This Is Not My Beautiful House, This Is Not My Beautiful Wife

How did I get here? Honestly, I don't know.

That's the Talking Heads lyric stuck in my head when I started writing this. In many ways, I feel like I’m living that moment in my life right now. I’ve arrived. 14 years of marriage, 3 kids, beautiful house in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but did I earn it? Was it a result of my privilege? Did I make it myself?

What I do know: I’ve spent my whole life performing success for other people and it almost killed me. Wildward Institute is what happened when I stopped.

I grew up in a family of people who were very good at succeeding. With twenty-two cousins on my dad's side alone, we grew up giving speeches, engaging in public debate, competing athletically, competing academically, and sharing our triumphs and successes, but hiding our failures. Every aunt and uncle I can name has built something impressive; earned an MBA, launched a successful business, succeeded in their field. For as long as I can remember, I have been running a race I didn't choose to run and finished somewhere near the back.

In some ways, I ran away from this competition. But I still felt the pressure to succeed. This created an internal struggle, mentally, physically, and emotionally. If I experienced success, I downplayed my achievements and pushed myself to do more. If I failed, I beat myself up, I fed into the belief that I wasn’t good enough, and pushed myself to do more. Regardless of the outcome, the pressure was still there. 

I kept collecting experiences because I needed evidence of the person I was trying to become.

By the time I was 35, I had been struggling with a stress induced illness for over a decade that was more common among men in their 60’s than in their 30’s. If I started a new job, hosted a big event, or had a new child I would get sick. This resulted in excruciating pain, trips to the emergency room, and weeks of trying to heal. Eventually, I couldn’t avoid it anymore, I underwent an invasive surgery to remove 9 inches of my intestines and spent 3 months recovering.

That's what it took for me to stop and ask the question David Byrne was asking.

How did I get here?

For the last year and a half, I have been commuting three hours a day to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. One morning I woke at 4:30am for the work-out I forced myself through every morning and realized that something had to change. 

It wasn't a breakdown. It was more like waking up mid-sentence. I was physically present in one of the most beautiful institutions on the California coast and I was absent from my kids, absent from my community, absent from the work I actually wanted to do in the world.

So I left. And I started Wildward Institute.

My phone rings when organizations have developed meaningful experiences but are struggling to prove its academic integrity. I fix that. Wildward Institute supports organizations, teachers, and parents who want to build meaningful relationships with young people and the outdoors. 

The programs I help scale in nature don't just feel good — they are academically impactful, measurable, and accessible to the communities that have historically been kept out of those spaces. That last part matters to me. 

Why? I spent my formative years in San Diego in, on, and under the ocean. In my first job outside of college I met 18-20 year olds raised in the same city who had never been to the beach, never learned to ride a bike. My work aims to create opportunities for kids so access is attainable AND impactful. 

I’m aware of the privilege I carry, but I’ve made mistakes trying to work across that gap, and I am still learning. What I know is that there are kids who need adults who can meet them where they are — in classrooms, in parks, on beaches, in places that ask something of them.

I built this because I believe the outdoors can do something for young people that almost nothing else can. I have watched my son grow up in the water and on the trail and I have seen what happens when a kid stops surviving and starts inhabiting their own life. I want more kids to have that opportunity.

And I am launching a podcast called Hopeful by Nature because I also believe the world needs more examples of people doing this well. I am going to travel (at least in conversation) to find the educators, parents, organizers, and communities around the world connecting young people to the natural world in ways that build something real. My hope is that it inspires people to take action — not just as individuals, but as communities, to care for and protect places where we play.

Here's what I didn't expect: starting over at this stage of life feels less like starting over and more like arriving somewhere I actually chose. It feels like I finally stopped running the race I didn't enter and started walking somewhere I actually want to go.

If you work in outdoor education, if you lead a nonprofit, if you are a parent trying to figure out how to raise a kid in a world that is genuinely frightening and simultaneously genuinely beautiful — I want to hear from you. Join the conversations I'm collecting — educators and community leaders around the world figuring out how to raise kids who give a damn about the planet — by listening and subscribing to Hopeful by Nature.

So how did I get here? Let’s find out together.