I grew up appreciating the wonders of the outdoors and receiving the lessons they could bestow. In winter I would spend most weekends skiing at our local resort Sundance and every summer my dad would take my twin brother and I on a week long backpacking trip, often to Uintas but occasionally to the Wind River Range. These trips are likely where I learned that enjoyment is strongly correlated with effort. The deeper we pressed into mountainous, empty places where our existence was dwindled beneath the majesty and grandeur of nature, the more I fell in love with wildnerness.

In adolescence, basketball pulled me away. Coaches warned against “injury-prone activities,” and my schedule left little room for the backcountry. It wasn’t until college, when I took a job as an indoor climbing instructor and route setter, that I returned. There I met people whose enthusiasm for adventure was contagious. We filled hours at the climbing gym dreaming of the remote, the multi-disciplinary, the consequential. I still enjoy all kinds of adventures, but I pursue them with an eye toward the next challenge that is both polymathic and weighty.

After each adventure of this kind, whether beaming from success or sulking from failure, I returned changed. Endeavors of this sort are, inescapably, transformative. Their trials strip away illusion, teaching humility in the face of forces beyond control. Their beauty awakens a reverence that is part joy, part sorrow, as if one had glimpsed something eternal. The camaraderie forged in hardship lingers long after, a reminder that solitude and fellowship are not opposites but companions in the wild. Above all, these endeavors demand introspection: to confront oneself as much as the landscape, and to find, if only for a moment, that the boundary between the two begins to blur.

Hence, my pithy phrase for the motto of this blog:

"No cathedral more sublime, No crucible more stern, Than the natural world."