ANALYSIS: How to Have a Rich and Meaningful Life

Here's what I know for sure: the entire lyrical database of the Coheed and Cambria discography, how to build an equalized rock climbing anchor, and the secret to living a rich and meaningful life. I didn't know I already knew the meaning of life until my friend Josh pointed it out to me last month; I'm a pretty happy guy so I guess I've had it all figured out this whole time. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1. Laughter: a rich and meaningful life needs joy and silliness. Refuse to harden your heart. Be an easy laugh. Laugh at your farts. Laugh at Johnny Knoxville getting hit in the nut sack. Laugh as your friend tells a story about a coworker stealing another coworker's pickle recipe and selling it as their own (#picklegate). Life is absurd, man. Take the barbed wire off of your heart and approach it with joyous whimsy.
2. Adventure: give your life some color. Pick a human-powered activity that's moderately hard for you, go to some destination, and sleep outside. Bikepack. Backpack. Climb to a big ledge on a 5.6 multipitch route. Sleep there. Make coffee. See the sunrise and go home. Now you have a story to tell.
3. Doing good: we are not made for ourselves alone. Make other people laugh. Take someone who never thought they could go on an adventure on an adventure. Organize a block party. Know your city council member. Replace people's tail lights for free. Raise a child. Plant a garden. You can't save the world but you can't neglect it either. 

Your mileage may vary. That's cool too. 

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Ranking Chattanooga's Mountains

The Tennessee River Gorge

I love mountains. Living in Chattanooga, mountains surround me. From downtown, I am within a twenty-minute radius of no less than five mountains teeming with creeks, capped by cliffs, and sprawling with trails. They are what makes Chattanooga Outside Magazine's "Best Town Ever" twice and one of their 24 Best Mountain Towns in the U.S. for 2022. But not all mountains are created equal. That's why I have created a definitive, objective, and exhaustive ranking of Chattanooga's mountains.

About Our Mountains

 Some snobbishly inclined folks from America's "greater" mountain ranges thumb their noses at the Appalachians, especially the southern Appalachians. When I say I'm from Tennessee, these people turn into Crocodile Dundees of elevation. "That's not a mountain. That's a mountain." 

*shows you a google image search of Longs or Shasta* 

*flails on a southern V3 boulder problem or 5.8 trad line* 

Yes, our mountains are small. The Rockies would be too if they were 400 million years older and succumbed to the geologic pressure of erosion. 

In the ridge-and-valley province of the Appalachian region, mountains are long rather than tall. Lookout Mountain peaks at a mere 2,392 ft but runs 88 miles south starting from Chattanooga. Because of this, "peaks" and rises above the mountains' plateaus often receive local, colloquial names. For example, Raccoon Mountain is also Elder Mountain; I will use "Raccoon" because trash pandas are cooler than old people. This is also the case with Signal Mountain and Suck Creek Mountain. Both are part of the Cumberland Escarpment, known as Walden Ridge, that runs 74 miles through Tennessee. It all gets confusing. For my purposes, I will use Suck Creek Mountain to refer to areas west of and including Suck Creek Canyon and Signal Mountain for everything else.

A: Lookout Mountain

B: Mowbray Mountain

C: Raccoon Mountain

D: Signal Mountain

E: Suck Creek Mountain

About My Methodology

I rank the mountains according to arbitrary categories: swimming holes, mountain biking, rock climbing, etc. If you don't like my categories or think them insufficient, make your own mountain rankings. 

Points are awarded based on the quality of the category for each mountain. The point system goes as follows:

No (0 points): nope, nada, zero. This mountain does not offer anything in this category. Or it does but it's on private property which means it does not. I award this mountain no points and may God have mercy on your soul. 

Not really (1 point): Practically speaking, no. Sure, you could cool off in the pools above and below Glen Falls but you can't swim in them. 

Yes (2 points): This mountain has swimming holes or rock climbing or trail running and is worth your time but other mountains have better.  

Amazing (3 points): This mountain offers amazing recreation opportunities. Its [insert category] is unrivaled regionally and maybe even nationally (just look at the license plates in rock climbers' parking lots in winter around here). 

 

Admitting My Presuppositions

I've stood on summits from Maine to Washington, New Mexico to Canada. Little ol' Lookout is still my favorite mountain in the whole world. I've climbed hundreds of pitches (Mountain Project), logged  thousands of miles (Strava), and made a lifetime of memories (my brain) on this ancient prominence. I'll try to keep that love of place in check throughout my analysis.

Ranking Chattanooga's Mountains

Mowbray Mountain takes the swimming hole KOM with ease. From the ever-popular and ever-crowded Blue Hole to the not-so-secret-but-hard-to-get-to spots up in Big Soddy Gorge or Deep Creek: cold and clear wollerin' holes abound. Suck Creek And Signal Mountain have great roadside holes for a summer escape. Lookout gets a "Not Really" score because a truly majestic, God-tier, swimming spot exists but is inaccessible behind the private property lines of the Lula Lake Land Trust. Raccoon comes in last, though you could jump into the green, tepid waters of one of America's most polluted rivers if you wanted to. 

Rebecca about to take the plunge somewhere on Mowbray Mountain

Lookout Mountain's Guild-Hardy and Truck Trail systems are excellent after-work ramble or pieces of a bigger adventure ride. Expect everything from pea gravel to baby head-sized chonk. The area's best gravel is on top of Suck Creek Mountain in the Prentice Cooper State Forest. The main road offers 25 miles of out-and-back gravel grinding and the numerous Jeep spur trails make for rowdy and fun adventure biking. 

Alea, Brooks, and some folks I don't remember on Game Reserve Road

This is Raccoon Mountain's time to shine. The High Voltage trail was featured on Patagonia's "Best of Home" and I think the Live Wire trail gives it a run for its money. If you like technical and chunky riding with blistering, singletrack descents, then this is the trail system for you. Not to be outdone, Lookout Mountain features fast and fun mountain biking across its plateau. Many of which can be strung together via the 14-mile long Cloudland Connector Trail. 

Notice that Signal gets an alternative ranking because Walden's Ridge Park will be completed soon and offers downhill trails that people will want to travel from all over to ride. So that's cool.  

Brooks playing on the Chunky Trail of Raccoon Mountain

Again, everyone gets points here. If there are trails, then there's trail running. Raccoon comes in last because if you run here you may get mowed down by an unsuspecting mountain biker. I know because I've almost mowed down a few myself. They're MTB trails for a reason. 

Lookout Mountain's battlefield national park offers a web of trails that link up in a myriad of ways but its 10-mile Big Daddy Loop is its pride and joy. Suck Creek boasts the Pot Point and Mullins Cove loops. Both measure about 13 miles and can be done together in a figure-8 for a trail marathon(ish) that will kick you in the pants. Finally, don't sleep on Mowbray Mountain where the Cumberland Trail traverses its plateau and descends and climbs back out of its steep cliff-lined gorges. 

Rebecca descending the Bluff Trail on Lookout Mountain

Chattanooga drops the ball in this category, at least in its greater-metropolitan statistical area. Segments of the Cumberland Trail cut through Mowbray, Signal, and Suck Creek Mountains and make for nice overnighters but the real good stuff is a few hours away in the Smokies. 

Reid backpacking the Cumberland Trail on Mowbray Mountain

Everybody gets points here. Even you, Raccoon. Chattanooga is the crown jewel of southern rock climbing and maybe even climbing east of the Mississippi. My favorite single-pitch trad crag in the world is Sunset Park atop Lookout Mountain. Mowbray boasts overhanging sport climbing and world-class bouldering (LRC, yes but don't miss the horizontal roof-pulling down the road on the Cumberland Trail). Lastly, Tennessee Wall attracts trad climbers from all over the country to its orange and tan sandstone walls during the year's coldest months. Because "T-Wall" is southern facing, you can climb in a t-shirt in January. 

myself bouldering at the base of Signal Mountain

The Final Analysis: Chattanooga's Mountains Ranked

Suck Creek Mountain: 14

Lookout Mountain: 13

Mowbray Mountain: 11

Signal Mountain: 10 (though soon to be 12, probably)

Raccoon Mountain: 7

Chattanooga's best mountain is Suck Creek Mountain. You can climb the formidable cliffs of the Tennessee Wall; dunk in the numerous swimming holes along Suck Creek Road; run the Pot Point loop; backpack the Cumberland Trail; bike Game Reserve Road to Insurance Bluff; or car camp at Davis Pond. All of these reasons make it Chattanooga's best mountain -- even better than Lookout. 

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Analysis: IPAs By Decade

November 2016, Josh and I headed up to the Big South Fork to climb the Standard Route of the O&W Wall. The Big South Fork is remote and wild, and the cliffs are intimidatingly tall by southeastern standards. At the top, Josh and I cracked open some cans of barley soda and enjoyed the gorge at its golden hour before making our descent. 

Once we returned to civilization and cell service (a McDonald's in Oneida, Tennessee), Josh posted a photo from the evening on his Instagram. Within minutes, vitriolic comments about our beer of choice  began blowing up the notifications on his phone. People did not approve of Busch. 

It was the 2010s, the height of the craft beer movement, and the Age of the IPA. Beer Wars was on Netflix, Fat Tire was no longer "fancy," and every town in Colorado had its own micro-brewery (8.4 breweries per every 100,000 21+ person, to be exact). Busch, and other single-name, macro-brewed, American-style lagers that retail for around $1 a can, were considered "cat piss.” According to Josh's refined friends and followers, we might as well have been a pair of slack-jawed yokels.

But that's all changed now. Beer taste has horseshoe theory'd back to the macro-brew, and now IPA's are the butt of jokes and memes. Micro and craft breweries have even started cranking out their own light lagers. But a six-pack will run you about $9.99 while a 12er of Busch costs and tastes about the same. That's basic economics. 

Speaking of economics, Busch and many other beers like Busch are union-made. And we should support labor unions. Unions are why our employers do anything remotely humane for us. And in the face of a fifty-year neoliberal onslaught on the working class, we should build worker power however and whenever we can; whether buying PBR or democratizing our own workplace. So here's a helpful list of union-made beers to get the revolution started. 

 

all-time great can design; bring it back, Busch.

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The Buddha and the Pain Cave

Running hurts. Anyone who tells you otherwise probably says wheatgrass juice tastes good too. (It does not.) Some want to pretend that running is always social media-worthy, but running will almost always bring you to a point where you look like death and everything sucks. That, to me, is part of what makes it so beautiful. 

My favorite running photo is of the finish line of a hundred-mile trail race. A middle-aged man weeps as he struggles to make it across the finish line before the cut-off time. He's fighting, with everything he has, for dead last place. And everyone around him is going berserker to cheer him on. It's heartbreaking and beautiful and I wish I could find the link to it. I like running because it pushes the body and brain beyond the threshold of discomfort. It requires the runner to dwell in the pain cave.

The "pain cave" is a term used by endurance athletes to describe the deep, dark place where physical, mental, and emotional fatigue coalesce. It sounds bleak and yet you'll find about 3,830,000 google results for "embracing the pain cave." Many feature ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter, who is largely responsible for popularizing the term. If you don't know who Courtney Dauwalter is, her ultra-running rap sheet is impressive. My favorite tidbit is her performance at the 2017 Moab 240 (that's 240 miles). Dauwalter finished in first place, kind of a big deal. She also finished 10 hours ahead of second place, which is a remarkably huge deal. Close your computer and ponder the world's greatest athlete you've never heard about. Courtney Dauwalter knows a thing or two about pain and how to deal with it.

Pain is the language our body uses to tell our brain that it does not like what is happening. I love this line from Haruki Murakami's, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." It's a Buddhist saying. The implication is that the body feels pain but the brain chooses what to do with it. You could give up. You could quit. Or you could delve deeper into the pain cave. Descend into the recesses of your mind and find the inner mental strength to carry on.

Watch any Courtney Dauwalter interview on youtube and she's grinning ear to ear as she talks about the pain cave. It could be her bubbly personality. Or it could be a peculiar love for this dark and agonizing mental space. For Dauwalter, the cave is the place to grow as a runner and a human being. 

Some runners transcend the pain altogether and achieve a "runner's high." I am not one of them. When I enter the pain cave, I bring an imaginary tent and sleeping bag because I'm going to be hurting for a while. I don't always tap into my inner-Dauwalter. Sometimes I have a pity party and cut my run short. I am not a world-class endurance athlete. I hesitate to call myself an athlete at all. But I do know that if I dig deep enough, enough times, my brain actually can dominate the body. And I've got pretty good at settling into the pain and suffering my way through things. Even when I hate it, I love it. And I almost always want to do it again.

I teach comparative world religions to eleventh graders in high school. I love my job. My favorite unit to teach, but the hardest for my students to grasp, is Buddhism. The First Noble Truth uttered by the Buddha is that life is suffering (dukkha). It is always interesting how my students respond to this assertion of the world. For many, it seems bleak or pessimistic. Still, others nod their heads in affirmation. Divorce, sickness, loneliness, death, poverty, bullying. Many students are acutely aware of the reality of pain. 

Last fall, in the middle of my Buddhism unit, our school experienced an awful object lesson in the truth of suffering. "If we are afraid to touch our suffering," Thich Nhat Hanh explains, "we will not be able to realize the path of peace, joy, and liberation. Don’t run away," he continues, "Touch your suffering.” This is the meaning of the First Noble Truth. And so that's what we did.

We didn't run away. 

We touched our suffering. 

We entered the pain cave. Sat with it. Kept company with the pain and suffering. Only then, the Buddha says, one can be on the path of release. But that's hard work. We'd much rather stuff it down, compartmentalize it, or run away. We put smiles on our faces and say we're good when everything seems like it's falling apart. This emotional bypassing is a pathological condition among Western folks, especially Western Christians. I mean, consider the great American folk song but the God-awful theology of the hymn, "I'll Fly Away:" 

Some glad morning when this life is over, I'll fly away!  Just a few more weary days and then, I'll fly away! Yeah, when I die, Hallelujah, by and by, I'll fly away!

This is either the ramblings of a psychopath with a death wish or a neo-platonic perversion of the gospel. Either way it's dirty brown water trash. Instead, the Buddha instructs us not to escape from life "but to help us relate to ourselves and to the world as thoroughly as possible" (Hanh). Yearning for a better life after death is passive. The Buddha encourages us to be active. Lean into the suffering and work towards its cessation here and now (Cūḷamālukya Sutta). "To be truly happy," insists Arya Namdol, "one must be intimately connected to and bear witness to suffering" (Namdol). That's a valuable lesson, even for non-Buddhists and, especially, for Western Christians.

Life, like running, involves tremendous suffering. But that is not the whole of it. The Buddha indeed taught the truth of suffering, but he also taught the truth of "dwelling happily in things as they are" (Samyutta Nikaya). And that, to me, is the meaning of the saying, "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." And that, to me, is the work of the pain cave.

So the next time you are edging toward the dark gaping mouth of the pain cave, physical or existential, set out for yourself a metaphorical meditation cushion. Maybe one day you'll reach enlightenment or whatever.

Further Readings (and Listenings):
Courtney Dauwalter on Embracing the Pain Cave (ep. 234 of Running On Om podcast) 
Courtney Dauwalter: How to Embrace Pain in Our Lives (Rich Roll podcast) 
The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh

Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor 

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5 Honest Strava Achievements

I love Strava. It's a fitness app that's equal parts training log and social media platform. Users can track their performance on routes and compare their efforts to other users on segments. Like Instagram and Twitter, users can give "kudos," leave comments, and be "rewarded" for their achievements. These rewards are great motivators, I just wish they'd be a bit more honest about them. Below are what I imagine would be honest Strava achievements.

1. Kudos

And mommy's baby is ready for his yum-yums. 

2. Top 10 Finish

I recently scored a Top Ten trophy on a local loop, which is really an embarrassment for the entire Chattanooga trail running community. I shouldn't have a top ten finish in anything. My high school basketball coach told me I ran like a 40-year-old man was fifteen. By that math, today I run like I'm 88.  

3. Local Legend

The Local Legend is a recent(ish) addition to Strava that rewards athletes who log the most attempts on a segment over a rolling 90-day period. TBH, I love it. It is the achievement I covet the most. To be a Local Legend, you don't have to be fast, you just have to be persistent. Or, you just have to be the only person on Strava ripping through that obscure back alley segment. 

4. KOM

Coming in hot with a side of bacon! We all have seen that guy (always a guy) blasting down the trail heat-seeking the much-sought-after "King of the Mountain" crown. Often, these bozos are so trophy hungry they forget they're not the only ones on the trail. 

5. No Bathroom Breaks

The data scientists and app developers at Strava Inc. need to make this achievement a thing. The only thing worse than a sloppy poo-poo sliding out your sweaty buttcheeks on a muggy summer day is an unplanned sloppy poo-poo sliding out your sweaty buttcheeks surrounded by poison ivy and mosquitos midway through your long run. Its avoidance should be celebrated. 

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The Adventure Spectrum

My wife might tell you that running in our neighborhood is an adventure. She's not wrong. It's not uncommon to be chased by dogs; she's been bit and has the scars to prove it. There's an old abandoned textile mill riddled with bullet holes across the street and we've seen the S.W.A.T. team on our block more than once. (Google how often "no-knock warrant" and other S.W.A.T. raids enter the wrong home.) Running in our neighborhood is exciting and even occasionally hazardous. 

My friends would tell you that raising children is an adventure. It seems like it. I've been around my nieces and nephew enough to know that their first steps, that first word, or the meltdown in a grocery store aisle certainly feel adventurous. But that isn't what we think about when we think about the word "adventure." I mean, there are not a lot of National Geographic cover stories on dropping off your kid for the first day of kindergarten. And don't expect an American Alpine Club grant for running around the block. 

“Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.” -- Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (2005)

I love Yvon Chouinard. I love Patagonia. I wish I could afford it. But this definition excludes a lot of adventure. For one, I try to mitigate not coming back alive as much as possible. Given the choice between hiking off the top of a climb and rappeling, I choose to hike every time. For that matter, you're more likely to die riding your bike to the grocery store in this country than you are climbing El Capitan. So living in a city with inadequate bicycle infrastructure, which is most American cities, basically means you're Alex Honnold. Except nobody actually thinks that, so this definition of adventure is insufficient. 

I started thinking critically, or thinking at all, about the word "adventure" in 2010 or 2011 when I watched 180° South. There's a line, also from Yvon Chouinard, that lodged its way into my brain and has managed to stay there for over a decade. 

"The word 'adventure' has just gotten overused. For me, adventure is when everything goes wrong. That's when the adventure starts." -- Yvon Chouinard, 180 South (2010)  

There's something admirably laconic about Mr. Chouinard. And it's true! I didn't think about leading youth backpacking trips as "adventure." Other than interpersonal relationships with the campers, it was pretty mechanistic. Water source here. High camp there. Summit before noon. Et cetera. But then there was that one week on trail when a mama bear and her two cubs woke us up in our low camp; and a kid went to the bathroom without a buddy, got lost, cliffed out, and cheese grated down a twenty-five-foot slab of Rocky Mountain granite; and we called off our summit attempt due to snow, and after we turned around, a different kid slipped and I had to glissade to his rescue. That week was an adventure.

I may not have thought about those trips as an adventure, but those kids sure did. Most of them came from the flatlands of America to sleep outside and climb to the tops of mountains for the first time in their lives. Every week was an adventure for them.

"I came to the conclusion that adventure is different for everyone. Just as climbing Everest is an adventure to a seasoned mountaineer, a baby’s first steps are adventurous for both a child and her parents. Both are new, exciting, and daring acts. Between staying at home on the couch and full-blown expeditions, there is a wide spectrum of adventure." -- Joey Homes, "Defining Adventure: Thoughts From Biking in Wales," Outdoor Women's Alliance 

Now we're getting somewhere! Adventure is a matter of perspective relative to experience. Adventure can be climbing a big, airy, exposed arete and running in a neighborhood that some of your friends don't want to visit after dark. Adventure isn't a clearly defined category but a spectrum to be explored.

"Gunsight to South Peak Direct," Seneca Rocks, WV

[Insert hard segue into exploring "adventure" from perspectives other than your own.] Malik Martin has shared summits with Conrad Anker, Manoah Ainnu, and Jimmy Chin. He's also the videographer behind Black Ice, a short film about Memphis-based rock climbers ice climbing in Montana. I stumbled across this Instagram post from Malik a few months back and saved it.

"I’ve been on a few expeditions where the journey to the summit gets extremely dangerous and not fun. I often tell my mentors that if I wanted to risk my life I’ll drive my car without a license or walk around the suburbs... Being black in the outdoors is an unnecessary experience that I want to extend to my people and my peers." -- Malik Martin, @malikethamartian, Instagram (May 20, 2021)

That'll make us rethink Chouinard's definition from Let My People Go Surfing. 

"Adventure," as we so often think of it in National Geographic or Patagonia catalogs, is unnecessary; a product of leisure afforded by relative privilege. Everybody deserves leisure. "Bread for all, and roses too," the old labor movement sang. Everybody deserves adventure, whether it's riding your bike somewhere to make coffee, backpacking with a group of inner-city teens, or climbing a really big mountain, even if it's just really big to you. And everybody deserves to stay home on the couch as well because watching t.v. rules. 

What's your (definition of) adventure? 

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