sinew and cold
steel and crystal
scraping up stone
sinking in snow

so you're back in
so you forgot
snow on your brow
sweat melts it off

gravity goes one way
you go the other, and
water is the stuff of life
so drink it up

and rage, boy, rage. but remember. "it's most 
wonderful to be cold with your closest friends"

The bible of this industry is literally titled “Hooked.” No joke. Here is an excerpt from the book:

“Emotions, particularly negative ones, are powerful internal triggers and greatly influence our daily routines. Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation and prompt an almost instantaneous and often mindless action to quell the negative sensation. For instance, Yin [a human being] often uses Instagram when she fears a special moment will be lost forever… By thoughtfully moving users from external to internal triggers, Instagram designed a persistent routine in people’s lives. A need is triggered in Yin’s mind every time a moment is worth holding on to, and for her, the immediate solution is Instagram.” (48 - 51)

This industry makes shiny, grabby user interfaces designed to alter human psychology. It foments addiction, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, comparison, and competition. In a sense, it is not an extractive industry, but a Devouring Industry.

Here’s how it goes: You get a new phone. You download an Industry app. You sign in, seamlessly, one click. You’re invited to join interest groups and follow sexy and interesting people. It shows you some sexy and interesting photos and videos. Your brain lights up! You click like. A heart appears, letting you know that it’s not a like after all — it is, in fact, true love!

Rinse, repeat, faster and faster, more and more. You add photos. People love YOU now. More photos, more love. What could be simpler! You have never had more love than you have on this app! What delights!

Yes, delights… and now it has its hooks in you. Day after day, you pick up your phone impulsively. You cannot control it. It will never let you go. It eats your attention. It eats your time. It eats your life. Bit by small bit. You cannot, of course, imagine deleting the Industry app from it (too useful! too loving!). From Hooked:

“The collection of memories and experiences, in aggregate, becomes more valuable over time and the service becomes harder to leave as users’ personal investment in the site grows.” (147)

Have you watched Stranger Things? There are scenes where the villain, Vecna, forces his slimy tendrils down into children’s throats, and pumps them full of dark energy, forcing them into a virtual dreamstate to take their agency for his uses. Hooked, again:

“Recently, a blog reader e-mailed me, ‘If it can’t be used for evil, it’s not a superpower.’ He’s right. And under this definition, building habit-forming products is indeed a superpower… [Industry products] can quickly degenerate into mindless, zombielike addictions for some users.” (11)

This is Zuck’s metaverse, pipelined straight into your eyeballs, welded into your tweenbrain, pumping you full of dopamine and feeding your desires. And monetizing them. Today, Meta’s market cap is $1.56 trillion. What a valuable company!

This is the nature of the Devouring Industry. It eats human capital. It eats cultural capital. It turns it into cash. Rinse, repeat. Every day it is engaged in a Great Devouring of human potential. Nom nom nom.

Jon Haidt and Zach Rausch wrote just yesterday, “…social media is an unusual consumer product because of its vast user base and the enormous amount of time it takes from most users. It’s as if a new candy bar, intentionally designed to be addictive, was introduced in 2012 and, within a few years, 90% of the world’s children were consuming ten of these candy bars each day, which reduced their consumption of all other foods.”

Candy bars Devouring us. Devouring the possibility of real-life human connection and imagination, like the Nothing and its wolf agent G’mork in the Neverending Story:

Now, not all social medias (or porn and video games) are dark forces. I do not think it includes Substack, but I may be wrong. Also, some people use Industry apps like Instagram as tools, and appear to have healthy (or at least managed) relationships to them. Good for these people. I am not one of them. I had Instagram’s hooks in me, back before 2017 (see Story #1 here). I hated this, and I eventually quit cold turkey.

A big part of quitting is answering, “what is the counterfactual? What do I otherwise do with the time I spend on social media?”

I had coffee with a new friend the other day and we discussed this very thing. He said, “imagine if all the time spent on these apps went into community service.” It’s a beautiful thought. Idealistic, yes, and beautiful.

It doesn’t have to be service. There are very many other ways to spend your time. Reading, running, dancing, writing. Music! Parties! Smooching! Picking your nose!

Whatever it is, share it one-to-one with a friend or family member, or with a small group in person. Real-life, person-to-person connections make life rich. Just please don’t pick your nose and share it.

Communion

A few years ago I was at a dinner party with my friend Niko and he said “Plato says…” and then went on to quote something Plato wrote. I interrupted in jest, something like, “Well, first off, Plato died two thousand years ago so he doesn’t say anything.” This has been on my mind recently because I’ve come to think Niko was right to use the present tense.

Fully engaging in reading good writing is being in conversation with an author. Authors spend a lot of time crafting their art. And when the author is someone you love, or could have loved, it means something extra special. In those moments, reading is a channel to inner dialogues with lost friends, loved ones, lovers, philosophers, intellectuals, business people, activists, really whoever took the time to write something you deem worthy of picking up.

I’ve found reading is the best communion with people I’ve lost, and people I wish I’d known, and people I could get to know better. I’ve felt this deeply while reading this year. Reading letters and emails from lost friends. EO Wilson’s books, though I never had the chance to meet him. Blogs of people I might like to know.

There is so much wisdom stored in writing. To start listening to it, all it takes is a book, intention, attention, and a place to sit quietly -- a couch, bed, bar stool, plane seat, you get the picture.

Courage

There has been a lot of violence around free speech this year. A lot of concern about its place in society, too.

I grew up with parents often riven by political conflict. My father is a Republican formed by military experience who values family above all else. My mother is a hippie at heart, a true “bleeding heart” liberal scientist who values education above all else. In my own political leanings, I am of them both.

In my community (perhaps because of my upbringing, perhaps it’s genetic), I enjoy picking up and playing with hot topics in conversation. I try to do this respectfully.

Yet, this year friends on the left have called me “bomb-thrower,” “instigator,” and “elitist,” and friends on the right have called me “naive,” “idealistic,” and “academic.” Being labelled for voicing a different take or opinion — it’s generally good information to have about what people think, but sometimes it’s a real bummer. Opinions aren’t wrong, and of course folks are free to disagree how they’d like. But sometimes it comes across that it’s not OK to have a different opinion.

Free speech is crucial. Why? Because we need to play with ideas to understand if we believe them or not. We should be free to act them out, to try them on for a few weeks, to consider them from multiple sides, to debate them, to be told we are wrong.

We should also form ourselves to have the integrity to ask, “why am I wrong?” and listen carefully to the person giving the answer.

I highly recommend Greg Lukianoff’s Ted Talk on this, it is only 13 minutes:

Without free speech, we tend to hide opinions, or weird and dark thoughts. Occasionally with this bottling up, violent release towards self and others becomes more likely.

I was chatting to a close friend recently. They told me “I think about killing myself every other day.” I loved this. I loved this, because I love this person, they felt comfortable speaking their mind to me, and I could be there for them because I knew what was on their mind. In my past, I have had a form of this thought, but I have never voiced it. I was too afraid of what others would think. It’s a terrifying thought.

It takes courage (and sometimes, stupidity) to speak your mind, especially when you’re in a group and you believe it’s the “wrong” social context to hold your belief, or you will be judged by the people listening.

On to reading… Developing nuanced beliefs involves reading discourses you may disagree with, testing them, and convincing yourself what discourse, or mix of discourses, you believe in. Reading widely and openly among different discourses is among the best ways to understand complex problems.

Consilience

I was Wilson-pilled this year. E.O. Wilson was a naturalist specializing in the biology of social animals (sociobiology). I find his writing endlessly fascinating for what it contains about the origins of human psychology, behavior, and culture. He was also quite the philosopher.

In 1998, Wilson wrote Consilience. He introduces the term thus,

Consilience is the key to unification [of knowledge]. I prefer this word over “coherence” because its rarity has preserved its precision, whereas coherence has several possible meanings, only one of which is consilience. William Whewell, in his 1840 synthesis The Philosophy of the lnductive Sciences, was the first to speak of consilience, literally a “jumping together” of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation….

The belief in the possibility of consilience beyond science and across the great branches of learning is not yet science. It is a metaphysical world view, and a minority one at that, shared by only a few scientists and philosophers. It cannot be proved with logic from first principles or grounded in any definitive set of empirical tests, at least not by any yet conceived. Its best support is no more than an extrapolation of the consistent past success of the natural sciences. Its surest test will be its effectiveness in the social sciences and humanities. The strongest appeal of consilience is in the prospect of intellectual adventure and, given even modest success, the value of understanding the human condition with a higher degree of certainty.”

One of the great joys of reading a variety of works, politics, and discourses is that at times, consilience punches you in the face. This year I read, among others, belle hooks, BAP, and Peter Thiel. This might as well be a bit starting, “a feminist scholar, a champion of the manosphere, and a gay libertarian business titan walk into a bar…”

Among some stark differences of opinion, I notice a lot in common amongst their ideas: An overarching desire to free humans from oppression. A thought that dominance-based hierarchies suffocate human flourishing. A need to listen to human wildness and instinct, and attendant emotions, in a world that’s trying to neuter you.

No one has all the answers. Frustratingly, sometimes ‘good people say bad things’ and ‘bad people say good things.’ To me, consilience means drawing truth out by engaging with different sources, discourses, and politics, which I ‘ought not’ agree with, or maybe even I think are a little bit crazy, and pulling on the common threads.

Books

Anyhow… my 2025 booklist:

Nonfiction:

• Fire Weather (John Vaillant) — A narrative account of the Canadian company town of Fort McMurray being vaporized in a wildfire.

• Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

• Half Earth (EO Wilson) — Phenomenal

• Consilience (EO Wilson)

• On Human Nature (EO Wilson)

• The Meaning of Human Existence (EO Wilson)

• An Immense World (Ed Yong) — On animal umwelt, and how other creatures sense the world. A great book to listen to during drives with special people.

• The Apology (Plato)

• New Atlantis and the Great Insaturation (Francis Bacon)

• The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)

• The Prince (Niccolo Macchiavelli)

• BOOM: Bubbles and the End of Stagnation (Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber) — A fresh take on how innovation occurs. Differentiates financial bubbles (net bad) vs. innovation bubbles (net good). Wonder why life has gotten so expensive, but we still live in an apparently old world? Read the chapter on financialization.

• The Technological Republic (Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska)

• Impro (Keith Johnstone) — A wonderful book on mental flexibility, pathways to instinct, and repairing miseducation.

• The Courage to be Disliked (Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi)

• The Will to Change (belle hooks)

• Bronze Age Mindset (BAP)

• Breakneck (Dan Wang)

• Over Ruled (Neil Gorsuch and Janie Nitze)

• Superbloom (Nicholas Carr) — Fill in the blanks: F__k Meta

• The War Below (Ernest Scheyder) — A decent intro to the tradeoffs and complexities of mining for resources (metals, industrial minerals) necessary to enable a future of clean energy abundance. Multiple environmental discourses explored.

• The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)

• The Philosopher in the Valley (Michael Steinberger)

• Terrible Beauty (Auden Schendler) — Boo.

Fiction: I read more fiction this year. Reading a passage of good fiction is a bit like stargazing. I sit and read and reread and then put my book down and stare at the ceiling and wonder what it all means.

• Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

“Now–such is progress–the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think–or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electromagnetic Golf course to…”

• A Selection of Poems, e.e. cummings

• Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy

I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question these honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior’s right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers. And yet there will be one there always who is a true dancer and can you guess who that might be?

You aint nothin.

You speak truer than you know. But I will tell you. Only that man who has been to the floor of the pit and seen horror in the round and learned at last that it speaks to his inmost heart, only that man can dance.

Even a dumb animal can dance.

The judge set the bottle on the bar. Hear me, man, he said. There is room on the stage for one beast and one alone. All others are destined for a night that is eternal and without name. One by one they will step down into the darkness before the footlamps. Bears that dance, bears that don’t.

• No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy

Here a year or two back me and Loretta went to a conference in Corpus Christi and I got set next to this woman, she was the wife of somebody or other. And she kept talkin about the right wing this and the right wing that. I aint even sure what she meant by it. The people I know are mostly just common people. Common as dirt, as the sayin goes. I told her that and she looked at me funny. She thought I was sayin somethin bad about em, but of course that’s a high compliment in my part of the world.

• The Road, Cormac McCarthy

One night the boy woke from a dream and would not tell him what it was.

You don’t have to tell me, the man said. It’s all right.

I’m scared.

It’s all right.

No it’s not.

It’s just a dream.

I’m really scared.

I know.

The boy turned away. The man held him. Listen to me, he said.

What.

When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you can’t give up. I won’t let you.

• Neuromancer, William Gibson

• Fourth Wing, Rebecca Yarros -- dragonrider smut (listened to this triology as a booktape on long drives)

• Iron Flame, Rebecca Yarros

• Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros

I have recently wondered if folks today are disconnecting from death. This got me thinking about war, and my relatives who fought in war. War is an obvious arena where death is far more prevalent than in day-to-day Americana.

My maternal grandfather (Rene) was a Marine who fought on Iwo Jima during World War II — the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater. Of 80,000 soldiers who fought for the United States, more than 6,000 people died and 18,000 people were wounded. In other words, my grandfather had a nearly 10% chance of death just being in this battle.

Over the holidays, I sat down with my parents and asked them what Rene shared with them about his experience in war before he died. They shared a few stories.

Rene was in the second wave of Marines who landed on Iwo Jima. He was a machine gunner, a BAR operator. As a Marine, Rene’s job was to kill the enemy and protect his comrades. They landed on a beach and began moving inland.

By the time he landed, the enemy had retreated to a tunnel network established for guerrilla warfare. His platoon was camped on the beach. At night, it was tough to sleep, because once the dark settled, voices would emerge from the tunnels and float out to sea:

Hey Joe, Hey Joe, You’ll be dead in the morning!

Then the enemy would sing a song.

The song was seared into my grandfather’s memory. I know this because he taught it to his children. My mother and aunt sang it for my family at Christmas. None of us had ever heard this before:

The enemy would fight from the tunnels in two ways. One, they would rush out in a banzai charge, altogether, aiming for overwhelming force in numbers. Two, they would sneak out alone and attempt to take out strategic positions, like Rene’s machine gun.

At one point, a single enemy combatant was sneaking upon Rene’s position, in a foxhole behind enemy lines. His platoon was advancing in a line beyond the combatant’s position. Rene left his foxhole and saw the combatant, who was playing dead. The man was armed and capture was a mortal risk.

E.O. Wilson writes in his excellent book Consilience, “Nature is a battlefield, make no mistake.” Sometimes in war, as in nature, you can’t make a moral choice. You must simply make the choice to live or die.

Rene was awarded a Bronze Star with the citation: “For heroic achievement in connection with operations against the enemy on IWO JIMA, VOLCANIC ISLANDS, during the period 25 February to 16 March, 1945. Private First Class [Rene], while serving with a Marine infantry battalion as an automatic rifleman, crawled through heavy enemy mortar and small arms fire, without regard for his own safety and without having been so ordered, and evacuated a wounded comrade who had fallen in front of the lines. Later, he engaged an enemy dual-purpose gun in a fire fight and rendered such accurate fire that his platoon was able to withdraw from an untenable position under cover of his fire. His devotion to duty and actions throughout were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

On his deathbed, Rene said something like “I don’t know if I’ll go to heaven because of all the awful things I’ve done,” but he also said throughout his life, “I would do anything to keep my children and grandchildren from war.”

When Rene was fighting on Iwo Jima, he prayed,

Dear God, if I get out of this alive, I will never again have a bad day.

I remember my grandfather as a jolly, gentle man who was full of love, wit, and charm. As a kid, he would take me fishing on his boat, the Poliwog. When I think of him, I think of the smell of salt air, the smile on his face, and the pride in his very being. On the ocean, he was happy to be alive.

My mother recalled, “When my Mom was cranky, Dad would put on polka music. Then he would sweep her off her feet, and spin her around, and dance until she laughed. She couldn’t help but laugh. He loved her so much.”

This last story I love above all the others… My grandfather, the romantic.

how does one size a life
i want a small life
she says i think 
i want an enormous life

lying sprawled under books, limbs entangled
speaking of new worlds entire
the details of your imagination
are my world now

tracing the curves of your body and joins
with fingers tongues and teeth
we laugh and chat and stroke the copses of 
each others’ electric fur

we ramble over the wild yonder, have
revelations in landscapes 
oft o'er the chawing void
together, thrilling and risking

and music! Oh, we shall have our relishes
bluegrass stomping, quiet symphonies
tasting your sweaty, breathy, grazing nearness 
in BASS thundering BASS thrumming BASS

with you, i could have an enormous life

Photos by Ian.

Steve (Ian’s dad) was our shuttle king. He dropped us off at the southern end of the range in the wee hours of the morning. It was pretty smoky from California wildfires.

Smoke does have some upsides… like insane basin-and-range sunrises.

You get up from sage to scrub to aspen groves pretty quickly.

Sheep dogs are not so pretty. As we ran uphill along one forested stretch of trail, we heard about 500 sheep bleating ahead. When we left the trees into their pasture, we then heard barking. Four massive Great Pyrenees charged down the hillside towards us. They definitely wanted to eat me, and we escaped into a thicket and bushwhacked to safety.

Red scrub along the trail gave the landscape a ruby hue. Apparently the Rubies are so named because the rocks have garnets (not actual rubies) and some early explorers got excited. We did not see many garnets.

Ian running about halfway along the traverse. Amazing landscape!

Looking down at the lakes.

An old mining or hunting hut by one of the lakes. There were some deer bags inside.

The northern end of the range gets spectacular. Big granite.

One of our favorite parts of the trail. Totally open, epic, flowy singletrack.

The second-to-last lake at the northern terminus of the range. Given it was late season and there wasn’t any snow, we were pretty thirsty by this point. Between mile 18 and 36-ish there wasn’t much water. Definitely something to be aware of.

All photos by Ian.

We started at Bighorn Lake instead of Coffeen Park campground (the normal start). I was concerned about getting up the road to Coffeen Park in my small, yet mighty 2WD bread truck. It turns out the road up to Bighorn Lake is probably not very much better, and we added ~5 miles onto an already long day. But the views of Cloud Peak on the way in are amazing.

We estimated it would take us more than 18 hours (that was the FKT). Overnight was the best weather window we had, so we started shortly before sunset, going clockwise.

Cloud Peak in the twilight.

For most of the night, we followed singletrack and granite cairns through alpine tundra and evergreen forests. This brought memories of nighttime hikes and runs through the White Mountains, where I cut my teeth. It’s funny how similar the scents of pine and feel of granite underfoot can be in different places.

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” - Carl Sagan

Sunrise started about when we crossed the halfway point in the southern part of the loop. Here we entered granite canyons which cut across the range, just south of Cloud Peak.

Big canyon meadow, where we saw a bull moose.

A couple of geologists loving life.

The morning light show was spectacular as we climbed up to the trail’s high point.

Ian did all of our runs with his camera and multiple lenses, most of the time running with camera in hand. He’s a tremendous photographer (with very strong legs and undefeatable positivity).

Early morning headed into the western part of the loop. This side opened up to high tundra with many lakes.

Nearing the final pass, still with 10-ish miles to go. Sitting down was very needed at this point.

After we crested the final pass, we ran down to Coffeen Park and still had 4 miles to go to the car. We got drenched in a storm, waded up a steep trail through ankle deep runoff, and both of us were moderately hypothermic and shivering by the time we made it to the car. The next day on the way home, we needed a few drying stops.

All photos by Ian.

The run starts with a little detour to Mount Rushmore. Optional, but probably a better way to see it than driving there. Start early, and you can enter before it opens and avoid the tourist hordes.

Lincoln remains my favorite president. It was a true honor to visit this landmark with my favorite Scot on Earth.

Dreamy, cushy singletrack. Near here, we ran into a couple of backpackers hiking the Centennial Trail from South to North. They were old, old friends and very friendly — in their late 50’s/early 60’s. I love seeing people out enjoying nature with good friends.

The Black Elk Loop is pretty much all runnable. It’s really, really good running.

The tower on the top of Black Elk Peak. High point of North Dakota. This is where we learned about the nearby particle physics experiment. Clemmie and I just knew Momo would be most jealous.

Per Ian’s request.

Atop one of the domes. Here we met and ran a little ways a baptist missionary who lived in Papua New Guinea, who was visiting his daughter in Rapid City. By the sound of it, he could only get home by several airplane and helicopter flights. Interactions like this are a good reminder that there are a lot of ways in the world.

Legend says there is good climbing in the Cathedral Spires. Ominous.

It’s also exceptionally flat. Over 100k, we went up and down an elevation profile of 300 feet, maybe less. But this flatness belies one of the most interesting forestscapes in the United States.

Florida is underlain by limestone built up over tens of millions of years, in a shallow sea. As it rose above sea level, precipitation falling on the limestone surface started to create subtle topography. Because it is so flat, water does not drain quickly, but water always finds a way... The resulting landscape drainages and high plateaus are no more than ten feet different in elevation, but that elevation is enough to create fundamentally different forest systems including high pine forests, hardwood and palmetto forests at moderate elevation, and cypress swamps in the lows.

Most photos by Ian.

We stayed at a bee-themed AirBnB in between the start and finish. Really early in the morning of the run, we dropped a car at Hobe Sound, and took an Uber to the start. I imagined Lake Okeechobee was very big. It was certainly very muddy.

The run was rich with wildlife we saw was amazing. Lizards, turkeys, and lots and lots of other birds of all types, shapes, and sizes. Only one alligator from far off.

The first half of the run was underwater. The cypress swamps at the start were… swampy. Lots of bromeliads on the trees and we even saw a few budding.

Bromeliads over a pool.

This song captures pretty much describes it:

The first part was largely a combination of high pine forests and cypress swamps.

Possibly the wettest photo I’ve ever taken.

After the first 50k, you get into some dirt roads along canals that link up into hardwood-palmetto forests. This part was nice running after all the splish-splashing.

Ian grooving through cool trees.

The latter half has a lot more wood work over the swampy bits. This was a welcome change from the morning.

Managed pine forests on the eastern portion of the run. These are regularly burned to keep the understory down, and turkey and deer hunting seems popular in these zones.

Km’s 92-95(ish) are through white sugar sand. They’re dunes grown over by beach veg. A welcome sign that we’re nearing the end.

The last bit goes by the road through Hobe Sound. Many loud trains. We were not close to 35 MPH at this point.

We reached the Atlantic a bit after sunset.

Part of that interest is a bevy of reporting around possible solutions to preventing or limiting wildfire losses, which generally fall into the categories of mitigation (i.e. how do we prevent fires from growing destructive), adaptation (i.e. hardening the natural and human environment to fire), and suppression (i.e. how can we extinguish fires).

The context for fire is very important. The Marshall Fire was a grass fire, the LA Fires are chaparral fires. In both of these cases, the fuels are different than in forest fires. But it’s wildland forest fires that generate the huge smoke waves the United States experienced nearly every year since 2018. The ones that blot out the sun. The reason we get those fires is that forests across the Western United States are overstocked relative to when they were traditionally managed with fire, and chock full of fuels that will otherwise burn.

From 2023 to 2025 I worked on systems attempting to scale mitigation and adaptation, and in particular to reduce fuel loads and restore fire resilience to forests across the Western United States via thinning and prescribed burning. Stated simply, I believe the an effective way to reduce wildfire risk in the Western US is to remove excess fuels from forests and put them underground. You can read more about the approach we piloted and associated research here:

• Whitepaper: Kodama Systems’ Frontier CDR Purchase Application

• Biomass burial LCA: Life cycle emissions associated with vault storage of wood cleared for fire management in the Western United States

• Co-benefits of using forest residues for CDR: Assessing costs and constraints of forest residue disposal by pile burning

Putting wildfire risk underground is likely to be a most cost-effective and environmentally friendly option for reducing fuel loads, while being relatively safe. This ought to be seen as a form of utilization, which repurposes fuels that would otherwise be disposed of by pile burning for durable carbon storage, which can be converted to a saleable product (i.e. carbon dioxide removal, CDR), for which companies have spent $11.4B in aggregate from 2022 to 2025 (i.e. there’s a market for the carbon cycle influence achieved). (2026 edit: the current geopolitical climate is, perhaps obviously, not great for carbon markets)

There are places, such as where machines can’t go (too steep, too ecologically sensitive, etc.) where this is not a good solution. But there are many places where today piles are burned into the atmosphere, where it is costly and slow to actually conduct the burning (see ). Paying for removal of piles as biomass for CDR feedstocks is an alternative that avoids burning, but requires more machines and personnel during thinning operations.

Done right, there are several forms of burial which are likely to achieve durable CDR (durable means carbon is stored for 1000+ years) which are scalable in the near future:

• Biomass Burial: Burying stabilized, raw biomass in a geologically engineered chamber, then protecting that chamber from disturbance (whether geologic, faunal, floral, or human). [see Graphyte, who acquired Kodama’s project]

• Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS): Converting raw biomass to energy and CO₂, and injecting the CO₂ into geologically secure formations. [see Arbor Frontier application].

• Pyrolysis with Byproduct Storage: Converting raw biomass into a C-rich byproduct, like bio-oil and bio-char, and storing these forms underground in a secure manner. [see Carba Frontier application]

If projects have a willing CDR buyer (2026 edit: big “if”) this can be a cost-effective strategy which adapts forests to hotter, drier conditions.

A couple weeks ago I watched a documentary about the philosopher Rene Girard, who started his career as a literary critic. A line from the documentary stuck — Girard’s colleague describing ‘learning to read’ with him, “He certainly taught me many things, especially how to read. He taught me to read with an open mind, and not to read with reverence, not to read with obedience — to read freely even the greatest authors. [That] you can be interested in what the text says, and also what the text does not say, and also what the text wants to hide” (~52m).

I love this notion of free and unabashedly critical reading. Reading paper books slowly enough to develop critical thoughts about them is an antidote to over-information.

I have been guilty in my life of reading with blind acceptance, and therefore, absorbing some ideas and rejecting others without testing them first. In 2024, I opened myself more to chewing on ideas, and as a result it was my best year of reading yet. I was receptive to new genres — particularly, psychology and philosophy. And, it turns out, reading about how humans think and what life means is delightful.

My favorites in the genre of Psychology and Philosophy:

• Attached (Amir Levine & Rachel Heller) - Basic introduction to attachment theory. At first I was skeptical of attachment theory, because I read Attached as a diagnosis for relating to others — i.e. people should fit neatly into secure, anxious, avoidant, or disorganized bins. But over conversations with my therapist and a philosophy reading group, I started thinking of attachment as much broader. I now understand it to be the accumulated mosaic of experience, thought, and emotion we hold in relation to objects — ideas, other beings, favorite lamps, etc. — which inform how we interact with those objects and the world more broadly.

• Anger (Thich Naht Hahn) - Mindful practices for dealing with an emotion which can be destructive and therefore which I’ve often judged harshly when expressed in myself and others. But anger often means something should be known.

• Breath (James Nestor) - I used to laugh at mouth taping, but after I read this, I started taping. I think it’s improved my sleep.

• Dopamine Nation (Anna Lembke) - In part, assesses smartphone and media use through the lens of addiction studies. I found the chapter on shame (destructive shame, “…which deepens the emotional experience of shame and sets us up to perpatuate the behavior that led to feeling shame in the first place…” vs. prosocial shame, “…[which] mitigates the emotional experience of shame and helps us stop or reduce the shameful behavior.”) particularly interesting.

• It’s Not You (Ramani Durvasula) - This is a primer on narcissistic relationships. It provides a useful framework for identifying and healing from narcissistic abuse and the profoundly confusing shame and grief that comes along with it.

• Self Compassion (Kristin Neff) - This book & the associated exercises facilitated a personal revolution in addressing, rather than hiding from shame. The feeling is an onion, but Neff’s book is straightforward. Highly recommended for every person who grew up Catholic or in New England.

• Setting Boundaries that Stick (Juliane Taylor Shore) - ‘Setting boundaries’ is a most popular term. Often I hear people misapply ‘setting boundaries’ when they mean ‘making ultimatums.’ This book clarifies that boundaries are largely internal — we choose what we allow into and out of our heads and bodies.

• The Anxious Generation (Jonathan Haidt) - Perhaps the best summary of the 'alone together' pressures of smartphone use, social media, gaming, etc. I've ever read. Starts the conversation with somatic realities of modern life — how humans have evolved to be embodied, communicate synchronously, find rhythm together, and how we've developed technologies that disembody us, are totally asynchronous, and destroy natural rhythms — leading to elevating rates of anxiety and depression among young people today. Ends it with practical advice to improve human connection, encourage resilience beginning in childhood, and reclaim attention. A must read!

• The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel van der Kolk) - Hugely helpful, nudged me to pursue acupuncture, breathwork, and bodywork as the next phase in recovery after a six-year ordeal that started with a broken femur. Also helped me unearth and process some blocked emotions related to the loss of my best friend Dan in 2021, and grieve more fully the loss of Mike in October.

• The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, & Kaley Warner Klemp) - Principles & practices to get 'above the line' - open, curious, & committed to learning, vs. remaining 'below the line' - closed, defensive, & committed to being right.

• The Identity Trap (Yascha Mounk) - Why woke won’t work. History of identity politics with powerful arguments on the hazards presented by the ideology. Provides good examples of identity-based policy failures during the COVID era.

• The Republic (Plato) - My first tangle with philosophy, read during a 10-week seminar series organized by Niko Kovacevic and led by Paul Diduch, via Parnassus House. I’ll be writing more on ideas from the Republic later, but briefly I’ve noticed two outcomes of this reading style. First, (per ‘chewing on ideas’ in the intro above) I find myself questioning how and why I know what I know. Internally, I treat my judgments and thoughts alike with an internal boundary, ‘why do I feel/think this way?” Second, I find myself deploying Socratic dialogue in conversations — pausing more to ask clarifying questions, follow-up, and check in. I find it leads to much better discussions overall, with a greater chance of my learning something, vs. reinforcing something (I think) I knew.

• The Righteous Mind (Jonathan Haidt) - A very good book. Outlines the psychological underpinnings of morality, and how different people may think differently about what’s right and good. Particularly useful to interpret how folks of different political leanings (left vs. right) have separate moral pillars they rely on. “Morality binds and blinds. This is not something that happens to people on the other side. We all get sucked into tribal moral communities. We circle about sacred values and then share post hoc arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. We think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, but in fact everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects.”

Other Nonfiction:

• After Geoengineering (Holly Jean Buck)

• And There Was Light (Jon Meacham) - Lincoln’s biography. A benevolent dictator & monumental human.

• Cheaper, Faster, Better (Tom Steyer)

• Free Range Kids (Lenore Skenazy) - It all boils down to “Don’t try to kidproof your world. Worldproof your kids.”

• Getting Things Done (David Allen) - Too long a book for simple principles, but a useful notetaking system to clear the mind. Rather, read the sparknotes version in “The Great CEO Within.”

• Hooked (Nir Eyal)

• How to Know a Person (David Brooks)

• Land (Simon Winchester)

• Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)

• Supercommunicators (Charles Duhigg)

• Thank You for Your Servitude (Mark Leibovich)

• The Age of Addiction (David Courtwright)

• The Wager (David Grann) - Wonderful piece of historical nonfiction including maritime battles, imperial competition, indigenous badassery, a batshit crazy survival story, and unlimited scurvy. Amazing opening line: “The only impartial witness was the sun.”

• Timefulness (Marcia Bjornerud) - “Rocks are verbs, not nouns.” Another wonderful line.

• Tribe (Sebastian Junger)

Essays:

• Lessons from the Anthropocene (John Green) - I give Lessons from the Anthropocene five stars. Delightful nonfiction essays which each end with an overall rating, e.g. “Canada Geese get two stars”. Green is a solid observer of the outrageous.

• Self-Reliance (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

• The Serviceberry (Robin Wall Kimmerer)

Fiction:

• Playground (Richard Powers)

• The Mountain in the Sea (Ray Nayler) - IMO much better than Playground.

• Storm (George Stewart) - The very first eco-novel, which describes the story of a storm and its knock-on effects. My two favorite characters are the storm and the coyote.

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (Gabrielle Zevin) - A+, powerful read for me as a kid who grew up playing video games and has used them to escape physically painful times.

All photos, except selfie at the end, by Ian.

Selfie by the indomitable, unstoppable Clemmie.  

The sun rose after we left the parking lot and starting climbing towards Pawnee Pass. Ian has always been a jolly man, but he seemed particularly alive and well on this morning. We stopped on the edge of a meadow to spy on a eight-point buck, who lounged until the sun warmed him.

The first sign of the wind was the whitecaps on Long Lake. I’d looked at the wind forecast, and expected gusts to 30 mph, but we felt a lot more than that while crossing over Pawnee Pass (50 mph? Venturi effect on passes is a thing to remember when looking at zone forecasts). My hat and sunglasses blew off and we leaned hard into the wind. Wind through hair is a delightful and life-giving sensation.

We ran down the other side on some phenomenal trailwork reminiscent of the Stairs of Cirith Ungol (going down a lot easier than going up), and the winds subsided. 

Flowy, fun, fast single track at the head of Cascade Canyon. 

The PB might be most scenic to run in the counterclockwise direction, because as you drop down into the Pawnee Basin and then head Cascade Canyon, you’ll see spectacular panoramas of 1.7 billion year old gneiss towers. You won’t miss them going the other direction, but you might have to stop and turn around. 

October is a great time to run the PB. As we dropped below treeline, autumn swallowed us up. Yellow aspens cluster across the landscape, and Woods’ rose blankets the ground in crimson. Mix it with the orange and purple hues of Clemmie’s wardrobe, and you’ve got every one of the rainbow of fall colors.

Running is fun. Running with great friends, having great conversations, is pure joy.

On the day, we covered a lot of ground. The merits of the world’s largest aircraft. Expectations and surprises in fatherhood. The immense quality of our best friend Brynn. JTT. Whether we are stronger on ups or downs. And stories of other, old friends trying new things. 

I must issue a correction, as earlier I wrote, “The Fifty is a fun project.” Not quite… 

The Fifty is a joy project.

die a little
with every disappointment
or find what never dies 
and has no preferences

try a little 
and keep illusion going
or see the futility of effort
and stop pushing on nothing

be happy a little
now and then when circumstance allows
or rest in the source of happiness
now, then and always

believe a little 
that you are someone
or notice there is no separate one
nor any limit to being

love a little 
with half a heart
or let love have it all
filling the heart to overflowing

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that 
there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. 
Without a cloud, there will be no rain; 
without rain, the trees cannot grow: 
and without trees, we cannot make paper. 
The cloud is essential for the paper to exist.
If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper 
cannot be here either. 

I played from 2014 through 2018 and during that time I had many close calls. Since then, I’ve lost three close friends to the mountains. In 2018, I was forced out of play when I shattered my right femur (not while climbing). I have not checked back into the game in the six years since my injury. First, because of loss of function, and now, because I am scared. I am scared, because alpinism is totally fucked. 

When I was just starting, I followed a framework for success. I climbed a lot. I developed a training plan and worked hard at it. I got grants. I Instagrammed. I got a few sponsor-ish deals. With all that hype, I thought to myself that other people cared that I did this stuff, and early on in my success I wrote, “Suddenly, there were other people out there, people I didn’t know, who thought that I could do this. That I should try it.” For the love of the sport and the love of the likes, I believed this story and hit the throttle. 

So, I edged into a world I will never forget, one where people go to places they surely don’t belong. For so many reasons, the world of alpinism is addictive. It is kinesthetic and maximally sensational. It all feels very big. It is, in fact, very big. On a flight out of the Alaska range after my second season of climbing and guiding, I vividly recall looking out of the plane’s window thinking, “We should turn this thing around.” I was high on adventure, adrenaline, and awe — I couldn’t stay away.

In retrospect, a huge part of that high was how I felt when I viewed myself within the context of adventure, adrenaline, and awe. I cultivated an identity. When I began to broadcast that out into the world, I stepped over a line from the love of the game, into a love of my ego. 

Out beyond the edges of my ego, I was standing in a desert of human experience — in reality, it is you, a handful of friends, and a sliver of humanity beyond that cares what you do, and how or why you do it.

Today, most people who follow alpinism do it via social media. Folks swarm up for the glory shots which accumulate likes and kudos. And what follows are the shiny goods — clothes and shoes and climbing widgets. People love their gear. All of this packaged into slick magazines, publications, and films. You can almost smell the sex appeal.

Now, I’m not about to decry capitalism or outdoor brands broadly. For many reasons, I like well-regulated capitalism. Gear companies need to make money, and athletes supported by those companies need to make money too. The fair exchange of goods and services is a necessary part of modern life. 

However, over the past twentyish years the grand reinvention of human communication (i.e. the advent of the ‘virtual’ life parallel to ‘real’ life, and the constant decision to live in one over the other) has piled on financial and social incentives to every adventure sport, including alpinism. Like most other human endeavors, adventure sports have been caught up under the overwhelming crush of limbic capitalism. Today, eyeballs pay the salaries of most branded professional athletes. And generally, the more eyeballs someone draws, the higher their paycheck.

At one point, I wanted that life. Today, I definitively do not. In the rest of this essay, I’ll highlight four stories I believed from 2010 to 2020. These stories contributed to my assessment of mortal risk-taking as a worthwhile moneymaking endeavor. They alone did not cause me to act — but they certainly changed how I thought.

But first, what does it mean to “be fucked?”

TOTALLY FUCKED

Though I didn’t know him personally, Kyle Dempster was my hero. I looked up to his general demeanor and his impressive list of ascents, and read and watched as much of his storytelling as I could. I really admired his spirit of adventure, particularly well-captured in “The Road to Karakol” which I watched maybe fifty times.  

In 2015 I wrote to Kyle, looking for beta for my first trip into the Alaska range. 

Hi there Kyle, 

Got your info from my buddy Austin. I've got a couple of AK-related questions that I think you might be able to answer - if you're willing! 

First, I'm flying onto the Kahiltna on 4/21 for my first trip to the Alaska range - woo hoo! My partner and I have gathered a lot of info on the Bibler-Klewin from friends in NH, but we're looking for more info on Deprivation. I heard that you've done Deprivation. I wonder if you have a route description, trip report, or (most hopefully) a topo for the route?..

Thanks for any info you can share!

Rock on,

Jimmy 

Kyle’s reply: 

Certainly willing! 

Bibler-K is def the better route! Deprivation is, honestly, a pretty mediocre route. At least in the conditions we found it. 90% of dep is really easy/cruiser low angle snow climbing. 5% of it is fun steeper ice. and another 5% is TOTALLY FUCKED sketchy and steep snow/snice climbing. Truly fucked is this one pitch down lower on the route. It is the Crux for sure. Maybe it's better in better conditions, but honestly dude, not psyched on how dangerous that pitch felt…

Looking forward to meeting ya. And feel free to fire away with your questions.

Kyle

For a situation to “be fucked” is a binary. It is to be wrong and unacceptable. Of all the times I’ve used the phrase, it has always meant “if I do this wrong, I am going to die at this moment.” Or, if something happens that is out of my control in this moment, (rockfall, avalanche, etc.), I will die. 

Kyle died while climbing in Pakistan in 2016. Before he died, Kyle wrote an article called Student of the Game: “As a student of the game in a classroom that is deadly, I know that sharing our experiences and our blunders helps to further educate and keep our class alive.” 

Of course, we’re all terminal. That is part of being human. That aside, everyone I’ve known who’s died in the mountains said some variation on “I’d rather not die in the mountains,” and then died in the mountains. I think of how many times I said that exact thing when I look back at my own register of close calls: 

• “Daggers of glacial ice hung above us. The moat pinched into a gully then and opened up again. I saw some (not small) rocks fall close to my right, through the pinch. I drilled a thread as Mike descended. ‘Dangerous spot, move fast,’ was the extent of our conversation.” (Alaska, 2016)

• “I planted my tools into the hard snow, sat down against the tethers that bound me to them and prostrated myself before [a block the size of a microwave as it] ‘whizZZ‘[ed] from above... The boulder exploded immediately above, and sparks and the acrid scent of rockfall whooshed around and past us.” (Patagonia, 2017)

• “Ethan was following, approximately 15m into the pitch, when a snow mushroom the size of a VW bug fell and strafed the couloir below. It fell below our belay spot; we had avoided a direct impact by ~1 hr.” (Canadian Rockies, 2018)

In each of those situations, I could have measured my salvation in feet or by minutes. We were climbing in places that were inherently dangerous, as though passing corridors where a gunman randomly shot at untold intervals. Much risk can be managed, for example by choosing not to climb where rocks and ice and snow mushrooms can fall on you, in good weather conditions, and so on. But then, you still must execute perfectly — no falls, no slips — no mistakes. Humans make mistakes. Ergo, Alpinism is fucked.

STORIES I TOLD MYSELF

Which brings me to the stories I told myself, that aren’t true for me anymore. 

Story #1: Social media is “necessary”

When I started doing bigger climbs, I also started Instagramming. Other climbers were doing it, as it is a simple storytelling platform, and those who were particularly capable were squarely in the crosshairs of brands. At the time, I wanted to be there too (see Story #2). 

But instead of actually telling stories (or in today’s parlance, “creating content”), I would spend a lot of time scrolling mindlessly, or in targeted ways, and comparing myself and my climbing accomplishments to others’. Before I deleted my Instagram in 2017, I was living probably quarter-time in the virtual world. Every time I shared something out into the void, I hungered for the metrics that returned. I would go about my day twitching to check for likes and comments. 

Social media rewires people’s brains in ways we are just beginning to understand. With Instagram and Strava, smartphones become tiny stages reaching massive audiences — I’ve heard them called ‘ego machines.’ Virtual engagement bathes brains in dopamine, stimulating neurochemical feedback for ‘more me,’ not dissimilar to feedbacks for chocolate, orgasms, ciggys, and hard drugs. 

What I did not understand about myself in my mid-twenties, is that I have strong addictive personality traits. At various times I have been addicted to books, writing projects, work, exercise, and video games. 

So, when I was digitally bathing in imagery of epic mountain landscapes and hardcore climbing, cocaine rat really worked overtime in my brain. I constantly thought about taking my own photos of epic mountain landscapes and hardcore climbing -- not for the memories, but to share on Instagram. I bought a camera for social media, because I wanted to be a pro-ish climber and I thought this was necessary. 

Today, I still use social media on occasion. But my relationship to social media is more akin to my relationship to the 19 cigarettes I’ve smoked in my life — I try to use it precisely. 

The addictiveness of adventure combines with the addictiveness of social media platforms to produce a potent cocktail, and I believe this mix changes humans’ moral behavior and risk-taking frameworks in powerful and poorly understood ways. So, to young Jimmy, I’d say, “Take care, as social media will rewire your brain. It will change the way you think about what’s right and wrong for you, and it’s easy to get carried away.” 

STORY #2: I should seek sponsorship by a brand to make money

Branded athletes are a unique type of salespeople. Sales is a core part of the job, which Nick Paumgarten captured well in a 2020 New Yorker article: 

“The panel that afternoon [at a North Face athlete retreat], featuring Tate [a grief counselor], me, and a social-media guru, was on “storytelling.” What did I know about the kind of storytelling that they were there to ponder—the framing of their adventures, which they refer to as projects, in such a way as to secure funding, attract an audience, and burnish a brand? It is the job of a professional adventure athlete to create media: films, photos, articles, social posts. You go out and perform amazing feats in amazing places while wearing the amazing gear. The framing and the depiction of these feats give them scale, reach, and meaning—and commercial viability.”

I have a mental model, a 2x2 in which ‘outdoor athletes’ exist on a spectrum, from Olympian to NARP (non-athletic regular person), and good to bad at sales. Take a look. 

In my framing, there are two main ways to create value. Be a better athlete (and let your accomplishments speak for themselves) or be better at sales. For sales, storytelling seems less important in a time when sci-fi has become reality. Rather, we’ve evolved to a place where personality makes the big bucks. Hence, the rise of the influencers.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I wanted to make money from outdoor brands. But I did, and I tried to get there. I didn’t get very far, and felt kind of icky with how far I did get. Looking back, here’s what I’d tell young Jimmy: “The bottom line is, when you exist in an environment where you are incentivized (via money and exchange of goods) to create media based on risky athletic feats, either your feats or your media must carry what you owe. If you still want to do this, and your media is carrying, figure out how to do it in a way that feels authentic to you and good for your soul — but be open to the chance that this may not be possible for you.” 

Today’s brand expectations get a lot darker than for social media posts. I recently spoke to one professional athlete who shared that their sponsor offers “send bonuses” to their alpinists, which are direct financial incentives to do hard, dangerous climbs — a lot different than a salary for your general vibe and accomplishments and social media aptitude. It's more like a paid round of Russian roulette. Perhaps this is the outdoor industry’s grandest expression of late-stage capitalism — “we demand eyeballs, you supply them — through glory or death.” 

STORY #3: There’s wisdom in hardcore climbing training literature 

In 1999, Mark Twight published a book called Extreme Alpinism: Climbing Light, Fast, and High, which established a hardcore, minimalist climbing ethos. Twight writes in aggressive prose, and his words pulse with testosterone. A couple of years after I started ice climbing, I devoured Extreme Alpinism and Twight’s book Kiss or Kill, and the literature of his peers who shared a similar “a muerte” attitude (including Steve House). 

So I was thrilled to read Twight’s introduction to Steve House’s 2014 book Training for the New Alpinism, the modern bible of training for climbing. It summarizes his writing style well.

My approach to training echoed how I climbed. The romance of climbing didn’t interest me.  I didn’t seek harps and wings. I heard no opera up there. Instead, my mountains had teeth. The jagged edge we walked up there dragged itself across my throat, and the throats of my friends and peers. I took the mountain’s indifference to life as aggression, and fought back. I armored myself against that indifference; with training, with thinking, with attitude. I trained with friends who shared a similar approach. Our mantra was dark, but it motivated us. 

When we ran we breathed in rhythm -- no matter the speed -- and that beat had words: “They all died.” We inhaled and exhaled the great alpine epics… to push ourselves to a place where we would never come up short, physically. 

The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades. (13-14)

As a young climber, I ate this stuff up. I gushed about it to my climbing partners. My admiration was not unique. Kyle, writing in Alpinist 42, professed an early devotion to Extreme Alpinism.

I studied Mark Twight’s Extreme Alpinism with the same devotion that a monk strives to connect with God’s purpose. I didn’t just want to respect Twight and his tribe. I wanted to embody their knowledge. As The Book instructed, I took my training journal to the crag. I tallied every pitch I climbed, noting what felt right or wrong and what I needed to work on. At the gym, I punished myself under the weight of heavy barbells. I documented each rep to quantify improvement. I quoted Twight’s bible with unwavering faith: “The harder you are to kill, the longer you will last in the mountains.”

Feeling strong after training is an amazing feeling. In 2018, I hired a coach to help me prepare for a trip to the Waddington range that I never got to go on. My effort paid dividends. At one point I emailed him, “There’s no doubt that the training I’ve done in the past four months has helped me out immensely. I felt stronger on the approach, fresh leaving camp, and had no doubts about my physical capability when we got to the difficult climbing.“ 

It’s not at all incorrect to describe training in terms of ‘making yourself hard to kill.’ The thinking goes, if you’re fit, you can spend a hell of a lot less time in places that are likely to kill you, thereby reducing the chance you will be killed. It makes a lot of sense.

Rather, I think a problem with Training (and Extreme Alpinism), is that it presents this material as front matter. The foremost training methodology for alpine climbing today starts with a treatise on hardening yourself to Death. At least in Training, the ‘why take the risk?’ section is relegated to the last few chapters -- mere afterthoughts.

Later on in his Alpinist 42 article, Kyle described his recovery after a close-to-the-edge solo attempt on a wall in Pakistan:  

During my six-month recovery, I shelved Extreme Alpinism. I realized The Book was someone else’s story. It didn’t have to be mine. Although I held on to some of its ideals, I returned to a more-lighthearted approach. Alex Lowe’s adage echoed in my thoughts, “The best climber in the world is the one having the most fun!”

Couldn’t agree more, Kyle (and Alex), couldn’t agree more. So to young Jimmy, I say “Knowing your why is most important. Take all climbing writing with a pound of salt. What’s true for others may not be true for you. ”

Which leads me to my final story…

STORY #4: It won’t happen to me

With all of this, I told myself, “I will train hard. I will make myself invincible.” 

That is a fallacy. 

In the same email to my coach (Story #3), I wrote: “There were several scary moments on the route. I want to proactively monitor threats like snow mushrooms and think about roping up over schrunds before charging ahead. I want to add these elements into the decision-making framework [I’m developing]...  Increasingly I see value in systematic risk-assessment.”

Again, Kyle in Student of the Game: “‘I nearly died...’ [and now] I’m grateful to have learned. And because of that lesson I’m now a safer climber… As a student of the game in a classroom that is deadly, I know that sharing our experiences and our blunders helps to further educate and keep our class alive.”

See the parallels? I do, now.

So, young Jimmy: “You may die in the mountains. If you play, accept it as a fact. If you are thinking that you won’t, you’re no longer living in reality. You may want to stop climbing until you come back to Earth.”

AND YET

When I am having a hard time and I doubt myself in the world, I close my eyes, and think of standing atop the Alaska range. Through visions of blue and white, the warmth of sunshine and the chill of icy air, I recall all that I and my partners have endured to get here. These memories are acid-dreams, embedded in my marrow. They summon to mind absolutes of love and trust for myself and my closest friends. I wouldn’t give them up for just about anything.

There is a story about Abraham Lincoln which I’ve grown to love. It goes something like this — when he was angry, Lincoln would write a letter. Then he would put that letter in his desk drawer. If he woke up the next morning and was still angry, he would send the letter. If he wasn’t — he would burn it in his hearth.

I take it to mean that timefulness and reflection and an ability to step outside oneself are most important qualities for a man to possess. All things that modernity, in its current state, depletes.

So no, I wouldn’t tell young Jimmy to avoid taking risks. I wouldn’t tell him to stop climbing mountains if deep down, that was what he felt drawn to do. Instead, I’d finish my soapboxing with this:

“Think about it. Why -- really why -- do you want to climb mountains? Write the answer down. 

Take three months entirely off social media. Then come back to it and ask, again, 

Why -- really why -- do you want to climb mountains?”

A human being is part of a whole, 
called by us the “Universe,” 
a part limited in time and space. 

He experiences himself, 
his thoughts and feelings, as 
something separated from the rest —a kind 
of optical delusion of his consciousness. 

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, 
restricting us to our personal 
desires and to affection for a few persons 
nearest us. 

Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our 
circles of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of 
nature in its beauty.

Where I am staying near the municipality of Bunyola, the mountains rise dramatically to the north and west, from farmlands to the south and east. Standing below a covered porch I had a unique meteorological experience. Looking to the farms and directly above, the night sky was starry. But clouds shrouded the mountains. Every minute, heat lightning would flicker through the cloud banks, wordlessly, without thunder. Winds gusts pushed out from the cloud bellies, carrying a spritz of rain onto my feet. 

I’d left my phone out on the pool deck, and grabbed it. A few missed calls from Jesse at 1:30 AM Mallorca time. One text: “Hey dude, give me a call if you can”

There are times in life when you know before you’re told. I spent 30 minutes watching the storm before I called him to confirm that Mike died. I spent the following three hours calling friends back in the States. 

In July, I visited the memory of my friend Dan in the Enchantments, where he died climbing in May 2021.  And in August, I visited Mike in Squamish to catch up with him over four glorious days of our favorite shared pastimes: play, laughter, and soul-baring. I am sparing with the photos I take, but after a run at the end of our visit I asked him for a photo together. I told him, “I trust you in the mountains, and I want a photo of us.” Mike replied, “Jimbo, it’s always good to have photos together.” And he is right about that.

There are many things that we caught up on during the trip. His journey as a professional athlete. A movie project he was working on, and the way he was working to be true to himself and his story. His plan to help family and friends out with newfound earnings. How he was in love like never before.

For all of these things, I am so, so proud of him. He was becoming the man the world invited him to be. “The force of character,” Emerson wrote, “is cumulative.” It sure is. 

There will be many stories and elegies written for Mike. Mike loved creating and sharing stories. But he was also a man of idioms. I have three favorites.

• Rationing is for the birds. On a 2016 trip into the Alaska range together, poor weather lasted three weeks before we got a decent climbing window. Mike and I brought a liter of whiskey in total. On or about day six, we were trying to decide how to apportion our whiskey for the rest of our time. I argued for temperance. Mike said “Rationing is for the birds.” We finished our whiskey that night. The next day, we started finding dead sparrows on the glacier. Out of guilt and fear of karmic retribution, we held a tiny funeral for each one. 

• The mullet is the most sensitive organ on the human body. You bet it is. There’s nothing like feeling wind flow through your shaggy mane, to make you feel alive.

• We’ve got to see the whites of her eyes. We were in Telluride for the 2019 bluegrass festival, and Kacey Musgraves was on the lineup. When she came out, we were in the middle of the pack, but Mike grabbed my arm and shouted “We need to get down there! We’ve got to see the whites of her eyes.” Whether it was karaoke at the Fairview or navigating a sea of people at a music festival, he wanted to be as close to the music as possible. And, in this case, I think he wanted to marry Kacey.

For me Mike is — will always be — the silent storm in Mallorca, the winds across Wyoming, the salmon twilight of the Alaska range.

A force of character.

A force of nature.

I learned about a supernova,
the brightest point before the end:
a star’s luminous coda,
its bold finale to life fervent.

we delighted in icy winds together,
brothers bound, a rope between.
courage, stupidity, no matter whether,
we simply loved each other’s keen.

today, running up a hillside breathless,
a kaleidoscope of memory,
every kind of grief’s caress,
yet again, cast out to sea!

now, it's sad to miss you Mike, but for ages hence,
i'll let ‘em know, you burned hot, nothing but magnificence.

in spring, we sow
in summer, we tend
in fall, we harvest
in winter -- we enjoy.