Staring out my office window at the buildings of downtown
Dallas lit up for the night, a wave of panic rolled over me.
Have I made a terrible
mistake? Am I really going to
leave everything behind?
I looked back at the floor covered by the boxes of legal
notes and files I had been reviewing, hoping that would somehow ground my
flight of panic, when someone knocked on my door: “Heard you quit to go fly
fishing.”
“Well, that’s the gist of it anyway,” I laughed, a little
more settled now. “The plan, if
you can call it that, is to leave the law firm and my life as a corporate
lawyer behind—at least for a while—and go fly fishing, hiking, and skiing
through the Rockies. If I can get
things wrapped up here in the next few days, I can still make the closing
weekend of the ski season at A-Basin.
After that, I’ll fish my way down, south and west, to my home base for
the summer: Lake City, Colorado.”
“You know we all hate you, right?”
 |
| View from the truck on the way to Lake City, Colorado |
A week later, I was driving north on I-25 toward the
mountains. I had moved out of my
office and my apartment, my law books boxed up and thrown into storage with the
rest of my former life. The long
drive gave me time—and forced me—to process what I was doing, where I was
going, and what I was leaving behind.
I had been a corporate and securities attorney at a mid-size law firm
for nearly six years. And I
enjoyed it for several years, despite the late nights, long weekends, and
incessant out-of-the-blue fire drills.
There was a feeling of accomplishment when we helped a client close a
big deal—and a sense that the long hours we put in on the project were worth
it. And there was so much to
learn—each day brought new challenges, new problems to solve.
But somewhere along the line it stopped being rewarding. As I progressed from a junior associate
to senior associate sitting first chair (or only chair) on deals, the work piled
up. The late nights and
all-nighters piled up. The long
weekends at the office piled up. Meanwhile,
opportunities to see friends and family and spend time skiing or fly fishing
dried up. The security guards at
the office all knew me by name. As
did the employees at the take-out restaurant across the street. After several years of grinding out the
hours, I realized I didn’t have the energy to do it anymore—I was completely
burned out. Projects that used to
take me an hour now took two because I couldn’t stay focused. I’d stop reviewing a document to look
up a question of law, but I’d soon find myself looking at sports scores on
ESPN, snow depths across the Rockies, or, more likely, pictures of giant fish—I
guess because I just didn’t want to do the work anymore. But that wasted time (which I had to
write off) just meant I was at the office later than I otherwise would have
been, so the next day I would be more exhausted and frustrated—and even more
inefficient. It was a downward
burnout spiral, and I knew I had to get out.
But then what?
I wasn’t ready to shut the door on corporate law forever, but
I knew that before I could give it another try, I would have to recharge my
batteries. So I hatched a plan—head
to the mountains and go fly fishing (with a little hiking, mountain biking, rafting,
and skiing mixed in for good measure).
Basically, go take my dream trip.
I started fly fishing and skiing in elementary school, and I
immediately fell in love with both sports. My family went to Durango, Colorado to visit relatives a
couple of times each year. During
the winter we would head to the slopes, and I would squeeze as many runs in as
I possibly could, always racing to make the last chair up the mountain each
day.
During the summer we would head out to remote mountain
streams around the area to catch small but aggressive trout. I had always liked fishing, but fly
fishing—especially in these little mountain streams—was so much more active, so
much prettier, and so much more relaxing.
Instead of melting on a humid afternoon tromping through tall,
snake-infested grass around a muddy Texas stock pond, I was hiking up a crystal-clear
creek, its cold water counterbalancing the warm summer sun as the water gurgled
rhythmically by. And the fishing
itself was addicting: in these small creeks, if you got a good drift through a
good spot, you caught a fish. I
was hooked.
As I got older, I started seeking out bigger water—and
bigger fish. I made it to
the Snake and Green Rivers outside of Jackson Hole, I fished Silver Creek near
Sun Valley, I tried the White River in Arkansas, but I continually gravitated
back to the San Juan River near Durango to hone my technique. The summer between graduating from
college and starting law school, I worked in Durango and logged even more time
on the river. When I graduated
from law school, I took off for Alaska in search of monsters on the fly. And when my little brother followed my
footsteps and graduated from law school as well, we celebrated by racking up
more debt and flying halfway around the world to fly fish Kamchatka. So when I announced my plan to
leave my life in Dallas behind to fly fish, my friends and family weren’t
really surprised.
 |
| Fly fishing just outside Lake City, Colorado |
By the end of that summer of freedom, I had fallen into a
job as a fly fishing guide at Dan’s Fly Shop in Lake City, Colorado. I was getting paid to take people
fishing and teach them the sport I love in one of the most beautiful places I had
ever seen. After getting a taste
of this, there was no way I was going to be chained back down to a desk again any
time soon. So I started looking
for winter jobs in ski towns.
When I was in elementary school, I told every adult who
asked that when I grew up, I was going to be a fly fishing guide in the summer
and a ski instructor in the winter.
Elementary-School Ryan seemed to be right about the fly fishing gig, so
I figured I should follow through on that life-long dream and try my hand as a
ski instructor too.
Well, it turns out I had been right about that as well. This spring I wrapped up my second year
as a ski instructor at Deer Valley in Utah, and I am planning on going back
next season after I finish my third summer as a fly fishing guide in Lake City.
 |
| Winter sun setting over Deer Valley Resort |
Depending on the season, I spend each day either fly
fishing, skiing, or trekking to beautiful vistas to take pictures (I sell some
of my photographs in Lake City), and while my alarm clock used to jar me awake
from anxious dreams about impossible deadlines and legal issues, filling me
with a sense of dread, I now wake up most mornings before my alarm excited to
spend my day doing something I truly love. The frantic bustle of the corporate world—and the incessant
noise of ringing phones, chiming calendar reminders, and buzzing email alerts—has
been replaced with wilderness, tranquility, and simplicity.
What started as a short sabbatical from my life as a lawyer has become a chance at a new life—a life chasing big fish and deep snow—the dream life I envisioned as a naive elementary-school kid clumsily slinging around his first fly rod in the shadows of the mountains. Looking out my window at snow-covered peaks, I can see it clearly now: leaving it all behind was no mistake.
