It was mid-winter 2010/2011 and Wendy had just accepted an offer to forecast for the Chugach Avalanche Information Center. At her going-away party in Salt Lake, long time avalanche hunter Tom Kimbrough and I arrived late, hoods on and carrying a bottle of Woodford Reserve. At the time, my
Whenever people ask me, Are you working right now? (I get asked this a lot), my answer is always the same: To the untrained eye, it may appear as if I’m not working. But at the heart of the matter, I’m getting paid to pay attention. This, of
The writer Brian Doyle writes occasionally about times when he gets down on his knees and prays like hell. He's an unapologetic Catholic and makes no excuses for Catholicism, but when he says Pray Like Hell, I think he means it. And so I will do this, and
Thanks again for subscribing to Meditations. This wraps up the 5th summer of writing. I'm too lazy to count, but perhaps 130? 140 Meditations over that time? None of them are perishable; feel free to look over some of the old ones. To me, it's a
The Ego will protect itself until End of Times, even until the End of our own time. In other words, have we not seen the Ego destroy its physical being to protect itself? And this says nothing of "Other". It's a tall task to live well
A long time ago, a friend of mine in Montana was fired from his job due to a safety violation. It amounted to him totalling a work truck on a state road after he crashed into a retaining wall. The investigation showed that a nail on the road had punctured
Summer's End Still in straw hat and sandals. See you next week -
A bee staggers out of the peony. His most recognized work is Narrow Road to the Deep North...also translated as Journey to the Interior. A Buddhist, Basho was often mistaken for a priest while on the road in the 1600s. But it was the banana tree at his home
I first want you to know that I am one of you: I love skiing powder and hate crossing other tracks. I love making my own decisions in the mountains and I also love occasionally triggering avalanches. But as a backcountry avalanche forecaster for 26 years, there's something
You know the old saying, A guy on his own can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real idiocy, it takes teamwork? It's not true. Ok, it's not always true. But these ideas of Crew Resource Management......If you See Something, Say Something, etc..... have become
Overheard at the monastery between the novice and the master - I once asked you why you were doing something and you replied that it was important to occasionally sharpen the pencil. But the thing for me - I keep breaking the lead point of my pencil. A bunch of
It was just before midnight, 1974, when the devil - Scratch - appeared to Charlie McCarthy. McCarthy had just written Child of God (a book on loneliness, madness, depravity and other acts unfit for this polite audience) and Scratch saw some potential. He offered McCarthy the opportunity to be the