Winter 2014 Mixtape

winter on the Cumberland Plateau 

Seasonal playlists are a labor of love. First, I put together a list of songs that, to me, match the season at hand; I listen the crap out of them all season long. I group and order each song so that they flow well and can be listened from first to last, in one setting. Then I make them available for friends to listen to, singalong to, and share. And I really like this winter's.

It opens with the sultry harmonies of the ladies in Mountain Man and then hits the ground running with a pair of grizzled yet melodic punk anthems that beg to be sang along with. The Weakerthans transition into the rest of the mix peppered with americana, country, and just enough good ol' fashioned rock n' roll to keep you awake.

The "rough draft" of this playlist was thrown together before a long car ride, and that's what this finalized group of songs most appropriately lend themselves to: long car rides with friends. Because, for better or worse, "we're only as good as the company we keep," sings Florida's americana veterans on the last track. So whether you're wrestling southeastern pebbles, chasing the Gulf Coast's cold-front swells, or just going to grandmother's house, this mixtape will help you get over the river and through the woods.

download here | download here | download here

1. Mountain Man - Buffalo (Made the Harbor)
2. Iron Chic - Bogus Journey (The Constant One)
3. Diarrhea Planet - Separations (I'm Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams)
4. The Weakerthans - Psalm For the Elks Lodge Last Call (Reconstruction Site)
5. Peggy Honeywell - Sing Sung Sang (Faint Humms)
6. Rising Appalachia - Across the Blue Ridge Mountains (The Sails of Self)
7. Gregory Alan Isakov - The Stable Song (That Sea, The Gambler)
8. Grand Falconer - Midwest (Midwest)
9. The Branches - O Come O Come Emmanuel (Songs for Christmas)
10. Teenage Bottlerocket - Go With the Flow (Freak Out!)
11. Uncle Tupelo - Screen Door (No Depression)
12. Iron & Wine - Winter Prayers (Ghost on Ghost)
13. The Band - Christmas Must Be Tonight (Islands)
14. Red City Radio - We Are the Sons of Woody Guthrie  (To The Sons and Daughters of Woody Guthrie)
15. Have Gun, Will Travel - Take Me Home, Alice (Fiction, Fact, or Folktale?)

Winter 2013 was pretty good too.

Some Thoughts on Turning 25

the birthday people laughing about our failed 13b attempts

For all of our freakish similarities, my sister and I have two very different notions about birthdays. For Annie, it's not just a birthday, it's a "birthday month" full of small treats, large dinners, and pinterest worthy parties. I on the other hand take a more Ron Swanson approach. I don't like loud noises, I don't like people making a fuss, and I think birthdays were invented by Hallmark to sell birthday cards. Birthdays are just another day that just so happens to be the same day that recurs every other 364 days since the day my mother painfully pushed me out of her whosywhatsy. If anything we should celebrate our mothers on our birthdays.

That being said, your 25th is considered a "milestone." A recent google of "turning 25" brought up a plethora of buzzfeed-esque 25 for 25 lists. "The 25 scariest things about turning 25," "25 things you must know before turning 25," 25 things that get harder after 25" and so on. The related google search? "quarter life crisis." The first result page is full of people having existential crises and websites trying to help those people cope their problems.

And while I'm no stranger to existential crises -- When am I going to put this master's in Old Testament Theology to practice? Where am I going to put this master's in Old Testament Theology to practice? How am I going to pay off all this debt for a master's in Old Testament theology?  -- these moments of crisis come and go faster than it took me to come up with these examples.

Honestly, the thing that haunts me most about "growing up" is the fear of getting fat. So much so that when I recently saw the nurse practitioner about a mysterious cough I had, I anxiously asked her if my height to weight ratio was okay. She laughed at me and said that unless I was worried about being underweight, I'd be fine.

I'll be fine.

Louis C.K. drives it home,  "You'll be fine. You're 25. Feeling unsure and lost is part of your path. Don't avoid it. See what those feelings are showing you and use it. Take a breathe. You'll be okay. Even if you don't feel okay at the time."

He might as well be talking about climbing.

a dry 10b in Little Clear

Which is why I opted to do something different for my 25th birthday. Climbing 25 routes for 25 years beats the hell out of stressing about the future, comparing myself to others, or worse, pretending I like wearing nice clothes and "going out." Living another year seems to me all the more reason to do something rad, not have a quarter life crisis and try to cover it up with copious amounts of alcohol.

And what better fitting way to celebrate the start of my 25th year than with unmet expectations? I didn't climb 25 routes for my 25th birthday. Though I was well on track -- thanks to a day early start -- weather shut me down. The clouds crapped on us and left the rock soaked, even the steep and overhangy ones.

Even without meeting my goal, it was perfect. I spent the weekend with some of the people I love most, doing what I love most: having a good time and climbing. It was spectacular.

Everyone's always asking, "how does it feel to be 25?" Most days I don't feel a day older than 17 or 21, mostly because I still go to school, I still laugh at super long burps, and I still love punk music. I just traded skateboarding for rock climbing. And I'm not some hopeless romantic with an out of control Peter Pan complex.

I'm way more mature in areas that matter: making decisions, articulating decisions, developing world views, trying to be selfless or at least acknowledging when I've been selfish, etc. And yes, I pay bills every month, I have student loans to pay off, I just spent an unexpected $1,400 on car repairs, and every so often I have to spend money on nice clothes I don't want for a friend's wedding I have -- I mean get -- to attend.

Still, I wouldn't go back to being "a kid" for the life of me. Mindy Kaling has an awesomely hilarious memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (And Other Concerns) with a chapter titled "Don't Peak in High School" (and I would add college and so on) where she offers a critique of the John Cougar Mellencamp song "Jack and Diane:"

The chorus of "Jack and Diane" is: Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone. Are you kidding me? The thrill of living was high school? Come on, Mr. Cougar Mellencamp. Get a life.

Rocky, the world's worst crag dog
being a good crag dog

Being an adult is rad. And it can continue to be rad if you fight for it. And maybe "fighting for it" looks like getting a job and paying some bills. But it also looks a lot like spending a weekend at the Obed with your closest friends and climbing spectacular southeastern cliffs in the cold and the rain.

Special thanks (in order of appearance) to: Brent, for coming a day early to help me get a head start on my ticklist. Jesse, for festering in the rain, bro-ing down in my "natural habitat," tolerating climber lingo, and taking rad pictures. Carol from North Carolina, for being super rad and super cute (call me) and listening to me try to explain my academic endeavors without running away or telling me to shut up. Eli, for showing up and proving to the bonfire crew that I do have friends, for being my friend and climbing partner, and everything else. Rocky the world's worst crag dog, for not being the world's worst crag dog. Jamie, for being my tastefully foul mouthed, delightfully potty brained, wonderfully gutter minded friend and kindred spirit, for the belays, and helping make this weekend happen by being born the day after me. Happy 22nd birthday. Caleb, for showing up later so Carol never saw how dang attractive you are. Eric and Adam from South Carolina, for sharing beta and stoke. See you next weekend. Robin and Vance, for driving all the way from Texas just to hang out! Sorry you got lost. Muriel, for decorating the tent while we were climbing, bringing birthday cake, and always making everyone happy. And a very special thanks to Del and Marty, for the Lilly Pad campground, the southern hospitality, and making the Obed the single greatest climbing experience in the southeast.

What a birthday indeed.

Proficiency or Perfection: The Renaissance of Adequate

They say it takes 10,000 hours of “appropriately guided practice” to perfect a skill, from climbing to chess to violin to Halo. If you want to be good at something, you have to put in the time. And if you want to perform at the highest level of that something, you have to put in an inordinate amount of it. My mind immediately conjures up romantic images of a young Michael Jordan shooting hoops in his dirt driveway, a la Space Jam or Beethoven laboring over the ivories of his beloved piano. 

I can hear the words Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson saying, “Never half-ass two things, whole ass one thing.” 

Which is a nice sentiment and maybe good advice every now and then, but it isn't reality.

The other evening, I listened to a slightly older, imminently wiser, much better climber friend of mine lament that his life lacked balance. His career as an architect is skyrocketing, and truth be told, he’s one of the seemingly few adults who likes what he does. But his growing career has left zero time for the other thing that he loves and gives him life: climbing. 

Life requires balance. It requires protecting our time and energy. It might require protecting the things we love from the other things we love or the things that make doing the things we love even possible. Life is primary. Climbing is secondary (blasphemy!). And, thank God, so is work and school.  

I don’t want to half-ass anything. I want to whole ass everything but there’s only so much of my moneymaker that can go around. It’s been on my mind a lot lately, even before the aforementioned dinner with friends.

I think I’ve found a pretty nice balance between being a mediocre graduate student and a mediocre climber.

I’ll never be the academic prodigy that I admittedly and selfishly daydream about being. I’m not the brightest of the bright and sure, I could try to be a little brighter. My professors probably wish I would, just like my college and high school professors before them did. But I have passions and talents that don’t involve sitting at a desk all the time.

I’ll never climb 5.13. I’m not a strong climber. I’m not a technically savvy climber. And however much I wanted to be, it was just getting in the way of me having fun. Moreover, I have passions and talents that don’t involve being on the sharp end of the rope.

It might be nice, for a time, to be a dirtbag-at-all-cost romantic. Drop everything and live in a van or in a foreign country. But I have passions and talents that don’t involve being completely unfettered to society. (Why social norms and constructs are altogether considered “bad” by my generation is a mystery to me. And deserves attention that space does not permit here.) I need balance. I need roots.

If my buddy quit his architecture job and stopped training for marathons to be a better climber, would he? Absolutely. But I think what he needs -- what we all need -- is balance. I'd rather be increasingly proficient at a few things than endlessly striving toward perfection in one or two.

I want to be able to write a decent exegetical paper with a compelling theological argument. I want to be a proficient climber who can push my physical and mental limits in the mountains. I want to bake a pie that will knock a girl’s socks off. I want to make people laugh. And I want to have a job that I enjoy doing most of the time. But being well-rounded doesn't mean being an expert.

I want to live a happy, healthy life and I’m doing it. Here's to being adequate. Most of the time.

Dixie Cragger's Fall 2013 Mixtape

Clear Creek from Lilly Bluff at the Obed

It's officially fall. The colors are changing. The days are shortening. Girls are wearing boots and flannel. I'm even considering cleaning the crusty, four month old, used, coffee gel packets out of the pockets of my puffy jacket. And though I'm not a fan of six dollar, sugar laden, pumpkin spice lattes; the yellow leaves, dense early morning fog, and the sound of Clear Creek in the gorge below get me all giddy. These tracks are dedicated to the most wonderful time of the year.

I make no claims to be on the cutting edge of musical tastes, but there's a lot of new-to-newish jams on here. And for what it's worth, the Buffalo Gospel track alone is worth the download. Enjoy!





download here | download here | download here

1. Shovels & Rope - Birmingham (O' Be Joyful, )
2. Two Cow Garage - Farmtown (Please Turn the Gas Back On)
3. Diarrhea Planet - Warm Ridin' (Loose Jewels)
4. The Band - Atlantic City (Jericho)
5. Mother Falcon - Marfa (You Knew, 2013)
6. Pernice Brothers - End of Faith (Goodbye, Killer)
7. Hollis Brown - Gypsy Black Cat (Ride the Train, 2013)
8. Ian Fisher and the Present - Why Do I Go? (Ian Fisher and the Present, 2013)
9. Brandi Carlile - Hard Way Home (Bear Creek)
10. Doc Dailey and Magnolia Devil - Catch the Presidents (Catch the Presidents)
11. Buffalo Gospel - When God's Away on Business (Acoustic Demo, 2013)
12. Jason Isbell - New South Whales (Southeastern, 2013)
13. John Denver - I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado (Poems, Prayers, & Promises)
14. David Dondero - Boxcar (Jawbreaker cover) (A Pre-Existing Condition)
15. Lucero - Union Pacific Line (Texas & Tennessee, 2013)

A Day in the Life of an Actual Normal Climber

7:00 am: Wake up an hour late because you slept through your alarm because you stayed up late working on a paper.

7:02 am: Stumble into the kitchen and get a cup of coffee brewing. While it percolates, pee, throw on some dirty clothes (smell check), text your climbing buddy you're running late, sync iphone with new episodes of your favorite podcasts for the drive.

7:08 am: Pour your delicious go-go juice in a mug, grab your rack, rope, guidebook, crashpads, etc. and go.

9:30 am: Get to the crag after a two hour drive, divvy up the gear and start the approach trail down into the gorge. Take advantage of this intimate time with your belay partner for deep cerebral discussion about existence and the plausibility that the events in Ice Cube's "Good Day" actually happened in a 24 hour time frame.

10:02 am: Arrive at your warm-up route. Flake the rope, lace up, chalk up, tie in. Complain about how stiff your body feels, how sore your fingers are, how bad your toes hurt, how this feels like it's going to be a "high gravity" day.

10:08 am: Ask "is it lunch yet?"right before getting on the rock.

10:11 am: How do I already have Elvis leg? Oh God, I hope he doesn't notice my Elvis leg. This route is a total sandbag. 10a my foot! This is the hardest 5.10a I've ever done. "Are you sure this wasn't an '11' in the guidebook?"Maybe 10a  for somebody over six feet tall. Did Dikembe Mutombo bolt this route? "Clipping!" Is that backclipped? No, good.  Man, imagine Dikembe Mutombo climbing. Focus. Breathe. But this is definitely a tall person's route. I wish a little bit taller...

10:20 am: Partner hops on "warm up route." Flashes it.

11:00 am: Climb your second route. Make it count. Warmed up but fresh, this is the best you'll climb all day.

11:43 am: Run and jump from a 45 ft tall ledge (while on top rope) to get the flannel shirt you took off mid-climb out of a tree. Boy scouts on the top rope wall down the corridor watch your bad example. It doesn't matter because they're boy scouts and will all most likely end up playing Grand Theft Auto in their mother's basements when they're old enough to really climb.

12:27 pm: Most likely your "project" or your muse. Flail around and hang dog for an hour. "Clipping. Clipping. Clipping! CLIPPING!" Followed by a contrite, "Sorry I yelled at you." You make it to the anchors but not without pulling on a draw. Maybe another day.

1:30 - 5:17 pm: Walking. Talking. Climbing. Whipping. Climbing. Somewhere in between climbs, while walking along the cliff you notice exquisite lines with beautiful holds and aesthetic moves. You anxiously look it up in the guidebook and realize it is not remotely in your league of climbing.

6:00ish pm: Climb way less than you planned on on account of the time it takes to hang dog, red point, clean, coil, walk, flake, tie, climb, hang dog some more, get spit off of routes. Forearms burning, fingertips bleeding, stomach growling, and heart happy you make the way back to the cars. Continue discussion about Ice Cube and existential crises.

7:30ish pm: Crawl into the booth of a questionable Mexican restaurant in Podunk, Tennessee. Order the burrito, enchilada, and taco plus a pitcher of margarita. Celebrate the day's victories and whippers while old, white, probably racist rednecks examine your ratty clothes, dirty feet, and girly beverage choice.

In the words of the great 20th Century urban philosopher Ice Cube, "I gotta say that today was a good day."

Shirts-On and Shirts-Off Climbers

Alex Puccio crushing  it (via tumblr)

Ever gone to the gym to get a few laps in after a long day at school or work? You feel slightly lethargic, maybe a bit pudgy because you splurged for the $5 footlong instead of just getting the six-inch sub. Nevertheless, you're psyched to work on that 11d that worked you on your last visit only to find some shirtless, perfectly chiseled specimen with exquisite hair-to-body ratio effortlessly cruising up its microcrimps as if it were a 5.8 jug haul. Suddenly you're not so psyched to climb anymore.

Why does he have his shirt off anyway? It's a cool night outside. Air-conditioned inside. Massive utility fans blowing chalk in every direction. There are two types of climbers in this world: shirts-on climbers and shirts-off climbers.

"shirts off" climbers Anderson and Kyle spotting Jamie in Little River Canyon, AL.

Shirts-off climbers are those gym gods who crush 5.13; they've earned their stripes.Those stripes outline every trapezius and latissimus, every abdominal muscle bulging forth like a constant reminder that you ate Taco Bell yesterday. It's clear these climbers live at the gym, do juice cleanses regularly, and crush on the weekends. Horse Pens' sandbagged slopers? No problem. The Obed's horizontal roofs? They can do it and they do it sexier than you.

And this is the movement of modern climbing, right? Ondra, Woods, Puccio, et. al. Nobody's interested in Joe Climber running up West Ridge on Pigeon Spire. But the truth is shirts-off climbers don't always have their shirts off. And shirts-off climbers also include those who want to be shirtless. The gym bros who think they can crush 5.13 but then struggle on a 5.10. Or think that if they take their shirt off, they go from climbing 5.10 to climbing 5.13. 

Barrett and I on top Torreys Peak, CO; definitely "shirts-on" climbers

I'll be honest, I want to push myself to my climbing limits and look halfway decent with my shirt off too. But I also want to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. 

I know that I am just a lat guy living in an ab guy's world and I definitely don't have a perfect body hair ratio. Any given day at a southeastern crag, it is very likely that I'm the only dude with a shirt on. And that's as true in June as it is in December. In fact, it might even be my desire to keep my shirt on that pushes me towards the mountains where layering up is not only the norm but the necessity.

It's probable that the lure of mountains is more significant than that. But the point is, that's where you'll find shirts-on climbers. On an airy pitch in the high country, sweating it out on what would otherwise be a warmup route if it were closer to the ground. Don't get me wrong, I love a hard sport route just as much as the next guy; I just really love jackets and the places a jacket, a rope, and basic rock craft will take you.

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Wetterhorn? I Hardly Know Her Horn!

wet night cooking the kingdom

we drove some other climbers up the 4x4 road to the trailhead.
it got a little hairy back in the bed.

Unc at sunrise

Wetterhorn in the morning light

astonishing photo by Robin as heavy fog rolls in while I give it to Barrett. and by "give it" I mean route beta.

Bear Snack on the cat walk to the summit push.

Robin and I celebrate our fourth summit together. this is the hardest face she could give.

Vance, myself, Robin, and Barrett

we climbed Matterhorn (13,590) for good measure. last one up summited at 10:57.
rain and hail drove us down by 11:04. 

wiped.

Making Miseries

wet, tired, smelly, and spent in Lake City, Colorado

"We're epic-ing so hard right now," I gleefully yelled while crouched over a stove tucked under a truck's tailgate in a desperate attempt to cook in the midst of a massive freezing downpour at the base of Wetterhorn's long approach trail. At the same time, Robin and Logan were pitching a tent and Vance was taking a poop in the cold, late night, driving rain. All equally miserable. All equally stoked.

Epic-ing is a climberism for when everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. And without going into too much detail, it had. To "epic" is to suffer and endure and while we may not end up in Alpinist, we were definitely epic-ing for the everyman. Or, as Logan said while huddled under a boulder in the middle of another rain storm on another mountain, we were "making miseries."

Difficult moments shape us.

As a climber, I live for those moments. Snot in my mustache. Wind in my backpack straps. Kick stepping through snow patches. Scree sliding off exposed ridges. Running it out over your last piece of pro.

As guides, getting to tree line or rapping to flat ground when a storm is or is about to pummel your valley is a lot harder with twenty inexperienced people than it is with just your party.

We often ask clients after super hard days, "how do you find joy in pain?" Week after week, the most common response is in the people around us.

Shared experiences bring people together. Shared struggles bring people together forever in deep and meaningful ways.

Very few people can climb a mountain by themselves. And those people usually eventually die in the mountains. Similarly very few people can make it through life alone.

Real community exists in the journey.

What does it look like to have joy in pain? To be content in every situation? It's not a perfect analogy by any means but I think it looks a lot like an exposed final pitch and turning to your partner behind you and admitting, "man, this sucks."

Real community creates the space for lament.

And maybe you summit. Maybe you don't.

Real community turns lament into laughter.

Because when you get back to your car or to the bar or the local pizza joint, you laugh about the loose block that fell right past your face and embellish how miserable you felt on the descent and rejoice about how ungodly tired you still are.

It isn't the summit or the view from the anchors I talk about most when I get back down. It's the struggle and pain and the absolute joy of the journey that makes for great stories and laughs and memories.

Making miseries.

That day, after climbing three peaks on two mountains and hiking for hours back in the rain and the hail, I sat in a gravel parking lot in Lake City, Colorado, watching Barrett struggle to learn how to change his first tire, my shins aching, my eyes struggling to stay awake, and foul stenches erupting from every pore of my body and I thought, man, I'm having the time of my life. 

**addendum updated 8.18.13:
"the essence of the sport lies, not in ascending a peak, but in struggling with and overcoming difficulties. The happy climber, like the aged Ulysses, is one who has 'Drunk delight of battle with his peers,' and this delight is only attainable by assaulting cliffs which tax to their utmost limits the powers of the mountaineers engaged." -- Alfred Mummery, 1895 quoted in Pilgrims of the Vertical by Joseph E. Taylor III

The Struggle Bus

A year ago, I took a break from climbing with my friend Kyle to hike Colorado's easiest 14er, Mt. Sherman. I'm a speedy hiker for a guy with short legs, and I ended up waiting for him at the summit for an hour and forty-five minutes. We were both pretty pissed at each other. I was mad that he took so long and had all the food. Kyle was peeved that I sprinted up the mountain without ever looking back to check on him. 

As a first year guide taking groups from the flatlands of these United States up Colorado's loftiest peaks, you learn quickly that you cannot tuck your hands under your pack, keep your head down, and blast your way up the mountain. In fact, as a first year guide, you often find yourself at the back of line, hiking last, making sure that that one fifteen-year-old who doesn't want to be there doesn’t mosey off the trail and try to find his way back to Texas. Or that the seventy-year-old grandfather who blindly agreed to come on trail with his grandkids doesn't keel over and die. But for the most part, the back of the line is just average people who justifiably struggle carrying a 40 lb. backpack up the side of a mountain.

We have a name for the back of the line: The Struggle Bus. 

The Struggle Bus is comprised mostly of chaperone adults who had no idea what they were getting into and teenagers who fall on either extreme of the weight spectrum. They hike slower, take longer, and necessitate more water and/or inhaler breaks. Thus, the healthier, stronger, or for whatever reason faster kids at the front get to break and rest while they wait for the back of the line to catch up. And then, they take off as soon as we do. The reality of the Struggle Bus is that you can't really catch a break. 

Personally, hiking slow hurts. As a group, it sucks to baby step your way up a huge hill and to finally see your group, only to have them saddle their water bottles, stand up, and take off. It's disheartening. 

Which is why I try my best to turn the Struggle Bus into the Party Bus. 

Some struggling hikers need conversation to help them find a rhythm. Some need to hear a story. Others need Disney or 90s gangster rap sing-a-longs. Still others just need you to shut the hell up and hike in silence with them. Perhaps the hardest thing for me about being a guide is determining which form of encouragement a person needs. 

Because the only thing worse than no encouragement is patronizing encouragement. 

I've come to really love the Party Bus. Some of my most difficult, painful moments have come from hiking in the back with people who really don't want my encouragement. They don't want me to be there, and neither do I. But all of my favorite moments have happened at the back of the line. If the "last shall be first" is any truism at all, it is experienced here. 

I think of Amanda from Texas who spent one year training for this very trip. Losing weight, getting in better shape, becoming a healthier mom for her kids, wife to her husband, and teacher to her students.

Amanda wrestled the whole way up Mt. Antero, placing one foot in front of the other from low camp to high camp to summit, and I was fortunate enough to be there almost every step of the way.

She never stopped. Never complained. Never said she couldn’t do it. I’ve never hiked slower. But there was so much joy in those steps. We talked about her one-year-old twins and her job teaching high school students. We sang silly Sunday school songs, and then we hummed them when we were out of breath. And we shared silence when we needed silence.

The kids chose Amanda to summit first, and watching her hike through a tunnel of arms, trekking poles, and ice axes to that peak with tears in her eyes has been my favorite moment of the summer. Rarely ever have I been so proud.

I’ve learned a lot taking it slow, hiking in the back, hanging out with the Party Bus. A few weeks after our Antero summit, a wise youth minister on Mt. Arkansas gave words to my experience:

“It’s easy to shout encouragement from afar. It’s another thing to walk alongside someone and speak words of hope amidst the struggle.”

And again, what’s true on the mountain I think is true in life as well.

5 Things Overheard on Mt. Arkansas

#dirtbagguideswag

My sister runs a little bookstore where she overhears a plethora of conversations and interesting tidbits. Occasionally, she'll write them down and post them anonymously on her blog. I have blatantly stolen her format to bring to you five memorable quotations from a week on Mt. Arkansas with a group from the flatlands of Texas. 

The week itself was perhaps my most challenging yet, but perhaps my most rewarding and memorable. Some quotes are profound. Some are challenging. Some are hilarious. And some were downright annoying. These were the most memorable. 

On teenage boys running towards real life bears 

"STOP! Are you on crack cocaine?!" 

On encouragement

"It's easy to shout encouragement from a distance, it's another thing to walk alongside someone and speak words of hope."

On ungratefulness

Camper: "What kind of pancake is this?"

Guide: "It's a mountain pancake. Made on a mountain."

On summits 

"I didn't think the summit would be this emotional."

(spoken by a teary eyed eighth grader)

On struggle and journey 

"The mountain doesn't show you who you are, but who you want to be."

Summer 2013 Mixtape

somewhere in Kansas (via instagram)

Seasonal mixtapes are a nearly three year tradition around these parts. If you've been a downloader in the past you probably get the gist. I pick a mix of songs I think would (a) make a good movie soundtrack (b) a perfect roadtrip playlist (c) mostly comprised of country, bluegrass, Americana, folk, and old guy punk rock that I find fitting for the season.

I think you'll find this summer's final cut to be a perfect blend for driving with the windows down (Joe Strummer, The Special Goodness), pursuing summer romance (Chicken Chokers, Lucero, Vetiver), or forgetting summer heartbreak (Ryan Adams, Doc Dailey). And I think you're going to like it.  Download it HERE. 

1. The Menzingers - Burn After Writing (On the Impossible Past)
2. Cordelia's Dad - The Traveler (Awake My Soul and Help Me to Sing)
3. Lucero - Chain Length Fence (Tennessee)
4. Vetiver - The Swimming Song (Thing of the Past)
5. Jason Choi & the Sea - Leave the Night Behind (Leave the Night Behind)
6. Fake Problems - Dream Team (Daytrotter Session)
7. Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros - Coma Girl (Streetcore)
8. The Special Goodness - Life Goes By (Land, Air, Sea)
9. Iron and Wine & Calexico - History of Lovers (In the Reins)
10. The Chicken Chokers - Shady Grove (07)
11. Doc Dailey & Magnolia Devil - She Has Her Moments (Catch the Presidents)
12. Ryan Adams - Pick Me Up (Heartbreaker)
13. Gregory Alan Isakov - If I Go, I'm Going (This Empty Northern Hemisphere)
14. Fistful of Beard - 5th Ave (Until We Know Better)
15. John Denver - Prisoners (Rocky Mountain High)

Fall 2011

Fall 2012

Summer 2012

Winter 2012

The Best Outdoor Pooping Experience Ever

the best outdoor toilet there ever was.

After a life of family hiking trips, I started backpacking with my best friend as soon as we could drive. Every weekend we would backpack Torreya State Park, "The Mountains of Florida," on the the high bluffs along the Appalachicola River; so much so, we got sick of it. Then we made a copy of the key to the same friend's church's trailer of canoes and started taking long paddling trips on Florida's scenic rivers. Not once did I ever poop outside. 

I wasn't scared of dropping deuces in the woods, though Deliverance didn't help. And I wasn't grossed out by wiping with leaves. I just preferred the comfort of my own toilet, my own toilet paper, reading material, and privacy. I could hold it for a weekend.

Until one time on the Wacissa River the weight of the world dropped in my stomach while portaging through Slave Canal. There was no waiting this one out. This wasn't prairie dogging, this was a raging black bear charging through my digestive tract.

And at that moment, at a safe distance from any water source, I became a man.

Pooping in the woods is a rite of passage. In an instant one may go from discomforted dayhiker to liberated mountain lover. As made evident from a recent post, it only takes a few nights outdoors for even the most insecure nature newcomer to embrace their ancestral instinct and be completely open about it.

You can google "how to poop in the woods" and get more than 3,890,000 search results. And aside from some important Leave No Trace principles, it just seems a bit ridiculous. Are we that far removed from our ancestral roots that we can't put 2 and 2 together to take a #2 sans toilet?

Our ancestors pooped au naturale. Our human brothers and sisters across the globe still wipe with corn cobs and river stones. Yet we won't talk about it unless it's in an off color birthday card and middle school boys won't even admit that girls do it. Our indifference to pooping outside forces the question, "Are we not human?"

I hope then we shall answer, "Nay! We are mountaineers! Dirtbags and trailrunners! Climbers and kayakers!"

Let us celebrate the fact that we can crap amongst the pines and the hemlocks while the rest of Western Civilization poops anxiously in dimly lit public restrooms.

Let us celebrate that we can defecate serenaded by cicadas and frogs and the distant sound of streams while our classmates and coworkers listen in on noisy stall neighbors, on phone calls and flatulences and explosive diarrhea.

Let us celebrate that we can drop a load surrounded by mountains while friends and family settle for wet seats, hemorrhoids, and single ply toilet paper.

Let us then speak the good news of pooping in woods! Let us tear down the social constructs of lavatory amenities! Let us share the liberating power of backcountry pooping!

The best excretion experience I had in the backcountry was somewhere in Sunshine Canyon outside Boulder, Colorado. If you follow Mapleton Avenue out of town, up the mountain meandering through the mountain community of Gold Hill and then down the canyon, you'll find yourself in the solitude of the foothills of the Rockies. It is truly lovely.

In the half-light of morning, coffee brewing on the tailgate of the truck, I wondered down the hill, shovel in hand to find a fabulously fallen tree resting perpendicular with the ground at an angle prime for squatting. Small limbs broken off over time made an actual toilet paper roll. An eight inch cat hole purposely placed for perfect aim, a mountain vista, the cool breeze on my posterior, the Stephanie Davis memoir, High Infatuation and I was in poopoo heaven. It was like MTV Cribs meets Little House on the Prairie.

I didn't want it to end.

Any attempt to articulate in words this majestic experience would be an understatement. So allow this picture to suffice:

Let us celebrate our forested fecal fertilizations!

What's your story? What's your best or favorite outdoor crap tale?