Open Mic is the series on BLISTER where we invite various people in the outdoor industry to say what they have to say, and share whatever it is they feel like sharing at this particular point in time.
Today, we hear from Angel Collinson:
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” – Joseph Campbell
Do you ever catch yourself giving advice to someone and realize that, not only is it good advice, it’s also the exact advice you need, and the thought of actually taking it is terrifying?
Sometimes confronting the truth that is residing deep within us can be surprisingly unsettling.
We are ever-evolving, changing beings. What is true one moment will change as time goes along. Instead of resisting this change, to actively lean into it, to work with it, and let it transform and alchemize us takes a kind of deep and true courage that is not for the faint of heart.
As I’ve written about in this Open Mic series before, I recently went through a big transition: a year ago, I quit skiing after a lifetime on skis and a successful decade-long career as a professional athlete in the sport. While that transition was still under wraps, I bought a 40-foot sailboat, Sea Bear, with my partner Pete, and I learned how to sail. After a year of balancing sailing and boatwork and my ski career, I announced my retirement. Now Pete and I live aboard Sea Bear, and we’ve been sailing around the world for the past year and a half.
After this big career change, I was asked to talk on podcasts (like this one) and give interviews about the subject: “You quit skiing while you were still at the top of your career? Why?” And in countless conversations, I’ve been preaching about following our truth no matter what. Skiing was no longer my dream, and I needed to stay true to myself to pursue other callings and things the world had to offer. I have been advocating for taking a leap of faith, leaving what no longer serves us, and pursuing that truth even when it doesn’t make sense and the ‘how’ isn’t clear.
And now the irony is: Life is asking me to really walk that talk. Again, seemingly so soon after I just transitioned and took a major leap of faith from skiing to sailing into the unknown, I’m humbly on the precipice of needing to take another one.
Let me back up and set the stage.
Pete and I didn’t set a timeline on our sailing journey, but our big dream has been to eventually make it to the South Pacific and adventure around far flung islands with turquoise waters and no one around. Following the predominant tradewinds and avoiding hurricane seasons, we left from Maine and sailed across the Atlantic and back, up the Caribbean island chain and back down to Panama where we are currently out of the water in a boatyard doing some regular maintenance on the boat. Our plan has been to go through the Panama canal early next year and sail out to the South Pacific around April 2023 or so.
But then something unexpected happened, and now I’m not sure what to do.
When we initially hauled Sea Bear out here in Panama to do some maintenance, we took a trip stateside and our time was jam-packed. Planes, trains, and automobiles, weddings, retreats, festivals, family time, etc.
It was biking around in a hot dust storm at Burning Man that my realization hit me… I was tired. Like, bone-deep tired. Not just from the fast-paced stateside trip — it was much bigger. The kind of tired that made me realize if I pushed it much harder for much longer, I was going to create some health issues with consequences. My body was clamoring for attention, for rest and stillness and care and for me to sit and listen to it. So instead of partying, dancing, and exploring the city of art, the majority of the nights I was there I slept 12-14 hours and sat with what was trying to emerge.
As I listened, I heard some hard-to-deal-with truths, the first one being: I’ve gotten incredibly far because I can push my body and it’s been so strong and resilient. But for a while my body has been asking me for things I’m not giving it, and it became clear I can no longer push through and temporarily override my body’s needs in pursuit of a goal or dream. The time for that is up, and now it’s time to let my body call the shots. A lot of those needs are really hard to fulfill living on a cramped sailboat and moving around all the time, often sleeping weird hours.
An underlying factor and truth beneath all of that was harder to palate. One of the main reasons I was so tired was that the want for this new life I worked so hard to create at some point has waned. When we want something so badly, it fuels us from our core. And at first, that was true — I wanted this sailing dream so badly and I did everything it took to make it happen. I jumped into it full on and I put all of my savings and life force into it, I was energized and Pete and I worked like maniacs to get this dream off the ground. But along the way, it has also taken more out of me than I realized, and I could really feel something needed to change. But I didn’t know how or what.
Sitting in my tent in the dust storm at Burning Man I had to be brutally honest with myself and how my truth was (is) changing. How I was changing.
For my entire life, intensity has been the common thread, and the word often used to describe my family growing up was just that: intense. At the time, it didn’t really feel like a compliment.
I grew up living out of a van in the summers with my family and backpacking in a ‘tent’ (a triangular tarp with no floor and mosquito netting sewn around the edges as walls) around the mountain ranges of the west. In the winters, we lived in the employee housing at Snowbird ski resort, and my mom taught a one-room homeschool that included my brother and 5 other kids. My dad was my ski coach for a big part of my life, and his favorite mottos were “Hurry up, daylight’s burning!” and “You can sleep when you’re dead!” My adolescence was spent in a pretty grueling training regimen trying to make the US Ski Team in alpine ski racing. That facilitated a rather accidental but cool slide into a career in a different discipline: big mountain skiing. I found myself making a living flying in helicopters and filming big lines up in Alaska, where I cultivated an intimate relationship with visceral fear on the daily. Then this recent development: buying a boat and sailing around the world. One intense lily pad to the next.
I have been incredibly privileged to have had the opportunities and life I have led so far. I’ve also worked my butt off for it. I’ve done a lot of hard things and I’ve cultivated an ability to work with fear and know when to push past doubt and fatigue when I thought I couldn’t go any longer. In fact, my ability to do that has defined me. I’ve always identified as being tough, gritty, and hardcore. I know how to suffer. I know how to push through big obstacles and be in challenging environments. I can be comfortable being uncomfortable.
I’ve also learned when to turn back, turn around, to step off a line when the conditions aren’t right. To know my limits when it’s not the right day for me to push myself.
To identify whether you are facing an obstacle that requires you to dig deeper and try harder versus an obstacle that requires you to take a different path is a nuanced art — one that my skiing has helped me hone. Yet it still is incredibly challenging to distinguish every time. It requires tuning in to our gut, our intuition, our deep knowing.
And sometimes, the answer is one that we don’t want.
So this leads me to where I’m at now, which feels scary to admit to myself and to the world: I have to change my life up again, somehow, but I’m not exactly sure how. Transitions are tough, and I’m in the early stages of this new one.
The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t live aboard Sea Bear 12 months of the year, full time anymore. It makes me really sad because I don’t feel ready to be done. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten the juice out of this dream that I gave everything up for, but it’s not as simple as it might seem to keep the sailing dream alive and also honor the needs of my body. My body, which is so wise and has gotten me so far with its abilities, needs something different, is speaking to me of the way forward: ease, spaciousness, stability, softening. But I don’t want to listen.
Restructuring my life in this new transition isn’t just about the way my life looks on the outside — it’s also just as much about how I relate to life on the inside. I am being called to move through life in a different way. It’s hard to articulate and put into words how it feels: mostly humbling and destabilizing and confusing, because intensity is both a big part of my identity and the entire way that I have related to life and gotten this far. I don’t know how to live a different way. In the grand scheme of things in the world, this feels petty and small. But for me, it’s big.
Transitions are full of complicated, intense, and diverse emotions as we let parts of our old selves and our old lives die in order to create something new. They are murky. They take a while. We long to see the way forward and path ahead, yet like that Joseph Campbell quote above, usually we can only see the next step if we are lucky. Sometimes we can’t even see that far. We can look back and connect the dots, see how one thing led to another — and often in meaningful and perfect timing.
But while we’re in that liminal in-between space of transitioning, while facing the unknown or an undefined future, however, it often feels like we are a lifeboat floating at sea grasping for a firm line, any line, any form of the ‘known’ or a definitive place to pause or rest. We long for something to tell us what we should do or how we should do it. It can feel like a long series of “WTF now?” moments.
The reason I wanted to share all of this now — in the midst of my ‘not knowing’ — is because I think we often don’t share from the middle of our transitions, because it’s hard to! Usually we’re at max capacity trying to just figure it out and get through. Then we share once we are on the other side and things have been mostly sorted.
But to me, that can create the illusion that everyone else seems to be having an easier time dealing with change and transition, so why am I struggling so hard with it?
Well, I’m here to tell you, from in-the-middle of mine, they suck sometimes. They are also beautifully expansive. But not easy for anyone I know. And not easy for me. They make you face your demons and question yourself and everything around you. Even writing this piece has taken me much, much longer than I hoped, and I’ve spent many frustrated hours trying to capture what it is I’m doing and feeling while having no idea of where I’m going.
I alternate between feeling resolved and confident, to bewildered and overwhelmed and sad and a little lost. I’ve had to feel all of my fears, insecurities. I don’t have a perfectly packaged, “This is how I did it, and you can too!” Rather I just have questions of the unknown, again. But something I try to remember is that if we are clear on our ‘what’ and our ‘why’ the how will always sort itself out.
And, again, I come back to the only cliché thing that is my guiding force: when my truth becomes clear, I have to listen to it and follow it. Even when it feels daunting or conflicting with my many desires and longings. Our truth doesn’t always make sense, it doesn’t always please others, it doesn’t always give us a clear path forward. But when I look back at every experience I’ve had when I’ve followed it, it’s led me right where I needed to be, in surprising, unexpected, challenging, and magical ways.
Here’s to all of us finding our way.
About Angel Collinson
As Angel puts it, she is a “skier of mountains, baby sailor of boats. Singer of songs, hounder of rocks. Haver of good times and lover of this planet.”
Beautiful and important. Thank you Angel for this thought-provoking and very relatable piece.
You may no longer consider yourself a skier, Angel, and you may or may not be a sailor, but you sure are a thinker and a writer. Thank you for working through this in the open.
Angel, I feel the old, “human condition” has gotten to you…..welcome to the club. I truly feel that any thinking,caring, non-selfish person, deals with this their entire life. In my opinion ,there is hope and that is investing your time ,energy,intellect, what skill you have
With children /folks in need. Believe me, there are plenty of folks that are in need, desperate need, more than most people can imagine.
When you know you have truly help a person to develope a positive outlook on life etc. That experience will make you own life becomes meaningful. One can carry that knowledge and feeling an entire life, big lines, climbs etc. Certainly have a place but helping change a life ……..