This is part 2 of Pat Ament’s essay, published in Volume 17. If you missed part 1, you can read it here. If you enjoyed this story please subscribe, it’s what keeps the zine dream alive! Banner photo of Pratt by Glen Denny. The psychic storm of the 1960s included the beautiful revelations and also…
The teenage Federale slings his machine gun over his shoulder and bends toward my bag. Cocaine? he asks. Marijuana? I have a stash of weed stuffed in an ibuprofen container in the outside zipper of my backpack. No, I say. Josh stands behind me. He doesn’t know about the stash. This? the youth asks. He…
“Think we could throw a haul bag out of an airplane? That would make the approach really easy.” Kennan was looking at me and Jeff with a twinkle in his eye, and unsure if he was serious, I asked, “Can you even open a plane door in flight, and if you could, wouldn’t it destabilize…
A rerun of our conversation with Tommy Caldwell from 2022, recorded in his van in Estes Park, Colorado. Big thanks to Shaun Matusewicz for joining on the adventure and helping with the interview! Our sponsors for Season 7: Kilter: http://settercloset.com (email holds@kiltergrips.com for more information) Osprey: https://www.osprey.com/ Scarpa. Use this link to shop Scarpa products, and The…
Then, when all seemed like peace had been restored to my existence, 9/11 happened. I was out on a morning jog, something I’d added to my climbing training, and I was listening to the radio on my Walkman. The song on the radio was interrupted: the United States had been attacked, and the first World…
“Keep dreamin’, stay hungry, and remember that there is no finish line.” This quote by Todd Skinner in the opening pages of the book Hangdog Days by Jeff Smoot gave me chills the first time I read it. In the pages that followed, I felt history come to life as I read tale after tale…
The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things… —Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of The World My first sense of it is auditory. I am walking toward the rim, eyes straining to see over an edge I can’t yet…
“Oh you feel and you taste it and you want to go higher. So what do you do? And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes. Spilt blood on this place it only echoes true all through the days. And so you peak into the mountain where your desire goes.” The Mountain…