||| SUN DAYS ON ORCAS by EDEE KULPER |||

I had a feeling Christopher Evans would have a fascinating story. I think of Christopher as a person who brings kindness, exuberance, and joy wherever he goes. From what I’ve known in passing over the last decade, Christopher lives life to the fullest, making the most of each and every day. He’s so approachable – quick to laugh, slow to judge, and keen on emotional connection with each person that comes his way. If there’s anyone who can gracefully balance the obligations of this life with goals, dreams, passion, and genuine neighborliness, it’s Christopher. He has always struck me as an extremely intentional and committed father, and he begins his list this lovely Father’s Day with a parental window into his life…
  1. I never really wanted to be a father. The arrival of my twin daughters to this world was the happiest accident of my life.
  2. The love I have for my children is the greatest love I have ever known. I never really understood my mother’s love for me until I had kids of my own.
  3. I have two dads, my biological one and my stepfather. My dad planted the seed, but it was my stepfather who watered the plant. My dad is still alive and living in Cleveland, and my stepfather passed beyond five years ago.
  4. My parental philosophy is heavy on example and light on rigid rules.
  5. I couldn’t ask for a better mother to be working with in our parental partnership. There’s a lot of love in our hearts.
  6. I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1972. My parents were divorced by the time I was one-and-a-half years old, so my early household consisted of my mom, older brother, and me until eight years old.
  7. My mom raised my brother and me as a single mom in a 720-square-foot house in West Cleveland on a Catholic grade school salary. It was in this home (and first eight years of my life) that my mother instilled in me my core values of love, gratitude, joy, kindness, service to others, and the dedication to family.
  8. My mom remarried in the summer between my third and fourth grade. We moved to the western Cleveland suburb of Rocky River and became a blended family with my stepfather and four step-siblings. At eight years old, I was the baby of the new complicated family.   
  9. These two homes of my childhood are forever divided in my mind between the 70s and 80s. My memories of these times even have the color hues and soundtracks of the 70s and 80s. The 70s for me were simple, frugal, innocent, and warm; almost like a dream. Jimmy Carter was President. The 80s became complicated, colorful, materialistic, and worldly. These were the Reagan years.
  10. 10) My very first dream job was to become a professional actor, with my sights on Hollywood from the time I was eight.
  11. I went to drama and performing arts school every Saturday from the time I was eight to eighteen. This was actually the greatest gift my dad ever gave me. He paid for my very first acting school tuition and continued to provide me with my very favorite thing in the world to do – acting! I was in anywhere from one to three plays a year, and also picked up some modeling jobs in print media and did an after-school special when I was 10 years old.
  12. My very first job was having a paper route from 10 to 18, until I graduated high school. Doing this job was the foundation of my work ethic – waking up every single morning and delivering papers for eight years – suburban American dream-walking.
  13. I have vivid memories of these 5:30 am mornings in which my stepfather would eat his breakfast getting ready to go to his job as a United Airlines airplane mechanic. He was a great example to me of a man with impeccable work ethic, humility, and steadfast providing for our family.
  14. It was on my paper route that I developed the super power to bend time by running instead of walking. The paper route that used to take me an hour at 10 years old, I had down to 20 minutes in my high school years. I still run places as a means to time travel. You can often see me running from this place to that. It may look like I’m in a hurry, but I’m really just time traveling.
  15. I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic grade school. I was in deep – baptism, first communion, and confirmation. I was also an altar boy. I loved Jesus, ritual, ceremony, and true Christian values. I began to despise the rigid dogma, hypocrisy, and abuse buried deep in the Catholic Church. Gratefully, I managed to come out of the experience unharmed.
  16. For high school, I attended an all-boys Jesuit college prep school located in a depressed area of West Cleveland. I played football and my senior year I was the student council president of the 1,200 student body. I loved and continue to respect the Jesuit philosophy of service to others and the fight for social and economic justice rather than doctrinal purity.
  17. A product of the 80s (and despite my family’s example), I developed a love for capitalism and the pursuit of the American dream. Through my teenage years, I began to abandon my hopes and dreams of a career in acting for the ambition to become a successful businessman.
  18. For college, I attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and studied Business Psychology. Between my freshman and senior year, my character arch came full circle. The perfect storm of events in my college years led to the reassessment of my life’s path. Through loss of my grandmother, disillusionment of my relationship with my first love, study abroad in Luxembourg, discovery of psychedelics, and spending their last years with the Grateful Dead, I had a radical assessment of my life’s path. So I basically had my midlife crisis at 22.
  19. After what felt like an acting performance for a job interview with a sales company in Chicago, I took off my tie and vowed to volunteer after graduating, abandoning my pursuit of happiness through material gain…
  20. Which brought me to live in a Lakota village on the Cheyenne River Reservation in North Central South Dakota. Sweat lodges, ceremony, and service helped me forget what I didn’t need and helped me remember what I didn’t know I needed to.
  21. After being stung in the knee by a desert cactus, I became temporarily paralyzed and realized I needed to stay put in Arizona for a while. Underqualified and by some miracle, I led a forestry crew for the Coconino National Forest and built trails and ran chainsaws in the woods of Flagstaff.
  22. The winds blew me south to Arcosanti, a frugal human living experiment where I learned to farm and grow food in the high desert near Prescott.
  23. South again, past the border into Mexico and Central America. Back now to New Mexico for a life of activism, organic food production, sustainable living, and following bliss and love wherever it led.  
  24. Vast night skies, wolves, UFOs, Hopi medicine, Navajo activism, Rainbow gatherings, Goddess chasing, desert walking, the Colorado River and Kachina energy – a waking dream New Mexico was for me.
  25. I found out about Orcas Island in the lobby of Naropa University while waiting to interview. I circled a job listing I saw for a farm and garden instructor at Camp Orkila.
  26. After surviving Y2K, I loaded everything I owned into my Toyota truck and made my way up to Orcas for that job. 
  27. I am currently living contently and with gratitude with my lovely family, a half-mile away from Orkila and 22 years later. What a long, strange trip it’s been.
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