“Did you send it???” My text message whooshes into the vast internet netherworld. Seconds later, I’m greeted by the familiar dancing ellipsis, and the anticipation builds as I wait for my friend Pat to tell me if he’s finally sent Sonic Youth, a route described on Mountain Project as “one of Clear Creek’s best climbs.”
“Did you send it???”
My text message whooshes into the vast internet netherworld. Seconds later, I’m greeted by the familiar dancing ellipsis, and the anticipation builds as I wait for my friend Pat to tell me if he’s finally sent Sonic Youth, a route described on Mountain Project as “one of Clear Creek’s best climbs.” Continue reading “Who’s rooting for you?”
Thanksgiving was never a really big deal in my family, which is perhaps part of the reason that—despite gluttony being my favorite deadly sin—I’ve never felt strongly about it one way or another.
Continue reading “A dirtbag’s guide to self-selected families”
My summer is not going as planned.
Okay, wait; let me start over: My summer is off to a much better start than last summer, when my personal life was a wreck and my dog died and I was unemployed and moved back in with my parents. Like an emotionally inept phoenix from the proverbial ashes, I had nowhere to go but up. Literally—I spent the vast majority of my time traipsing around the Rockies in pursuit of lofty summits and inner peace, both of which I am still looking for.
Continue reading “The art of letting go, and other things I haven’t really mastered”
It is three o’clock on a deceptively sunny Wisconsin afternoon, and I am sitting on a rock at the edge of Devil’s Lake with a lit American Spirit in one shaky hand and a can of Coors in the other. The skies directly above the lake have cleared and the brilliant post-thunderstorm sunlight is bouncing off the glassy surface of the lake. Just offshore, an assembly of hungry mallards dives for tiny fishes, stirred to the surface by the frenzied rain.
A crack of thunder draws my attention to the bluffs high above the west side of the lake, from which we have just descended. I count—one, one thousand; two, one thousand; three, one thousand—until I get to ten. Lightning flashes in the distance; the storm has retreated and we are, for the moment, safe.
Continue reading “Adventures in Quartzite: A dirtbag’s visit to Devil’s Lake”
As I wrap up my second year in Alaska, I spend a lot of time ruminating on the idea of adventure.
The word “adventure” suffers the same serious overuse as its cousins, “epic” and “amazing.” Everyone’s Instagrammed lunches are epic; any old sunset counts as amazing; every trip to an all-inclusive beachside resort is an adventure.
Tell that to Ernest Shackleton.
Continue reading “A treatise on the nature of adventure (for what it’s worth)”
my alaskan odyssey 