“You want to talk about shaking up your life? Start by shaking up your relationships.” Photo: John Rathwell
Nature can teach us a lot. It taught Brad Scott valuable life lessons, allowing him to turn his life around and set him free. It taught him that sometimes it’s better to surrender to the flow of nature than be a prisoner of societal expectations and rhythms.
As a young man, he had his taste of freedom. He spent his first year after high school living out of his Ford F150, hanging out in climbing spots in and around North Carolina. But as reality set in, Brad felt like he had to go back to “real life.” He’d given into what he thought was expected of him, went to school, married his sweetheart, got a house, and started a business in construction.
“My life was wake up before the sun came up, go until the sun went down, five to six days a week and then try to be a weekend warrior,” he says. “I wanted to paddle, I wanted to climb, I needed a lot more adventure than what I was getting. It’s like I was working 60 hours a week just to try to be off and do the things I wanted to do on the weekend. It’s all well and good, but I just want to go and get lost.”
With daily frustrations mountsin, things started progressively degrading for Brad. Life is hard enough when you have no outlet. In Brad’s case, the 2008 housing market crisis in the U.S. came along and rocked the contracting and construction world he was working in. And his personal relationships were coming apart. He needed to act to keep his sanity.
“Life started adding up,” he says. “I just remembered the happiest times in my life were when everything I owned fit in the bed of the truck and I was 100 percent free to come and go as I pleased. The more things I accumulated, the further it took me away from that existence and happiness.”
The times that followed were turbulent. Brad had to make hard choices that impacted not only his life but the lives of others. He didn’t take this lightly, but ultimately, he had to go. He sold his company, his home, and ended up on his own, searching for himself again.
“The hardest part about it was being able to separate myself from longtime personal relationships that prevented me from being in a happy, mentally-healthy place in my life.,” he says. “Many of those relationships were lifelong, important relationships that I had to sever in the hopes that one day they may come back, but knowing that they may not. Letting go of those was the hardest thing. You want to talk about shaking up your life? Start by shaking up your relationships. That’s way more than getting rid of some couch and moving into a more minimal living situation.”
“My mind doesn’t turn off. Sometimes, it gets to be just way too much to handle and the only time I feel like it shuts down and I don’t have to listen is when I’m on the water.” Photo: John Rathwell
Today, one might think Brad is no further ahead than he was over a decade ago, with his life belongings all strapped to his vehicle. But that perspective wouldn’t take into account all the life baggage he’d been carrying. He knew of happiness and contentment. He’d met them before and was hoping to find them again, this time in West Virginia. When he moved to Fayetteville, he wanted to enjoy the climbing and the rivers, working in the rafting business during the summers, and spend his winters working at a ski destination. Turns out, he never left. While he enjoyed Fayette County’s world class climbing scene, the rivers stole his heart and provided the healing he was looking for.
“My mind doesn’t turn off. Sometimes, it gets to be just way too much to handle and the only time I feel like it shuts down and I don’t have to listen is when I’m on the water,” he says. “It quiets my mind. It’s the only time I’m at rest. I’ve always looked for that in different places, it just took many, many years — well into my adult life before I realized paddling was the resource that was going to provide that most readily and regularly. When you’re on the water, it’s the only place where you have to surrender to the greater power. You can’t win a fight against the river. To be on the river is release. It means everything to me.”
With the rivers at the core of his revival, he found a place to live where all the adventure he needs is close and he doesn’t need to be a weekend warrior. In Fayetteville, he can be an everyday warrior. Which is just what he needed.
“Go with the flow,” he says. “That statement is really about surrender. Surrender to the flow. The flow of the river and the flow of nature is very different from the flow of society and the flow of what man has created–the pace of life dictated by dollars and cents. The pace of the river is the pace of the natural world. Tapping into that is a different experience entirely than surrendering to the flow of the 9-5.”
Editor’s Note: Searching for Sero is a mental wellness project created by professional photographer, John Rathwell and writer, Tracy Guenard. The photo project shares the stories of people who are passionate about outdoor adventure as the key to happiness, well-being and balance in their lives. Find out more at Searchingforsero.com
“When you’re on the water, it’s the only place where you have to surrender to the greater power. You cannot win a fight against the river.” Photo: John Rathwell
