Risky Business

As I ‘splained way back in the Stone Age days of this here blog, finding out that there are mountains in the . . . Mountain West (a term and region of the country that I assure you, Dear Reader, I was aware of) . . . and discovering and learning about FIRE was what pushed me to move from the Midwest to the Mountain West.

Utah man!

But there’s more to the story. See, in I think 2016, The Missus and I took a somewhat unplanned trip to southern Utah, a place I’d never been. My . . . mind . . . was . . . blown. As I like to say, the best way to describe that place is that it looks like it was designed by Mother Nature while she was on an acid trip. 

Previously, the places that most tickled my fancy were big, dynamic cities and/or locations near large bodies of water. But after the trip to southern Utah, I joined Team Mountains and started longing to live in the Mountain West.

We ultimately didn’t move to southern Utah. But it remains my happiest of happy places. And a direct line can be drawn from the trip there to our eventual move to where we ended up.  

Fear factor

Before the move, there were lotsa reasons I’d talk ad nauseum about moving, but never, you know, actually moved. For all intents and purposes, it boiled down to fear. 

We can’t move because we’re headlong into increasingly well-paying careers! 

We can’t move because we’d have to have jobs lined up wherever we’d move to and finding jobs in a new, unfamiliar place would be so hard! 

We can’t move because we have so many friends and family where we live now! 

We can’t move because we might not know many or any people in the place we move to! 

We can’t move because what if things don’t work out perfectly?! Or at all?! 

We can’t move because Thing One (The Elder) and Thing Two (The Younger) are in school, and our Midwest city is the only place they’ve ever called home!

But maybe the biggest fear of all: We can’t move because we’re in our 40s, and who does that at that point in their lives?!

I longed to move. But for at least 15 years my lizard brain smothered that desire.

The knowledge and confidence I acquired from discovering FIRE, and the concrete changes we consequently made, removed said stake and stripped the fears away. Full stop. The trip to southern Utah greatly narrowed the possible destinations.

The Accidental Tourist

Since moving, I’ve been fortunate enough to take several trips to southern Utah. This year, to my unbridled delight, I’ll not only go again, but get to camp with a buncha people in the FIRE community. 

In between these trips, I watch lotsa videos about (hiking and camping in) southern Utah. One of my favorite YouTube channels is Tristan Higbee’s SUV RVing. Not all of Tristan’s adventures are in southern Utah. But most are. Many of the rest are in other beautiful parts of the Mountain West. 

Tristan is a highly experienced hiker, climber, and camper. Most of his adventures are solo ones that are physically demanding and/or require advanced technical skills. This is part of the channel’s appeal. I’m way outa’ Tristan’s league and don’t wish to get there, even if I do wish to get closer to it.

In his episode published on May 18, 2025, Tristan planned to cover an adventure on the Grand Canyon’s north rim, and his motorcycle ride to it. But things went sideways, literally, when Tristan wiped out while riding through a thick patch of sand and one of his legs got pinned under the bike. Tristan extricated himself from his predicament with a lot of ingenuity, strength, and perseverance. 

The end of the video features Tristan reflecting on the misadventure. Decidedly blase, Tristan explains: 

“It’s always, always an adventure. But all’s well that ends well, right?! I was able to self-rescue. Barely. But we made it out of there. And, phew, what have we learned? . . . [I]t’s easy to say that I should go out there with more people and I should have more experience, but this is something that I’ve kind of suffered with for the past, I don’t know, 15 or 20 years. I’ve traveled the world alone. You know, I’ve been to 30-something countries. The vast majority of that traveling was me solo. I’ve gone on innumerable hikes solo. People always tell me not to, you know, not to hike solo, not to go scrambling and climb these mountains solo, not to camp solo. People are always saying not to do this, don’t do that, don’t go there, move somewhere else. And if I had listened to those people my entire life, then my life would be much less full than it is now. I never would have met my wife, who I met in Cambodia. I probably wouldn’t have started this channel. You know, everything good in my life has come from pushing my comfort zone a little bit. Occasionally, that might push the boundary of . . . of what most people would consider safe, but that’s, that’s part of it, you know. That’s part of the growing. That’s part of the adventure. There is no adventure without a little bit of uncertainty. And sometimes that uncertainty comes in the form of risk, but sometimes it’s just the unknown and sometimes it’s just, you know, fighting your own inner doubts and demons. Anyway, that’s all to say. What a what a fun morning.”

Hearing this didn’t just put a smile on my face, it instantly made me think back to my post about moving to the Mountain West. 

Now, Dear Reader, I’m not saying that a simple move to a populous location in the United States was anywhere near as dangerous as riding a motorcycle, alone, through a remote, wild part of Arizona. But it did require me to conquer very real fears of mine. Fears that I don’t think were completely misplaced.

The move has been a wild success for me. It was the right thing to have done, notwithstanding some expected and unexpected tradeoffs and consequences. 

Boundary Lands

What Tristan said really got me thinking about FIREing altogether, too. I didn’t necessarily have people directly telling me not to FIRE. But certainly no one outside the FIRE community cheered me on. And, I f’sho sensed that many considered my plan at best concerning. At worst outright reckless. Even now, those who know my situation never ask things like “How is your ‘retirement’ going?” or “Are you happy?” or “Have the financials worked out as expected?,” or the like. To the contrary, I have anecdotal evidence that they think we’re in or headed toward financial ruin.

As it’s turned out, more than three years after FIREing, I couldn’t be much happier. Certainly, my daily happiness level is leagues higher than what it was pre-FIREing. Happier than even the pre-FIREing days after we moved to the Mountain West. 

I’ve also learned that I likely won’t ever do the type of work that I did during my full-time career days (this itself being an invaluable discovery and conclusion that I’d not have been able to make or commit to but for FIREing), but that revenue-generating opportunities—some very lucrative—come regularly, if at times that cannot be predicted. 

I’ve also gotten to spend (more) quality time with The Family, and other family and friends. This included a month-long trip abroad with Thing One (The Elder) that we’ll both remember fondly for the rest of our lives. Next year, I’ll do a similar trip with Thing Two (The Younger). These things would’ve been somewhere between difficult and impossible to do but for FIREing. 

Financially, things are working out quite well too, thank you very much. Yes, income through The Missus’ job and my funemployment and gig work has helped. But absent that, we’d still be doing OK. That even though the U.S. and world economic situation has been, shall we say, rocky since I FIREd. What with the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 2022, and a to-date neurotic 2025. 

So, I refer back to this from Tristan: . . . And if I had listened to those people my entire life, then my life would be much less full than it is now. . . . You know, everything good in my life has come from pushing my comfort zone a little bit. Occasionally, that might push the boundary of . . . of what most people would consider safe, but that’s, that’s part of it, you know. That’s part of the growing. That’s part of the adventure. There is no adventure without a little bit of uncertainty. And sometimes that uncertainty comes in the form of risk, but sometimes it’s just the unknown and sometimes it’s just, you know, fighting your own inner doubts and demons.”

Amen, brother. 

And in the end . . . 

Not one to suffer from hubris, I’m not so foolish as to think that our situation can’t turn south. Quickly, even. But our plan was made and executed with great forethought and care. And we continue to bolster it. So, I’m still alert and attentive. But in the meantime, I’m happy to say that I’ve done it my way.