I don’t often re-publish stories I’ve written, but I remembered this one this past week when I was tagging along on a rock climbing trip in the desert with my mom and her friends. I think this essay, back when I wrote it in 2013, was a sort of expression of gratitude through a story about my grandma (my mom’s mom), who was in the last 14 months of her life at the time I published it. I hope it still resonates.

—

I flew to Iowa to visit my grandmother in the hospital a couple weeks ago. She’s been in and out of hospitals for the past few months, kind of one thing after another, the latest being a dental infection. I got off the plane in Des Moines, rented a car and drove straight to the hospital, where she was in bed, the right side of her face swollen up around the infection, IV drip in her arm.

I sat with her for three days, leaving when she went to sleep at night and took naps in the afternoon, but mostly we just sat and chatted like we always do. I ran across the street a couple times to get her milkshakes and real coffee from the coffee shop a block away. She only drank a few sips of it, but it didn’t matter. If it was between hospital coffee and espresso, I thought she should have espresso.

We went for short walks up and down the hallway, Grandma apologizing for how slow she was going, shuffling with her walker in front of her, and me telling her that she was the fastest 85-year-old lady I’d hung out with, plus I didn’t have anything else to do that day anyway. I have about a dozen deadlines and a million e-mails, but only one grandparent. Sitting there in the chair next to the hospital bed, helping her in and out of the chair, cutting up her food, I wondered how many more times I’d get to spend the whole day with my grandma, just me and her.

My grandma knows I live in a van and that I’m a writer, and I don’t think she cares what I do as long as I’m happy. She doesn’t read my blog, or care too much about rock climbing and mountains, and she knows I travel a lot, but I don’t think she cares where — I think she sees me in one of two locations: in person, and at the other end of the phone line wherever I call her from.

While I was visiting her in the hospital, I was supposed to talk her into moving into an assisted living home five minutes from my parents’ house, where she’d have her own apartment and her seven kids would be able to visit more frequently. I tried a little bit. Her other option was a nursing home in her hometown, and she liked that idea better, despite the wishes of all of her kids. She’s lived in the same town, Emmetsburg, Iowa, pop. 4,000, her entire life, and in the same house since 1956. She’s not going to be able to go back to her house, but she doesn’t want to leave Emmetsburg, where she raised seven children, and outlived almost every single one of her friends.

When we talked about the assisted living home, she said across the hospital table, “Brendan, I don’t want to go somewhere I don’t know anyone.”

I said Grandma, I go everywhere, and I don’t know anybody.

Which is a stupid thing to say to your grandmother when you’re a young guy who loves to travel, and she’s talking about leaving the same house she raised a family in for 30-plus years, and then lived in alone for 26 years. She said, I mean, Can you imagine me leaving the only place I’ve ever lived? and I understood how scared she is.

I’ve had something like 23 different addresses in my life, and every time I moved out of another apartment, I had a little twinge of nostalgia, a little sadness as I closed the door on all the emptied-out rooms I’d made memories in. My grandma had to multiply that feeling times 66 years. Driving away from the hospital, I realized Grandma and I were both talking about freedom, even though it looks wildly different to each of us. She doesn’t want to live anyplace where people tell her what to do, and I suppose I’m kind of doing the same right now.

I guess we like to point out the traits we get from the people who raised us, how we’re like our people — I was raised on spicy food; my family’s always been Cardinals fans; we never back down, et cetera. I’ve spent most of my life rebelling against everything I grew up with, but I get it. When you’re 85, like my grandma, people say you’re stubborn. I think I’m just like her, but I call it driven. I fancy myself to be pretty tough, able to get myself out of any jam in the mountains with sheer perseverance. My grandma doesn’t care if anybody thinks she’s tough, but she fell and broke her hip five years ago, and walked around her house for three days thinking it was just bruised before she went to get an x-ray. My family, both sides, has never been shy about busting people’s balls, no matter the situation. It’s a true art, and I have a hard time relating to people who don’t know how to do it. My Uncle Dan, on Grandma’s second day in the hospital, told her, “Mom, we’re so optimistic, we’re gonna buy you some green bananas.”

We walked down the hallway one evening, just me and Grandma, past a few open doors of hospital rooms, and she apologized again for being slow, and I just walked next to her with my hands in my pockets and assured her I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. She said Brendan, I bet you can walk anywhere you want, and I said Yeah Grandma, I guess I can. I thought about all the places I had walked, like the top of the Grand Teton and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and I don’t know why my grandma had to say something like that hunched over her walker and shuffling along in a hospital gown and why it made me so sad.

Last Christmas, after I hugged her goodbye, she grabbed my hand with both hands, taking one more second. That was the first time she’d ever done that, and I walked out the door of my parents’ house wondering if she did because she wasn’t sure if it was the last time she’d see me. It wasn’t, of course, but I guess you never know when you get to be 85.

Someday she’ll be gone, and then I’ll be a wreck for a while, but I suppose after that, I’ll find a few good places to think of her when I’m out there being stubborn and walking anywhere I want.

—

My grandma died in June 2014. Here’s the essay/obituary I wrote about her back then.

May your inner physics nerd (and chemistry nerd, too) keep you sucked into watching this entire video from 1987, which just keeps going and going, even though at times it looks like the chain reaction is millimeters away from being upset, and maybe that’s why it’s so compelling. (video) (thanks, Eric)

A hundred years from now, when historians are looking back at the communication styles we developed in the first couple decades of social media, I really hope they are able to access the many, many jokes that have been written in 280 characters or fewer, including this one, which I am sure will pop up in your head every time you put on a shirt for the rest of your life.

Speaking of social media: I forget where I found a link to this essay titled “How to end your extremely online era,” before I read the whole thing, not so much for the tips on how to spend less time scrolling, but for the observations and banger lines like these two:

• “I couldn’t help but come to the conviction, right there on the bus, that one of the most important questions modern man must ask himself is how much time he is willing to spend being passively entertained.”
• “Most of a good life is simply refusing to do what is bad.”

I had to count, but it’s been six months since we wrapped up our Freeflow Institute course in the Grand Canyon, and I continue to be glad that Eliot Treichel joined us for his second Freeflow course, even though he’s a published author and professor of English, because he put together this wonderful write-up about his experience on the trip for NRS’s Duct Tape Diaries.

We interviewed Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, for The Trailhead a few weeks back, and just published the episode this week to coincide with the publication of his book, The Running Ground. I didn’t say this in the interview, but I am not usually drawn to books about people getting faster at running road marathons, but the book held my interest in that exact thing, as well as the stories Thompson pulls into the narrative, about his father’s tumultuous life, his battle with cancer, and his efforts to balance his ambitions of being a good partner and a good dad, having a successful career, and running his fastest marathon in his mid-40s.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

If you are at all moved by a very specific nostalgia for the computers/technology/aesthetics of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, you may (as I sometimes do) scratch that itch with the r/cassettefuturism subreddit, which is full of photos of that sort of stuff, like this 1965 photo of the reception desk at the General Motors Technical Center, or this set of photos of the Brutalist design of the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco from 1973.

Maybe you’re paying attention to the World Series this year, or maybe not. Maybe you did or didn’t know that Game 3 went to 18 innings. Either way, here is a wonderful essay about staying up too late to watch the conclusion of that game, and I don’t think it’s spoiling it to say that the essay includes a mention of (and the trailer for) Invasion U.S.A., a Chuck Norris movie with a 22 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I have a number of new designs for coffee mugs and t-shirts that I’m trying to get out before the holiday shopping season starts ramping up (I can’t believe I’m saying that already, I apologize), and I whipped this one up a while back when I was flogging myself trying to write something about something and of course struggling mightily with it. Which reminded me that no matter what people on LinkedIn say, the creative process is never straightforward, and I don’t think it should be. Anyway, maybe someone in your life would like this mug that says “Please Do Not Question My Creative Process” (and by “someone,” maybe I mean “you”):

I think I was vaguely aware of Track Star before my friend Pitt sent me this video, in which Jack Coyne plays songs for MC Serch to quiz Serch on his hip-hop knowledge—but I hadn’t ever watched one. Now I’ve watched a few of them, but I think this one is still my favorite because of the enthusiasm Serch still has for the music and the culture. (video)

This is a great story about making time to write, and sometimes making desks to write on, and also about stealing—well, maybe not stealing if it’s during down time at the job—time to work on creative stuff, even if it’s not paying your bills, or paying at all. (thanks, Mario)

I don’t know why but during a couple conversations I’ve had with friends in the past few weeks, the question “Is running cool now?” has come up. I am not saying I have a strong opinion one way or another, but it had definitely not occurred to me that it was cool now. (Maybe because I run, and I am not cool?) And then Hilary sent me this essay titled “Running Isn’t Cool,” and I thought it was really interesting, especially this part: “To run is to be seen trying. To be seen sweating and snotting and grunting and wanting. To be vulnerable. A moving testament to humankind’s endless search for meaning through suffering. Running a marathon is thus, by definition, uncool.”

A few weeks ago, I was looking for new José González songs on Apple Music and found a rework of his song Broken Arrows by a group called Portico Quartet, and I immediately put this song on repeat for about 35 minutes. Then I started digging around YouTube to look for more of their stuff, and I found this wonderful video of them performing their Terrain album at Studio One at Abbey Road, and now this is all I want to listen to when I’m working, and I imagine it will be like this for several weeks.

I am excited to be working with the wonderful and hilarious folks at Precision Fuel & Hydration in 2026 and will be cooking up some fun stuff with them in the coming months, not the least of which is their continued sponsorship of this newsletter, and my continued consumption of their products on a weekly basis, my current favorite of which is this big bag of Carb & Electrolyte Drink Mix. Now that the temperatures are dropping a bit here in Missoula, I am running shorter distances and needing a few less carbs and electrolytes, so I’ve been doing one scoop of this mix in each water bottle before I head out on my runs up Mt. Sentinel, and I’ll tell you, it’s just about perfect. If you’d like to check it out, this link will give you 25 percent off your first order (or about $8 off a single bag of this mix).

We went to see Ross Gay speak at the University of Montana last week, and I don’t know the last time I have been so happy to be in the same room as someone whose art I love. (Actually, that’s a lie, I do know—it was Rakim, on his book tour in 2020, with my friend Syd) I decided a few weeks before Ross came to Missoula to go ahead and read the remaining books he’d written that I hadn’t read yet, all poetry collections and one epic poem about Dr. J. That night on campus, he was exactly who I thought he would be, a true joy, and I would have stuck around to high-five him after and maybe ask him to sign a few books, but we had a babysitter and had a feeling Jay wouldn’t let her put him to bed, so we took off, and I decided I would go ahead and continue being the enthusiastic evangelist for his work that I have been since 2021. So I searched around for an excerpt of one of his books that I thought was perfect, and here’s one about loitering, from the Book of Delights.

I thought the best part of this video clip was the clearly offended chef saying, “if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike,” but then I think the show hosts’ reaction of basically choking on the food in their mouths because they’re laughing so hard was the best part, but then the hosts are trying to obscure the mess they’ve just made and trying to hide while also still laughing, and then I started reading the comments and realized this saying has many versions, including “If my grandmother had wheels she would have been a truck,” and I kind of want to adopt this saying for myself now.

This Korean guy became a Detroit Pistons fan basically completely randomly, but then fell in love with the team and gradually became a die-hard fan, and then he saved up a bunch of money to make a trip to Detroit, and then a second trip to Detroit, and I’ll tell you what, Detroit loved this guy right back, and it’s a great story.

—

(click here to watch the video on YouTube)

We were scarcely eight miles into the 105-mile Tour du Mont Blanc when I narrowly avoided disaster. I had trained all summer for the steep ultramarathon days we planned to put in on the TMB. I came to Chamonix with 20-plus years of experience in the mountains, which I’d like to think amounted to at least something like wisdom. I have calibrated and recalibrated my risk tolerance as I’ve gotten older, but you can’t think of everything. 

In the mid-afternoon light of the small dining room of La Chalette, a mountain restaurant at the top of the Bellevue Cable Car, halfway through our first day on the TMB, I pushed down way too hard on the ketchup dispenser. A laserlike stream of tomato condiment completely missed the ramekin I held in my left hand, and the deep red bolt of ketchup sailed directly at a German hiker’s backpack sitting on top of the table. My heart leapt into my throat as I watched it unfold in slow motion. 

It missed. A wave of relief washed over me as I apologized to the two hikers at the table and mopped up the ketchup with a stack of napkins. I returned to our table, freshly reminded that when you’re adventuring in the Alps, you expose yourself to many risks, and a faux pas while dispensing condiments is just one of them. We had almost 100 miles left to travel on foot, which I reminded myself is a big number, and an even bigger number if you measure it in kilometers, the standard unit used by every country in the world except the U.S., Liberia, and Myanmar—including France, the country we were in today, Italy, the country we’d be in tomorrow and the next day, and Switzerland, the country we’d enter on Day 4. 

If you were to use a hotel breakfast croissant for a map of Mont Blanc (the croissant being Mont Blanc), this is what the TMB would roughly look like: 

I was invited to run the Tour du Mont Blanc by my friend Doug Mayer, who founded a company called Run The Alps back in 2012 during the twilight of his career as a producer for, I shit you not, Car Talk. Doug grew up in New York and New Hampshire, fell in love with trail running in the Alps, and decided to reinvent himself as a guy who helps people do running tours in the Alps. He asked if I’d like to try one of their self-guided trips this year, and I said: 

a) of course I would, Doug, but 

b) I have a three-year-old and a lovely wife, so

c) what do you have that’s not a super-long commitment? What about

d) this “Express Tour du Mont Blanc” I see on your website? 

Doug said, Well, our regular Tour du Mont Blanc is actually way more popular for many reasons including the daily mileage, but sure, excellent choice, sir. 

I asked Majell Backhausen, a North Face Australia athlete, freelance media pro, and environmental advocate if he would like to run it with me—which was a bit of a gamble on his part, since we had had several conversations but really hardly knew each other, and I was asking him if he’d like to spend 24 hours a day with me for five straight days, and he didn’t know if I snored at a high decibel level, or if I had a thing for conspiracy theories, or if I would demand he close down the hotel bar with me every night of the tour. He said yes. 

DAY 1: CHAMONIX TO LES CONTAMINES

Day 1 was our short day, at 15.7 miles/25.3 km, from the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix to Les Contamines. If you’ve ever seen footage of the start and/or finish of the UTMB, you’ve probably seen the Église Saint-Michel, aka “the church behind the start/finish arch.” A cliché place to begin (and hopefully end) our loop around Mont Blanc? We started in a light rain on Tuesday, September 5, to the sounds of work crews disassembling said arch, about 36 hours after the last UTMB runners had crossed the finish line. 

We stopped after 1.2 miles/1.9 km for a croissant and a cappuccino, maybe to set the tone for the trip? I mean, we’re not trying to do this thing on a low-carb diet.

Many Tour du Mont Blanc trips actually start in Les Houches, about 4.5 miles/7.3 km down the road from Chamonix, or a quick 30-minute train ride. That option shaves a few less-epic miles off the first day—mostly roads and multi-use paths that we ran, and I get why people skip that part. By starting and ending at the church in Chamonix, we would have a nice clean-looking loop on the map of our route, which would exist mostly in our minds but also a set of GPX files, I guess. 

After Les Houches, we began climbing in earnest up singletrack in a forest, while getting drenched by real rain, the kind of rain you hope you don’t get every single day of your trip. After our climb—about 2,500 feet/750 meters, we took a break at La Chalette to eat frites, aka French fries, aka chips, before finishing the second half of Day 1. 

We climbed up through patchy clouds, passing a few dozen hikers, up to Col de Tricot, the high point of our first day at 6955 ft/2120 m, and then ran as the clouds gave way to full sun and we descended into Les Contamines. We popped into a grocery and grabbed a few post-run snacks, and Majell bought a baguette, ripped it in two, and handed me half. I wouldn’t say I was exactly hankering for a big hunk of dry bread at that exact moment, but when in France. Also, our next day was our biggest day of mileage and vertical gain, so I guess we’d be needing the carbs/glycogen.

DAY 2: LES CONTAMINES TO COURMAYEUR

Going into our TMB trip, I knew I would have to eat hotel breakfasts like it was my job. Fortunately, this is a job I love, especially in the hotels around Mont Blanc, where every morning is a buffet of pastries, breads, jams and nut butters/pastes, good coffee, eggs, and other delights. 

Since Run the Alps had put together our self-guided trip, we hardly had to worry about details, and every morning we got up, packed our bags, ate as much breakfast as possible, loaded up our vests, and took off on our run. Not “took off” like we were bounding out the door running 7:30 miles—more like we walked out the door of the hotel, broke into a light jog while still digesting our breakfast, and ran to the start of the first climb of the day, which usually began fairly immediately. 

Usually, in the first few miles of our day, we’d pass a few hundred hikers, all making their way on the same route we were, in the same direction. Each year, Mont Blanc draws 20,000 climbers hoping to summit, and each year, the same number of people—20,000—do the Tour du Mont Blanc, walking or running around the mountain. You can generally discern the itinerary of a TMB traveler by the size of their backpack: 

Maybe an hour and a half into our second day, I heard someone behind us say “no way,” the voice of Adam Peterman, a guy from my neighborhood in Missoula who won the Western States Endurance Run in 2022. He was out for a training run with Caleb Olson, who won Western States in 2025, and we chatted with them for a few minutes before they detected that our priorities for the day were different than theirs, bid us goodbye, and took off running uphill. 

A little past the eight-mile (12.9 km) mark, we had chugged up 4,200-plus feet (1280 m) to Col de la Croix du Bonhomme, our first big climb of the day. We jogged downhill a few hundred feet to the Refuge de la Croix du Bonhomme and popped in for a slice of cake and a lemon tart. 

We ran singletrack down the 3,000-foot descent to the hamlet of Les Chapieux, where we took a proper lunch break and Majell made a sandwich out of a baguette and a small pizza: 

Our next big climb was seven-ish miles (11.25 km) up to Col de la Seigne, on the border of France and Italy. This of course put us in a new country—Italy—but it also was the point in my mind where the view of Mont Blanc really started to dominate our field of vision. Like every time you took a photo, a solid chunk of your visual reason when you pulled your phone out of your pocket was, oh yeah, that’s a dramatic piece of Mont Blanc you’re looking at. A hiker from Singapore asked Majell to take his photo, and while pointing in the direction of Mont Blanc, asked if it was Mont Blanc, and I don’t know if it was the language barrier, but the correct answer was either, “The actual summit is in that direction but partially obscured” or, while gesturing broadly with one hand, “Yeah, that whole thing over there is Mont Blanc.” A big deal. Massive, or even a massif, if you will. 

We ran the downhill, dropping about 1,800 feet (550 m) in three miles (5 km) to a brief flat section passing Lac du Combal, and then began our last climb of the day while Mont Blanc bathed in the best light we’d see all day (maybe the best light of the entire trip?). I mean, look at this shit: 

The TMB traverses up through bits of forest to Arete du Monte Favre, then rounds a corner into the top of the Courmayeur Mont Blanc ski resort. We stopped to fill bottles at the Maison Vielle Refuge at Col Checrouit, then dropped via steep tight switchbacks into the town of Courmayeur, where we ended our 50km day at the Hotel Bouton D’Or. As soon as we showered, we walked to dinner at La Padella, where we split:  

• 1 salade montagnarde
• 2 orders of gnocchi with cheese
• 1 order Pommes frites/French fries/chips
• 1 aI funghi pizza
• 2 orders of bread

I had a cold, which I’d felt the inklings of the day before our trip, thinking to myself, “Perfect timing, as always.” Thankfully, the next day was our “rest day,” which had been built into our itinerary by the folks at Run the Alps. At first I kind of pooh-poohed the idea of taking a rest day, but now I was more than happy to take one. 

DAY 3: COURMAYEUR TO COURMAYEUR

We smashed a big breakfast even though we were not running on Day 3. Thanks to the hotel, I discovered the invention of pistachio paste. We bought tickets to the Skyway Monte Bianco, a tram system that took us to Punta Hellbronner, (3466 m/11,371 ft), via a rotating cable car. Then we ate more food and watched it downpour outside, which fortuitously passed through during the night. 

DAY 4: COURMAYEUR TO CHAMPEX-LAC

The morning of Day 4, for whatever reason, the breakfast room at the hotel seemed way more crowded. Several groups looked like they were also headed out on the TMB. I gathered that one person in a big group near our table informed her friends that she was going to have to skip the next couple days and meet them in Champex-Lac, which must have been a huge bummer. 

People reserve rooms in the hotels and mountain huts along the TMB about a year in advance, and the route is, of course, a circle with only a handful of towns along the way, so if you have to miss a day because you’re injured or sick or whatever, you might have to miss two or three days and shuttle around the mountain via taxi or bus before you can re-join your group at the next town. 

Majell and I sat with our food and coffee, enjoying an immoderate breakfast and looking forward to another immoderate day on the trail measuring somewhere around 29 miles/48 km and 8000ish feet (2400 m) of climbing, according to the profile on our Run the Alps app: 

The route started climbing literally a few feet from the front door of our hotel, up the winding streets of Courmayeur, picking up a trail at the edge of town after about a mile of pavement. We passed groups of hikers, Majell jokingly saying to me “surge!” before we sprint-hiked past the groups of 10 and 12 trekkers and my heart rate jumped into Zone 4 territory. 

We passed by Rifugio Bertone after climbing 2,500 feet (760 m) in just over 2.5 miles (4 km), then ran as the trail mercifully flattened and contoured around the mountain. We cruised into Rifugio Bonatti, which Majell had said was more hotel than rustic mountain hut, and I ordered a couple cappuccinos and cookies. Majell had also, for some reason, purchased a one-inch-thick chocolate bar and would not let me not help him eat it, so, faced with another challenge in the mountains, I sat there in the sun and enjoyed all of it. There are many differences between the mountains in my beloved American West and the Alps, and every time I get to visit the Alps, I take advantage of places like the Bonatti refuge, which combines a couple of my favorite things: a mountain view and a solid espresso cafe. And also baked goods. 

Only one-fourth of the way through our day’s map, we chugged on, dropping down a few hundred feet and then starting our next climb, 2,500ish feet up to Grand Col Ferret, the high point of the TMB at 8,323 feet/2,537 meters. We shared the trail and the col with dozens of hikers, and I stopped to take photos for folks posing in front of the view back down the valley, which, to be fair, is absolutely incredible on a clear day and if you’re alive and there in person you damn well better stop and look at it, because otherwise why did you even bother coming?

At the col, we said goodbye to Italy and hello to Switzerland, a country we’d be in for, *checks notes* almost 24 hours, eight hours of which we’d hopefully be asleep. We descended, running down, down, down, for 13 straight miles (21 km), stopping briefly for a coffee at Buvette de la Peule, and to stroll through the town of La Fouly. As we were jogging through the hamlet of Praz de Fort, Majell remarked that he’d been through this spot several times before and didn’t remember it being so scenic. I assume all those other times, it was either dark or he was blindfolded. 

The last 3.5 miles/5.6 km, climbing one last gentle kick-in-the-shins 1400-foot (425 m) climb to Champex-Lac, took us a little over an hour, and by the time the Hotel Splendide came into view, I was ready for a chair. Fortunately, we had a room with an incredible view of the Grand Combin, and it had two chairs. There were more chairs in the dining room, where we ordered two dinners apiece and watched the moon rise over the Grand Combin, and I took the world’s worst moonrise photo with my iphone:

DAY 5: CHAMPEX- LAC TO CHAMONIX

This past spring, my friend Nick Triolo came out with a book called The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere, and in it, he explores the idea of circumambulation, which is, according to the dictionary definition, “to circle on foot especially ritualistically.” It’s full of all sorts of beautiful prose and thought-provoking shit, ruminating on why (some) humans want to summit/conquer things and (some) humans find meaning in circumambulating things. Like this, from the introduction: 

Having historically been a bit of a mountain summiter/“peak bagger” myself, but also loving a good loop now and then, I am a fan of both approaches. But I’ll say this: If your goal is to summit, there comes a point when it gets easier, usually halfway through the trip (or earlier). Of course I’m aware that the majority of mountaineering accidents happen on the way down the mountain, but aside from that unfortunate bit of data, once you summit, gravity is helping you get down. Maybe your pack is lighter, maybe you get a night or two of relaxing at base camp, maybe you walk off the top of El Capitan and hike back down to the valley. 

On the other hand: If you’re doing a loop, such as, say, the Tour du Mont Blanc, you can’t really take your foot off the gas, so to speak, till you finish the loop, which ends where you started the whole thing—in our case, Chamonix. Yes, we could have taken a train back into town if we wanted to skip the final seven-ish miles/11 km if we were really in a bad way, but that would have to be an emergency, in my opinion (and before 8:21 p.m., when the last train leaves Le Tour). 

We weren’t exactly bounding out the door of the Hotel Splendide after breakfast on Day 5—we walked most of the way through town, the past few days’ mileage weighing down our legs a bit. But we finally got going, jogging downhill until about Mile 3, and I reminded myself: Three more big climbs. 

I also reminded myself: Many, many people do this whole loop in a single push. It’s called the Ultra-Trail du Mont Blanc, aka UTMB, and 1,665 people finished it this year, out of 2492 entrants. Three people in our shuttle van from the Geneva airport to Chamonix did it, out of seven. Anyway, plenty of those people must have been at least a little bit like “fuck this” by the time they got to Champex-Lac. But they kept going. Maybe even without stopping for espressos! The humanity.

About five miles/8 km in, on the first climb, a kid in his late 20s stepped aside to let me pass on the steep trail. I said Bonjour, he said Bonjour back, and then, “You are strong.” I laughed and nodded, looked at his big pack, pointed at my tiny 12-liter running vest and said “small pack. ” At the top of our climb, we stopped for water at the Bovine alpage, which must be one of the best places in the world to be a cow, I guess if you’re a cow who enjoys expansive views of stuff like the Rhône Valley almost a vertical mile below. 

We dropped down into the town of Trient, stopping only for water, and settled into our 900-meter climb. Majell actually got out of my sight for what I think was the first time the entire trip, and I was not in a hurry to catch him. I kept plugging away in the intermittent shade on the trail, drenched in sweat and wishing for even the slightest breeze. Right around 14 miles/22.5 km, pretty much halfway through our day, we crossed the border back into France, which is not marked but paralleled the Tête de Balme chairlift right above our heads.

Just around the next corner, the dramatic north-facing expanse of Mont Blanc came back into view: 

We would barely lose sight of it the rest of the trip, as we wound another 13 miles/21 km up and down into the Chamonix valley, stopping once at Chalets de Balme for a sunny 9-Euro apple crumble and one last trail cappuccino. As we traversed the trails on the south face of the Aiguilles Rouges, we looked across the valley at the spires and glaciers of the entire Mont Blanc massif, unobscured by a single cloud. 

As we passed through the outdoor seating for the cafe at La Floria with about two miles/3 km to go, I started to let myself believe I was going to actually make it—none of my minor aches or pains would turn into something catastrophic, the cold I’d been fighting wouldn’t knock me out, and maybe I’d finish the final bit to the Église Saint-Michel in Chamonix without stumbling and falling. 

And I did. Majell and I crossed the bridge over the river back into town, weaved in and out of the hordes of people shopping the sales of all the shops in town, and jogged back up the church steps to complete the loop. 

It was kind of a whirlwind, and taking a couple more days to do it is definitely the more sane option. But we finished our circumambulation of the big mountain, and we took in all of it in the daylight. So now I understand why 20,000 people do it every year. 

—

For more information on Run The Alps guided and self-guided tours all over the Alps,
visit RunTheAlps.com.
The founder of Run The Alps, Doug Mayer, pronounced the apple fritter at Veera Donuts in Missoula, Montana, one of the best apple fritters he’d ever eaten, in March 2024. Or maybe he said “the best apple fritter I’ve ever eaten”? I can’t remember exactly. 

The students of Shanti, a driving instructor in New York, have a 99-percent success rate, and Shanti has been doing this for 30 years. I love everything about this short film (and it is also a shining example of how to use profanity in storytelling, in my opinion). (video)

This clip on the r/oddlysatisfying subreddit begins with this guy talking about how his car is 58 inches wide and his garage is 60 inches wide, and my first thought was, “how does he get out of the car after he drives it into the garage?” Now, the person who wrote the headline for this post was mainly excited about how smoothly the car slid into the garage, but I gotta say, watching this guy get out of the car was just a goddamn delight.

Having now dropped my phone onto actual rocks while trying to put it back in my vest after taking a photo twice in the past week, and realizing this unfortunate event might have been prevented by wearing gloves with some actual grip on the palms and fingers instead of some minimalist liners I’ve been wearing since 2020, I just ordered myself a pair of these Revo Merino Liner Gloves from newsletter sponsor Janji, which I am going to assume will solve all my phone-dropping problems for the next few months, and perhaps help with other tasks requiring at least a modicum of dexterity.

I wasn’t interested in this article titled “Is the Look Good, Play Good Theory Real? A Ringer Investigation” because I am into NFL football, but I have heard GOAT ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter say “Look good, feel good” many times before, and that’s why I clicked. I was pleasantly surprised by the data, the methodology, the writing, and really some of the shit-talking that occurs in this piece. I am happy that in a world where everyone says journalism is going to hell, someone is paying for stuff like this.

I have never seen a gravestone with a recipe on it, but Rosie Grant has seen a bunch of them, and has compiled 40 of them into a book called To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes. Which is in itself interesting and inspiring in the art sense, but reading this article and learning a bit about the research Grant did for the cookbook, and tracking down the deceased recipe writers’ surviving family members, was fantastic.

I’m sure there were many words spilled about the 50-year anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald—the actual ship sinking, not the Gordon Lightfoot song—but when this newsletter from Niko Stratis, “The Gales of November remembered,’ landed in my inbox, I trusted it would be fantastic. Her essay alternates between the history of the shipwreck and the song, and a car accident she survived, which is the style of much of her book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman (which I read in May 2025 and won’t shut up about)—great music writing about a song + great memoir writing about chunks of her life. (Also: I have done many laps of this live Punch Brothers cover of “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and I bet you will too)

There are two video clips in this post, and the documentary trailer is great and all, but what’s even more interesting is the second video, a clip from the movie in which you can (like I just did) how the word “podcast” came to be.

My friend Nick goes to a coffee shop every year on Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday (November 11) and reads Vonnegut books, which is a tradition I wish I had thought of first and will perhaps join in next year, or whenever Jay reaches a grade of school in which he doesn’t have Veterans Day off and stays home with us. Nick did include one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes about writing voice, “I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am.” If I may, though, I would like to tack on the next couple sentences Vonnegut wrote: “What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.”

Also: If you missed yesterday’s newsletter, here’s my new video about the Tour du Mont Blanc:

—

About three years ago, I decided to start writing bad poetry on a fitness app I use regularly. When I checked last week, I had written more than 500 poems. Mildly curious about whether any of them were halfway decent, I gave them a quick read. And then …

… did someone offer me a significant sum of money to publish some of my running poetry in a chapbook? No. 

OK, but was I pleasantly surprised to discover that I had, through persistence and hard work over three years, become a great poet? Also no. 

What did happen is I waded through a 500-plus page document and found that I had written a lot of bad poetry. But, some of it—well, hold on just a second: 

How I originally started doing this was: Back in 2022, I read this book of poetry and essays by Chris La Tray called One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large, and loved it. Then I listened to a 2020 episode of my friend Ed Roberson’s podcast, Mountain and Prairie, in which he interviewed the author, and Chris shared the process of how all that poetry became a book. That process, to put it in bullet points, was: 

• While working as a manufacturing consultant, Chris wanted to keep practicing the craft of writing, so he committed to writing one sentence every day (yes, a One-Sentence Journal, if you will)
• he happened to read the book Braided Creek, a collection of short poems that Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser wrote as correspondence to each other
• Chris realized that if he made some edits to the spacing and punctuation to the sentences in his one-sentence journal, they could be poems too
• He made the edits to the spacing and punctuation to the sentences in his one-sentence journal, and they became poems
• The poems became a book called One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large in 2018
• The book won a bunch of awards and Chris became Montana’s Poet Laureate

I did not have any illusions of writing an award-winning book of poetry (or even a non-award-winning book of poetry) or becoming a poet laureate, but I did think to myself: 

“Shit, one sentence? I could probably do that.” 

So in November 2022, I ran 3.1 miles, one of those just-going-through-the-motions, something-is-better-than-nothing runs, I stopped my watch, pulled up my Strava activity details, and tapped out a poem on my phone keyboard with my thumb. It was, like the run itself, a real going-through-the-motions, something-is-better-than-nothing effort: 

And then I just kept doing it. After every run, I’d stand in my kitchen, dripping sweat (late spring, summer, fall) or slowly freezing in my sweat (every other season), trying to type out a few lines that might, in the most generous of definitions, pass as poetry. In the worst case, I was still showing up—like a server at a brunch restaurant showing up for work on New Year’s Day after a very late night out partying. It may not have looked or felt that great, but I got the food to the tables and didn’t get fired. Like this one: 

In the best cases, I’d be present during the run, taking things in, trying to connect some sights or sounds into a scene that would work as a poem. Or something would happen during my run, and all I had to do was convert it into some sentences in my head by the time I finished running. Like this one: 

As I said, nothing magical happened—as in, nothing unexpected or miraculous happened. What usually happens happened: Some of the poetry wasn’t total shit. Lots of it was shit. Which is kind of what happens when you run, or go to the gym, or do any form of exercise—some days you have a really great time out there, and some days you just gotta get out there and get it done. 

Some days I’d have a great run, barely even thinking about my poem until I stopped my watch and remembered, Oh yeah, I always write a poem when I finish. Some days I’d have an average or below-average run, but a poem I thought was pretty decent would basically write itself. Rarely would I have both a fantastic run and an easy time writing the poem afterward.

But I never expect every run to feel amazing. I don’t really run with a goal of performance; I mostly run because of what it does for me: anti-anxiety, time in nature, fitness, lengthening telomeres, time to get away from devices and think, et cetera, et cetera. If I had a motto for my running on a sticky note above the closet where I keep my shoes, it might be: 

So then maybe the poetry motto would be: 

I was just messing around, really. Right? Publicly sharing poetry is not something most of us would probably do at an open mic night, or even on Substack. But Strava, an app where nobody reads much of your description of your activity (unless you’re a famous athlete), that’s kind of a safe space. If I was serious about it, I’d probably try to get published. But telling myself I was just messing around gave me permission. From myself, which is funny to say.

Chris La Tray said another thing in that Mountain and Prairie interview that stuck with me. He was talking about when he started going through his years of daily sentences to see if any of them would make good poems, and said, “for every good one, there’s five terrible ones.” That’s probably him being at least a little bit self-deprecating, but hey, if one out of six is good enough for our award-winning Poet Laureate’s first drafts, that seems like permission for the rest of us to try. 

I share Chris La Tray’s story—guy, busy working regular job, determined to keep creating every day, gradually builds something great—with all my writing workshop classes, because I think it’s inspiring and admirable for the rest of us (in the spirit of Austin Kleon’s “Forget the Noun, Do the Verb” or Oliver Burkeman’s “Kayaks and Superyachts”). But I also blame One-Sentence Journal for being a gateway drug to me inexplicably buying and reading poetry books, which is becoming a significant expense, but not quite a problem. Yet.

When the three-year mark passed a couple weeks back, I had thought I’d written a poem for every single run I’d done in that time period. But the spreadsheet said otherwise. I must have given myself a break from writing bad running poems  in January 2024 (a month in which I usually try to run a 5K every day, just to make myself get out of the house during our cold, dark days here), and was pretty spotty through that spring, when I was getting sick a lot thanks to viruses Jay was bringing home from day care. But overall, I wrote 524 poems in three years, 20,000-some words, kind of by accident. 

And if one out of six of those poems is good, that’s more than enough for a fairly standard poetry collection book, so maybe I’ll put one together sometime. Or maybe I’ll keep writing more bad poems, in order to eventually produce a few more good ones.  

—

Here’s a look at a new coffee mug design about the creative process (mug available here): 

NOTE: Like I said last week, I’m not doing a Black Friday email—this is a regular Friday Inspiration email! But if you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see a bunch of images and links to stuff in my DFTBA shop, some of which may be appropriate for someone on your holiday shopping list. There was something funky about the links I put in last week’s email, and that has been fixed this week (sorry about that!). 

—

If you haven’t seen One Battle After Another yet, this has a spoiler near the end (with a very clear warning beforehand), but what is not a spoiler is the explanation that no one involved in this film knew what the ending was going to be before they started shooting the ending (!!!)(video)

This article about the people who are still studying to be black cab drivers in London in the age of Uber is inspiring in the fact that passing the exam called “the Knowledge” is ridiculously hard, but it also gave me this strange sort of hopeful feeling, that maybe not everything we do as human beings is going to be replaced by tech that we think is great but ends up becoming, as Cory Doctorow termed it, enshittified. Like yeah, you could just use an app, but instead you’re taking on this nearly superhuman feat to memorize 25,000 streets in London and imprint the city map on your brain. Incredible. I’m rooting for this guy Besart to pass the test when he takes it. [GIFT LINK] 

Toe Socks! Newsletter sponsor Injinji is having a Black Friday sale through December 1 and a bunch of their socks are up to 50% off. I poked around a little bit yesterday afternoon and a couple of my favorites were still available (and marked down). The discounts vary per size and color, so it’s worth doing a little bit of clicking. Here’s the link to shop the sale.

I have only had one person ever tell me that they “didn’t do small talk,” and I don’t remember where our conversation went after that, but I definitely remember wondering about it afterward. Like where’s the line between small talk and big talk? Do you just launch right into the deep stuff with everyone? Baristas, cab drivers, the person next to you on a flight? I mean, I’m not like trying to push talking about the weather on anyone, but I definitely found myself nodding at a lot of the lines in this short piece, ‘It’s incredibly useful’: why small talk is actually great

I should have shared this last week (although I’m pretty sure I shared it last year or the year before?) but this recipe is one of my favorite fall/winter/cold weather/oh who am I kidding, anytime recipes, created by James Beard award-winning chef and ultrarunner Gregory Gourdet. Also, it’s super-easy: Brussels Sprouts Roasted with Kimchi and Scallions

Delete This Later is one of my favorite Substack newsletters, because of humor, not because it has anything to do with outdoor adventure or exercise. BUT! This week’s post is about getting into a kayak for the first time ever, and it reminded me that yes, kayaking is in fact difficult if you’ve never done it before. And can also be funny.

We interviewed writer, professor, and runner Lindsey Freeman for The Trailhead podcast that published this week, and one of my favorite observations of hers that we talked about was how running is one of the few really socially acceptable things you can try hard at in public (because it’s inherently hard compared to, say, drinking coffee).
Apple Podcasts | Spotify

For no real reason, back in 2021 and 2022, I talked Hilary into watching every film in the Fast and the Furious franchise with me. I think I just thought it would be worth studying a movie series that was at that time going on 11 movies. Plus, I told her, Roxane Gay is a huge fan of the franchise (yes, that Roxane Gay). I found out yesterday through reading this excerpt that a new book about the series, Welcome to the Family: The Explosive Story Behind Fast & Furious, the Blockbusters that Supercharged the World, came out this week, and I immediately thought a) I’m going to buy that book and b) I wonder if Roxane Gay is going to read and review that book on Goodreads? [Here’s a link to Roxane Gay talking about how much she loves the series, back in 2015]

And now, Stuff In My DFTBA Shop That May Be Appropriate For Someone On Your Holiday Shopping List:

The 2026 Semi-Rad Running Calendar (only 34 left as of Thursday morning!)

What Does Your Urine Say About You Nalgene Bottle (only 21 left as of Thursday morning!)

This Fucking Sucks… Mug

Please Do Not Question My Creative Process Coffee Mug

Hope, According to My Dog Mug

Practice Maximum Enthusiasm Hoodie

Ask Me About Free High Fives Shirt

The Zen of Training Shirt (Put In The Miles So You Can Put In The Miles)

Of course there are more mug designs, t-shirts, posters, and signed books—?to see the whole collection, click here?.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 4 is Kris Hampton, a podcaster, writer, artist, climbing coach and founder of Power Company Climbing.

Kris’s favorite things are:

1. “The Show” by Doug E. Fresh
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

2. “Check the Rhime” by A Tribe Called Quest
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

3. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Publisher’s page | Bookshop | Amazon | To Kill A Mockingbird movie trailer

4. Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

5. No Kings by Doomtree
Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

Other things we mentioned:
The Day Todd Skinner Fell To Earth, Men’s Journal

—

An update from me as we enter the final weeks of 2025: As you may already know, this newsletter is supported financially by my friend Don. And Brian. And Julie, Scott, Kim, Travis, Adam, Charlotte, Zachary, and a bunch of other people who kick in a few dollars a month on my Patreon or through paid Substack subscriptions. I am grateful and privileged to be able to create the things I create for a living, and it’s because of the support of those people that I’m able to continue. I always joke about “having to get a real job,” but that’s something that’s always in the back of my mind—hanging up the weekly writing for a steady paycheck. THANKFULLY, for now, I have Don, and Brian, and other folks, and, maybe this year: you? You can help keep this newsletter going via Patreon for $3 a month (or more if you’d like), and you’ll get my monthly members-only Patreon update, in which I share lots of behind-the-scenes stuff about upcoming projects, things I’ve learned over the years, and my annual book recommendations (coming in a few weeks!).

If you get some joy out of this newsletter and you’d like to get yourself a gift for 2026 called “Making Sure the Semi-Rad Newsletter Keeps Coming,” please click this link to check out my Patreon. Thanks again to everyone who’s been supporting my work for the past few years.

—

I honestly was not expecting this video to go as deep/thoughtful as it did in four-ish minutes: Why Is Everyone Running In Rom-Coms? (via Kottke) (video)

Maybe you are familiar with ultrarunner John Kelly, who has, among other achievements, finished the Barkley Marathons not once, but three times. Maybe you aren’t familiar with him. EITHER way, his grandmother, Stella, is turning 100 years old, and John put a post on Instagram saying she would love to receive some cards, including a brief bio of her and her address (Stella Kelly, The Glen at Oak Ridge, 200 Bus Terminal Road, Oak Ridge, TN 37830). I have a stamped and addressed card sitting on my desk right now, waiting a few days closer to the holidays to send it.

I broke out the microspikes for a lap up Mount Sentinel yesterday, and it was quite lovely, snow falling, the quiet trail, a very stiff breeze blasting my sweat-soaked wind jacket as my route went from the leeward side of the mountain to the windward side. It felt like my first real winter weather run this season, and I realized that I have no idea how my hydration needs change when the temperature drops, so I looked up a few articles on newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration’s website. This one, Why hydration still matters in cold climates and how to nail your strategy, by Katie Elliott, ski mountaineer and founder of Elliott Performance and Nutrition, was pretty eye-opening, even just for the fact that, ahem, did you know you actually pee MORE in cold weather? (FYI, clicking the above link will give you 25% off your first PFH purchase)

Any interview with Ethan Hawke is pretty much clickbait for me, but even if you’re not a huge fan of his work, I highly recommend listening to the two minutes starting at 10:39, where the conversation turns to why movies about regular people are important (this link will start the video at exactly 10:39).

I love this idea for this book: Sure, we know who paid for the Empire State Building to be built, and we know who the architects are—basically the rich people who were involved—but how about the actual workers who built it? The ones in the old photos we’ve all seen, roughneck daredevils (?) standing on exposed steel beams hundreds of feet above Manhattan, 40 years before OSHA was created. This article about the new book, Men at Work: The Untold Story of the Empire State Building and the Craftsmen Who Built It by Glenn Kurtz, is really intriguing. Also, did any of those guys ever drop a wrench from up there? Because that would be bad.

This is a super-long poem, but I was guessing from the title, “we acknowledge ourselves,” that it was a take on land acknowledgements, and once I started reading, I wanted to see where Iñupiaq poet Aisa Akootchook Warden was going to take it, and I was not disappointed.

I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this until my friend Glen sent it to me last weekend (thanks, Glen), but National Geographic Explorer and journalist Paul Salopek is walking across Africa, Asia, North America, and South America, retracing human migration from Africa. If I am reading the incredibly detailed and extremely well-produced website correctly, I believe he has just left Japan and  is now on a ship crossing the Pacific Ocean.

I have not read that much Charles Bukowski, but damn, this is a really interesting piece about the most inspiring thing he ever said—which was in response to a journalist asking him what he thought about a library in Finland banning one of his books because someone complained that it was vulgar.

—

Lastly: If you’re still looking for gift ideas, we still have some of these available in my DFTBA shop:

Bears Don’t Care About Your Problems (signed copy)

Grand Canyon Subway Map poster

I Hate Running and You Can Too (signed copy)

The Periodic Table of the Elements of Adventure poster

What Does Your Urine Say About You? Nalgene bottle

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 2 is Hilary Oliver, a writer and editor (who I happen to be married to). Hilary’s favorite things are:

1. Paul Simon, Graceland (album)

YouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon

3. Daft Punk, Alive (album)

YouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

4. Mark Rothko, Untitled (1968)

5. 20th Century Women

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 3 is Ed Roberson—dad, husband, adventurer, and creator of the Mountain & Prairie podcast. Ed’s favorite things are:

1. Liner notes from Jimmy Buffett’s 1990s albums

2. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
Publisher’s page | Bookshop | Amazon

3. The Gulf Stream by Winslow Homer

4. Tribe by Sebastian Junger

Publisher’s page | Bookshop | Amazon

5. Road House (the original)

Other things we mentioned:

• Jack Johnson’s cover of Jimmy Buffet’s A Pirate Looks at Forty
• The Rewatchables Road House episode

Every year, whenever the process of trying to find the perfect holiday gift for *everyone* at the exact same time hits its crescendo, I tell myself: One of these years, I’m just gonna do what Jeff Harris does. 

Every December for about a decade now, a Priority Mail Flat Rate box has arrived at my house, weighing approximately four and a half pounds. I open it, and if I don’t already have some softened butter, I grab a stick out of the refrigerator and command it to soften as fast as it can. 

Inside the box are two loaves of Harris Family Cranberry Bread, which stretch the definition of “bread” to the furthest extent of the laws of nature, and might even qualify as “cake,” depending on context or audience. Anyway: You are not making a BLT out of two slices of Harris Family Cranberry Bread. 

You just follow the directions on the label, which say: SLICE THICK > TOAST > BUTTER > REVEL

One loaf is approximately 10 slices of cranberry bread. In my house, since Hilary is much more of a disciplined/sensible eater than I am, I consume approximately 80 to 90 percent of our cranberry bread each holiday season. I am not at all mad or sad about this, and I would like to think everyone who is bestowed a loaf or two of Harris Family Cranberry Bread during the holidays appreciates it as much as I do. 

Jeff has been making cranberry bread since 2009—or, rather, 2009 is when he got serious about it, shipping loaves of it to family and friends. In peak years, he shipped about 80 loaves of cranberry bread, and baked another 70 or 80 loaves for friends and family in his hometown of Cincinnati, which added up to about 160 loaves total, baked four at a time for 50 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees. 

He’s dialed back production after back surgery a few years ago, so I am even more grateful when our box shows up. Especially because it’s always during the time when I start feeling the pressure to buy something for everyone in my family (even in a family that keeps the holiday gift-giving pretty minimal). 

I’m over here with 50 tabs open and a Note on my phone with a list of possible gift ideas for each person, trying to once again nail it, or at least not buy someone something that will leave them thinking, “Huh, that’s who you think I am?” Will they think this sweater is ugly, will they put this record on the turntable more than once ever, will they read past page 50 of this book, or should I just admit defeat and buy them a gift card? Argh. 

Gluten allergies and intolerances aside, the cranberry bread (or any mailable baked good, really) seems so … smart. No returns or exchanges, no gift receipts, no one having to hang a shirt in a closet for three years telling themselves they need to wear it more often/ever because someone who loves them bought it for them and their heart was in the right place. You just bake a shitton of delicious bread/cake, pack it up, and after it reaches its destination, it creates joy in all who are graced by its presence. 

And if it doesn’t create joy for its recipients, it’s at least biodegradable or compostable. Although if a retired man from Cincinnati is sending you loaves of cranberry bread every December and you’re not eating them, please contact me. I know someone who can get rid of them. 

—

If you are interested in the exact recipe for Harris Family Cranberry Bread, Jeff generously shared a PDF of it, and you can download it here. 

I was not prepared to learn so much about the human body when I started watching this new-to-me video about why kids don’t get cold as easily as adults do. But if you have five minutes to watch this, prepare to be armed with several pieces of information that will make you sound really smart. (video)

I linked to this series in December 2024, and totally forgot about it until the emails for this year’s series started popping up in my inbox again this December. There are still 12 days of it left, each one an essay on the topic “I thought about that a lot,” written anonymously and published once a day. Here’s a bit from the December 9 essay, “In 2025, I thought a lot about my body in numbers”: “What I’ve learnt is that I didn’t need extraordinary willpower. Just the steady motivation of wanting to feel better, and the awareness of what was at stake if I didn’t.”

I’ve loved having Janji as a newsletter sponsor in 2025, and really enjoyed trying out different pieces of gear as the seasons change, and my routine changes. Recently, I added in some strength training a couple times a week at the gym near our house, and I am happy to report that I have not injured myself yet (probably due to my very cautious approach to increasing weight/resistance). And of course I run to the gym, and run home. I’ve been wearing the Janji Circa Daily Tee, which is a blend of cotton, polyester, modal, and spandex, that I’ve worn for running, casual wear, and now to do barbell squats. The short-sleeve versions are pretty much sold out (so I’m not wrong!) but several colors are still available in the women’s long-sleeve version and the men’s long-sleeve version.

I am a huge fan of Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” one of my favorite books about how to write, and I saw this note by her pop up on Substack, read the first line and thought, “Fuckin Anne Lamott. Why is she always so right?”

This is probably more for people who have read a book to an infant or toddler in the recent past, but I was laughing out loud at Jae Towle Vieira’s writing in this Defector piece, “Here Is What Reading To My Child Has Done To My Brain,” commenting on the slight and not-so-slight absurdities in children’s books. Such as: “Before I had a kid, I questioned the need for the abundance of Wheels on the Bus variations. Now I understand that there is no upper limit to the ideal amount of things that could happen in threes on buses. All day long, all through the town—a la Speed, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing as long as the bus keeps going.” [GIFT LINK]

Like every other social media platform, Reddit often feeds me stuff I would have been better off not seeing, but I feel the most in-control of my feed there, so I keep going back, and often the local Missoula subreddit provides me with actual useful information (new restaurant/power outage/warning about something), or just a laugh—like when someone posted a photo of this tree that’s in one of our local nature areas and asked if it had a name. And now of course every time I go for a walk there, I’ll say, “There’s ol’ Don Quattro.”

We are very close to announcing the dates and location for my 2026 Freeflow Institute writing + trail running workshop, so my friend/Freeflow Institute founder Chandra Brown having been talking a lot of logistics lately, and somehow she did not mention this story she wrote for The Guardian about what happened to the body of a 40-ton whale that washed up on a beach in Anchorage in November 2024, and the guy who was determined to get it off the beach and into a museum. (and yes, the exploding whale of Florence, Oregon is mentioned in the story)

This essay is a few months old, but I found it after reading another piece the author published recently, and the headline “The slow death of firsthand experience” pulled me in. It gave me a lot to think about, and I realized I have wondered something similar, but as it relates to online writing, i.e. how much online writing is just reacting to or interpreting things or thinking about things, vs. telling about an actual experience (or even just making an actual real-world, non-screen-time experience part of an essay about something).

—

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 5 is Anya Miller Berg, brand creative director at Mountain Hardwear, climber, mountain biker, former architect, and cat mom. Anya’s favorite things are:

1. Teenagers in Their Bedrooms by Adrienne Salinger

Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon

2. Bobo Choses

3. Les Others Magazine

4. Barking at the Knot – Seamus Foster

5. (large scale art):

• Echoes of the Infinite by Alex Proba
• Souvenir by Kathleen Ryan
• The Red Popsicle by Catherine Mayer

—

As 2025 winds down, I’ve been revisiting all my Friday Inspiration newsletters from the year and picking out my favorite links from each of them. I was going to do one “best of 2025” post at the end of the year, but there was a lot of good stuff, so this week’s Friday Inspiration is a collection of my favorites from the first half of the year, January through June 2025.

First things first, though: I convinced newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration to put together a sample pack of my favorites from them, tried and true for me over the past year and a half. This link will give you 15% off the sample pack, which includes a box of 10 packets of PH 1000 electrolyte drink mix, 3 PF 90 gels, 3 PF 30 caffeine gels, and 4 PF 30 chews.

Onto the best of the first half of 2025 then:

—

This is not exactly new, but WOW, building a scale model of the timeline of the history of the universe in the Mojave Desert—in a day. (video)

From a short but brilliant essay titled, “You might just have to be bored,” subtitled, “Or: How to fix an attention span”: “Not being bored is why you always feel busy, why you keep “not having time” to take a package to the post office or work on your novel. You do have time—you just spend it on your phone. By refusing to ever let your brain rest, you are choosing to watch other people’s lives through a screen at the expense of your own.” (January)

I have been thinking a lot about nostalgia lately, after reading about a study that showed we all basically think the best everything happened when we were approximately 10 years old. So of course I clicked on this piece, “Your brain is lying to you about ‘the good old days,’” and the science behind why we think things were better in the past. And it applies to how we think about progress, and improving society, but I think also, specifically this passage, how we remember things like mountaineering, endurance events, and all things “Type 2 Fun”: “Thanks to ‘selective memory,’ humans have a tendency to forget negative events from the past and reinforce positive memories. It’s one reason why our feelings and memories about the past can be so inaccurate — we literally forget the bad things and give the good things a nice, pleasant glow. The further back the memory goes, the stronger that tendency can be.” (January)

I found Robin Wilding’s Substack this week through her post about putting her senior dog down (which was wonderful but maybe not what everyone needs to read this week), and I clicked around a bit and found this gem she wrote last September, The 11 Traits of Utterly Unfuckwithable People. My favorite might be #5, They Treat Servers Nice. (February)

I assume that you, like me, have had no less than one thousand instances in your life in which you had a weird or awkward conversation/confrontation with someone, walked away, and spent the next few minutes/several hours thinking, “you know what I should have said to that asshole?” If my assumption is correct, I think you will find Michael Estrin’s latest quick story very satisfying (and also hilarious). (February)

I have been trying to put my finger on why algorithms just don’t work that well to introduce me to new music/books/videos/shows/whatever, and I think lots of people are having the same feeling. This Atlantic piece about the new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist, dives into a bit of it, but also captures what I think many of us have been feeling: “Like so many other products influenced by machine learning, Spotify’s playlists can’t generate something new—say, a wholly fresh and unheard sound—for its users. They instead offer the flash of recognition, rather than the mind-scrambling revelation that comes only when you hear something you’d never expected.” [GIFT LINK] (February)

I don’t know how I stumbled on Mike Monteiro’s (non-Substack) newsletter, in which he answers one question every issue. But this one, answering the question, “How do you decide which donut to get?” begins thusly: “First off, congratulations on your donut. Donuts are fucking amazing and everyone should have a donut. Some of you might be thinking about donuts and attaching the word “deserve” to it. Fuck that. Deserve has nothing to do with donuts. You want a donut. You should have a donut.” (March)

David Epstein’s book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World is one of my favorite reads of the past five years, maybe because it validates my tendency to try lots of things instead of just one, or maybe because it encourages us to go ahead and be real human beings with multiple interests—like he does in this recent piece, “Why Hobbies Are An Advantage, Not a Distraction.” (March)

I think there’s a pretty easy response you could have to people who say things like “empathy is a weakness,” and certainly there were probably many, but the phrasing of this one was my favorite. (April)

This is a Substack post about paper (and really, using paper and writing utensils to think), from a writer I’ve never read before encountering this piece, and it just made my week. Because, I don’t know, I love paper too? And wish I used it more than I use my laptop and iPad. The author writes in the intro, “Also, the world needs way more mundane blogging,” but I don’t think this is mundane, and it also reminds me of the best advice I give myself when I’m stuck trying to come up with something to write about: Go smaller. Stop trying to solve the world’s problems and just write about something small. (April)

Love this display at a college library: Is it Kendrick Lamar or Shakespeare? (Subtext here: Is Kendrick the Shakespeare of our time? Was Shakespeare the Kendrick of his time? If they met, would they get along?)(April)

If you have a) ever tried to move a photo within a Microsoft Word document and b) somehow not seen this yet, I believe you will feel quite validated, and probably also laugh at this seven-second masterpiece. (May)

I love finding good writing, and I think I kind of suck at describing why it’s good—like this essay by Niko Stratis, whose work I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter. Her essays are always fascinating, weaving together music, culture, and scenes from growing up in the Yukon and becoming a journeyman glazier, and discovering her gender identity. Anyway, her new book, The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman, came out on Tuesday, and this week’s essay is one of my favorites I’ve read of hers, maybe partly because I also put songs on repeat for an hour sometimes. (May)

Trust me: Take 60 seconds, or 90 seconds (OK, maybe more like three to four minutes) and scroll through the photos created by the winners of the Milky Way Photographer of the Year Awards (via Kottke.org). (May)

I have mentioned before in this newsletter that I have been enjoying the live DJ mixes I often find on YouTube, but I think the production of this one might be my favorite yet: camcorder footage, a few different angles, a little bit of video editing, and a bunch of R&B tracks (and some live drumming). Plus the title is “the homies mixing R&B and chilling with a pineapple.” (May)

Years ago, I was climbing a multi-pitch route with a French friend who was pretty fluent in English, and we paused at a belay to eat a snack and drink some water. Simon pulled a small stuff sack from his pack and from the stuff sack a few food items, including the most battered energy bar I had ever seen. He held it up and said to me, “Theese ees my friend. He goes weeth me everywhere.” I of course understood exactly what he meant, as I, like every one, had the one bar that I kept bringing on hikes and climbs, but never eating, because I had better options. It was like an emergency ration that I kind of knew I would never eat unless I was on the verge of starvation. If you know what I mean, you will love artist Cy Whitling’s latest comic, “The Eternal Granola Bar.” (May)

I was clicking through Substack yesterday, wanting to find someone who wrote an actual story, a narrative of something that happened in real life. It wouldn’t have to be anything spectacular, just a story. And I found it. It was titled “I Agreed to Help Pick Up a Couch and Ended Up Participating in a Street Performance” and it made my day. If you read it, I am betting you will say to yourself, “Yes, I know or have met someone like Moonbeam.” (May)

Look, I am not saying everyone should drink five or more cups of coffee per day, but I’m also not saying people shouldn’t. Anne Kadet, whose Substack is a treasure, interviewed a handful people who drink prodigious amounts of coffee, and it made me feel both happy, less weird, and less alone. And also validated in my choice to make a 9-cup moka pot yesterday afternoon. (June)

I don’t know how I found the Why Cheap Art Manifesto this week, but something about the typeface and the style and the very simple message of it really hit home for me, and perhaps it will hit home for you too. If you are really into it, there’s a link at the bottom where you can purchase a print of it, which, at $20, I guess is technically cheap art, which is very meta, to support artists by buying a print of a manifesto about cheap art. But of course you can just read and enjoy it for free, too. (June)

If you have ever seen Christoph Niemann’s art and design work, you will probably not be surprised at how interesting and accessible this interactive piece he put together about artists and AI for the New York Times is—the first time I read it, I scrolled through it on my phone, which honestly worked just as well as viewing it on my laptop. It really covers some ground. Here’s a gift link to see it. (thanks, Fitz)(June)

—

If my Friday Inspiration newsletters made your 2025 a tiny bit better, please consider keeping it going in 2026 by supporting my work through Patreon here.

This time of year, many of us are looking back on the previous year, or looking forward to the next year, or both. When I am mulling over ideas to write about in late December, I often catch myself thinking too big, trying to solve all the world’s problems with an essay. So this year, I thought I’d re-publish a very brief piece I wrote a few years ago, because I still think about it often. And it’s based on something my friend Tom said to me in 2012, which was almost 14 years ago, so he really nailed it (in my opinion). Here it is: 

About five years ago, my friend Tom told me what I thought was an insignificant thing: that he’d taken a ceramic mug to his office and had started using that for his morning coffee instead of a travel mug. He said it made him feel less rushed.

In the span of those five years, Tom’s little seed of an idea stuck with me, and gradually and almost subconsciously grew into a full-blown life philosophy. I too tried to start drinking out of ceramic mugs when possible. I minimized drinking coffee in a car, preferring to schedule a few minutes for drinking coffee somewhere stationary, whether it was my apartment or a coffee shop. Every coffee shop I visited, I specified “for here” to avoid being served coffee in a paper cup. I noticed at hotels and sometimes airport coffee shops in Europe, coffee was served in ceramic mugs, and how much I liked it compared to a hotel breakfast in the U.S., served on all disposable dishes and cups. (Obviously it’s also better for the planet if we’re not creating a piece of trash every time we drink a cup of coffee, but I’m talking about something else here.)

I wouldn’t have expected that concept to change my life in a big way, but now I look at to-go cups and travel mugs like the equivalent of drinking wine out of a glass vs. straight out of the bottle. Or maybe more accurately, sitting down to eat a sandwich at an actual table vs. wolfing down a drive-through meal while navigating in freeway traffic. I’ve learned to like my coffee like I like my conversations with good friends: not rushed.

But we all feel rushed, don’t we? We live in a world that seems to get faster and faster every month. And how do we deal with it? Most of us try to adapt and keep up with it all, without even thinking about it. We have eight different methods people can use to contact us and we have to check them every 15 minutes just in case we missed something. We eat lunch at our desks, and drink our coffee out of non-spill vessels, often in our cars. And nobody just sits and drinks coffee anymore, except this legendary Starbucks customer spotted in 2015:

Yes, it’s great that we’ve been able to make lots of things portable, including drinking coffee. But while the actual coffee is portable, the experience of slowing down and taking a minute to be present is not so much.

Maybe my friend Tom is onto something with his ceramic coffee mug, and he knows something most of us should admit: that rushing the things we love isn’t making us any happier—even if it is making us able to scroll through 12 to 15 more meters of social media feeds every day. Maybe instead of trying so hard to keep up with everything, we should all take a small step in resisting the velocity of our discontent.

—

As 2025 winds down, I’ve been revisiting all my Friday Inspiration newsletters from the year and picking out my favorite links from each of them. I was going to do one “best of 2025” post at the end of the year, but there was a lot of good stuff, so this week’s Friday Inspiration is a collection of my favorites from the second half of the year, July through December 2025.

—

I wrote a whole newsletter about Listers the day after I watched it this past fall, and the gist is, “I didn’t care about birding before this film, but I could not stop watching this 2-hour film about two brothers who decide to get very into birding for an entire year.” (video)

I started laughing my ass off at the 00:09 mark of this video, and then thought, “this video is 63 seconds long, what else could happen in the next 50 seconds to make it better?” and I gotta tell you, I did not expect this lady to walk up to this guy, and get the reaction she got from him, which made me laugh even harder, and also sort of restore my faith in humans. (July)

This one-minute video was simply titled “Researchers react to first-ever photos” on the youseeingthisshit subreddit, and I watched it three or four times before I poked around to try to find more info on why these guys were so excited about this bird. The video is from 2022, shot on Fergusson Island, off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, and the bird is a Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon, which is a bird species that hadn’t been documented by scientists since it was first described in 1882—it was one of 20 “lost” birds that hadn’t been documented for more than 100 years. The guy with the camera is Cornell researcher Jordan Boersma, and he’s showing the video of the bird to local biologist Doka Nason. More info in this Audubon article, but the video itself is just a moment of joy. Like I am not what I would call a big “bird person” but I loooooove this video. (July)

This is a brand anthem video for HOKA, which I guess is essentially a sort of ad, but I gotta say, it’s fucking great. Made me think I actually do love running, partly because of exactly what they depict in the video: community. Anyway, it’s two minutes, and I’ve watched it three times this week. (July)

My friend Ed sent me this short blog from Seth Godin, Scarcity and Abundance, and it partly captures something I have been thinking about often, which is a mindset of scarcity vs. a mindset of abundance, and how much more I gravitate toward other people who believe they can “win” without other people having to “lose”—and of course, vice versa, how I’d rather just avoid people who think the only way they can be happy is if they somehow “beat” other people. And how we should all think about that sort of thing more (especially when driving automobiles?). (August)

Great headline on this short piece from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg’s newsletter: “The Most Underrated Performance Enhancer: Having Fun,” which is in the same vein of something I’ve told a lot of people when they mention the idea of starting writing a newsletter: have fun with it, or you’ll find yourself abandoning it because it feels like work. I believe Steve and Brad are writing more about success/winning, but I think we’re on the same wavelength (isn’t fun its own kind of success?). (August)

I am sure there is more to this story of the late musician and Harvard mathematician Tom Lehrer writing a letter to representatives for 2 Chainz in reply to their request for his permission to sample his song “The Old Dope Peddler,” but I think the writing itself is just *chef’s kiss*. (August)

I love artist/designer Mike Monteiro’s newsletter—in every post, he answers a question from a reader, in an essay, and I don’t read every post, but for whatever reason last week, the subject line “How to Stay Hopeful” grabbed me. And I was delighted to find that his answer had a lot to do with walking, bikes, neighbors, and cities. (August)

These shots are incredible, but I think made even better when you know a bit of the story of how long these photographers waited/planned/did math so they could get the shot. It would be really interesting to hear what they said about how they felt when they finally got these shots, and how they dealt with finally getting something they obsessed over for years. (September)

Do you need to look at a huge map of the entire Star Wars galaxy? Sure you do. Why am I not surprised (but still awed) that they created this? I love humans. (via Kottke) (September)

I don’t read every single email I get from the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day, but I try, and occasionally I read one that’s just perfect for that day, like this one Ada Limón wrote about a small moment she witnessed on a subway platform: While Everything Else Was Falling Apart (September)

I think Keith Haring’s art is still relevant, and if you don’t believe me, how about this bit that Jillian Hess dug up from Keith Haring’s Journals? “Money is the opposite of magic. Art is magic. The worlds of art and money are constantly intermingling. To survive this mixture the magic in art has to be applied in new ways. Magic must always triumph.” (September)

My friend Ben Polley wrote this piece on who lives and who dies after getting lost in the backcountry, and there’s a bunch of fascinating stuff in it, including this bit from the chief of county search and rescue here in Missoula: “there are two main categories of outdoor emergencies: those that involve meeting a schedule and those that involve pleasing another person.” (October)

I am not usually interested in videos with titles like “Shocking police brutality in Ireland,” but this was posted on the ContagiousLaughter subreddt, so I figured I could chance watching all 30 seconds of it, and I’ll tell you, it delivers, and does not need a trigger warning. (I mean, I guess it is technically a “dirty joke,” as far as that goes.) (October)

I’m not interested in using AI for the stuff I create, but I’m also not that interested in spending my time shit-talking it or people who use it. That said, when artists I respect comment on the whole moment we’re in with all of it, I am interested in what they have to say. So I read this piece/cartoon by Matthew Inman (The Oatmeal) when it landed in my inbox, and I definitely agree with a lot of what he says here—not so much the insults directed at people who evangelize about it, more the “talent vs. skill” stuff. (October)

This Blackbird Spyplane piece Hilary sent me yesterday echoes something I have quoted my friend Forest as saying to me once, a piece of advice that lives rent-free in my head—You don’t look cool looking at your phone. My favorite part: “This is the real cure for “phone addiction” that no one has considered. Forget lightphones, forget apps that lock you out of other apps. Humans are a deeply image-conscious species. Just think about how dumb you look when you’re on your phone, and how you would never willingly look that dumb by any other means.” (October)

Maybe you’re paying attention to the World Series this year, or maybe not. Maybe you did or didn’t know that Game 3 went to 18 innings. Either way, here is a wonderful essay about staying up too late to watch the conclusion of that game, and I don’t think it’s spoiling it to say that the essay includes a mention of (and the trailer for) Invasion U.S.A., a Chuck Norris movie with a 22 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (October)

This is a great story about making time to write, and sometimes making desks to write on, and also about stealing—well, maybe not stealing if it’s during down time at the job—time to work on creative stuff, even if it’s not paying your bills, or paying at all. (thanks, Mario) (November)

This Korean guy became a Detroit Pistons fan basically completely randomly, but then fell in love with the team and gradually became a die-hard fan, and then he saved up a bunch of money to make a trip to Detroit, and then a second trip to Detroit, and I’ll tell you what, Detroit loved this guy right back, and it’s a great story. (November)

I used to read Dave Barry’s column when it was printed on newspaper that was delivered to my parents’ house in the 1980s and 90s, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and I saw that he started a Substack a while back but I intentionally didn’t click on it because I wanted to preserve the Dave Barry of my childhood as he was. So: Thanks to Emily for sending me this Dave Barry piece about the exploding whale of Florence, Oregon, in 1970, which, as I learned in this story, will soon be the subject of a short documentary, and even though it’s been 55 years, I think it will be quite relevant to our current times. (November)

This article about the people who are still studying to be black cab drivers in London in the age of Uber is inspiring in the fact that passing the exam called “the Knowledge” is ridiculously hard, but it also gave me this strange sort of hopeful feeling, that maybe not everything we do as human beings is going to be replaced by tech that we think is great but ends up becoming, as Cory Doctorow termed it, enshittified. Like yeah, you could just use an app, but instead you’re taking on this nearly superhuman feat to memorize 25,000 streets in London and imprint the city map on your brain. Incredible. I’m rooting for this guy Besart to pass the test when he takes it. [GIFT LINK] (November)

Any interview with Ethan Hawke is pretty much clickbait for me, but even if you’re not a huge fan of his work, I highly recommend listening to the two minutes starting at 10:39, where the conversation turns to why movies about regular people are important (this link will start the video at exactly 10:39). (December)

I have not read that much Charles Bukowski, but damn, this is a really interesting piece about the most inspiring thing he ever said—which was in response to a journalist asking him what he thought about a library in Finland banning one of his books because someone complained that it was vulgar. (December)

This is probably more for people who have read a book to an infant or toddler in the recent past, but I was laughing out loud at Jae Towle Vieira’s writing in this Defector piece, “Here Is What Reading To My Child Has Done To My Brain,” commenting on the slight and not-so-slight absurdities in children’s books. Such as: “Before I had a kid, I questioned the need for the abundance of Wheels on the Bus variations. Now I understand that there is no upper limit to the ideal amount of things that could happen in threes on buses. All day long, all through the town—a la Speed, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing as long as the bus keeps going.” [GIFT LINK] (December)

—

If my Friday Inspiration newsletters made your 2025 a tiny bit better, please consider keeping it going in 2026 by supporting my work through Patreon here.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 6 is running coach, podcaster, writer, and runner Mario Fraioli. Mario’s favorite things are:

1. The Beatles — Here Comes The Sun
   Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube
2. Hunter S. Thompson’s letter to Hume Logan
   
3. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
   Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon
   
4. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball
5. The White Stripes — Little Room
   Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube
6. Seth Godin’s blog
   
7. The church at the end of Mario’s street

   Other things we mentioned:

• It Might Get Loud (trailer)
• Jimmy Page scene in It Might Get Loud

—

This is a fun idea, and as someone pointed out in the comments, probably one of the safer things Red Bull has sponsored (thanks, Hilary) (video)

I don’t know what it is but something in these Illustrations from “The House Of The Future” scratched a nostalgic itch for me, probably involving photos of humans using jetpacks and flying cars in a school textbook when I was in third or fourth grade.

Gabe Bullard moved to Switzerland and found himself suddenly caring very much about the snails he saw everywhere. My favorite few lines from this piece: “I asked Estée Bochud [who manages the Natural History Museum’s malacology collection] if moving snails like I was doing might cause them stress. She said it seemed fine, since snails can start on an adventure and not realize what they’ve gotten themselves into until it’s too late. I understood the feeling.” [GIFT LINK]

Someone linked to this piece, Thin Desires Are Eating Your Life, somewhere, and I apologize, but I forgot where and can’t track it down, so apologies to that person. I can say that I am now thinking of things as Thick Desires vs. Thin Desires: “The business model of most consumer technology is to identify some thick desire, find the part of it that produces a neurological reward, and then deliver that reward without the rest of the package.” (via Kottke)

I imagine this [satire] headline will resonate with you if you have ever done laundry in your life: Study Finds Missing Sock Will Only Appear Once Matching Sock Has Been Executed

This appears to be a tweet from 2022 but I am laughing at it and considering doing it myself.

I read this story that Hanif Abdurraqib wrote on Instagram sometime just after Christmas, and I am pretty sure the reason I’ve read four of his books is because I assume Hanif Abdurraqib moves through the world like this all the time, and probably tells stories like this all the time too. But don’t take it from me, take it from the 17,000+ other people who clicked the heart icon on this post.

I am still cranking out episodes of my new podcast, My Favorite Things, and the latest episode is an interview with my friend, writer and running coach Mario Fraioli, who snuck in a couple extra favorite things into our chat, which was fine by me (also, Mario would like it noted that his audio settings were off and he sounds “like a chipmunk”).

—

One of my newish favorite images of my kid, among the thousands, is him standing on the front of a lumber cart at a big-box home improvement store, holding his “sword” that his mom made for him out of parts from a toddler tool kit, wearing a dress that his mom also made him—really just kind of a skirt made out of a piece of fabric with beetles printed on it.

You could probably read a lot into his outfit, I suppose. But he has watched Frozen many, many times in the past few weeks, and I believe he likes to wear the dress because it makes him feel powerful. Elsa is the most powerful character in the movie, and she wears a dress. The sword, I’m not sure about, because Elsa never uses a sword, but lots of details about the movie are a little beyond him right now. But if you had sent me a photo of him with the sword and the dress on the front of the moving cart six years ago, and you had told me that I was the person pushing the cart, I’d have a lot of questions.

Our little guy turned three and a half last weekend. I don’t write much about him, or being a parent, and I always wondered if I could write something original about the experience of raising a kid. But it’s probably easier to just try to write the truth.

Years ago, back when I woke up to an alarm clock and not a child with immediate needs, I asked my friend Chris what he thought the biggest surprise about parenting was, and he said, “That the clichés are true.” Which I didn’t believe at the time, but he knew and I didn’t know anything.

Until 2021 or so, I did not think I’d ever become a parent, and I thought all parents said the same things about having kids: It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It goes by so fast. Et cetera, et cetera. And now I say all that cliché shit too, always reminding myself, dammit, Chris was right.

Here are a few things I’ve observed and thought about in the past 3.5 years:

Your kid is the cutest
Did you know that your kid is the cutest kid in the world, to you? It’s true. I imagine there’s some biological reason for this feeling among parents. Unless, of course, YOU think MY kid is the cutest kid in the world, in which case I would like to commend you on your impeccable taste and judgment.

Kids say the darndest things!
Or in our kid’s case, he said “Fucking Christ,” every once in a while, for several months when he was about two and a half. Hilary very politely tried to say that he could have picked it up from either of us, but I’m pretty fucking sure she was just trying to protect my feelings.

“Slow days, fast years”
I interviewed 40+ dads in the months leading up to Jay’s birth and the year after, and when I asked them what parenting forced them to improve about themselves, a great many of them said “patience.” This has never been more clear to me than when I ask Jay to wash his hands after using the toilet, or before eating. It is FUCKING ASTOUNDING how many things a three-year-old can find to distract himself from the one thing he is supposed to be doing. Look, I have 20 browser tabs open and can take an entire workday or two to write a 1,000-word essay, but six and a half minutes to wash your hands? Come on, man.

HOWEVER. Every bit of progress we mark as our little dude becomes more of kid and less of a baby means that part of his life—and our lives with him—is over. We have a shared Notes document where we type phonetic spellings of words Jay mispronounces as he learns to talk, because every time he figures out how to correctly pronounce a word, we lose his innocent, Beginning Talker words like “hollowcotter” and “dagedder.” [See Raymond Beisinger’s “The Affabet”]

Kids force you to be present.
Sure, playing with a toddler can sometimes feel tedious, especially when your presence is requested not to actually participate in the playing with, say, a train set, but to sit and watch your kid play with a train set. But when you pull out a smartphone and try to answer an email or check the weather and 15 seconds later you hear a tiny voice saying, “Dad,” as in, “Pay attention to me,” it’s really hard to not feel like a real asshole. Most dads I’ve talked to mentioned regretting that they had to work so much when their kids were young, and I get that, but at least work is earning money to provide food and shelter. There is literally almost nothing I can access on a smartphone that is worth ignoring my kid over. Even if he’s watching paint dry and asking me to watch him watch paint dry.

It’s gross
Previous to having a roommate who didn’t know how his butt worked, I thought I had a maybe slightly above-average comfort level with human feces. Like I feel like I have a Hirayama-in-Perfect Days level of comfort with cleaning toilets, don’t mind digging catholes or blue-bagging it in the backcountry, and have, since 2013, sold a “Grand Canyon Groover Calendar,” made up of photos I took while doing groover duty every day of a 28-day river trip. Well well well. Without getting into too much detail, the birth of my child marked a new epoch in my poop journey. This past December, we had a potty chair sitting next to our Christmas tree, long story, but that’s where we were. The irony of having a groover in my living room was not lost on me.

This is why we can’t have nice things.
Before I had a toddler, I had some stuff I cared about, and it was “nice.” Some of it’s still “nice.” Some of it has been dropped and/or broken and/or destroyed. Now that Jay has been our roommate for three and a half years, my possessions all probably fit into three categories:

1. Stuff that absolutely cannot get fucked up and needs to be hidden from child at all costs
2. Stuff that’s nice and that a toddler could maim themselves with, and therefore must be hidden from child
3. Stuff that’s nice, but let’s be honest, is less important than my kid’s experience of exploration and discovery, and therefor shareable, even if he breaks it, or that’s what I told myself after he broke it

It’s hard
People say raising a kid is hard. In my experience, they’re correct. I think what I didn’t expect was the diversity in types of “hard”: The interruptions of your own sleep that for the first three months or so feel like they’d be an effective interrogation tactic, the sudden disappearance of any time for yourself after decades of having what feels in retrospect like all the time in the world, trying to understand the psychology of a human being who is just discovering they have hands and that they act very irrationally when they are hungry or tired, the slowing down of literally everything you try to do as you chaperone an amateur human being through an airport or hardware store or the steps of putting on a sock—I could go on.

Am I complaining? I am not. Being a stupid idiot who believes that almost every meaningful thing in life requires difficulty or discomfort, I have realized that if I was forced to trade in all the hours it’s taken me to help raise this kid and do something else with them, I’d probably just pick another hard thing to do.

Also: I didn’t even do the physiological and psychological work of turning this dude from a zygote into a seven-pound human! Or the breastfeeding. As a dad, my body didn’t change in any noticeable way the entire time! I was just the assistant for all that stuff (maybe assistant manager?). And I still thought it was hard. Can you imagine if I had to be pregnant, give birth, and immediately feed and care for a thing that was a fetus 15 minutes ago?

“You’ll miss this”
There’s an old joke about mountaineering—or many jokes, probably, and the gist of them is basically: “That was miserable. I can’t wait to do it again.” It’s a joke, but it’s based on actual human psychology that we tend to forget the hard parts, and mountaineering, somewhat like child-rearing, has many hard parts.

“You asked for this”
I did. I asked for this. I consider myself privileged and lucky to be in a position to ask for this, and then receive it, and to have what has been a relatively smooth journey with it up until this point, all things considered. I would add the caveat, though, that maybe some of us weren’t super familiar with some of the specifics of the “this” that we were asking for, such as the amount of time I would spend using a Libman Easy Grip Scrub Brush to remove human feces from clothing, but also the feeling of reaching my hand down at a crosswalk and feeling a little hand reach up and grab my middle finger without ever taking my eyes off of vehicle traffic.

“You won’t understand until you have one for yourself”
See previous item. Also, to the extent that I understand raising a kid, I only understand my kid, not anyone else’s kid. Even if our kids are the exact same age, it’s not like we are comparing the same pair of running shoes or something— “Do you like the new cushioning in your Cascadia 19s? Me too.”

“They love to push your buttons”
I forget which parenting book I read this in, but yes, I too have felt that my kid has done a certain thing because he knows for sure that it will piss me off. Which is, of course, not true. Someone wrote somewhere that instead of imagining your two- or three-year-old is a smaller adult human who you can expect to act with some degree of rationality, it’s helpful to imagine they’re a raccoon, a creature you probably don’t think you can control.

“You get to see the world through a child’s eyes again”
Sure, this means watching some Daniel Tiger, or Bluey, or Frozen 25+ times or whatever. But it also means when I’m pedaling our cargo bike down the path to take Jay to preschool, trying to find things to talk to him about, and I see a three-quarter moon in the morning sky, and I realize this is a novel thing I can point out to my kid, and I say, “Jay, did you see the moon?” I am also telling myself to look at the moon, which is, compared to mentally cataloguing the dozen or so things I need to do today or stressing about an upcoming deadline, actually quite nice.

—

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work.