TDC 053: Between Death and Danger is the Path Up the Mountain

#053: Between Death and Danger: Wilderness Wisdom from the Grand Canyon

Between death and danger lies the path up the mountain—a profound insight revealed during my life-changing vision quest.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Digital Contrarian, host Ryan Levesque dives into a deeply personal father-son Grand Canyon journey that became the catalyst for his upcoming book "Return to Real".

You'll learn why reconnecting with nature isn't just a luxury but essential for breakthrough thinking, discover the symbolic message from a desert pocket mouse and California condor, and find how God-made things offer clarity in our AI-driven world.

Question of the Day 🗣️

Where do you find clarity when facing life's biggest questions?

Key Take-aways

• Between death and danger lies the path up the mountain
• Time in nature provides breakthrough clarity for life's difficult questions
• God-made things are more important than man-made things in our post-AI world
• The condor represents a bridge between humans and the divine
• Return to Real explores building financial success while embracing authenticity

Timestamped Outline ⏱️

00:00 – My life-changing father-son Grand Canyon journey
00:47 – The vision quest that revealed a profound truth
01:54 – The symbolic message from the wilderness
03:04 – God-made Things vs. Man-made Things in a post-AI world
03:59 – The breakthrough clarity that comes from nature
05:36 – The core question at the heart of "Return to Real"
06:53 – How you can provide feedback on my book

Links & Resources 🔗

• The Digital Contrarian newsletter → https://thedigitalcontrarian.com/
• The Happy Hustler podcast interview: "Contrarian Entrepreneurial Strategies to Win Life"

Next Steps & Subscribe 🚀

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Credits

Host: Ryan Levesque
© 2025 RL & Associates LLC. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Last week my oldest son and I hiked the Grand Canyon together and the trip was life-changing. We were part of a small group of fathers and teenage sons gathered together for a father-son rite of passage experience, backpacking through the Arizona Trail into the Ponderosa Pine Forest and hiking in and out of the Grand Canyon via the Bright Angel Trail down into the Havasupai Gardens at the canyon floor. And as part of the experience we embarked on a vision quest, each of us descending into the wilderness alone on one of the days of our trip in silence and stillness, bringing with us nothing but a question on which to reflect. 

I found myself drawn to a rocky outcropping, sat with my back against the hillside looking down into the valley below for the answers that I was seeking, but after nearly an hour no answers came until the silence was broken and behind me I heard a noise. Now first it was quiet, but it quickly grew louder. It sounded like, now curious, I turned and literally just a few feet behind me was a desert pocket mouse chewing on seeds extracted from a Ponderosa pine cone. 

Now to her left was a bright green prickly pear cactus with dangerous yellow spikes and to her right was a black brush plant, scorched black from wildfire, appearing like a dead tumbleweed skeleton in the desert. And as I watched my brave diminutive companion make her way up the hillside between these two figures, the following words hit me like a lightning strike. Between death and danger is the path up the mountain.

And as I watched my pocket mouse friend make her ascent, my eye was drawn to the ridgeline where something spectacular caught my vision in the distance. A huge soaring bird with an enormous wingspan. Underneath the wings were black with triangular patches of bright white and the markings were unmistakable. 

It was a California condor, one of the rarest birds in the world and one that holds a deep symbolic significance, especially among Native American tribes from the southwest. Often seen as a bridge between humans and the divine, condors represent messengers from the spirit realm. Their immense wingspan and soaring flight symbolize the ability to rise above worldly concerns, bringing spiritual insights and messages from ancestors. 

It was a moment that I'll remember for the rest of my life. The pocket mouse, the cactus, the burnt bush, the condor, the symbolism of it all, and the words, between death and danger is the path up the mountain. God made things versus man made things. 

In my forthcoming book, one of the ideas that I explore is that in this post-AI world, it's never been more important for us to be spending more time with God-made things and less time with man-made things. Now it seems like we all know we should be spending more time in nature. Touch earth before touching a screen, right? And yet, we don't. 

Time in nature feels like a luxury, something that we do when we have the time. Not one of the daily non-negotiables of life, but there is increasing evidence that suggests we may want to reconsider that perspective, both because of what the absence of nature does to our biology, our body, and our brain, as well as the profound clarity that can come from time immersed in the wild, particularly when we're seeking answers to difficult questions or we're looking for our next big breakthrough. How to live and give what the world is craving. 

Now in terms of breakthroughs, two weeks ago in issue number 51 of the Digital Contrarian, Setbacks and Breakthroughs, Why Feeling Stuck Means You Are On the Brink, I promised that I would soon be ready to share the updated draft table of contents from my forthcoming book, Return to Real, tentatively subtitled, How to Live and Give What the World is Craving. And in this week's issue of the Digital Contrarian, I was excited to announce that I'm finally at a place where I'm ready to get some thoughtful feedback from a small handful of readers on the TOC. And this is where I'd potentially love to get some feedback from you.

Now, before I explain the process for doing that, let me first take a moment to articulate the focus of Return to Real and help you determine if you might be a great potential reader. So here's what this book is all about. As you sit here listening to this or watching this here today, there is ever increasing data that suggests we feel more disconnected than ever, despite being more digitally connected than we ever have been as a species. 

We feel more burnout than ever, despite the enjoyment of more material wealth as a society than any time in history. And there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and a craving for the intimate, personal and real. And yet technology, automation and AI in particular, is at the center of virtually every business conversation happening right now among the smartest minds in the world seeking to solve these problems.

And I can't help but wonder, is this really the only way forward? Now, this tension brings me to what is the core question at the heart of this book. Can you actually build a business and live a life that's both financially successful and deeply fulfilling by rejecting the digital race to the bottom and embracing what's real? Or are these goals fundamentally at odds with one another? In other words, in this increasingly AI driven digital world filled with automation, algorithms and artificial everything from the food that we eat to the content we consume, can return to real serve as a viable strategy to both live authentically and achieve financial success? This book explores this question deeply and makes a compelling argument for a contrarian path to both live and give what the world is truly craving right now. Now, if this resonates with you, and if you're feeling inspired and energized to spend 10 minutes this week to provide detailed, specific feedback about my current table of contents, I would love to hear your thoughts. 

And I'll be opening up an opportunity to share your feedback, which I'll be sharing via email. Now, if you're not already a subscriber of the Digital Contrarian Newsletter, you can subscribe today for free by visiting thedigitalcontrarian.com. Now, lastly, a little something to wrap this episode. A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Kerry Jack for his Happy Hustle podcast, which has over 5 million downloads. 

And our episode together was titled Contrarian Entrepreneurial Strategies to Win Life. Now, in this episode, we explore the return to real, a movement toward authenticity, practical applications of the return to real, optimizing for oxytocin in business, the importance of unscalable experiences, navigating life's windows of opportunity, and more. It was one of the best interviews that I've done this past year. 

And if you're looking for something to watch or listen to this weekend or this week, I highly, highly recommend checking it out. We'll make sure to include a link so you can catch the interview in full. In the meantime, if you enjoyed this video, or it's helped make you think, be sure to like, follow, and subscribe to be notified for when the next video episode drops. 

And in the meantime, I have another episode that I think you might enjoy that goes a bit deeper into some of the ideas that we started to touch on together in this piece. Okay, I'm going to leave you with that for now. Remember to hug the ones you love, and I'll see you again in the next episode.