Ira Sutherland

Ira Sutherland. About me and my activities

2011-12-10T09:19:00.000-08:00

Climbing a very large and difficult mountain is an appropriate analogy for how I live my life. A peak like this is intimidating enough that few people dare to venture the first step. However, once the challenge is undertaken, the way becomes clear, and beauty and reward fuel the motivation to continue. Getting to the top is never guaranteed, but each step higher reveals an enhanced perspective of the world and of oneself.

My adventure career began after high school in Vancouver’s North Shore mountains, where reaching the top became my favourite pastime and primary goal in life. For five years I applied this passion to the highest summits in North and South America. Along with this I undertook several months-long wilderness treks and nearly an entire year of travelling by bicycle. Many of these experiences have been in solitude and have afforded me a thorough understanding of myself as well as a rare perspective on society’s relationship with nature.

Having witnessed environmental degradation and rampant inequality throughout my travels, I reconsidered my “purpose” in life and decided that I could use my experience and ambition to tackle deep-rooted problems. I knew that I would require tools in addition to those I had employed in the mountains. Education would be key.

I began to study at Langara College in 2007. As a mature student with an awareness of the opportunity cost of time devoted to studies, I determined to maximize the educational experience. By joining various clubs I built the confidence to speak publicly and the ability to coordinate with others. Helping to establish a bike maintenance room and a large community garden on the college’s grounds were profoundly rewarding and encouraging achievements.

After transferring to UBC I joined a plethora of clubs, but ultimately focussed my energies on the UBC Ancient Forest Committee. I became an active and dedicated member, and encouraged the group in the belief that together we could raise the profile of B.C.’s unique forests. I organized a series of wilderness hikes in old-growth forests around Vancouver, and these have become a great success.

Summit of Castle Towers, Garibaldi Provincial park, BC

Along with this I have become an enthusiastic volunteer with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) and the Ancient Forest Alliance, which are both advocates of old-growth forest preservation. My work for the WCWC has also resulted in a job: on a part-time basis I work for the organization as a wilderness expedition leader, directing volunteers in the building and restoration of trails and taking groups into remote areas of interest for conservation.

Aside from activism and mountaineering, I have been applying myself in endurance sport and the development of a business that builds beautiful greenhouses of my own design from salvaged construction materials. Establishing sustainability in my own life in terms of recreation, advocation and income is an essential element that must be taken care of even as I attempt to help others and the Earth.

Along the right side is a series of links that direct you to different branches of my blog. Many of the links bring you to the main pages of some of the longer trips I have done and contain many links in themselves. Others focus into short dialogues about my beliefs in gardening, cycling, activism and these sorts of things.

Ira's recommended New Years Resolution

2011-01-04T11:37:00.000-08:00

Breaking ice with our paddles and heaving our canoe through a moon less night we anxiously search for somewhere to land. It is 4 degrees below zero and our feet are numb in the aluminum canoe. The shoreline is steep and unaccessable and a thick soupy fog obscures our vision of shore so we feel lost and slightly concerned. Our senses are keen, though, and the moment is ultra clear and surreal. Millions of stars glitter in the night sky, which is partly obscured by the silhouettes of tremendous mountains rising on all sides of Powell Lake. Suddenly a sign appears from the mist. Our spirits lift until we realize that it is not a sign but a mockery of our situation. Nailed to an old submerged snag are old toys and stuffed animals crucified and moldy. We are then paddling through a rotten forest of trees that drowned when the lake was damned. An eerie and surreal situation given the passing mist, the calmness of the water and our tired states. Finally we see the triangle and follow it to a small beach where we joyously land our canoes. We light a huge fire to thaw our feet. We finish the last of the scotch and the bare remains of our week's food supply. Our sleeps are immensely satisfying and peaceful. I fall asleep with a clear mind listening to the occasional creak of the frozen forest or the chant of a distant squirrel. No unnecessary thoughts badger my mind, no concerns nor stress interfere with my tranquil state.

One week of living simply in nature had afforded me the priceless reward of peacefulness. I believe that this is something not readily obtainable in our modern cities and lifestyles. It is certainly not traded on the stock market nor available for purchase no matter how hard one works to save money. Nonetheless, I assign it a high value and it is in fact a primary goal in my life to achieve and maintain. I encourage others to pursue such a state of mind as well. I do this not only for their own good, but because I believe much of the hard work we pour into life is in vain. All the things we buy, the energy we consume and the comforts we create are an endless cycle that merely sets the goal to be bigger and better yet yields little true reward and certainly not a deep sense of peacefulness or harmony. Throughout this path we endure high rates of stress on our own minds and spirits and all the while we create an enormous burden on the environment.

If you agree then I call upon yourself to act. There is no time like the present to make an adjustment in one's lifestyle. A good goal may be to go for a hike every Sunday and where ever you go to then stop and take 5 minutes to breath some deep breaths and try to be as mindful as possible of your surroundings. Perhaps, though, you need to pursue a deeper interaction with nature and would prefer several days in a wilderness setting where your mind can restore true clarity. Either way the goal I suggest is to enhance one's interaction and understanding of nature. Maximizing your time spent in natural areas is the first step in this process. Adapting to the elements and learning to become comfortable in the outdoors is the second barrier to overcome. Pursuing general knowledge and understanding of nature and its processes will further bring you towards a situation where a substantial portion of your spiritual fulfillment and daily satisfactions comes free and in a constant stream from nature's limitless supply.

As you may have already surmised, I believe that nature is the best and most dependable source of peacefulness and spiritual stability. I have gained this perspective over the last many years through spending large amounts of time in an array of different natural environments ranging from icy mountainscapes to windblown beaches in wild locales and from ragingly dry deserts such as the Atacama to the spectaculaly wet coastal rainforests of British Columbia. For the majority of these experiences I have been alone and on several such trips I have passed many days without encountering another human. (Plenty to read about if you follow the links on the right or check out:

Walbran Valley--Mystical Rainforest adventure July 2009

The Atacama desert, Volcan San Pedro, Northern Chile

My belief in the value of nature to the human spirit is widely shared by indigenous cultures all around the world who have acknowledged since time immemorial that all life on earth is interconnected. These cultures have traditionally had an intrinsic respect for other organisms sharing their environment and generally have lived in a much more equitable and sustainable lifestyle than our own society. Modern religions have deviated from this path and been very successful in urging humans to neglect our origins and relationship to nature but it is important to remember that on the geologic time scale or even on the scale of humans as a species, this has been a very recent occurrence. Consumerism has become a near universal religion, as it is increasingly and mistakenly relied upon as a source of happiness, identity and community.

As a biology student I cannot neglect my species' common ancestry with all other life on earth. The evolutionary tree of life is not funneled towards humans; we are merely a branch. Though we may seem incredibly advanced as a species, perhaps even too the point that we are superior or dissimilar to other life, but such thoughts would be erroneous. All life is unique and different advanced traits appear in different species. I cannot fly to 6000m summits like an andian condor nor produce a seed like an arctic lupine wildflower that is viable for 10,000 years (the latter ability may be handy if deterioration of our environment continues!). When I ran out of food while hiking through a remote and wild rainforest valley on Vancouver Island, I realized how use full it might be if I could obtain energy from the sun like photosynthesizing plants or from decomposing wood like a saprophytic fungi. The point I urge is to find the nature within oneself. I think it is a beautiful way to see one's existence and both science and traditional knowledge support that it is the correct way to think.

I intend for the purpose of this blog to shift from encouraging people to take part in challenging adventures in natural settings to one that prescribes the means to simply interact and understand nature as much as possible. I hope to eventually have a detailed on line guide to the best and most fulfilling hikes in the Vancouver area. People in this city are lucky because world class nature is directly at hand and if people are inspired to take advantage of this then perhaps they can discover the endless supply of joy that me and many others have found in the trees, mountains and wildlife that abound.

2010-01-09T17:32:00.000-08:00

My name is Ira Sutherland, I am a mountaineer and bicycle traveller from Vancouver, Canada. Welcome to my blog of worldly adventures and nature experiences. Please feel free to have a look at some photos or have a read of anything that catches your interest. I have a deep respect for the nature and conern and respect for the environment is a common theme among my blogs. Anybody has the right to disagree with my views but as always, it is good to read with an open mind and perhaps some of my experiences documented here will give an unique perspective for people who have not passed weeks and months alone in nature.

2010! Happy New Year everybody. I have started the new decade off with a separated shoulder. Yep, all gimped up. Luckily, my longboarding injury occurred at a time when I dont have any immediate trips planned and when my work as a carpenter is much less important than my role as a student. I am currnetly completing my last semester at Langara College (Spring 2010) and starting at UBC in the field of resource conservation in the fall.

Probably if you read into my blogs or have read some already, you will be saying "yes sir, that sounds like the perfect program for you Ira!" My life has been shaped dramatically by my experiences in nature and for the most part in a very positive way. Many of my most memorable moments have been alone in a far corner of some specacular natural environment. Often though, I feel a serious concern for societies mismanagement and exploitation of nature so instead of just complaining and urging one person at a time I am going to empower myself with education along with my experiences and make something happen. I want to to see earth's exceptional ecosystems that are either of intrinsic value to the earth or of significant value to humans for generations to come to be respected and preserved. I'd like to encourage people to seek satisfaction and spiritual content by pursuing harmony and general experiences with nature rather than from material goods, consumption and technology.

Society is built in a self-destructive way. Many environmentalists and other holistic thinkers have urged this for a long time, but now the greater scientific and political communities have recognized that we cannot continue to operate the way we do. Climate change would be he obvious example that we are doing a very poor job at managing our planet. The beginning of the earth's sixth major extinction as exemplified by rapidly disappearing biodiversity would be another.

One new hobby I have found is gardening. In fact, since starting vegetable gardneing in May (8 months ago) I have volunteered many days on a Stat-imc first nations community garden in Lillooet. I have transormed my dad's already existing backyard opertion into a maximized back yard (not to mention front yard, and sideyard), I have built a greenhouse out of recycled goods, and I have recently begun a small movement at Langara College to create a student garden. I find gardening to be incredibly beneficial for ones spirit and of course for the environemt. Check out the solar greenhouse link for more on that.

So that is my update. Injured shoulder and more harmonized with nature than ever before. Below this are older posts that go back three years and explain a little bit more about me but you might be better off to read on into my adventuers from the links on the right side of the page. Enjoy!

2008-12-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

My life has taken a sharp turn. If you can believe it, at this moment I am not clinging to the side of a mountain with frost bitten fingers against a howling wind, nor am I alone in a far corner of Northern Ontario riding my bike along a deslote, bear infested highway. In fact I have not been in either of those situations for atleast a month. I am a student. I eat breakfast, I study, I go to school, and I study some more, just like any other student. Yes, I still drink beer, I still ride my bike around town, I still plan mountain excursions, and I still sit on Vancouver's beaches watching the mountains with dedicated interest as if they are about to get up and run away.

Most people who are familiar with my adventures, will perhaps be happy to know that my field of study is geography and the environment. For a long time I have had a deep interest in these subjects and am now thouroughly enjoying the opportunity to learn about them in great detail. My studies reveal answers to some questions that I have pondered on my travels; the information is sometimes complimenting and adding to what I already knew, and sometimes it is altering my perspective and understanding entirely.

What led me to abandon (atleast temporarily) my vegabond lifestyle was a combination of factors. I was beginning to grow tired of my carpentry job and realizing that no matter how cool my job may have been I didn't like to think about doing it for the rest of my life. I always find happiness in diversity. At the same time my body was urging me to find a more humble means to make money; my knees were beggining to give me a hard time and wether or not it was because of too many mountains hiked, kilometers biked, or floors layed it was clear that I needed to take it easy. My outdoor adventures have brought me times of sensational pleasure that have contributed greatly to who I am today and I am not willing to give those up nor do I want to shine a sliver of regret upon them. Working, however, is indeed a regretable way to harm your body, money is not my drive and my passion for constructing is not nearly as great as my passion for adventure.

And so my adventures will continue, although, at a more modest pace; I am now a weekend warrior and may be for some time. Rockclimbing is my newest passion and fits well with me as it is very gentle on my knees while giving me great excitement. I love the combination of delicate, weight shifting manouvers and powerful, thrusting leaps. It satisfies the mind and the body. So please do not worry, I am going to continue making the most out of my time; and you can bet that when I finally do get some serious time off I will let myself loose on a massive adventure campaign to some beautiful and wild corner of this glorious world.

Please feel free to read my blog entries. I have documented several of my great adventures such as biking across Canada and big mountain climing in South America. I have, afterall, created this site for people to read it, to hopefully become inspired, and to know more about who I am and what I love to do. Many of the experiences documented here have been while I was travelling solo and this is perhaps the best way to try to share my emotions, struggles, and truimphs with people.

2006-01-21T21:26:00.000-08:00

My name is Ira Sutherland. I live in Vancouver, B.C. the most beautiful big city in the world. In the city I am a carpenter, spending my time building houses and saving my money. When Im not in the city Im either travelling to distant countries or exploring the remote wilderness of British Columbia. For the past several years Ive become obsessed with the Natural wonders around BC. Im really not myself until I step off the pavement on to a trail and leave the troubles and constraints of the city life. This is why I work hard to save money that will allow me to travel freely and happily among diferent areas of the world. Wether solo or in the company of my good friends I seek adventure and rewarding experiences and I shall continue to do so for as long as I possibly can. I have just finished riding my bicycle 10000km across Canada and am now heading down to South America to travel and climb big mountains.

These photos are mostly from South West BC within a 125 km radius of Vancouver but the 3rd and 4th are from Glacier National Park, Golden, BC near the Rocky Mountains.