Still Sideways: Riding the Edge Again after Losing My Sight - Hardcover

Raney, Devon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1938340892 ISBN 13: 9781938340895

Publisher: Patagonia, 2020

Synopsis

Before a surfing accident caused thirty-three-year-old Devon Raney to lose all but 15 percent of his vision, he had already lived an extraordinary life. Time and again he’d gone against the grain to maximize time for his passions―surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding―bringing him into the direct path of colorful characters, unexpected adventures, and even the occasional brush with death. Through it all, Devon’s commitment to outdoor adventure never wavered. If anything, he learned to approach the other commitments he would make in life―as a husband and as a father―with the same passion and dedication he’d applied to board sports.

So when facing a devastating mid-life challenge, Devon once again went against the grain -- sideways. Instead of retreating into a life made smaller by the things he could no longer do―drive, build houses, read to his young daughter―Devon resolved to keep his commitments to the same passions that had defined and sustained him. Using his remaining peripheral vision, he developed a style of tandem snowboarding, figured out how to read the waves, and carried himself through his daily life in such a way that few people other than his close friends and family were aware of his vision loss.

Still Sideways makes the case for the sustaining power of nature for a new generation of outdoor enthusiasts: the late Gen X / early millennial generation that has one foot firmly in adulthood and the other foot buckled into a binding. Readers will relate to Devon’s stubborn refusal to organize his life around convention and will be inspired by how his dogged devotion to shredding brings him salvation, not comeuppance, when it all hits the fan. A must-read for any mid-life adventurer, Still Sideways intersperses a gripping narrative of Devon’s incredible decade and flashbacks of formative experiences from his youth and young adulthood with humor, candor, and authenticity.

About this title

About the Authors

Working-class American adventurer Devon Raney was born in Goleta, California, and currently lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, with his wife Rebecca and daughter Madrona. Devon fell in love with surfing and skateboarding at an early age and went on to spend most of his life riding a board of some kind. Devon has spent countless hours searching for good waves, smooth snow, and flowing skate parks.

He spent a decade as a construction project manager before starting his own homebuilding company in 2007. A year later, in September 2008, Devon hit his head on the hard sand bottom while surfing in Northern Oregon. He lost 85 percent of his eyesight as a result of a genetic disorder triggered by the head trauma. Devon and Rebecca are the owners of YES Please! Coffee and have been successful business owners for nearly twenty years.

Devon navigates his visually impaired world in a way that makes it hard to recognize his disability. He remains active in the passions he has known since childhood although he takes a very different approach these days and often has help from a friend. Still Sideways is his memoir and second book.

Tom Burt is a legendary snowboarder and board designer, owner of Winterstick Snowboards. He lives North Lake Tahoe.

Jeff Hawe is a photographer, writer, traveler, adventurer and board rider. He accompanied Devon on his Seattle to Baja bike ride. He lives in Seattle and Hawaii.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue: This is How I’ve Always Seen It

“Kneel down, keep your equipment beneath you and both hands on your snowboard,” our guide shouted. I felt the rotor wash, followed by a whirlwind of snow on my face, and then listened to the change in pitch the engine made as the helicopter pulled away from the peak.

I stood up and watched the chopper descend into the valley on the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range, and then tried to eye my own way down. The steep gullies were calling my name and their walls were begging to be slashed. Little pillow lines stood out like partially submerged boulders in a swift creek. I turned my back to the valley and began stomping down the snow to create a flat section in the pitch where I was standing. Then I lay my board down on the level bed and strapped into my binders. It was February 2006, and I was about to take my first heli-boarding run.

Ron Hendrickson, his brother Gary Hendrickson, and his son David stood nearby hooting with excitement and buckling their bindings as well. I looked at David, and said, “Are you ready?” He was smiling ear to ear. A senior in high school, the kid was a ripping snowboarder, and I knew he would be right beside me all the way down. I wiggled my board into position, listened to the instructions from our guide Ken from North Cascade Heli Skiing, and prepared to drop after giving Ken a few seconds head start.

Almost immediately, I passed our guide. The snow was smooth, bottomless, and with enough moisture to keep it stable throughout the steep sections. When I found a snow panel with significant pitch I was able to make carving surf turns without the snow blowing out beneath my contact edge. The snow held, compacted nicely in my turns, and was still cold enough to keep me moving fast in the flat sections. It was perfection.

I rode through the trees and into the valley. I spotted the helicopter sleeping peacefully in the open snowfield and kept my board running flat on its base to maintain my speed as I rode through the valley floor. I took my board off and waited beneath the rotor blades as I looked back up at my line. David was right behind me and he was riding in my track with speed and coming right at me. He threw up a little snow as he stopped and yelled, “That was awesome!” still smiling ear to ear.

In a minute we heard Ron, then Gary, and then Ken punched through the tree line and all three of them rode up to where David and I stood grinning. “You were supposed to stay behind me,” Ken scolded.

“I am sorry man, but this is a once in a lifetime deal for me. I just can’t slow down.”

Ken initially looked bummed, but he seemed to understand my enthusiasm and softened. “OK, maybe we can move over to another area where I can safely see you guys from top to bottom.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I really appreciate it. I don’t want to be a pain, but it’s just too good out there to stop midway down. Let’s just meet up at the bottom instead.”

Two days later I walked through my front door in time for dinner and put my bags down on the hardwood floor of our living room. My ten-month-old daughter, Madrona, was crawling around in front of the fireplace. When she realized someone new had entered the room, she turned her head sideways and upwards, then smiled and giggled. My wife, Rebecca, sat cross-legged on the floor next to her, glowing, and said “hey,” as soon as I entered.

Leaving my bags where they fell, I took a seat on the couch near Rebecca and soon Madrona began pulling herself up my shin and holding my knee for stability as she stood smiling at me. I felt like I was the most important man alive, absolutely sure of myself, and with a confidence that can only come from being responsible for the well-being of others.

Sitting on the couch, radiating with happiness, I looked at Rebecca and just smiled. She nodded and returned her gaze to Madrona, and I knew she understood how stoked I was. It had been a dream of mine since I began snowboarding twelve years earlier to be dropped off at the top of mountain peaks by a helicopter and then snowboard the untouched powder below. It was expensive. I was thirty-one years old, I had the money, and I finally rode in a helicopter for the first time. For two days I enjoyed perfect, smooth, untracked powder while being shuttled up and down by a flying machine I had mostly seen in war movies.

Time stood still in that moment and I said to myself, “This is it, Devon. This is how you have always seen it.”

I looked down at Madrona again, then around our living room. Our house was an old Tudor built in 1890, nestled on a safe, dead-end street in the historic district of Tacoma, Washington. In that moment, with my eyes on my baby girl, I said to myself, “This house is worth a good chunk of change and it’s the only debt you have.” Still lost in my own prideful thoughts, I looked out the window at my truck, a new Chevy Silverado. It was parked next to Rebecca’s freshly acquired silver Volkswagen Eurovan. My ego grew even bigger as I said to myself, “Those are paid for,” and then laughed.

Rebecca probably assumed I was silently enjoying the gratification of fatherhood as Madrona played at our feet, and she would have laughed at me in a big way if she knew how swollen my head was becoming over material things. Still, despite my shallow vanity, I had the most profound realization of my life on that couch. I realized, as I looked at it all, that for the first time ever I was completely happy, and one hundred percent content. I could not think of anything more I wanted in that moment, or any part of my life I would change.

My brain shifted gears and I started looking at my life as a whole and the decisions I had made that put me in that happy place. I realized that many of the character traits I had been scolded for as a youth were now considered strengths as an adult. As far back as memory allowed I could recall being labeled stubborn, defiant, energetic, and persistent.

I started examining specific decisions that had put me into my career and built my lifestyle. I dropped out of college after only a year to work in construction. It was a disappointing move to almost everyone around me, but I wanted to work outside, and I wanted to eventually own my own company. I wanted to feel tired at the end of the day and see tangible results from my labor. So I worked in as many of the trades as I could with the intent of becoming a homebuilder.

I roofed houses. Framed houses. Laid hardwood floors. I repaired plaster walls, installed interior trim, and put up exterior siding. My favorite work was always as a carpenter, and most of my time was spent in some aspect of that trade. My enthusiasm for building houses was recognized by Ron Hendrickson when we met for the first time in the spring of 2000 when I was twenty-four years old. He was a successful, second-generation builder and he would go on to mentor me for the next ten years.

Sitting on that couch in 2006, I reflected on how much I loved being a project manager for him. I also knew my time to branch out on my own was coming soon. I was ready, and I sat poised to start my own company in less than a year.

I continued to examine the decisions I made in my youth that seemed to disappoint so many people yet I knew had been the right moves for me. The sports I had given up, soccer and baseball, so I could ride my skateboard whenever I wanted and surf when the waves were good. Not many people understood why I had quit those team sports, but it was the right call for me, and I began to recount all the days I had spent surfing that year and all the evenings I went to the skate park on my way home from work. Recognizing that my life had been built around my passions, I smiled as I reminded myself of the main reason I started in the trades. Nodding quietly, I said to myself, “It’s the freedom, Devon. You build houses for the flexible schedule you have.”

I had been lucky to meet up with my passions as a kid. I fell in love with the surf, the water, riding waves, and later riding any board I could get my hands on. As much as I loved it, though, I never wanted to be a pro skateboarder, a pro surfer, or a pro snowboarder. I have always wanted to keep my passions going strong on my own terms. As a kid, when I got bored with skateboarding, I would go surf. If surfing felt stale or the waves didn’t show up, then I’d go back to getting sweaty and dirty on my skateboard. Sometimes I just rode my bike, or focused on the swim team. I always had a lot of energy and I just liked adventure and doing stuff. From a young age, I was aware that the most important thing to me was my time and being in charge of how I spent it.

I must have had a dazed look on my face sitting on that couch for what felt like eternity as I thought about how happy I was. “Devon, hey! Let’s eat,” Rebecca said. Blinking my eyes I looked at her and grinned as I stood and headed to the dinner table.

During our meal Rebecca asked what the snow was like, and how it felt to be a big shot that used a helicopter as a chairlift. As she teased me a little, I could tell she was slightly jealous, since she loves to snowboard too. The following month, it would be my turn to be jealous after Rebecca returned home from a luxury Snowcat-chauffeured snowboarding trip to Baldface Lodge, where she rode perfect powder with a girlfriend. “It was perfectly smooth,” I said. “It was easy to ride. I could have ripped that powder blindfolded.” And I meant it, too. Neither of us knew how ironic that statement would become, so we just laughed and agreed how awesome good snow can be.

After the meal, I washed the dishes as Rebecca put Madrona down to sleep. My earlier feelings of pride and vanity had begun to fade and in their place an unsettling sense of worry began to grow. I didn’t know many people who were completely content, at least not many my age, and I wondered if I had peaked too soon. Maybe I had reached my goals at too young of an age and all that remained was complacency. Even more unnerving was the thought that I could go through the rest of my life without any challenges and therefore fall prey to the worst trap of all: mediocrity. I couldn’t bear the thought and shook my head to rid myself of this doubt.

Before bed, I glanced at my calendar to see what the week ahead looked like. The housing market was booming and my week looked busy.

I checked my email and saw that I had confirmation from a man interested in buying my motorcycle. He would be picking the bike up that week. I would be sad to see it go.

I had acquired the bike as a result of a trip in 2005―an adventure, really―put together by a good friend of mine. He owned a vintage early ’70s BMW, and it was stored in Pennsylvania at the time, in his mother-in-law’s garage. He was going to fly to the East Coast and ride the bike back across the country to Washington State. He asked if I wanted to join him on the ride, so I bought my 1999 GS 1100 sight unseen, online from a dealership in Wessex, Pennsylvania. I flew to Pennsylvania and met up with him, picked up my bike, and we spent the following two weeks riding west.

Looking at the email I recalled how fun the trip was. We had our skateboards, our sleeping bags, stoves, and a cooking pan. It was our intention to stay off any major highways and look for two-lane rural roads instead. Before we left, we researched the locations of skate parks along our route. Trying to find ramps and bowls in the most obscure places possible, we skated parks in towns I didn’t even know existed.

We slept when we got tired, and wherever we felt like it. Each night was different and unique in some cool way. We slept on the banks of the Mississippi, in farmers’ fields, near lakes, and under the eaves of a bar at Yellowstone with Old Faithful in our line of sight during a rainstorm. One Wyoming night was spent sleeping inside one of the bowls at a skate park. They had just finished pouring the concrete that day, and as we lay in our sleeping bags, I could feel the warmth radiating from the concrete as a result of the chemical reaction caused by the cement hardening.

While sleeping on the beach of Lake Michigan, we were awoken by a park ranger. He spent an hour shining a flashlight in our eyes, calling us free loaders and telling us we should be ashamed of ourselves for not using a proper campsite. Then he handed us tickets for $15 each. I remember thinking, “Dang. If I knew it was going to be this cheap I would have given him a twenty and gone back to bed.”

Sitting at my desk in Tacoma I said to myself, “It was the trip of a lifetime.” But was it? I wondered. The same friend and I had taken a similar motorcycle trip together in our early twenties and it had been amazing too. “They are all fun,” I thought.”

I replied to the buyer’s email and agreed to meet him later that week. I was bummed to sell the bike, but knowing that the money would help buy a new ninety-horsepower outboard for our Boston Whaler softened the blow a bit. “All three of us can’t ride on the motorcycle together,” I thought, “but we all enjoy being in the boat.” As I sat rationalizing my decision, I remembered what Rebecca had said; “You have already dropped that bike twice. You’re a father now, and the motorcycle is dangerous.” So I hit send on the reply and quit thinking about it.

As I got into bed, I thought over and over about the evening’s revelation. I wanted to remember the night forever. It was hard to shut my brain off, and I stared at the ceiling as I tried to focus my thoughts on fun stuff. “March is coming,” I said to myself. This meant great snow in the mountains as March always has lots of precipitation and is still cold. It had been a great winter and I started drifting off to sleep as I thought about its highlights. I had competed in the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom that winter. I was stoked on how I did too, qualifying the first day and finishing in the upper half of my group for the finals. A lot of good snowboarders show up for that race. “I’d better ride more days next winter to be more prepared.” - - -

By the summer of 2008, my dream had become a reality. I had left my job as project manager for Hendrickson Construction and formed Raney Group Construction. We were living in a house Rebecca had designed and I had built in Port Orchard, Washington―our construction company’s first residential project.

Madrona was now three years old, and I was proud of the lifestyle that lay ahead of her: one full of adventure, time outdoors, days on the beach, and time in the snow. She was already learning to use the chairlift on her own at Mt. Baker and showing an authentic love for that special place.

My year had been full of adventure. I had competed in the Mt. Baker Banked Slalom again and pretty much posted the exact same result as the year before. I qualified on the first day and then placed just above the middle of my group in the finals. “At least you are consistent,” a good friend of mine said to me. The summer before, I paddled the sixty-nine nautical miles from Sequim, Washington, east down the Strait of San Juan De Fuca then south into the Puget Sound and down to Bainbridge Island. I went with my usual adventure partner, Temple Cummins, and the two of us stuffed our kayaks with our skateboards, our sleeping bags, stoves, and fishing poles. We slept on the beach whenever we got tired. On the evening of our first day we had paddled twenty-five miles and were exhausted. It was still warm, no wind, and the sunset was shaping up to be memorable. Temple fished from his kayak in a kelp bed just offshore. Letting his lure drop to the bottom and then pulling it up to the surface, he caught a nice-sized lingcod. We took the fish straight to the beach, fileted it, removed the skin, and then rolled the meat in corn meal. I fired up a stove and fried the fish in butter. Then we washed it down with a warm microbrew. To this day it remains one the best meals I have ever eaten.

In June I opened an email from Seattle Homes Magazine, looked at the pictures, and read the article about our house and new business. During the interview I had discussed our company’s mission statement, which focused on longevity. Reading the piece I smiled when I reached section where I gave kudos to Ron Hendrickson. “I didn’t understand it until the end of my tenure with Ron, but as I grew into my own as a builder, I started to recognize that there were things I wanted to do to be environmentally friendly and green. I believe houses should be built to stand the test of time,” they’d quoted me as saying.

I sat at my desk, reclined in my chair, and scrolled through beautiful photos of our home. They had been professionally staged, and they looked amazing. I read the text again and thought, “Wow, an article in year one.” I couldn’t help but feel like my career path was paved in gold.

Two years had passed since I’d returned from heli-boarding and I realized I was completely happy. I was still happy, but now I was beginning to feel invincible too. Everything seemed to come easy now, and I credited the success to all the tough years I had as a kid, and the unique decisions I forced myself to make in order to create this lifestyle. Still, I was beginning to notice the numbing sensation of entitlement, and I wondered if my character was truly strong enough to remain intact with all this good fortune.

A month later I opened another email from Seattle Homes Magazine. The editor was sad to inform me that, due to the plummeting real estate market and the looming recession expected to follow, her magazine was bankrupt. She went on to say that our issue would not go to print. However, the good news was that because they had already paid the photographer for his work, and the journalist for their words, we were free to keep the photos and the text.

I read the email again and said “bummer” out loud to no one in particular. Still, I was not that disappointed. The news had come during a time in my life when my optimism still had the resilience of granite.

That upcoming summer I filled our freezer with local salmon and brought Madrona with me on every fishing excursion. She loved being on the boat and was fascinated by the huge fish I brought to the surface and put in our net. Randomly, I entered my first fishing derby that August. The Point Defiance Anglers Club put on the event, and it cost twenty-five bucks to enter. I figured, “what the heck, I am out there every morning anyway,” and I ended up winning $500 by simply doing what I did every day in August. A twenty-pound King Salmon headed for the Puyallup River put the money in my pocket and supplied the evening’s barbeque, salmon cakes the following night, and teriyaki salmon bowls on the third evening.

As fall grew near I focused my energy on surfing. In mid-September of 2008 I left for a quick three-day trip to northern Oregon with my friend Forrest Burki. The two of us surfed the beach breaks on the north coast and slept in my van at night.

On the second day, and after a long session surfing, I hit my head. Possibly because I was tired, or maybe just careless, I fell off the wave I was riding in an unusually awkward way. I dove slightly forward and the curl rolled me up and then pushed me into the hard sand bottom headfirst. I felt my neck compress and I popped up to the surface in a panic. I went to the beach, sat for a while in the sand, and later the two of us drove back to Washington. The following day my neck muscles were tight and felt sore and tender when I turned my head to either side. But within a few days the strain was gone, and everything seemed normal.

Less than two weeks later I began to notice some trouble with my vision. I was at the skate park in Gig Harbor, Washington, riding the bowls and enjoying the exercise when I saw lightning bugs all around me. It was four in the afternoon and fully light out, and I became confused as my brain ruled out the possibility of lightning bugs. I would remain confused for quite a while.

Any concern I had that my life was too easy and without sufficient challenges, or that my career path was paved in gold, would shortly be silenced forever. Soon enough, I would be again relying on the character traits I had developed as a kid. Words like stubborn, defiant, energetic, and persistent would take on yet even more meaning as I fought for my family, my passions, my place in this world, and a new way to exist in my daughter’s life.

Edition details

• Publisher: Patagonia
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1938340892
• ISBN 13: 9781938340895
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320