Q3 Letter to Clients

The Economic Landscape

If Q1 felt like driving into a headwind, Q2 was the stretch of open road that followed. Markets staged a powerful recovery, more than erasing the losses that rattled investors earlier in the year. For the quarter, the S&P 500 gained roughly 14.5%, the Nasdaq Composite surged approximately 19.7%, and the Dow advanced around 11%. Small-cap stocks were the quiet standout: the Russell 2000 returned approximately 20.8%, capping its strongest first half since 1991.

Importantly, the rally was not built on hype alone. S&P 500 companies reported first-quarter earnings growth of about 28% on revenue growth of nearly 12%, and market leadership broadened meaningfully, with Consumer Staples, Real Estate, and Healthcare joining the conversation by late June. Inflation, however, remains elevated. The Consumer Price Index hit 4.2% on an annual basis in May – its highest since April 2023 – driven largely by energy costs. Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, was more encouraging at just 0.2% for the month, suggesting the broader pass-through from the energy shock is still limited.

Making Sense of the Headlines

The conflict between the U.S., Israel, and Iran has been the dominant macro story of 2026, disrupting roughly one-fifth of the global oil trade and pushing average gasoline prices as high as $4.56 per gallon in May. By mid-June the picture shifted: the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on June 17 to extend the ceasefire and begin reopening the Strait of Hormuz, sending crude oil down roughly 20% from its 2026 peaks. That is real progress, though the situation remains fluid and a permanent deal is still being negotiated.

On the monetary policy front, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at 3.50%–3.75% at its June meeting – the fourth consecutive hold and the first under new Chair Kevin Warsh. The updated dot plot told the bigger story: half the committee now envisions at least one rate hike before year-end, a sharp reversal from March projections that still implied a cut. The Fed also raised its 2026 inflation forecast to 3.6%, up from 2.7% just three months earlier. The message is clear: the central bank is not in a hurry to ease.

Staying the Course in a Noisy World

Wars, inflation, and Federal Reserve posturing are not comfortable topics. We know the headlines can feel heavy. But if the first half of 2026 has reinforced anything, it is that markets reward patience more than prediction.

In late March, after the worst of the oil-shock selloff, the S&P 500 had pulled back to around 6,344 – roughly 7% below where it began the year. Investors who stepped to the sidelines would have missed one of the sharpest quarterly recoveries in recent memory. Those who stayed invested, rebalanced, and leaned into the discomfort were rewarded with a double-digit rebound in a matter of weeks.

This is not a new lesson, but it is one worth revisiting in every market cycle. Volatility is not risk. Volatility is the price of admission to long-term compounding. Risk is permanently impairing your capital by abandoning your plan at the wrong time. We continue to believe that a disciplined, diversified approach – across asset classes, market capitalizations, and geographies – is the most reliable way to build and protect wealth over time.

Protecting What You Have Built

So much of our work together focuses on growing and investing your wealth. But the plans we build only work if the foundation underneath them is solid – and that brings us to a topic that does not get enough attention: your insurance coverage.

Summer is a natural time to review your property, auto, and umbrella policies. Home values, replacement costs, and liability exposures can shift meaningfully from year to year, and your coverage should reflect the life you are living today, not the life you were living when you last renewed. If you have not looked at your policies recently – or if you have questions about whether your umbrella coverage is adequate given changes to your net worth, real estate, or vehicle situation – we would love to help. Just reach out and we will walk through it together.

As always, we are grateful for the trust you place in our team. Half the year is in the books. There will be more headlines, more volatility, and more reasons to worry between now and December. But there will also be more reasons to be thankful – for the progress we have made together, for the plans we have built, and for the lives those plans are designed to support. We hope your summer is full of rest, adventure, and time with the people who matter most.

Stewarding Significant Wealth: Navigating Complex Financial Decisions

At a certain point, the financial conversation shifts.

For most people, the early stages of building wealth are focused on accumulation. Growing a business, investing consistently, and creating a sense of security. But when wealth reaches a level of real significance, the questions change. It becomes less about whether you have enough and more about what you do with it, how you protect it, and whether it continues to reflect what actually matters to you.

That is the work of stewardship. And it looks very different from standard financial planning.

The complexity is real

Ultra-high-net-worth families face a different set of decisions than most financial plans are built to address. A portfolio may span public investments, real estate, private companies, philanthropic structures, and multigenerational planning. Each layer adds another decision point. Taxes matter more. The structure of asset holdings matters more. Family dynamics matter more.

And here is something that surprises many people: the margin for costly mistakes does not shrink just because there is more money on paper. In some ways, it grows. Complex wealth requires more coordination, more intentionality, and a plan that is built around your specific situation, not a template.

Tax planning is not an afterthought

For families managing significant wealth, tax planning is often where the most valuable work happens. Not because every decision should be made to save taxes, but because the tax consequences of major decisions deserve to be considered before they are made, not after.

The most effective planning weaves together investment strategy, estate considerations, charitable giving, and liquidity needs. When those pieces are coordinated, families can be much more deliberate about timing, ownership structures, and how different assets fit into the larger picture.

Beyond a traditional portfolio

Many families at this level begin exploring opportunities outside of a standard investment portfolio. Real estate, private companies, alternative investments, and family-office-style structures can all offer meaningful diversification and long-term potential. But they also entail greater complexity, more due diligence, and a need for clarity about how each piece fits the overall plan.

The question worth asking is not just “What is the return on this?” It’s “How does this serve the life and legacy we are building?”

Using wealth well, right now

One of the most common patterns we see is this: families who have worked hard to build significant wealth end up waiting too long to use that wealth intentionally. There is always a reason to hold off. Another milestone to hit. Another uncertainty to resolve first.

But wealth is most powerful when it is engaged with intention now. That might mean funding the experiences that matter most to your family. Supporting causes that align with your values. Helping the next generation understand both the opportunity and the responsibility that comes with what they will inherit. Sometimes it simply means giving yourself permission to live fully into the life your planning has made possible.

Good stewardship is not about being cautious to the point of paralysis. It is about making decisions that are values-aligned, tax-aware, and built to last, while also actually living.

The real work

At the highest levels of wealth, financial planning is not primarily about performance. It is about making sure the decisions you make today reflect who you are and what you want your wealth to do.

That requires a plan that accounts for complexity, a team that understands the landscape, and the clarity to know what you are building toward. Not just financially, but in life.

Wealth creates opportunity, but it also creates responsibility. If your financial picture has grown more complex and your planning has not kept pace, it may be time to revisit whether your strategy truly reflects the life you’re building. Reach out to our team to start the conversation.

Base Camp Thinking: What Mountaineers Know About Volatile Conditions

There’s a sentence Ed Viesturs likes to repeat, and we’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”

Viesturs is one of the most accomplished high-altitude mountaineers in history – one of a handful of climbers to summit all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks without supplemental oxygen. He’s said he didn’t make it home that many times by being brave at the wrong moments. He made it home by being disciplined at the right ones.

Markets aren’t mountains. But the principles people use to come home alive from volatile conditions translate surprisingly well to financial life planning. And in a stretch like this one – energy shocks, persistent inflation, consumer confidence at all-time lows – we keep returning to a few of those principles.

Base camp

No one summits straight from the road. The first thing you do is build a base camp – a stable, well-supplied position you can return to when conditions deteriorate. You sleep there. You eat there. You wait out storms there.

In a financial life, base camp is the cash reserve. It isn’t where you live – it’s what you fall back on when the weather turns. And the function it serves isn’t really about the dollar amount. It’s about giving you the freedom not to make decisions out of panic.

Households with an honest base camp don’t necessarily make different long-term decisions than households without one. But the experience of difficult conditions is fundamentally different. One is decision-making from a position of strength. The other is decision-making from a position of fear.

Acclimatize before you climb

Altitude doesn’t care how strong you are at sea level. The body has to be allowed to adapt to thinner air, in stages.

Building a financial life has a similar rhythm. Big decisions – a new house, a business move, an early retirement, a significant inheritance – work best when there’s time to acclimatize. To live with the implications. To stress-test how they feel. To see what assumptions hold and which don’t.

Most of the financial regrets we hear about aren’t bad ideas. They’re good ideas executed too quickly.

Pre-set turnaround thresholds

Climbers set turnaround times before they start the summit push. If you haven’t reached the summit by, say, 2 p.m., you turn around. Period. The decision is made in advance – in calm conditions, with clear thinking – precisely because at altitude, in bad weather, under pressure, the mind isn’t reliable.

A financial plan with pre-set thresholds works the same way. Rebalancing triggers. Cash buffer minimums. Withdrawal rate guardrails. Spending floors during retirement transitions. These aren’t constraints – they’re decisions made when your head was clear, so you don’t have to make them when your head isn’t.

The team you bring

No one solos K2 by accident. Every expedition has a team – sherpas, climbers with complementary skills, an extended network at lower altitudes. The team is part of the equipment.

In a financial life, the team is the people you’ve intentionally chosen to walk alongside you – the spouse you talk through decisions with, the CPA, the estate attorney, the advisor, the family members you trust. The point isn’t to outsource judgment. It’s to have other clear minds in the room when yours is tired.

One more thing

The mountains have a way of revealing what was already true. Volatile financial conditions do the same.

If your plan is built well, hard stretches are uncomfortable but not catastrophic. If it isn’t, hard stretches reveal what was missing – and they tend to do it at the worst possible moment.

We’d rather have those conversations now, in calm air, than at the top of the ridge.

When the Tank Costs More: Energy, Inflation and the Family Budget

Walk into almost any conversation with friends right now and the cost of things is bound to come up. The grocery bill. The fuel cost. The summer travel that suddenly feels more expensive than it did last year.

We want to make sense of what’s actually happening – without spin and without panic – and offer a calm way to think about the household budget through this stretch.

Where the pressure is coming from

A few things are converging.

Gas prices are up sharply. The U.S. national average for a gallon of regular sits around $4.48 in late May, an increase of nearly 50% since February. The driver is largely geopolitical – disruption to oil supply routes through the Strait of Hormuz, which historically handles roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.

Headline inflation is moderate but persistent. The Consumer Price Index for April came in at 3.8% year-over-year, up from 3.3% the month before. That doesn’t feel huge until you remember it’s stacked on top of several years of similar increases.

The cumulative effect is real. A common framing – a basket of goods that cost $100 before the pandemic now runs about $126. That’s where the “everything is more expensive” feeling comes from. It’s not your imagination.

Why oil ripples beyond the pump

Higher oil prices don’t only show up when you fill the tank – they show up indirectly in almost everything you buy. Nearly every product spends time on a truck. Shipping costs feed into grocery prices, into building materials, into the cost of a hotel room two states over. The pump price is the most visible piece of a broader effect.

That’s why the budget pressure right now isn’t only about gas. It’s about gas plus the things that gas touches.

The line we’d encourage you to draw

There’s a simple distinction worth making, and we find that families do better when they make it explicitly.

Essential – the things that have to be paid no matter what. Housing, utilities, basic food, insurance, transportation to work, medical.

Discretionary – everything else. Some of it is meaningful to you. Some of it has crept in through habit.

Both categories deserve respect. We’re not in the camp that says cut every latte. Discretionary spending is often where life happens. But knowing which line items are which gives you choices, and choices are what reduce anxiety in a stretch like this one.

Sticky vs. temporary

A second cut worth making – which price increases are temporary, and which are likely to stay with us for a while?

Gasoline is sticky in the sense that it stays elevated until the underlying supply story changes. We don’t know how long that takes.

Some household items are temporary – they spike for a season and ease back.

Some are structural. Housing, healthcare, insurance – these tend to grind higher over time regardless of headlines. They’re the line items that quietly do the most damage to a long-term budget, because they don’t make the news.

For most families, the leverage is in the structural line items. A modest, deliberate review of housing-related expenses, insurance, and recurring services often produces more breathing room than cutting variable costs.

A few starting places

Not advice for your specific situation – just a frame.

Re-price what you can. Insurance, internet, streaming, subscriptions – these are line items most households don’t revisit annually, and there’s often room.

Refresh the emergency cash number. The familiar “three to six months of essential expenses” rule still holds, but the dollar figure has moved. Your reserve from 2022 may now cover less ground than you think.

Be honest about discretionary creep – not to shame it, to see it. Choices are easier when you know what you’re choosing.

If you’d like to walk through any of this in the context of your own situation, that’s what we do. The numbers feel less heavy when there’s a structure around them.

“Will We Be Okay?” The Question Beneath the Question

Of all the questions we’ve heard in this work over the years, the one that’s been coming up most often lately isn’t really a question – it’s a feeling. The words around it shift depending on who’s asking and what kind of week they’ve had.

“Will we be okay?”

Sometimes it sounds like a market question. Is the portfolio set up for this? Sometimes it sounds like a household question. If we have to absorb a few more shocks, how do we look? Most of the time, when we listen carefully, it’s neither. It’s a question about whether the plan can hold.

We want to talk about that question – because it deserves a real answer, not a market forecast.

What clients are really asking

When we sit with someone who’s worried, the surface question is almost never the deepest one. The surface might be should we cut back on travel this summer? The deeper question is does our life still have room in it for the things that matter to us, if conditions keep getting harder?

That’s not a market question. That’s a planning question. And it has a real answer.

Resilience isn’t a guess

A financial plan, built well, doesn’t depend on the next twelve months going a particular way. It’s designed to absorb the months we can’t predict. That’s the whole point.

The pieces that actually answer the “will we be okay” question aren’t headlines – they’re structural. A cash reserve sized to your real fixed expenses, not the version of your budget on a calm day. A clear picture of which expenses are truly fixed and which feel fixed because they’re habits. An understanding of which goals are non-negotiable and which are timing-flexible. A goal that can wait six or twelve months without doing damage is fundamentally different from one that can’t. And a relationship between your portfolio and your actual time horizons – money you need soon shouldn’t be at the mercy of money you don’t need for fifteen years.

When those pieces are in place, the answer to “will we be okay” is mostly already written. It’s not a prediction. It’s a structure.

What we’d say if you asked us today

We’d say what we always say – it depends on the plan you’ve already built, and we can walk through it together. We’d look at your fixed-expense floor. We’d look at where your goals have room to flex. We’d look at the cash reserve relative to today’s prices, not last year’s. And we’d revisit time horizons.

That conversation is rarely as scary as the one in your head.

A small word on the headlines

Consumer sentiment hit an all-time low in May – lower than during the 1970s oil crisis, lower than 2008, lower than the early days of the pandemic. That’s a fact worth knowing, mostly because it means two things at once. If you’re feeling unsettled, you’re not imagining things, and you’re not alone. And feelings are not forecasts. The economy will do what it does. Your plan can be ready for a wider range of outcomes than you might think.

If “will we be okay” has been a question on your mind, we’d love to sit with it. That’s what we’re here for.

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

Two Walks Off the Well-Marked Path

What a 10,000-mile hiker and a credit card points cosultant have in common – and what it means for the rest of us.

If you had told me, when I started the On Adventure podcast, that two of my favorite recent conversations would be with a long-distance hiker who walked the equivalent of more than four cross-country trips in a single calendar year and a Midwestern dad who built a thriving business around airline points, I would have raised an eyebrow. On paper, they have almost nothing in common. But spend an hour with each of them and you start to hear the same note ringing underneath the very different music.

Madison Blagden and Colin Stroud both did something that scared them. They both stepped off a well-marked path. And they both came back changed – not because of the mileage or the revenue, but because of what those experiences taught them about who they actually are when the safety rails come off. I think there is a lot in their stories that the everyday explorer – and frankly, the everyday investor – can put to work this week.

Madison: Walking 10,000 Miles, Planning Almost None of It

Madison Blagden spent last year on her feet. Through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail in a single calendar year is itself an audacious goal – only a handful of people have ever done it. Madison didn’t stop there. She set her bar at over 10,000 miles, walking from Florida to Newfoundland and weaving the three big trails together into a feat that no woman had previously completed. She finished. She also raised the women’s record by a couple thousand miles in the process.

What surprised me most, though, was not the scale of the accomplishment. It was her relationship to planning. Here is someone who built her year around weather windows, snowpack, and resupply logistics – and her advice to anyone considering something hard was, in her words, plan as little as you have to. Whatever you think it will cost, double it and save that much. Then go.

Her reasoning is worth sitting with. So many things will happen that you cannot predict, she said, that the energy you spend trying to control them is energy you will need later for the things you actually have to face. The hikers who do best on a long trail are the ones who can pivot – who do not get emotionally locked into a schedule or a route. The ones who white-knuckle a plan tend to suffer more, finish ragged, or quit. Madison described last year’s mid-season injury as the moment she finally let go of the last bits of control she was still holding. From that point forward, every setback, every weather change, every wrench in the gears became something she just folded into the trip.

If you have ever opened a financial plan and felt the urge to nail every variable to the wall – the exact return, the exact retirement date, the exact tax outcome – Madison’s advice translates directly. A good plan is a flexible one. Whatever you think things will cost, plan for more. Then walk.

Colin: The Quiet Quit That Wasn’t Quiet at All

Colin Stroud’s adventure looks nothing like Madison’s, and that is the point. A few years ago, Colin was sitting in an insurance brokerage in Indiana, watching his wife and two of his brothers-in-law build real audiences on the internet. He was good at his job, but it bored him, and he had been passed over for a promotion he wanted. Around the same time, he had stumbled into the world of credit card points and travel rewards as a way to take his young family on a vacation they otherwise could not afford. He started writing about it on LinkedIn, mostly to see if anyone would care.

They cared. The Washington Post quoted him after one of his earliest posts. People started asking if he would get on the phone for an hour to walk through their points strategy. He charged forty-five dollars. Then a little more. Then more. About fifteen months later, he resigned from his W-2 job and went all in on a one-person consulting practice he calls Go Somewhere. Today he is running consulting calls, building a private community for business owners, and partnering with another points expert to scale a white-glove travel-research service. He does not yet know how big it gets. He does know that nothing in his prior career – the standardized tests, the promotions he did not get, the jobs he was not great at – comes close to what he is feeling right now.

What hooked me in our conversation was Colin’s description of why entrepreneurship lit him up the way it did. It was not the income, though the income matters. It was the daily measurement. Every day he gets feedback on whether he is where he thought he was. Every post, every sales call, every new client tells him something true about his actual capability. He used the word ikigai – that overlap of what you love, what you are good at, and what people will pay you for – and said for the first time in his life, every part of him feels activated at once.

Colin also said something I want every entrepreneur and every parent listening to this to take seriously. He has experienced more dopamine, more excitement, more flow from building this business than from any travel destination he has ever been to. And his family life, while quieter, is the most meaningful thing he does. Travel, in other words, is not the adventure. The adventure is the life he is building around the people he loves. The travel is just a way to bring them with him.

What the Everyday Explorer Can Take Home

Different as they are, Madison and Colin pointed me toward the same three lessons, and I think they apply just as much to the way we manage money and build a life as they do to long trails and online businesses.

The first is that uncertainty is not the enemy. It is the proof that you are doing something real. Madison built her year around variables she could not control. Colin walked away from a paycheck without knowing what would replace it. In both cases, the willingness to live with not-knowing was what unlocked the experience. We tend to treat uncertainty in our financial lives as a thing to be eliminated. It cannot be. The better question is whether your plan can absorb a surprise without breaking – and whether you have left yourself enough margin, financially and emotionally, to keep walking when the weather turns.

The second is that the people who do the most talk about it the least. Madison observed that on trail, the loudest people in the room have usually done the least. The ones with the real accolades sit quietly in the corner. I have seen the same dynamic in money. The truly wealthy people I have worked with rarely tell you anything about it. The ones loudly counting their wins are usually the ones with the most to prove. If you are doing the work, the work will speak. You do not have to.

The third – and this is the one that has stuck with me longest – is that the cliff edge is the whole point. When I asked Madison what she would say to someone standing on the edge of a decision that scared them, her answer was just, do it. Not because every adventure works out. Some do not. But because nobody she has met in the trail community regrets going and finding out it was not for them. The ones with regret are the ones who stayed home. Colin’s version of the same line was that everyone has a hundred-thousand-dollar idea sitting in their Google Drive, and most people will never act on it.

You probably have a version of this too. A trip you have been talking about for five years. A career move you keep telling yourself you will make next year. A conversation you have been avoiding. A plan you have been afraid to commit to on paper. The everyday explorer is the person who, knowing they cannot control the outcome, takes the next step anyway – and trusts that whatever shows up next, they will figure out how to keep walking.

That, more than anything else, is what I keep hearing from the guests on this podcast. And it is the kind of mindset I want for the people I am lucky enough to work with at Ridgeline. A flexible plan. A long view. The honesty to admit you cannot know everything in advance. And the willingness to walk into the unknown anyway, because the alternative – staying parked at the trailhead, indefinitely – is not actually safer. It is just stiller.

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

What Hurricane Helene Taught a Free Solo Climber About the Life You’re Already Living

Most of us will never free solo a 3,000-foot cliff on the Napali Coast or spend a night alone in the Appalachian wilderness with nothing but a pair of shorts. But Robbie Lenfestey — wilderness survival instructor, ecologist, and founder of Mandala Springs retreat center — would argue that every one of us is already standing on a ledge of our own. The question is whether we’ve trained our nervous system to meet the moment.

In his return to the On Adventure podcast, Robbie shared what happened when Hurricane Helene tore through his corner of the North Carolina mountains in the fall of 2024 — and how a lifetime of deliberately pushing his edges prepared him for the worst night of his life. Alone on his tractor in the pelting darkness, digging channels to divert floodwater from his structures, he felt massive boulders rolling in the creek bed and heard entire mountainsides give way in explosive cracks above him. Landslides were happening on every side. There was nowhere to go. And yet something inside him remained still.

That stillness, Robbie explains, is flow state — the same theta brainwave pattern found in master meditators and elite athletes. He first discovered it as a young man doing things most people would call reckless: free soloing without ropes, walking into the forest at night to navigate by sound and feel alone. What he learned is that when the stakes are absolute, the mind quiets itself. Thought drops away, and all that remains is the next move. Over decades, he turned what was once a byproduct of extreme risk into a skill he can access at will.

What the Everyday Explorer Can Learn

So what can the Everyday Explorer take from someone who has mastered the extreme?

Start with the Breath

Robbie points to one of the simplest and most underused tools available to any human being: conscious breathing with an emphasis on the exhale. Inhaling activates the sympathetic nervous system — the fight-or-flight accelerator. Exhaling engages the parasympathetic system, the body’s built-in brake. Simply slowing down and lengthening your exhale in a tense moment can shift your entire physiology. It’s kindergarten-level entry into something profound, and it works whether you’re standing on a cliff or sitting in a difficult conversation.

Build Emotional Intelligence Like a Muscle

Drawing on Internal Family Systems therapy, Robbie described the practice of stepping back from a triggered emotion rather than being consumed by it — creating enough separation to ask the feeling where it started. That flash of anger when your partner says something pointed? It probably has nothing to do with what was said and everything to do with a protective pattern wired in childhood. Working through those patterns doesn’t bury the emotion. It dissolves the hook so the emotion no longer hijacks the moment.

Protect Your Attention

In a world engineered to capture and commoditize human attention, Robbie sees reclaiming it as a quiet act of rebellion. Walking in the woods without a phone, practicing peripheral vision, engaging the senses in unfamiliar ways — these aren’t esoteric exercises. They expand the attentional capacity that makes flow state, presence, and deeper experience possible in ordinary life.

The Grief That Waited

Perhaps the most striking insight from the conversation is what happened six months after Helene, when a neighbor led a bonfire gathering and asked everyone to name what they had lost. Robbie — the man who had held everyone together through weeks of crisis — sat down on the ground and wept. The grief had been there all along, waiting for a safe moment to surface. Mastering the extreme doesn’t mean bypassing the human experience. It means developing the tools to move through it fully, on your own terms, when the time is right.

The real frontier, Robbie suggests, isn’t a cliff face or a hurricane. It’s the edge of what we’ve habitually come to believe is possible — and the willingness to step beyond it.

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

Highlights from Recent Episodes of the On Adventure Podcast

By Josh Self

There are lessons that only come at a cost. They show up in the middle of something hard—when you’re out of breath on a ridgeline, sitting across from a family receiving the worst news of their life, or listening to thunder echo through a gorge from inside a tent. In our two most recent episodes of the On Adventure Podcast, I sat down with a neurosurgeon and a bishop whose stories remind us that the edge—wherever we find it—is where the real formation happens.

The Surgeon Who Learned to Stop

Dr. Hilal Kanaan is a neurosurgeon in Greenville, North Carolina and the son of Palestinian immigrants who rebuilt their lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan after his father was expelled from the West Bank. Hilal grew up with hardship in the background—never the whole picture, but never erased. His parents walked a fine line between honoring their roots and letting their boys be fully American.

That tension shaped his own approach to fatherhood. When his kids asked for a book about religion, Hilal didn’t hand them the Quran. He wrote them one—eight pages, hardcover, titled A Book About God. Its message: be kind, express gratitude, and know that people of different faiths are simply using different languages to say the same thing.

But the moment that stopped me cold was a story from early in his career. He’d taken on a tough surgery, made a decision that made it tougher, and suddenly found himself guiding a patient toward death. He told himself: stop. Ask for help. You’re making it worse. The surgeon he called came in without accusation, focused entirely on the patient, and saved a life. From that day on, Hilal said he wanted to become the doctor others would call when they were in trouble. He still walks the hospital thinking, “When I grow up, I want to be like him.”

That kind of humility—the willingness to stop and ask for help—is one of the hardest skills to develop, whether you’re in an operating room or on a mountain. And when I asked Hilal what he’d say to someone in a season of real hardship, his answer was simple: your feelings are valid. This is not the rest of your life. And you are not alone.

The Bishop Who Kept Walking

Bishop Mark Beckman, the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville, has been pairing faith and the outdoors since a young parish priest took his youth group hiking at David Crockett State Park. Early in his priesthood, on a Good Friday, he walked into a forest at Radnor Lake and found the floor carpeted in spring wildflowers. He thought: where have I been all my life? That was over thirty years ago, and he has never stopped walking.

His greatest physical journey was the Camino de Santiago—500 miles across Spain over six weeks. He learned that the first third is a physical challenge as your body adapts to the pain. The middle, the Meseta, is flat and monotonous, and the struggle becomes spiritual: enduring the ordinariness. His daily prayer was simple: God, help me to see today with my eyes. Help me to hear, to smell, to taste, to touch. When someone later asked if he’d just picked the best days for his photos, he answered: every day had its own beauty.

One of the most striking moments in our conversation was a story from the Grand Tetons. Bishop Beckman was sitting on a bench with an agonizing toothache, and his first instinct was self-pity. But as he kept breathing and looking, something shifted: if I’m going to be in pain, I’m grateful I can look at something this beautiful while it’s happening. That night, instead of fighting the pain, he simply noticed each sensation—breathing in and out—and found a peace deeper than the suffering. It’s a lesson I keep coming back to: suffering equals pain plus resistance. Lower the resistance, and something opens up.

What the Edge Teaches Us

These conversations left me with a few lessons I keep turning over. Humility is strength—knowing your limits and acting on that knowledge is one of the bravest things a person can do. The best lessons cost something—a family’s displacement, blisters on the Camino, a failed surgery. Monotony is its own wilderness, and the answer isn’t escape but presence. Community makes the summit possible—Bishop Beckman wouldn’t have reached that Colorado fourteener without friends beside him, and Hilal wouldn’t have saved his patient without the willingness to call someone. And if you’re in the middle of something hard: you are not alone, and this is not forever.

Stay safe and stay on adventure.

— Josh

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

The last two episodes of On Adventure launch a new series exploring a question: where do the pursuit of adventure and the pursuit of spirituality overlap? Not just in extreme places or dramatic moments, but in the lived experience of ordinary people willing to step into uncertainty, discomfort, and transformation. Each conversation approaches that intersection from a different angle, yet together they reveal a shared truth – growth happens at the edge.

Episode 64: Adventure, Spirituality, and the Search for Something Bigger with Reed Dunn

This episode of the series begins in the physical outdoors. Through stories of backpacking, solitude, and long days in wild places, the conversation explores why nature so often becomes a canvas for spiritual awakening.

Adventure, in this sense, is not about adrenaline or accomplishment. It is about participation. Being immersed in the natural world strips away distraction and puts us face-to-face with something larger than ourselves. Mountains, weather, and vast landscapes confront us with scale and humility. They remind us that we are small, yet deeply connected.

What emerges is the idea that spirituality is not primarily about answers, but about transcendence. In wild places, that transcendence feels immediate and unmediated. Awe interrupts control. Beauty disarms productivity. The edge of physical effort becomes an entry point into meaning.

Episode 65: Why Suffering Becomes a Spiritual Awakening with Scott Sauls

The second episode shifts the setting but not the theme. Instead of mountains and trails, the edge shows up in a personal and professional reckoning. Leaving a long-held identity, facing internal exhaustion, and stepping into an unknown future become acts of adventure in their own right.

This conversation reveals that hardship does not create what is inside us – it exposes it. Pressure brings unresolved fears, wounds, and motivations to the surface. At the edge, the stories we tell ourselves stop working. What remains is an invitation to honesty.

Here, spirituality is found not through escape, but through surrender. Letting go of performance and productivity creates space for healing, community, and a re-centered sense of calling. Adventure becomes less about doing more and more about becoming whole.

Together, these first two episodes set the tone for the series. Whether through wilderness or inner work, the overlap between adventure and spirituality is clear. Both require uncertainty. Both invite transformation. And both ask us to step beyond comfort into a life that is more present, more connected, and more true.

On Adventure: Lessons from the Edge

Three Conversations. One Thread. What Endurance Really Teaches Us.

Over the last few episodes of the On Adventure Podcast, a quiet but powerful theme emerged – not about speed, podiums, or records, but about how people choose to keep going.

Across three very different guests – Lisa Decker, Mike Wardian, and Vincent Antunez – the conversations circled the same deeper questions:

  • Why do we choose hard things?
  • What happens when the plan breaks down?
  • And what actually carries us forward when the body, mind, or circumstances push back?

Here are some of the most meaningful moments and lessons from these recent conversations.

Lisa Decker – Doing It the Right Way

Lisa Decker’s story is a reminder that endurance doesn’t have to look aggressive to be powerful.

Lisa completed the Vol State 500K – a 314-mile journey across Tennessee in July heat and humidity – not by grinding herself into the ground, but by leaning into community, pacing, and joy.

She didn’t arrive at the starting line with a crew or a rigid plan. In fact, she nearly backed out. But something remarkable happened early in the race: strangers became companions. Five individuals naturally synced up, moving together mile after mile, sharing food, laughter, and long conversations.

While others battled isolation and exhaustion, Lisa’s group turned the race into a moving community. They rested together, navigated resupply stops together, and ultimately finished knowing they had shared something far bigger than a finish line.

One of the most striking parts of Lisa’s story is that she never wanted to quit. Despite sleeping on park benches, navigating closed gas stations, and enduring oppressive heat, she felt strong the entire way. No blisters. No breakdown. No dramatic low point.

Her insight was simple and profound: “If I had left the group to do my own thing, my whole experience would have been completely different.”

Lisa also spoke openly about her 120-pound weight loss and the role endurance plays in mental health and self-trust. Her takeaway wasn’t about transformation through punishment – it was about learning how to care for herself while still doing hard things.

Mike Wardian – Seeking the Edge on Purpose

If Lisa represents endurance through joy and connection, Mike Wardian represents endurance through curiosity and intention.

Mike has done things most people would never consider – running across the United States, setting age-group FKTs on the Appalachian Trail, competing at elite marathon speeds, and now preparing to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Yet what stood out most wasn’t the resume – it was how deliberately Mike chooses his challenges.

He doesn’t wait for opportunities to come to him. He seeks the edge – the place where doubt creeps in and self-definition is tested. As he put it, these projects are about finding something that gives him “butterflies” again.

Mike described how goal-setting for him isn’t about perfection. He writes lists each year knowing some goals will roll over unfinished. The point isn’t completion – it’s direction.

One of the most powerful moments in the conversation came when he described the difference between who we think we are and who shows up mid-race:

“A lot of us have a vision for who we are, but until you actually step out there, it’s just in your head.”

Whether it’s mile 18 of a marathon or day 40 on the Appalachian Trail, Mike sees endurance as a mirror. The work reveals truth – not just strength, but limits, humility, and growth.

What makes Mike’s perspective especially compelling is his willingness to become a beginner again. Despite decades of experience, he’s intentionally stepping into an entirely new domain with ocean rowing – knowing discomfort and uncertainty are part of the reward.

Vincent Antunez – When the Real Battle Is the Mind

Vincent Antunez brings a different depth shaped by 32 years of military service, combat deployments, and decades of ultra-distance racing.

A retired Army Major and Physician Assistant, Vincent has completed events ranging from European 100K marches to multi-stage desert ultras and the Vol State 500K. But when asked what takes people out of races, his answer was blunt:

“The three B’s – the balls of your feet, your belly, and your brain. And for me, it’s always been the brain.”

Vincent’s endurance journey began almost accidentally – showing up to a German “walk” that turned out to be a full marathon. From there, distance became normal. What never changed was his understanding that finishing is a decision long before it’s a physical outcome.

He spoke candidly about fear, self-confidence, and early life challenges – and how overcoming literal obstacles in military training taught him something lasting: once you’ve done hard things, you can remind yourself you’ve done harder.

During Vol State, Vincent noticed Lisa Decker and her group moving differently – laughing, stopping for food, staying light. That observation stayed with him. It reinforced something he’s learned repeatedly: suffering is not the only path through endurance.

Sometimes, reframing the experience is the most effective survival skill.

The Shared Lesson: Endurance Is a Teacher

Three guests. Three very different lives. One unifying truth.  Endurance isn’t just about miles. It’s about:

  • Trusting yourself when the plan falls apart
  • Letting go of ego when it no longer serves you
  • Choosing connection over isolation
  • And understanding that progress often looks quieter than we expect

Lisa taught us that joy can be strategic.
Mike reminded us that growth requires intention.
Vincent showed us that resilience is often a mental practice, not a physical one.

Each conversation pointed to the same deeper idea: hard things shape us, but only if we’re paying attention.

That’s what makes endurance such a powerful metaphor for life, work, leadership, and family. It strips away pretense and leaves only what’s essential.

And that’s what we’ll keep exploring here – one story, one adventure, and one honest conversation at a time.