FOCUS: MEN’S THRIVABILITY


its tagline – “93.5, music without boundaries” – to which he yelled, “No boundaries, baby!” Greg’s workdays end at 3:30pm,


which justifies a 15 minute lunch. “Anything longer breaks momentum,” he claims. When he gets home, he might call a friend and ask, “Can you play today?” An hour later he’ll be peddling his mountain bike up a stump- riddled trail, his heart rate jacked, eyes glued to the forest floor. Or perhaps he and his girlfriend might take a leisurely motorcycle ride on the Kancamagus Highway, a 34 mile scenic highway that stretches from Conway to Lincoln.


OUR FATHER’S WISDOM A week before my transcontinental journey, my brother and I were talking about our dad as we walked the footpath around the Charles River in Boston. I pointed to a row of docks along the river. “A year ago, I was having beers there


MAKING THE MOST OUT OF LIFE An avid mountain biker, fierce downhill skier and healthy eater, my dad is the picture of health, but even at 59 years old, he suspects he’s on borrowed time. When his father died at 55 and his uncle at 54, he began to think of the 50s as danger years. (It’s worth noting that on the day I was born, he attended the funeral of his best friend’s father.) Greg also thinks about the end


because his mother won’t stop talking about it. While I was staying in Eaton, in Santa Barbara, California his 77 year old mother, Cheryl, was creating her living trust. Cheryl had made her son the executor and was inundating him with emails about his obligations upon her passing. He became overwhelmed. “I’ve just about had it with the emails,” he said, closing his laptop. It made me realize that my dad prefers


to take a philosophical approach to death over his mother’s more practical one. He also refuses to plan for death, because he’s too busy getting the most out of life. Take a stroll aroundShangri-Laand life-affirming messages abound. Tacked


26 SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2017


to the walls or hanging in frames are postcards and pictures with inspirational quotes. A postcard in the downstairs bathroom has a mouse on the front wearing a helmet, inches from a block of cheese in a trap. Another quote hangs next to that, Hunter Thomson this time: “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a ride!’” A self-employed contractor, Greg spends his days replacing roofs and building additions or custom homes. If you call him in the morning, he’ll shout that he’s “building America.” On the job site you’ll see a man always dissatisfied, eager for tangible measures of progress. “We need a success,” he once told


me, as we stared at the foundation of a garage without walls. After we built and then stood up the walls, his mood brightened. He sung the lyrics to Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car playing on the local radio station. During the commercial break the station broadcasted


with dad and his girlfriend. I asked him who he thought the wisest person in our hometown was.” “What’d he say?” Daniel asked. “He thought for a while, but didn’t


have an answer.” I paused, watching a sailboat bob on the Charles. “Honestly, I think Dad could make the short list.” At the time, I was


readingMeditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius who repeatedly reminds the reader that death is inevitable. “Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else,” writes Aurelius. It sounded like my dad’s letters. As we strolled, my brother and I


pondered our father’s wisdom. We balanced the ‘wise’ with the not-so- wise; he was impatient, he could be judgmental, empathy wasn’t his strong suit, and his temper was the stuff of legend. However, despite his impatience and intolerance, his lack of understanding and hotheadedness, he was a blue-collar mystic: Mount Washington Valley’s philosopher king. Daniel made a shrewd point: “Dad


knows what’s important.” Meaning, he didn’t just make it a priority to attend


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