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Aug, 2025

Aug 1 An image that describes dichotomous thinking: Imagine how hard it would be to function if you could only see what's in your periphery.

My current best (most developed) essay ideas:

• "'Casual Sex' Is An Oxymoron"
• "Eden Is Hell Too"
• "Leave the Pupa Alone"
• "Getting Away from What Might Seem to Be The Center of It All"
• "Park Ranger Revision"

"Comparison is the thief of joy"—sure, but let's challenge that. When is comparison a virtue? Comparison can be the benefactor, or the vehicle for gratitude and self-forgiveness. Compare your circumstances to someone less fortunate, and you are grateful. Compare your worst deeds to the immoral actions of others, and maybe you can forgive yourself and free yourself of the guilt that would otherwise distract you from future good-doing.

Aug 2 Man looks to the creature of the sky and kings to fly, to the creature of the sea and kings to breathe underwater. Then man looks within himself and accepts that he has neither gills nor wings, that he will only ever glide or dive and must return to earth if he is to survive. Man looks within himself and realizes his gift: that he can venture into the sky or the sea, into either side of the dichotomy, and bring the two into harmony.

Aug 4 "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs" (Stephen King, On Writing), but a single apt adverb can be a sentences ticket to heaven.

The Fall is almost the perfect human-origin myth, except for the context we give it that sin is a curse. Sin is a gift and so our banishment from Eden, for it is the combination of being mortal and having divine knowledge that makes us human. Thank God for Eve, the Mother of Man.

[[Eden Is Hell Too]]

Aug 6 To behold Nature's majesty is to become aware of my own mortality; to become aware of my own mortality is to feel grateful exist with and witness this majesty.

Aug 9 Aug 09, 2025—After hiking Quandary:

Breckenridge is lively today, more lively than in winter. I had lunch alone at the Horseshoe then went out by the Riverwalk to a bench to read. Children are in the river playing. A talented banjo-busker was captivating a crowd, so too a magician around the corner. Then raucous cheers from Breck's downtown patrons broke out in celebration of a wedding party that was walking along the river together. Every attendee, it seemed—a hundred people easy—were parading, led by the bride and groom who were followed by bridesmaids and groomsman, one of which was holding a boombox on his shoulder. Even though, right now, this is a town full of tourists (for some reason, I've seen so many people from KC today, wearing their Royals and Jayhawk gear), the community is strong and free.

No thing can exist as either only yin or yang, for within every thing is the seed of its opposite. The manta ray leaps from the water and glides for a moment like the albatross, as play; the albatross dives beneath the surface and dwells there for a moment like the manta ray, to hunt.

Aug 10 (Near the summit of Mt. Sherman):

One of the greatest virtues in life, and in mountaineering, is to be sure-footed: to select carefully and then commit.

While sitting here on the summit (of Mt. Sherman), eating my trail mix and peering out tens of miles to the horizon (northeast), I saw something that I have never seen, or never noticed, in nature. The sun above is fighting to burn through clouds and peaks through for seconds at a time before being blotted out again. And there are these clumps of cumulus clouds all the way out to the horizon, and between me and the silhouetted mountain ridge in the very distance, the sun is breaking through in many places, touching down. I have marveled before at the shadows that clouds cast on the land when viewed from above, but this is what was new: I see the shadows and highlights in the air, in the air between me and those mountains on the horizon. The clouds cast bands and beams of shadows that alternate with bright columns of light, such that the air itself looks like a set of vertical blinds.

Aug 11 You can see every insect on the surface of the Great Sand Dunes, no matter how small; they're like ink on blank canvas. You can't miss 'em. I saw every beetle—winged, either climbing or sliding, and high-contrast black against the yellow-gold.

Aug 16 To resolve a state of discord, [feed/ amplify/nurture] the seed of the opposite.

You want the challenge of your prose to be because of its intellectual content, which is analogous to the natural terrain and slope of a mountain. You do not want your reader to struggle because of the shoddy-ness of the trail.

[[Park-Ranger Revision]]

The stream accomplishes a waterfall not because it strives but because it abides.

The visual datum of my orange rainfly had shrunk to a single pixel.

Your reader needs sufficient (infra)structure and signposting (trailblazes) to be able to navigate on their own—to not get lost and not stumble. The park ranger does not accompany the park's patrons on their hikes, just as you will not be there to accompany your reader.

[[Park-Ranger Revision]]

August '25 14ers Trip Report

Why did I decide to hike ten peaks above 14,000 feet in one month? To challenge myself, to experience the best of Colorado, and most of all to prove to myself that I'm someone who keeps my word—to stop feeling like I've fallen behind on my commitments to myself.

I'm a better writer than almost every skier and a better skier than almost every writer, so consider hiring me to write about skiing.

Every image you conjure in your reader's mind must have a conceptual payoff, or at least a deep relevance to either the action or the argument.

[[Imagery Palette]]

Aug 09, 2025: Notes from Quandary Peak

• Heavy haze from the fires on the drive out, orange fireball in the sky after sunrise, one the mountain, through the side-view mirror. I looked back at it, and my eyes didn't burn, because the sun's light was more diffuse than a sunset on the ocean.
• Crowded at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Some hikers are already descending, which gives you a sense of the CO culture. People don't stay out until 3 a.m.; they get up at 3 a.m. so that they can catch sunrise from the summit.
• Quandary is just south of Breck on Route 9, and it's a model of trail maintenance and infrastructure. It has to be to handle the volume. Parking passes for the trailhead lot are $55 on the weekends (worth it), so scores of people take the shuttle from Main Street in Breck.
• Everyone greets one another, and people are considerate and aware of whether they're slowing someone down. Without fail, people move aside to pass (which would not happen in New Jersey, because everything seems to be a competition).
• I hadn't planned to do this, but when I reached the summit, I nestled into one of the round rock piles, shielded from the wind, and started making a rock balance. I had the idea that it'd be cool to do that at the summit of every 14er I hike. Most people do all the work to get up there then just take a picture or two and leave. What else is there to do really, except maybe eat and drink and take in the view. What better way to spend my summit time (and spend more time on summits) than with this meditative practice that I cherish? It'd help me connect with the summit itself, too, by studying the rocks and (hopefully) making them into art.
• The haze had slowly cleared up throughout the day, so the visibility kept improving, and some of the best views were on the descent.
• I love the pair of terraced (although damned) lakes that are in the valley to the south.

Aug 10, 2025: Notes from Mt. Sherman

• 11 miles of unpaved road
• Ruined mine
• Marmot early on, in the distance (heard it’s squeal/cry)
• The first half hour (acclimating to the ascent) is always the hardest part, even if it’s not the steepest pitch.
• Sound of the snow pellets landing on the scree, percussion with melody. It started snowing/sleeting while a group of us were on the summit. I was the last one to leave, because I was still trying to finish my rock balance.
• I found a cool-shaped rock near the bottom and started to carry and fidget with it, twirling it between my thumb and index finger. It was the size and shape of my palm-pad (sans nuckles). I decide that I would carry it to the top and incorporate it into my rock balance—effectively undoing what millennia (at least) had done to make that tiny stone crack and shave and tumble all the way down the mountain.
• Beams that remind me of the tesseract, inside the black hole, at the climax of Interstellar, the light/love/gravity beams that Nolan (Matthew McCanahey) manipulates with his fingertips.
• Two humbling things I saw on Sherman: (1) Near the summit, I saw a man descending, and he was hiking barefoot on the jagged scree, and when I was driving away—five miles down the 11-mile dirt road—the same man was jogging on the side of the road, barefoot. (2) Before I saw the barefoot man, I saw a mother escorting her bundled-up son who could not have been older than four. She was vice-gripping his and was the only reason he wasn't constantly falling. He was pulling her down the mountain and had just summited a 14er on his own two feet.

Aug 12, 2025: Notes from Mt. Bierstadt

• Perfect weather, best views, and my favorite 14er so far — the ridge line is beautiful from below
• Back east on I-70, toward Denver from Silverthorne, just south of
• Group of 70-year-olds who complimented us young ones on our pace but who also were on their way to do the Class 3 ridge to Mt. Blue Sky after submitting Bierstadt. I told them, What do you mean? You're harder than we are.
• I loved the rock-scramble section toward the top. It was not hard but totally fun. All the boulders were huge—mostly pink granite.
• At the summit, we saw a marmot, who was hanging out right near the Forest Service's metal medallion. There wasn't much for it to graze up there.
• We could also see Grays and Torreys, the outskirts of Denver, and the abandoned observatory atop Mt. Blue Sky
• On the descent, we followed a handsome white goat down the trail, giving him space. He stayed on the trail for a while and, at one point, trotted like a horse. He was an elder male. At one point, he stopped to graze for a while, the two of us and a group of two behind us went off the trail a bit and around him, as not to spook him.
• Gantt and I went to Beau Jo's in Idaho Springs afterwards and housed a large Mountain Pie (their signature style with the thick crust that you dip in honey as a "built-in dessert").

Aug 16, 2025: Notes from the Decalibron

• I camped her last night, right on the bank of Kite Lake, beneath the ridge line that accounted for three of the four peaks I would climb the next morning.
• Everyone was out before sunrise.
• So many baby marmots, all coo-ing. They move across the screen like they’re surging waves. Their cries echo through the bowl.
• Light(s): from blue-only, with specs of wobbling white on the switchbacks, then to a pure yellow bouncing off the white granite (6:28 a.m., 2 mins before sunrise)
• I can hear but can’t see the water flowing down every groove of the mountain that’s miles away, filling a high-alpine lake
• The furthest mountains you can see from the summit could be painted in watercolor with one pigment: a hazy blue.
• Marmots, especially the babies, sound like birds; they chirp.
• I retrieved a cardboard sign from a couloir using a stranger’s hiking pole. It looked sketchy; it was sketchy. If I had tired to descend without the ledge, I could have fallen a long way. Everyone around me was freaking out silently, as to not pass their worry onto me. It doesn't seem like it was worth it to risk my life to retrieve trash, but I weighed the risk and decided that it was less risky than the imperative of my principle of picking up trash when I see it in Nature. The stranger who lent me his pole called me a good Samaritan.
• These bulbous, green-and-purple succulents are thriving up here above 14k’
• The headlamps this morning were like seeing CATs at Breck.
• Most of Mt. Bross, including its summit is privately owned. You have to technically trespass to reach the peak (and that's why you have to sign a waiver to even drive up that dirt road).
• From Kite Lake, you can see every peak on the loop (all along the ridge line) except Lincoln, which is tucked behind Cameron and is the most dramatic of these peaks.
• Kite Lake's name is apparent when viewed from 14,000 feet. It's a perfect, kite-like rhombus and looks like one that's been abandoned in the grass. The kite is even complete with a long string, which is the dirt road that leads to the campsite.
• Everybody’s got a cardboard sign with the name of the mountain and its peak elevation. On this route, people have two signs, with a label on each side totaling the four peaks. And if a group doesn’t have a sign, they ask to borrow someone else’s for a picture.

Aug 17 Aug 17, 2025: Notes from Mt. Elbert @ 6:30

• the trailer is forced for the first 2 1/2 miles, and it's probably the best-kept trail ever seen. There are rocks laid in logs with crotch, hatches that form essentially one big staircase.
• I can hear a hundred chittering grasshoppers but can't spot a single one.
• I'm almost four miles in, and there has not been any rock-scrambling, route-finding, or even any scree.
• Elbert is big and tall but easy because of all the infrastructure. Although, I am feeling fatigued from this week of hiking. The steep step-ups are more taxing on my quads and glutes than they have been.
• Elbert is the tallest peak in the Rockies. The next highest peak in the Continental U.S. is the Sierra's Mt. Whitney.
• Oh shit! The chittering thing aren't grasshoppers but these massive, ugly beatles—brown, glistening chitin. And the part that chitters is on their backs near their heads. They do hop but along the ground, not into stalks of grass.
• It's more crowded than any other 14er, because it's the tallest. It's the same reason people almost die in the Death Zone queueing for the summit of Mt. Everest.
• There's quite a pleasure in seeing Mount Albert in my side view mirror as I drive down from the trailhead. It's the feeling of "I already did that today, and it's not even 1:00"

I believe in the concept of sin in so far as the fact that we "miss the mark," which is sin's etymological origin. But I disagree that it's a curse or something to be rid of. Here's a more life-affirming way to look at sin: as the ability to aim.

Like Sisyphus, we must be happy to climb and to die on the ascent, without reaching our destinations. But otherwise, human life is not quite Sisyphean. Sisyphus knows what's coming. Sisyphus is immortal. And Sisyphus gets to descend his hill, whereas we are always climbing.

The albatross and the manta ray are good stands-ins for the archetypal masculine and feminine. The albatross is ambitious, skilled, violent, protective; the manta ray is mysterious, chaotic, playful, receptive.

When I read Genesis as a man-made myth, I can't help but think that we created it as a way to divinely—and for all eternity—justify our insecurities and self-loathing. Being ashamed of nakedness, for instance, is something to overcome, not something to accept as a hand-me-down trait of the human condition.

Aug 20 Aug 20, 2025: Notes from my first visit to Created Butte's Secret Stash Pizza

• Asian influence in decor: ornate lamps (dangly string ones and metal one with holes and patterns), tapestry/robes hung between the booths like curtains, "Buddha's Belly" as a specialty pizza, many posters of Hindu (and Buddhist) deities
• Bar seats are sponsored with small plaques--the one in front of me: "Matty Robb, Forever in our hearts"
• I had the "Notorious F.IG."
• Two sets of two skis hung by rod iron banister spindles from the ceiling that each serve as the log of current tickets, for the kitchen to track orders
• Cell Phone Box on the way from front of house into the kitchen, which reads: "If you don't want your phone in here, put it in your locker. Love, The Management"
• "Fuck Yelp" sticker behind the bar and thousands of other stickers from patrons around the place, especially in the restrooms
• Laminated sign behind the bar: "Secret Stash will match any $1,000 kitchen tip" and ~35 streamers hung above the bar stools with notes from patrons who gave $1,000 tips — dating back only about three years (and that's just the one side of the bar—the streamers wrap all the way around them n front of the kitchen/pizza ovens)
• The tip jar for kitchen tips is a mini basket ball hoop, so that you can "dunk" ones into the bucket.
• A framed letter from the mayor in a shadow box, with frame lighting, praising the co-owner and founder of the place and declaring her a special citizen (looks like a shrine, with feminine figurines and art on the shelf beneath the hung frame
• "The Secret Stash Book of Pies—spiral-bound, semi-circular paper—displays photos of all of the specialty pies on the menu and is stored in the little condiment carriers that have napkins, Parmesan, and chili flakes
• Merch galore—hats, shirts, hoodies, etc.
• I came in late, 30 minutes before closing and was served at the bar. I got my pizza within 12 minutes of sitting down, and it was delicious, also creative and bursting with a surprising combo of flavors (most notably the combo of blue cheese and fig.
• The staff were in the midst of their clean-up checklists, which they seemed to be executing with military precision. No one was still. I watched the counter get wiped, the floors get mopped, the dough get recycled, the bar-runners get rinsed, the tips get gathered and counted. It was so obvious that everyone takes pride in working there. Why? Because this place has a rare commitment to quality and attention to detail.
• Oh! Further evidence of that fact: in multiple places, including beside the sink in the men's bathroom, they have a sign that asks for feedback and gives the email of the managers. They say that every piece of feedback is discussed with the whole team in their weekly meetings (freaking incredible—no wonder they're averaging 10 or more $1,000 tips per year).
• 10/10 on all fronts for a restaurant—I'm blown away.

Aug 21 It's a miracle the way that light moves through trees.

I looked at the map on the counter between us and saw how far F570 was from the footprint of the glacier. At no point on that route had my toes even touched the ice.

Aug 22 Aug 22, 2025: Notes from Sunshine via Redcloud

5:15 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.

• I rolled out of my tent this morning, before 5 a.m. to the sight of at least ten thousand stars and kept my headlamp on red light during breakfast as to not drown them out.
• the only sounds besides my breath and my boots is the Silver Creek (which is comprised of many streams) rushing down from every trough in the mountain.
• I miss stuck a star hanging just above the ridge of the mountain for a hiker's headlamp who started a couple hours before me.
• i've become much more perceptive of the changes in grade of the trail. It may seem obvious, but if you are not moving uphill at a challenging pace, you might not notice when it starts to suddenly flatten out. Part of why I have started to notice is that I am pushing myself up to a challenging pace for every grade, which means that when I feel like getting flatter, I start going faster.
• The stars have gone away and clouds have rolled in which I can see because of the moonlit-lake blue light that proceeds dawn.
• ("False Summits"): The wind was pushing up and pouring over the glacier, from Arnarstapi to Olafsvík (from my destination to my origin), anti-parallel to my [heading/aim].
• I'm tailing a guy who has hiked 4714 years, and who hiked Handies yesterday.
• 6:03—Turned off headlamp (blue light of the valley only) so that I can swim in the light that will flood the valley before it turns firey.
• ("The Sun Also Sets"): Terrestrial Immortality means standing long and tall in the balance of a day, knowing you will fall (like a rock-balance).
• Silver Creek is silver, murky, clouded as if with a high silica content. The tiny streams are silver too but not so opaque as the full-bodied creek.
• There's a tinge of campfire-scent from distant wildfires but no visible smoke or haze.
• 6:39—The sun has risen already on Handies and the surrounding peaks, due west of me down the valley. They are pink. Here, I'm still in shadow and will be for likely another thirty minutes to an hour.
• Hiking 14ers, for me, is not about risk-taking but about full and free living. (To challenge myself without threatening my wellbeing.)
• This is the least crowded trail I've been on, and I'm in the lead (besides that guy from Denver who passed me and seems to have taken an alternate route).
• ("Beneath Snæfellsjökull"): "Bareefoot, my pack plunges my feet deeper into the igneous sand. . . .
• Denver man spotted: he's several switchbacks ahead of me, already walking Redcloud's ridge-line.
• (About the Great Sand Dunes hike): "The Park Ranger said, 'The closer you get, the harder it will be to tell which dune it is.'"
• The peak that I thought was Redcloud, down there, was only a preliminary peak obscuring Redcloud, which peak is more deserving of the name, for it is both taller and more red (sanguanous).
• 7:42— looking Northwest to the rest of the San Juan, where Uncompaghre is the most prominent, I'm reminded of Landmanaulagar and its gradient, radiant streaks odd oxidized surface-iron and -silica.
• 7:51—The sun is high in the sky now, enough for my shadow to seem short, considering that it is cast off the ridge onto the downward-sloping western face.
• 7:57—First summit of Redcloud
• Shit! There's a guy climbing right up the saddle's gully. I'm far away, at least 500 vertical feet above him, and I can hear miniature rockslides with every step he takes. That's the route that the sign at the trailhead explicitly says not to descend.
• 8:50—Summit of Sunshine
• My summit apple tastes so rich, especially being in the summit before 9 a.m.
• The visibility is incredible this morning, yet it is clear now that there is haze to the east; the westward view (the view I have right now, eating my apple), of the San Juans, is exceptionally clear.
• Last night at the campsite, after brushing my teeth, I jumped the Denver guy's Subaru.
• Curious, fluffy, cute, furry, fast baby marmot at the summit of Sunshine
• My rock-balance fell on its own right before I was about to topple it, and I didn't even notice a gust of wind.
• There are some (white, bright) clouds around but none above these two summits. The "considerable commitment" of this route proved to not be a factor today because of this cooperative weather.
• I've already hiked the entire distance of the four-in one Decalibron loop, and I haven't even started my descent of this two-fer.
• ("There Is No Crime in Iceland"): ". . . like a bondsman brandishing his hip-holstered weapons."
• 10:27—Second summit of Redcloud and the true start of the descent
• Trash so far: a zip-tie and two CheezIts (and I accidentally dropped one cashew between a crack in the scree on Sunshine's summit—couldn't retrieve it.
• I've see a couple white butterflies and am wondering whether they are the endangered ones mentioned at the trailhead.
• Several slips on the steepest part of the descent but no falls—I'm using hiking poles for the first time ever, and they're helping.
• Also, I hear many more of those beetle/roach things but can't see them. On the entire hike so far, I've only seen one young, small one that wasn't chittering.
• I just saw a big-daddy roach/beetle crossing the trail and noticed that these things have long, needle-shaped tails. They look gnarly. And now I'm seeing a ton of them. It seems like they may be underground until a certain time of the day. When they're startled, they hop ungracefully, with their bulky bodies. I watch one day on jump downhill along the trail, and each time it flipped over and looked like a sand flee writhing on the beach before righting itself.
• I definitely just saw some of the butterflies. They're a beautiful, speckled orange. I watched one feed on a few tiny, many-petalled, yellow flowers.
• I just saw the biggest marmot I've ever seen chasing after another critter that I couldn't identify. The other critter was much faster, and it may have been an adolescent marmot. It looked sort of like a fox. The big marmot has a long, thin tail that is quite articulate, flicking with every stride of one of its four paws.
• One benefit of starting a hike well before sunrise is that the terrain on your descent, especially that of the final stretch, looks nothing like it did on your way up.
• There was a big fire down here, and hundreds of scorched trees have piled up in the creek. I had no idea that I'd walked by all that this morning. (Clearly the result of post-fire flooding and landslides)
• ("False Summits"): "Sisyphus gets to descend with the utter leisure of immortality and the enlivening sense of accomplishment that comes from actually reaching the summit of something."
• ("False Summits"): "Witnessing Nature's majesty, I was reminded of my own mortality, that my body is as ephemeral as a rainbow. Being reminded of my own mortality, I was grateful for the privilege to witness Her Majesty."
• 12:45—Complete

Springboard: What's a goal you have that you have yet to pursue, and how much time and money would it take to make a dent in it?

[[August '25 14ers Trip Report]]

Annie Dillard's greatest strength is also her greatest weakness, which is her self-indulgence. It seems that she follows every thought she has and later restructures her chapters to make those seemingly divergent thoughts relevant and coherent. Rather than choosing the most apt simile, for instance, she will give you three. It creates the effect of winding through another's mind—an exceptionally perceptive mind—, but it can be exhausting and disorienting.

Aug 23 Essay idea: Do a character study of the female-counterpart characters in film, describing two main archetypes: the woman who pulls the ambition out of the lost man (makes the heavy lighter), and the woman who grounds the lofty man and captures his attention (makes the light heavier).

I could call these the Muses and the Sirens. The muse inspires you, fills your lungs with air and makes you more buoyant. The siren pulls you down, maybe under, and distracts you from the path you were on, forces you to consider something else, something different, to reconsider your values.

Some examples of Muse characters:

• Sylvia in The Truman Show
• Clementine in Eternal Sunshine
• Skylar in Good Will Hunting

Some examples of Siren characters:

• Sloane ( in Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• Summer in 500 Days of Summer
• Pussycat (Margaret Qualley) in Once Upon a Time
• Debora in Baby Driver?

The memory of the muse may be more potent than the moment of connecting with the muse herself. You inevitably inflate and exaggerate all of her best characteristics, and it is the memory of the muse to which we all aspire.

(Example: Truman, in The Truman Show clipping apart the faces of female models in magazines to try to reconstruct his memory of Sylvia)

I like towns that are small enough where there's about one store-front for everything, and they're all simply named—for example—Telluride Window Treatments. As a bonus, towns this size have several highly curated and creative restaurants whose names and dishes are both unique and perfectly suited to the town (in Telluride, there's a mushroom theme: Telluride Truffle Chocolates is two doors down from Wood Ear, which is a Texas BBQ–inspired ramen place).

Aug 24 Imagery Palette

Every piece of writing—whether a chapter or an essay or whatever—needs to have its own imagery palette, like the room of any home needs a color palette. Figurative language and comparisons are valuable and essential for captivating readers, yet maybe the best way to describe the common error of "purple prose" is that the figurative language of the piece bleeds outside of the imagery palette. You want to have a related cluster of images, not a sporadic, haphazard collage of clashing colors.

Aug 25 Twice today I've read about The Great Unconformity (first in a spiral-bound, self-published book on Ouray geology in the Ouray Bookstore and just now on an infographic by the high bridge above of Box Canyon). That term describes a billion-year gap in our understanding of the sedimentation of the San Juan–Uncompaghre region, which understanding is otherwise complete—without any gaps—stretching back to the pre-Cambrian era. Geologists make pilgrimages to Box Canyon to see this mysterious, unreconcilable strata in the sheer walls of the creek, apparently to marvel at it and sear for clues that would help us make sense of how it happened. With my untrained eye, I would never have guessed it to be an "unconformity," and given the strata's vertical height, I would have never guess that it accounts for an entire billion-year period of rock-action.

Aug 26 In my writing, I don't want my meaning to be so opaque as to confuse and I don't want it to be so overt as to bore. I ought to weave many meanings together into a tapestry with enough variety and intricacy that the reader must get involved, lean in to inspect it, and engage in meaning-making.

Aug 26, 2025, on the Bridal Veil Falls Trail:

I've seen some fallen heart-shaped, yellow leaves on the trails over the last couple of weeks, but today the Aspen have turned yellow in mass, at least in the hills above Telluride. Even just a few hundred feet lower on the trail, the bushy tips of the Aspen arrows are more green.

Aug 27 The interrogative mood and the subjunctive tense are unrepresented in contemporary American nonfiction, which means that we are not asking enough questions and are a little too certain of our [answers/convictions].

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