Finding Shangri-La - #100

Paradise isn't found, it's made.

This newsletter is written from a log cabin in a high-alpine valley, nestled just shy of 10,000 feet, in a town of 180 people, 51 dogs, and an undisclosed number of cats. We are surrounded by peaks soaring into the sky. There is one road in and one pass out. There is no sign indicating where to turn, and every time there is, the locals take it down. Wildflowers give way to mushrooms give way to dazzling gold vistas give way to walls of snow. We manage our own water, trash, roads, and trails. When there is a wildfire, we appear with shovels. When there is an avalanche, we appear with sleds. When there is a power outage, we appear with beer. 

I’ve written many times about what drew us here. This tiny town in the vast mountains held everything on our list: it was remote but community-driven, it put nature first, its architecture used the materials of the mountains, it was self-sufficient, environmentally-minded, politically-progressive, and stunning. Every person here seemed perennially young — the mountain air and spring water acting as natural elixirs, deals with a devil yet to be known. 

This was our Shangri-La. But of course, Shangri-La isn’t real. 

In 1933, the English novelist James Hilton released his best-selling novel Lost Horizon, depicting the story of five plane crash survivors who find shelter in the mythical utopia of Shangri-La, a mountain hamlet in the Kunlun Mountains of Tibet where no one ages and everyone lives in harmony with the world around them. The novel’s success is owed in part to the Western world’s fascination with Eastern “exocitism” and a passionate but very shallow examination of the Eastern world’s cultures. Shangri-La entered the cultural lexicon as a remote paradise, a lost city, and a Himalayan utopia hidden from the world.

Since then, it’s become arcadia canon appearing in the songs of Elton John, the Bee Gees, AC/DC, Janelle Monae, Stone Temple Pilots, Stevie Nicks, and Insane Clown Posse. In the sitcom Frasier, Niles moves to an apartment complex called Shangri-La after his divorce. Shangri-La is referenced in episodes of Law & Order, The Simpsons, and Boy Meets World. It’s a restaurant, a hotel chain, a Guatemalan soft drink, and the original name for Camp David. It’s everywhere despite actually being nowhere.

But when we bought this house, it felt like we’d found it. We cheekily named the house Shangrilogs because of it: our mountain Eden of deadfall logs. It was only a month later that I started this newsletter. This house, this valley, this writing — they are synonymous for me, inextricably linked to when my metaphorical plane left behind Targets and traffic and international airports to crash land just east of an avalanche field. 

Hilton wrote Lost Horizon in the midst of the Great Depression, during the rise of Hitler, in a world on the brink of collapse. It is an escapist fantasy, and one the characters ultimately leave. This Shangri-La, the one I’ve been lucky enough to call home, is not so separate from the world. It’s bucolic and breathtaking and a privilege, but in its seeming rarity, there is common dissent and work. There is NIMBYism, carelessness, exceptionalism, and selfishness — there are all the problems we have everywhere that we can only solve together. 

When I started this newsletter, I knew it was “about living here.” I had an idea that I might have more ideas and that they might be worth writing about. I’d been writing for others for some time, and it was time to write for myself again. Or at least that’s what I thought. Now, 100 editions later, I can see the bulk of this newsletter is about community — that’s what I was seeking, and that’s what I have found. 

Numbering these newsletters is something I started sheerly because I’d seen others do it. You have a newsletter, you number it. This is, obviously, the 100th newsletter — special only in that it is a round number. Two years would be 104 weeks, but in the two years I’ve been writing this newsletter, I have taken 4 weeks off, and this community has supported that. 

This community — you who subscribed, opened, read, commented, liked, and shared — this is the community I did not expect to find. I mean yes, obviously you start a newsletter hoping people will read it. Writing a newsletter is essentially only about community after all. It’s not like I’m submitting to the Times or the Paris Review. I’m not pitching Outside or High Country News. Every week I am thinking about the community I am in and writing about it for the community that we are: a group of people who care about living in a way that’s sustainable, for ourselves and the planet. And every week I am in awe that you’re here.

The first edition of this newsletter was sent to the TinyLetter subscribers who’d been with me since the DateByNumbers days of Tumblr. They didn’t know what they were getting in their inbox and I didn’t know what I was going to send. In that very first essay, I recounted the journey Ben and I took to get to this “Shangri-La”, and I finished the piece by saying this:

Whether or not we belong isn't up to the town council, and it's not up to these residents. It's up to years spent drifting my old Mustang in the snow on the way to school, up to Ben's months and months spent in the backcountry, up to my years of reading fire reports and assisting with evacuations, up to Ben's ability to read the landscape and the weather, up to my doggedness, his diligence, and our pathological love to do difficult things well. It’s up to us, to these old logs, and to this valley. Doesn't mean we'll belong, but it does mean we'll try.

I bought a house in the middle of nowhere - #1

Try we have. Ben is the Town Clerk. I’m on the foster hotline. We might not be on the short list for dinner parties, but like I said, we’re trying. We’ll get there.

And I’ve been trying here, too. Here are some stats about Shangrilogs on its 2nd birthday:

• There are 4,752 subscribers. (Not quite the even 5,000 I was hoping for on the 2nd anniversary, but again, that’s just another round number.)

• More than 300 paid subscribers receive the Wednesday edition of Shangrilogs every week, helping me continue this project

  

• These letters have been viewed over 450,000 times!!!

• Shangrilogs was a Substack Featured Publication two years in a row

• And there are readers in every single state and over 100 countries

Sharing these numbers feels vulnerable, even when I write things like this, but I think it’s important to share that your creative passions can have success, even when the landscape seems to prefer something else.

Many people have said their favorite thing about this newsletter is that it’s different every week; you never know what it’s going to be. Neither do I, honestly.

There’ve been one-night stands and ski bums.

Places where the dogs run free but the people run scared.

The desperate desire for a house with a little life, and the reality of living in it.

There’s been death, rescue, and the promise of life.

Shangrilogs covers a lot of ground, but I’ve gotten pretty close to summarizing it:

Shangrilogs is the high-altitude exploration of what it means to be a good neighbor — to nature, to your community, and to yourself. And the people who read this newsletter, the Shangriloggers, are the special kind: ever investigating their relationships with big nature and their own natures. They keep it kind and curious in these parts, and they make sure trespassers are always humbly reminded of their place within the universe.

Shangri-La may not be real, but this place we’ve created together here, is. And I simply can’t thank you enough.

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Thank you for reading. Thank you for supporting. If you have a favorite essay from Shangrilogs, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

As this newsletter grows, so do my hopes for it. I’m exploring a few new ideas for the coming seasons, and please know that my inbox is always open to yours.

Oh, and one last thing. Here’s a little 2-year-anniversary gift from me. Thanks for everything.