess are things that you know that's not very
00:48:16.320
specific but it's i think it's a it's good because like throughout life you're gonna have to think of
00:48:21.660
how to cultivate a sense of meaning and and the way to do it is to think about the different things
00:48:26.440
it'll actually provide that sense of meaning and and those things you can work out in a lot of
00:48:30.140
different ways in a lot of different contexts so what did you do personally when you were feeling
00:48:34.420
that sort of existential funk after you you know after the the tour the the american west like what
00:48:40.600
did you do to inject some more meaning into your your life yeah good question so um one of them i went
00:48:46.900
basically i went back to my job as a mental health nurse so that is definitely definitely one of the
00:48:54.060
things where i feel like i'm providing some value to my community um i worked for about 10 years as
00:48:58.760
a mental health nurse so so i went back to that and i started working more shifts there and then my
00:49:04.120
wife one of the things i haven't talked about is like my wife started a business called boldly went
00:49:07.840
that was really it was focused on holding events in the outdoor community where people could tell their
00:49:14.780
stories and then we created um a podcast and and sort of online content coming out of those stories
00:49:20.340
so building that business was another way that we definitely started to recultivate a sense of like
00:49:27.140
meaning and purpose and direction and have you i mean i imagine you encountered a lot of people
00:49:32.600
out on the trail who were they they were basically just trying to escape from something i escaped from
00:49:38.340
life and they weren't really trying to embrace something constructive or meaningful like how do you
00:49:43.340
how do you make sure that if you decide i'm going to become a pacific i'm going to become a through
00:49:47.640
trail hiker that you're not just running away from your problems and you're actually trying to
00:49:52.040
turn towards something constructive that's a good question i think that human beings are pretty good
00:49:58.160
about like instinctually recognizing when something's wrong in their situation and something needs to be
00:50:03.080
done but they're not always that good at figuring out what to do in response i think you're right that
00:50:07.940
there there are a lot of through hikers out there who like life has just been a mess
00:50:11.520
and so they go on the trail to try and solve it and i think that's true with a lot of um escapist
00:50:17.360
kind of things right like if you travel internationally too and you get on the backpacker circuit you're
00:50:21.760
going to meet those kind of people as well who are just basically like home sucked stuff went really
00:50:26.840
sideways so now you know now i'm in ecuador and i don't know what i'm going to do when i go back
00:50:33.040
it's it's kind of tricky and i think part of the process itself helps a lot of people figure out
00:50:37.880
what to do next the general process of travel the general process of doing something physical a lot
00:50:42.580
of times a lot of people sort out their problems on the run a lot of people sort out their problems
00:50:47.020
while they're traveling so i think it's i think it's a good prescription when there is something
00:50:50.480
wrong for a lot of people just to do it and see where it goes but yeah but i think that again it
00:50:55.720
comes back to that that question of responsibility if you're running away from doing things that you
00:51:01.340
should do or doing things that you need to do then you're going down the wrong path you have to
00:51:06.700
figure out how to how to address those things how to confront those things whether that's like
00:51:10.460
problems in relationships or if it's financial problems or whatever you have to figure out how
00:51:15.460
to address those things a lot of times what that comes down to is finding something meaningful to
00:51:21.940
replace those relationships or drug addictions or whatever with it's finding something better to
00:51:27.080
replace it with move in a healthier direction it's a good it's a good question it's it's not a not
00:51:32.540
easy question but yeah i think these types of these types of processes can be part of the
00:51:39.300
the answer well tim where can people get to learn more about the book in your work
00:51:43.600
yeah so the easiest place to find the book is on amazon you know as it's true of pretty much
00:51:49.160
everything in the world so yeah dirtbags guide to life eternal truth for hiker trash ski bums and
00:51:55.140
bag of bonds it's on amazon it'll be on a bunch of other sites as well pretty much wherever you buy
00:51:59.380
your books and then i've recently launched a blog called dirtbagsguide.com that's focused on
00:52:06.880
sort of continuing to write on some of the same themes that were in the book but you know just
00:52:11.140
trying to make sense a little bit of the 2020 context as well and i have an instagram account
00:52:17.520
that's just if you just search dirtbags guide to life that'll pop up but i'm not that great at
00:52:21.880
keeping that up and i'm kind of over social media marketing so but you can go to instagram too and
00:52:27.540
then my wife and i's business is called boldly went adventures it's uh boldly went adventures.com
00:52:33.900
there's about four years of podcasts there that are stories from all types of of people in the
00:52:41.760
outdoor community a lot of blog content that sort of thing that people can check out as well
00:52:46.220
fantastic well tim mathis thanks for your time it's been a pleasure yeah man thanks for having me it's
00:52:50.820
great my guest there's tim mathis he's the author of the book the dirtbags guide to life it's available
00:52:55.520
on amazon.com you can find out more information about his work at his website boldly went adventures.com
00:53:00.460
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash dirtbag where you find links to resources we delve deeper
00:53:05.080
into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at
00:53:16.420
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until next time it's brett mckay reminding you not only listening to aom podcast but put what you've heard