The Gypsy

“You’ve inherited my Gypsy blood,” I remember my father saying as I threw my climbing gear in a backpack and told him I was headed to Mexico to put up some first ascents on some towering limestone monoliths.

Potrero Chico

“You’re going to be both blessed and cursed by it. You will see the world and everything that God has meant for you to see, but you will also go through deep bouts of boredom when you sit still. Being sedentary will be the bane of your existence. Careful during those times of inactivity, you will cause problems for yourself and become your own source of unhappiness,” he warned. 

That was half a lifetime ago and the Oracle no longer wanders this world. That warning never left my thoughts, just like the bearer of them. 

He wasn’t guessing, he saw my future because after all I’m an iteration of him, as he was to his father. You like to think you become your own man, that you're different from those before you. The only true difference is the path you chose and how it delineates your course, the starting point is the same. 

I think back to this as I sit in a treestand in Kansas, swaying in the gale force winds like a human metronome. My family is tucked away in our Gypsy caravan, in its warm depths wondering why their patriarch chooses to freeze his ass off in hopes of killing a trophy. 

Sometimes I question the same thing, wondering if this is the best use of my life. It’s satisfying to me, but a convoluted passion that makes little impact on anything besides myself and my family. 

How big are our aims meant to be? What deems a wasted life? Is just being happy with how you spend your time enough?

More questions for the Oracle, if only he were there to answer.

I know everything is temporary, including the current view from my cedar fortress I have myself tucked away in. I’m a voyeur that will be moving on once my goal is accomplished. It will be time for change again soon, it’s the only guarantee we have in this life. 

I look forward to the next unknown, the next town, the next hunt. I look forward to showing my kids that it’s a big world and it’s experiences are not to be wasted. If they don’t already have the Gypsy blood in them, they’ll absorb it by osmosis. 

I think back to a few short months ago. We were rooted in Denver in a home that never felt like a home. It sheltered my family and I, but that’s about it. We had a solid group of friends, but that is something you didn’t lose with distance. 

The walls were closing in and I felt the air getting squeezed from my lungs. Monotony set in and I was getting complacent. Life was easy and that made it mundane. Familiarity was breeding boredom and I saw the energy being drained from me. Was this it? Repeat the daily cycle? Until what, death? 

This was a life based on fear. I knew I would regret not moving on, giving my kids the experiences they looked to me for. 

It couldn’t be. There was more out there and we were going to go find it. When life is too easy, it’s a good indicator that it’s time to split. 

And so we did. To live the life of gypsies. It was time to move on. 

There is no end to this story. It stays continuous until the air leaves my lungs and the dirt blankets me. Until I meet up with that Oracle and ask him if I did this right, or if I missed the bigger plan for me. 

// Fred Bohm