the thunderchicken and primordial spirituality

My first car was a 1985 Ford Thunderbird that had its first breakdown on the way home from handing the previous owner 600 bucks cash. My bud Hagen and I drove it home from a tiny ass town in central North Dakota and found ourselves on the side of the highway kicking the tires. 

I actually don’t remember how we got it home, but what I do remember is rocking out to a cd that I’m too embarrassed to name. 

And that was the life story and the essence of the Thunderchicken. It broke down constantly, but I installed a sound system that was worth at least 4 times the car’s value. That tells you all you need to know about my inherent values. It was a lowriding silver piece of shit with a giant sign in the back window that fell down from the ad board at the local Hardee’s. It just said “ROAST”.

But my god did it sing. I won’t bore you with the technical details of the sound system, but it was insane.

It was the car at the gravel pit party that lit the night up with studio quality sound. It was the car next to you at the light that made your car shake and made you uncomfortable, probably for several reasons. It was the mobile party that constituted the only place on the planet that I felt comfortable dancing. It’s the reason my ears ring at night. 

Fuck I loved it. 

What I really loved was sound, sound that was so loud it shook every cell in my body. It made me feel alive. It made me feel feelings. It brought me friendship and a container for brotherhood. It made me cry and laugh and scream. 

I think I probably needed that level of volume to feel anything at all. 

One of the great mysteries and joys of my life now has been in slowing down and relaxing enough to feel life through my body. Years spent in nature and in somatic meditation practice have made this the center point of my spiritual life and my offering to the world. So much so that as I now reorganized and align my work, it is a simple, specific embodied note that I am anchoring my current and future career on. 

A little over 3 years ago I led a wilderness expedition for a bunch of dudes. 15 guys showed up to Montana and we hiked up and over the Gallatin Range and into Yellowstone. On the 2nd day, we woke up early and I led a meditation practice in the most incredible meadow, rung by sharp mountain peaks in all directions. The meadow was large and carpeted by long dry grass. We formed a circle and laid on our backs. 

I invited us to let go, to surrender. To relax. To feel. To open our bodies and become a part of the earth itself. Not some grand idea of the earth, but the one we were laying on. As we dropped deeper and deeper I let go and the men followed. 

I have no idea how long it was, probably no more than 20-30 minutes, but it was profound. It was a peak moment for me and for many of us. 

When we stood up and stumbled back to camp, my buddy Gan came up and we shared a moment I’ll never forget. One of us said something like “If a Grizz stepped out of the woods I’d probably just walk up and let him eat me. I’m good. I’ve lived everything I could ever want.”

What I’ve since learned and clarified is that this experience is our birthright, and the most natural thing in the world for our bodies to be alive and in connection to the earth and to nature. It is something our bodies always know and yearn for, but that our minds can’t begin to conceive of. 

It is an experience of spirituality completely stripped of any iconography, concepts, or human meddling. 

It is simply our bodies experiencing and singing the fundamental joy of being alive. 

It’s not complicated, elusive, or even a mystery. It’s available whenever we want to experience it. We can simply tune ourselves to the earth and to nature, and we can do it anywhere at any time. We don’t need to be in a meadow rung by peaks--though I highly recommend it.

So that note and that song is what I’m building my current world, business, and offerings around. And like teenage me hurtling through the midwest in the Thunderchicken, our bodies might need some shit turned way up to train the body to wake up and feel.

And also like the Thunderchicken, profound experience can be fun, and silly, and sloppy. It can be all of the things.

But once we get quiet enough, the earth’s tune is far louder than any teenager’s sound system could ever be. 

The experience of nature, of each other, and of life itself is right here waiting for us to hit play.