Anza Borrego: The Existensialist Re-Awakening
There’s been a lot of hubbub on here about the interpretation of Jesus and God, and the historical teachings of Christianity and the church. I don’t know who keeps writing those blog posts but I’m here to remind everyone that God is dead. Of course the implication there is that God was alive at some point, and he was. The picture perfect male representation of the ultimate father figure. As the father he handed out inviolable decrees about how we should live and what is right and wrong, saving us from the pesky trouble of having to reason about such trivial matters ourselves. Then something interesting began to occur, as we invented science and began applying the scientific method we began to discover natural laws. These were still of course part of God’s design but a comfort began to creep in as humanity decided that it “knew” things instead of “were pretty sure” about stuff. Then we built on top of these laws and developed the civilizations we know today: housing, government, industry. Yet still God was there as the foundational cornerstone to all ideas as even Descarte’s famous Cogito Ergo Sum declaration rests on the existence of God. As mankind developed medicine they started to forget about their impending doom, death became far removed from the certainty it was in years past and even then, the staunchest believers were sure of a better life after death anyways.
It was in this milieu of scientific advancement that Nietzsche simply declared God had died. Civilization had advanced so far and became so sure that maybe all laws were natural that we didn’t need the foundational existence of God any longer. He removed that Jenga block from the very bottom of the tower. All of a sudden concepts such as morality and purpose that had a direct connection with God were left floating in the void, unconnected to any objective source or explanation. Philosophers have then tried to perform surgery on these most ancient concepts. The purpose our lives shifted from “How to live the best life in service to God” to “Why do we live at all?”. The certainty of death and the apparent absence of God led to a depressing outlook on our existence. The existentialist thinkers eventually came to an idea though, that this mortal certainty is what brought meaning to our lives. After all it was the one objective truth that had not been decimated by the death of god. No one on this Earth can argue that we wont die, regardless of what happens after, this life will end. So death is now a foundational element on which we should rebuild our purpose. Non-existence is the antimatter on which we should measure our lives. Yet there is a problem in modern society, we forget about death. We’ve abstracted it away to farthest reaches of our minds. That’s not to say that tragedies don’t occur everyday but unless we’re personally involved we don’t see the spectre of death hanging over us every second of everyday.
That’s a very long preamble to say that the fear of death was firmly placed back into me by my bikepacking trip to the Anza Borrego desert. I haven’t written about my cycling exploits on here in a while mostly because I haven’t tackled any rides that made me scared, by choice. I chose to have adventurous but predictable rides which definitely deserve to be written about but they’ve become so numerous that it would be a disservice to each one to pick and choose which ones to highlight. The events of the weekend of March 15th 2025 though deserve to be retold. Recently I’ve taken a dip into the world of camping and specifically camping on a bike ride. I was presented with an opportunity earlier this year: 6 months of unemployment in which I wanted to ride my bike for as long and as far as possible, in which I would adventure through much of the west and maybe even Europe. To that end, camping as much as I could would be a great way to curb the expenses of such an undertaking. So I put together a setup that could carry about 50 pounds of extra weight on my bike. Enough for a tent, cooking utensils, one or two changes of clothes, food, water and maybe a laptop or books if I was really feeling sprightly.
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