"We should blow this off and go float the river."
It was the first day of a complete property rehabilitation project.
It was also going to be one of the last 90-degree days of summer in Bend.
A friend of mine looked at the house we were supposed to start working on, looked at the weather, and apparently found the weather more compelling.
I laughed.
"I'm working toward the point where I can say that on day one of a project."
We didn't blow it off.
We went to work.
But I've thought about that exchange several times since.
At the time, I was joking about money.
I'm beginning to think I misunderstood what he was saying.
We've been trained to think of recreation as what happens after the important stuff.
Work.
Responsibility.
Money.
Family.
Obligations.
Handle those first.
Then, if there's anything left over, recreation.
Play is what children do naturally until we gradually train it out of them.
Adults get weekends.
Vacations. Hobbies.
Maybe someday, retirement.
First build a responsible life.
Then enjoy it.
My friend seems to have quietly inverted that hierarchy.
Not irresponsibly. That's important.
He hasn't organized his life around avoiding work.
He's organized his life so that work serves living instead of living serving work.
That's different.
And I've found myself paying attention.
He mountain bikes.
He camps.
He rides adventure motorcycles.
He recently spent two weeks riding the Montana backcountry with a group of friends.
There always seems to be another adventure somewhere out ahead of him.
Not an endless itinerary.
Not a frantic attempt to collect experiences.
Just something.
A ride.
A trip.
A few days away.
Something on the calendar that he's looking forward to.
Usually with only a few weeks between them.
Then he comes home and works.
And this is where my initial assessment of the arrangement fell apart.
Because the motherfucker works.
The property we've been renovating had been neglected for years by the kinds of tenants who are well known to local law enforcement.
The lot was filled with an almost impressive amount of accumulated junk.
Old lawnmowers. Car parts. Makeshift structures.
An entire camper that had become immovable and had to be cut into pieces and hauled away.
He cleared most of it himself.
Trailer load after trailer load.
Then I came in to start painting the house.
My friend is the owner.
He's paying me to do it.
Yet somehow, my client became my helper.
He's masking.
Sanding.
Filling holes.
Mixing paint.
Laying drop cloths.
Holding a spray shield while I work.
Wrangling my hose.
Cleaning.
Learning.
No task is beneath him.
And that's one of the things I've come to admire most.
There is a particular kind of confidence in a man who doesn't need you to remember that he's the boss.
Show him how something works and he wants to understand it.
Show him again and pretty soon he's anticipating what you'll need next.
A secure man, I've discovered, is perfectly happy holding the other guy's spray shield.
Especially if he's learning how the sprayer works.
We've worked some long days together.
Physical days.
Hours in direct sun.
And I've noticed something else.
He doesn't really fade.
He works at this almost irritatingly sustainable pace. Never frantic. Never proving anything. He just keeps going.
One afternoon we were talking about birthdays.
He told me his was coming up in October.
Then he mentioned how old he'd be.
Sixty.
Holy shit.
I thought he was around my age.
Maybe a year or two older.
I had been watching this guy haul junk, climb ladders, move equipment, ride motorcycles and work all day in the sun assuming we were roughly contemporaries.
He's almost a decade ahead of me.
That's when I really started paying attention.
Because the thing I was seeing wasn't youth.
It was vitality.
There is a difference.
Vitality is harder to measure than fitness.
It's physical, certainly.
But it's also curiosity.
Interest.
Energy.
Engagement.
Having somewhere you want to go.
Having something you still want to learn.
Being willing to be a beginner.
Having people you want to go places with.
Having another adventure penciled onto the calendar.
Still being interested in tomorrow.
I know men younger than my client/friend who seem considerably older.
Not because their bodies have failed them.
They've just gradually stopped doing things.
Stopped going places.
Stopped learning.
Stopped playing.
The radius of their lives has gotten smaller.
And I'm beginning to wonder whether we have some of the causation backward.
Maybe my friend doesn't keep playing because he has so much vitality.
Maybe he has so much vitality because he keeps playing.
That thought has collided with another one that's been following me around this summer.
Recreation.
Re-creation.
Once I saw the word that way, I couldn't unsee it.
I've felt it myself recently.
I happen to need nature.
It calls to me in a way I don't entirely understand.
A motorcycle into the mountains.
A tent.
A fire.
Coffee outside in the morning.
A place where my phone eventually becomes a useless rectangle in my pocket.
I leave carrying one version of myself.
I come back carrying another.
Not transformed.
Not enlightened.
Just restored.
Re-created.
Nature may not do that for you.
Maybe it's golf.
Fishing.
Woodworking.
A motorcycle in pieces across the garage floor.
Music.
Gardening.
Running.
A puzzle that requires enough concentration that the rest of your brain finally shuts up.
I don't think the particular recreation matters nearly as much as what happens while you're doing it.
You stop producing.
Stop performing.
Stop solving everything.
Stop preparing for whatever comes next.
And for a little while, you play.
Then you return.
Maybe that's the part I've had backward.
Recreation isn't necessarily an escape from the serious parts of life.
It may be one of the things that keeps us capable of meeting them.
My friend isn't riding motorcycles through Montana instead of living his life.
He's riding motorcycles through Montana as part of living his life.
Then he comes home.
And works.
And learns.
And builds.
And fixes things.
And eventually goes riding again.
Work.
Play.
Work.
Play.
Not opposing forces.
A rhythm.
Maybe play is one of the things preserving his capacity for seriousness.
Maybe disappearing for a few days is part of what allows him to return so completely.
Maybe the sixty-year-old man who looks at one of the last beautiful days of summer and says, "Let's blow this off and float the river," isn't being irresponsible.
Maybe he's gotten some priorities right.
We didn't float the river that day.
The responsible adults won.
The house got worked on.
But I'm still thinking about it.
Because there will always be another house.
Another project.
Another responsibility.
Another perfectly legitimate reason to postpone the things that make us feel alive.
Summer doesn't operate under the same arrangement.
Neither, for that matter, do we.
So maybe recreation isn't what we do after we've finished building our lives.
Maybe it's one of the ways we build them.
Or, every so often, build ourselves again.
Re-creation.
