September 07, 2018

30 Years to Finland

September 07, 2018/ Erik Orton

by ERIK ORTON

It’s been 30 years since I’ve been to Finland. My mother is Finnish. She moved to NYC at age seventeen to be a nanny. A few years later she met my dad and they got married. I’m half Finnish. I used to spend summers in Finland as a kid. My last summer there I was fourteen. My mom worried I would be bored spending all day in my grandmothers two-bedroom/one bath apartment, so she signed me up for a cycling race. I was big into cycling at the time.

July 17, 2018

Meet Our Mentors

July 17, 2018/ Emily Orton

by EMILY ORTON

A few weeks ago I wrote about drinking the Kool-Aid and how we can leverage our natural inclination to conform by deliberately choosing who we want to follow and then giving them lots of space in our brains. That’s what we did with Totem.

In early 2014 our family of seven moved out of our small Manhattan apartment into an even smaller boat where we lived for most of that year. We did lots of two-steps forward one-step back preparations. We’ll tell more in our upcoming memoir available March 2019. Nothing beats just starting, but one of the most important steps for facing our fears was finding mentors.

May 24, 2018

Wendy and the Surface

May 24, 2018/ Erik Orton

by ERIK ORTON

My favorite part of the class was to lay on the ocean floor and stare up at the surface. The light shimmered across it, the same way the water sparkled from above, but with a muted, quiet kind of beauty. I was taking a scuba certification class and I was swimming along thirty feet below the ocean’s surface for the first time in my life. My body drifted with the surge in unison with the school of yellow fish. I looked a sea turtle in the eye as it swam toward me. We stayed below for the better part of an hour. I was in another world.

May 02, 2018

Connecting the Dots

May 02, 2018/ Erik Orton

by ERIK ORTON

El Capitan is 3,000 feet tall, the largest single monolith of granite on the planet. Climbers come from around the world to attempt an ascent. It rises straight up from the Yosemite Valley Floor and dominates everything else. The most prominent line runs straight up what’s called The Nose, the corner where the East and West walls meet. This is what I wanted to climb.

March 21, 2018

Your Perfect Day

March 21, 2018/ Erik Orton

by ERIK ORTON

Yesterday I turned 44. Birthdays make me philosophical. So I’d like to speak briefly about time, my perfect day and taxes.

November 16, 2016

Why Do We Wait to Do the Things We Say Matter the Most?

November 16, 2016/ Erik Orton

I’m trying to figure that out. I’m sitting in the lodge at Half Dome Village. I’ve dreamed of coming to Yosemite Valley since I was a teenager. I came close once in high school. I actually flew out to Utah, met up with some buddies and we drove through Nevada and up to California. I was the second youngest climber in the bunch, a junior in high school, so I wasn’t planning the trip. Turned out we ended up climbing in the highlands of the park (Tuolumne Meadows), where it was cooler and less crowded. We didn’t go down into the Valley, the land of the big walls. Even so, it was the best rock climbing of my life, and I promised myself I’d come back and climb in the Valley. Twenty five years later I’m here. Why did it take so long? Again, I’m trying to figure that out.

November 01, 2016

Are You Getting In Your Own Way?

November 01, 2016/ Emily Orton

Sometimes we get in our own way. I know I do.

With my eyes closed, my weary head on the pillow, and a fluffy duvet beginning to warm me, Erik asked, “What are you interested in these days?” What a thoughtful sweet man trying to connect with me at the end of the day. I rallied. My brain flipped through the mental files of my day. I told him about a podcast on philsophy in the secular age, a Google search on fascial tissue (our bodies are held together with snot!), a news article on teens growing up in New York City (we have some of those), a new geography resource book, and how bacon isn’t actually that bad for you. My enthusiasm grew. Eyes open. I was sitting up now. I told him about DIY word books for Lily, and this terrific ebook series on copywriting... ZZZZzzzzzzzzz. Erik? Before I got halfway through my list, he was asleep.

October 26, 2016

Answer to the Question Everyone Asks

October 26, 2016/ Erik Orton

We’re not sailing again, but we are spending a lot of time thinking about sailing, because we’re presently working on a book about the trip. It’s going to be epic, so stay tuned. We promise it will make you laugh, make you cry, transform your life, double your income and probably be better than the iPhone 7. But we’ll see.

That said, digging into the book has conjured up lots of thoughts about our time on the water as well as what it means for our lives right now. Life certainly never stops. It’s a constant dynamic of going back to remember and extract meaning from the past, but also continuing to live going forward.

I don’t see us spending a lot of time reminiscing about sailing Fezywig (we’ll save that for the book), but I couldn’t resist one crack at that time and what it meant.

Since living on our boat with our five kids, I would say there are two questions we’ve been asked most frequently: “Did you run into any storms?” and, “What did you learn?” The answers are: Yes, and keep reading.

October 23, 2014

The End / The Beginning

October 23, 2014/ Erik Orton

So I suppose it’s worth writing about how all this ended up. Wouldn’t want to leave anyone hanging. Here goes

After two weeks on blocks, Fezywig was back in the slings, ready to launch. We packed the kids in the car and drove to NJ to pick up the boat. We got there a little later then planned, but as usual with boats—there was a delay. The starter motor needed to be replaced. It finally rusted out as a result of the flooding. It was 10am. The part was supposed to arrive by 11am. We could wait. We cleaned the boat.

There’s always a certain catharsis in cleaning something.

February 01, 2014

T-Minus Friday

February 01, 2014/ NYC/ Erik Orton

Friday was my last day in NYC. Next: Sleep. Get up. Throw my stuff in the van and drive out of here. Just like that.

I turned in my access cards at work. I packed my favorite mug. Gave some really great people hugs. I'd brought donuts. They'd brought cake. Walked out the door. That was it. Done.

It’s funny, all the things we think we can’t change. Or don’t want to change.