The Shorts — The Swallow and the Anchor
The Swallow and the Anchor “My future captain interviewed me with three questions,” remembers Joe Aultman-Moore. “Had I ever sailed before? No. Did I get seasick? I don’t know. And, could I leave tomorrow? Yes.” As Joe learned to sail while hitchhiking on a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean, he also discovered the unexpected ways […]
The Shorts — 365 Days
365 Days “In the day to day tangle of life, it’s easy to let go of the things that provide that focus, and calm and perspective,” writes Fitz Cahall. “I find that serenity so easily in wilderness. How do we carry that home?” While on a trip to Minnesota’s Boundary Waters, Fitz resolved to do […]
The Shorts–The Journey Within
The Journey Within “I’m thirty-years-old, and a complete and utter failure,” writes Chris Kalman. “My mom is a PhD astrophysicist, my dad, a PhD mathematician, and my sister has a Master’s in epidemiology. They all have jobs, children, houses. I, on the other hand, am a dirtbag.” Earlier this fall, Chris moved away from favorite […]
The Shorts–More Than Just a Camping Trip
More Than Just a Camping Trip “Death-by-lightning-strike statistics kept swirling through my head, causing me to push my 13-year-old daughter to the very limits of her physical ability. We were on her Trip,” writes Otto Gallaher. Today, we bring you the story of a rite-of-passage tradition in Otto’s family simply known as ‘The Trip’. What […]
The Shorts — Hooch
Hooch “It’s never encouraging to be awoken in a tent by headlights. I wanted to play possum–roll over, and pretend to sleep until they left,” writes David Hanson. “But this was exactly why I was here, a few hundred miles into a 500-mile canoe float down Georgia’s Chattahoochee. I came here to see the river, […]
The Shorts — 5 Steps to Bailing
5 Steps to Bailing “The reality of climbing is, if you climb long enough, you’re bound to bail,” writes Dean Fleming. “I’ve left rappel biners on sport bolted 5.8s. I’ve bailed from trees, chockstones, fixed cams, and Manzanita bushes. Sure, sometimes my pride gets a little dinged, but so far I’ve survived some pretty weird […]
The Shorts — Go For It!
Go For It! “Encouragement. Peer Pressure. Bullying. Call it what you like,” writes Tom Ireson, “but the climbing community is full of it.” We rely on our friends, mentors and coaches to push us past our own self-doubt–help us realize what we’re capable of. And yet, we never actually know what someone is capable of ahead of […]
The Shorts — The Drowning Machine
The Drowning Machine “I was disoriented beneath the cold water. I kicked toward the surface, but the force of the water held me down. I twisted and hung underwater for a moment. A thought passed through my head–this is what it feels like to drown,” writes Dan Gingold. Dan and three friends planned to raft […]
The Shorts — My Bluebird of Happiness
My Bluebird of Happiness “Standing up in my pedals, I dug so deep to make it to the top of the hill I wasn’t positive that my butt could bear sitting back down on my bike seat when I got to the top,” Hilary Oliver remembers. “I’d hardly said a word to another human being […]
