Joining the river of big mind
Recently I was texting with my best friend, Sid. He’s facing stage-four cancer, and when he told me about the pain he’s enduring, I sat in my truck on the side of the road and started crying. I’m not someone who breaks easy, but the unfairness of it hit me like a wave. He couldn’t talk — he was in the doctor’s office — so I told him over text that I was crying because he got a raw deal and I’m tired of pretending it’s okay.
As I continued down the road, I found myself thinking about our long life together. I flashed back to the storm of 1982, when we were thirteen, living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Thirty inches of rain fell in three days. Rivers exploded out of their banks. Hillsides liquified and homes slid into the abyss.
After that storm, life became brutally simple. Mother Nature had hit the reset button. All the performative nonsense of our teenage identities fell away. Sid and I wandered through landscapes of fallen redwoods and washed-out roads with awe and wonder. In the face of something so vast, everything artificial just crumbled. Only the real remained. 
When someone you love receives a terminal diagnosis, it’s the same feeling. A big storm is happening, and you’re inside it whether you want to be or not.
Sid told me he isn’t afraid of death. “It’s part of life,” he said. His bravery humbled me. It put everything in perspective. If Sid can stare down cancer with clear eyes, I can face my own trivial struggles without complaint.
Storms are part of the cycle of life. So is cancer. Both remind us that the roles we play are superficial skins draped over something much bigger.
Here at Adventure Sports Journal, we try to honor that “something bigger.” Wild nature is not a backdrop for recreation — it’s the unseen hand behind everything, even our own consciousness. We go outside to reconnect with that larger self.
Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once described seeing Yosemite Falls for the first time. It seemed to him that the individual drops of water had “great difficulty” falling all the way down. In the same way, we struggle because we imagine ourselves separate from nature. We forget we belong to the great river of life.
Storms remind us. Death reminds us.
Welcome to ASJ Issue #139, where snow settles on a quiet landscape and we breathe in the magnitude of existence.
For nearly 25 years, ASJ has been the unofficial voice of California’s outdoor community. We’ve poured our heart and soul into advocating for a nature-based existence and celebrating the wild spirit that animates our readers.
At its best, outdoor recreation isn’t performative — it’s a natural dance. Breathing in, we find our rhythm. Breathing out, we dissolve a little into the vast sky from which we came.
There are times the struggle of producing this magazine feels overwhelming. We wonder if our soulful approach — and our printed format — are just leaves drifting on a digital ocean of noise. Yet somehow, every issue finds its way. Cathy wakes up one morning, decides to keep it going, and enough of you whisper “keep going” that we continue. For you.
But the truth is: we can’t keep going much longer without help. If you value what ASJ brings to the outdoor community and are in a position to support us — personally or through your organization — please reach out. We need a sustaining partner to keep this publication alive.
In the meantime, enjoy this issue. May these pages guide you back to the great river of consciousness that binds us all.
Thanks for reading.
— Matt Niswonger
matt@adventuresportsjournal.com
Read past Editor’s Notes here
