It more or less comes down to skateboarding, being a skater. When I was a kid, I used to play all of the organized sports – soccer, football, baseball. But then I dropped everything. I quit all of that and got into skateboarding. And it really changed my life, how I looked at things and how I approached things.
Part of being a skater, especially back then, is you had to go find your spots. This is the early eighties and there weren’t any skate parks around, there were only a couple in the whole country. That was the era of backyard pools, drain ditches, and building your own ramps, and you had to discover these places.
My friends and I lived in the suburbia called Danville up in Northern California, and even at a really young age we were getting outside of our small town and traveling to other towns around the bay area just to skate. For me, playing organized sports, and the whole winning and losing thing, seemed so confined, even as a little kid. It just felt so cool to get into skating because it didn’t have that aspect of winning and losing. There was no tangible “thing.” It was this act that you simply did, and it was fun. You could be creative, but it didn’t produce anything. I really love the purity of that, because it is ultimately about what you want it to be about.
Anyway, a lot of us getting outside of our small town was just riding buses and public transportation and bumming rides here and there. But we were discovering the whole bay area as little kids. It was exciting at the time because most of our peers weren’t able to leave town without their parents; but our parents had no idea what we were doing — we were sneaking out, cruising around San Francisco when we were 13, 14 years old. I think that’s kind of what got me into exploring and traveling. It was just that excitement of finding something new… and back then it was definitely forbidden, we weren’t supposed to be doing that. And that is definitely what started it, that curiosity of what’s “beyond.” It was eye opening growing up in really conservative suburbs and skating around San Francisco at night and seeing what the city’s like.
That curiosity just naturally extended to the rest of the world. As soon as I got out of high school, I wanted to get further out of my town. I ended up in Hawaii. On the North Shore of Oahu, especially in the early nineties, there were lot of traveling surfers coming through there.
Returning to that unadulterated perspective I had of skateboarding, I’ve had a similarly idealistic perspective of surfing and climbing as well. Over the years, I gravitated towards those because I thought they were such a great life pursuit again for being so different than organized sports. Of course there’s professional surfing and competition. But I’ve always had this idealistic view of it being this pursuit that’s still physical yet also highly personal.
Thus living there in Hawaii and seeing all of these different people come through from different countries inspired me to travel even further into this beyond. Around the same time I developed an interest in storytelling. My father was is a good storyteller and passed that along to me, and I grew up writing in my journal, but this was the first time that I began thinking about the stories that were being told. I always happened to have a camera — a point-and-shoot camera — with me when I was traveling so I started taking pictures and that became a central part of the story. Eventually I started doing slideshows in my garage. A group of us were really into the Hawaiian canoe and canoe surfing and would take off and try to sail around the islands. I documented these as if I was on assignment, sharing these slideshows in my garage for everybody would come over and drink beers and heckle with each other. To me, that’s where my own version of “storytelling” actually began.
I think what I like to show in my photographs and stories is more of the human element of what’s going on there, more than “he summited” or “he did this or that.” I like the intangible. I’ve always looked at these things as if it’s a lifetime endeavor, not a fad or a journey that you’re on for a year.
Basically, I took these things on — the “beyond” and storytelling — because it consumed my life. However, I never thought it would be something that other people would be interested in. I never thought it would fit into the grander scheme of things. If I planned it that way, I don’t think it would have worked. I merely got involved in things I believed in — followed my heart around for good or for worse. And because of this opportunities came my way, things I never even dreamed of.
But, still, the unadulterated perspective goes back to those slideshows. I still feel like that’s what I’m doing today — putting together these stories to share them as slideshow in my garage for everybody to come over and drink beers and heckle with each other.
It comes down to making good decisions in life. When all is said and done, you’re just standing on a pile of decisions that you’ve made. And you never know what decisions or situations are going to present themselves to you. Today, the biggest journey that I’m about to embark on isn’t a backyard bowl or surf trip, but it’s that we’re going to have a kid in about a month. Even through all the travel and adventures, that is far and away the most exciting thing that has happened in my life. I can’t wait.
For more from Jeff Johnson, be sure to head on over to his website. And don’t forget to follow him Instagram. Additionally, Jeff is an ambassador for Saint Archer Brewery, which operates out of San Diego, California. Jeff features in “The Path Unseen,” a film by Josh Landan in collaboration with Saint Archer.
