2009

Sagamore Hill, New York, December 2009.

Sagamore Hill [Teddy Roosevelt's summer house], New York, December 2009.

My sister Laura [left] myself, and my Aunt Betsy.

Skipping stones at the beach, Oyster Bay, New York.

Happenings

Backers of a measure to legalize same-sex marriage in New Jersey reacting to a 7-to-6 vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of the bill. [Via The New York Times 12/11/2009]

George Burgess has lived and worked most of his 96 years in Wyoming and Nebraska as a hired farmhand and in later years as a machinist. He still drives his truck eight miles into Torrington every day for a hot lunch and to socialize at the senior center. But his driver's license expires next month and he's worried about what he will do if he doesn't pass the test. "I might be on roller skates," he said. [Via The New York Times, 12/20/2009.]

Noise

~Torngat Mountains, Labrador Peninsula, Canada~

~Open Road~

Well the clock says its time to go,

going to the sun, on the open road, give me one try, 

and spin sweet wild wind over my hands the steering wheel dead arrrow

north into the night the snow flies hard and the shadow of the earth curves,

warped around huge mountains and endless promises, the highway withers 

beneath the momentous sky, impulsive, medians and mile markers, forever onward,

no particular path or destination, just forward, some things last forever, I hope this 

lasts for never, fade into a shimmering reflection in the rear view mirror, stranger,

we've met before, but on different terms, myself just a passenger spun on the endless,

narrow, asphalt strip of reality, that which separates us, the adventurer's, the wayward 

dreamers, the romantically detached fools, from them , the heavy, trodding masses, 

us delayed, just a rest stop or two.

~Numbers~

So much for numbers, the night has slid,

you said you'd call me, and never did.

I see you searching, don't know what for,

you say your different, but life's a bore.

regret the morning, that comes to fast

for your obsessions, already passed.

I see you searching, don't know what for,

you said your different, no,

your the bore.

So I stumbled on this old enrtry from July of 2005 two summers ago which I wrote while I was whitewater canoeing and hiking for 6 weeks in Northern Quebec on the De Pas and George Rivers with ten friends. I think the part about actually hearing the wold might have been wishful thinking on my part (or did we?... in any case I forget), but I think this sums some of my feeling for being in the wilderness for long periods of time.

55 Degrees 49' North, 65 Degrees 13' West. July 21st, 2005: "Though sometimes it seems in my memory the hours and days of the last few weeks blur together in an indecipherable haze of experience and sensory overload, this past day has been a particularly amazing and memorable experience, and as I haven’t had the chance to write for a few days I’m taking the time now to jot down a few remembrances. It seems that it’s been months since our group of twelve first met on the morning of July 4th way back in Wiscasset, Maine, but in fact this is only our seventeenth day together in the wilderness. Yesterday evening we paddled into our campsite for the night as the sun started to dip below the barren hills in the distance, and brought a satisfying end to both a long, hard day as well as a chapter of our trip, our time on the De Pas River. In the distance, the confluence of the De Pas and George rivers converge together, and ahead lies the massive expanse of sixty-five mile long Indian House Lake, home to the ancestral “barren land people” or the Naskapi Indians as they are called today, before the last of them were driven onto reservations in the 40’s by the government. As we approached last night’s campsite, suppressed weariness and fatigue of both the body and soul from the day’s long miles of paddling were relieved by what might be called a veritable arctic oasis by our campsite standards; here was a massive sandbar forming an island in the middle of the river than had been exposed by low water levels this year; it wasn’t even shown on our maps. A good thirty acres of flat, barren sand stretched out before us, akin to a gorgeous tropical beach at 56 degrees north in Arctic Quebec.

 I felt distinctly unearthly setting up our ultra-modern looking, bright yellow modular “North Face” tents in this arctic desert, and it is true we’ve begun to refer to this odd locale as “the mars campsite” over the last day. After setting up tents, unpacking, getting the boats put away, and doing dinner chores, I savored one of my favorite parts of our daily routine, our time as a group together around the fire, savoring both the delicious wilderness cuisine as well as both the wilderness and each other’s company. The thought of how lucky we were to be travelers through this vast, magnificent territory played through my mind as it often does in times of quiet contemplation. Perhaps fewer than a hundred people in the history of mankind, both Indian and white, had ever seen or stepped foot on my land, and this served as a continual reminder to leave only footsteps and take only pictures. A pleasant light breeze kept the normally vicious bugs to a tolerable low, and a typically spectacular arctic summer sunset played out across the interface between barren ridgelines and sky. In such latitudes as this, the day is sufficiently long, that the sun never really dips all the way below the horizon in midsummer, instead, rays of fiery hues of amber and gold play out for hours on end, ambient light for reflecting on things around the fires earthly glow. 

As we sit in a circle around the fires last dying embers on the shores of a great river in the midst of the greatest untapped wilderness in eastern North America, the conversation dwindles on its own as we sense the unspoken bond of the wilderness; one that binds all men subconsciously and might very well be the sinew of our being; what makes us both uniquely human as well as a member of the global earth community. As I savor the last bits of grilled salmon and trout, caught scarcely six hours ago, I feel that sense of overwhelming well-being that keeps me coming back to the wilderness summer after summer and binds me to the outdoors so strongly. No where else and at no other time have I felt so purely alive. Why is it that sometimes when the line between life and death is felt close enough almost to reach out and touch it, that we feel most alive ourselves? I have not seen a person outside of our group nor looked in a mirror and seen myself for over two weeks, and the closest inhabited settlement in several hundred miles away. Occasionally while paddling or doing dishes I catch my reflection on glassy surface of the water from the corner of my eye, and it almost makes me jump. One takes these things for granted in our modern civilization, and I wonder if our ancestors felt the same bond with the land I think we are compelled on a daily basis to stand in awe of. Overhead, the night sky looks as if a flashlight is being shone through a piece of black construction paper with pencil holes punched in it; I wonder if the ancient Romans, lying in the open fields after a day of battle or conquest, saw this same sky when they came up with the constellations. All of a sudden, a rolling wave of green and blue light morphs itself across the horizon and up through the sky, and reflect on one of my favorite images of the north, the aurora borealis. 

The ancient Inuit were afraid of the northern lights and made sacrifices to appease them, but somehow I sense this ghostly phenomenon to be my friend. We end our night with our usual ritual of sorts before retiring to a well-earned sleep in preparation for 5:00 AM wake-up and uncharted waters the next day. We join arms in a circle around the fire and share thoughts on the success of the day, what lies ahead, and the value of living in the present. Already I feel, along with the others, as if this group represents some of the closest people I have ever worked with, after having met some as strangers less than three weeks ago. Finally, we do our sort of goodnight signal, at the request of wildlife enthusiast and head trip leader Pieter Ingram, that we started a few weeks ago sort of to humor Pieter and also because it doesn’t really matter what you do when your 500 miles from civilization as we call it. On the count of three, we all gave our best wolf-call, howling for a good minute or so, all twelve of us, with sounds ranging from a baritone growl to what you might here if you accidentally stepped on a Chihuahua. To date we hadn’t gotten a response, but, wolves being intelligent, social creatures, we had heard from local native people we had encountered at the Indian village at the start of our trip, they will often respond if a pack is in hearing-range. Pieter gave the cut-off signal and we brought the cacophony of noise to an abrupt halt. 

What filled the air was the most startling silence I have ever heard, the sound of both absolute nothingness and everything sucking a vacuum into the air at the same time. The faint sounds of running water and wind rustling in the pines could be heard, but not a man-made sound in the slightest. As we prepared to end our own silence and admit defeat by calling in a night and hitting the hay, I felt the hairs bristle on my neck as the unmistakable howl of a wolf swept itself across the barren tundra in our direction. Far away across the river on a rocky knoll, the faint silhouettes of several dog-like creatures stood for a moment in the glow of the northern lights, and then disappeared. As I returned to my tent for a few precious hours asleep, I felt perhaps more keenly than I ever have or ever will the weariness of the body but the soundness of the soul."

The lower George River, Northern Quebec, Nunavik Territory, Canada.

"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it's still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for awhile and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."

- Edward Abbey. 

" Once we were becalmed off the Four Peaks, the highest coastal mass between Baffin Land and the strait of Magellan; they were dark and purplish, and patches of snow clung to them; the silence was of such a quality that it deafeaned, even as certain sensations of cold are so violent that they simulate in charecter and feeling a burn. It was my watch during this calm, and just after four in the morning. By the steely light I observed the angles between certain of the peaks, searching for a sign that we were being carried inshore. And the loneliness, the aloof chill of the jagged peaks and gray sea, was so great that once I nearly called the others to demand they help bear it. When the impusle was nearly irresistable, however, a breeze sprang up and the schooner, that unfit-for-sea, half-equipped, wholly botched version of a yacht, moved forward again carrying us still further into the north and the lands where we were to be discoverers and explorers, since trading and prospecting were no go. Once I saw deep into a secret and icy fjord and the notion of living in it, between the somber rock and cold, green water, came to me; periodically it recurs even today; there must have been some dark enchantment, in the sterile magnificence of the place."
Pg. 124, "Northern Lights", by Desmond Holridge.

Hurry Up And Wait

Star Peak, Humboldt County, Nevada, Memorial Day 2006.

Paradise Valley, Nevada, May 2006.

November 2009.

Oyster Bay, NY, 2005.

Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, October 2007, self-portrait.

Ogdensburg, New Jersey, May 2005.

George River, Labrador, Canada, 2007.

George River, Labrador, Canada, 2007.

Photos, Music, Media!!!!

Glacier National Park July 2008

Colorado School of Mines December 2007

Glacier National Park, July 2008.

Stowe, Vermont, 2003.

Busie, 2005.

Golden, Colorado, 2007

Franklin, New Jersey, Old Mill ruins, 2004.

Fluorescent calcite, Chihuahua, Mexico, 2005.

Stonington, Maine, 2009.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, October 2009.

Brandon, Moab, Utah, October 2007.

Gore Range, Colorado, September 2007.

Eden Mills, Vermont, 2005.

Black Sea, Kazakhstan.

Atomic Test over White Sands, New Mexico.

The first half [and some randoms] of these photos are by/of me, some just pictures I like a lot.

Some new music I think is noteworthy: Parisian electronica/nu-disco group "Jolie Cherie" recently released a fantastic track, 'Star' on French electronica label Kitsune Record's new compilation... check them out on the web; I believe they also may have several free songs on Last.Fm which is always worth checking out. Don't know who they are signed with or when they are planning on releasing an album; but I'm pushing for an early EP with "Star", "Barcelona", "Losing Control", and "Oh Yeah", possibly on 12 inches of delicious vinyl... that would be sweet.

This isn't particularly new, but if you like Australian band 'The Avalanches" and are as sad as I am they haven't released a new album and don't seem to be planning on it, do yourself a favor and check out Gothenburg, Sweden's 'Air France", who's full-length LP just came out in late 2008.... their instrumental prowess is pretty intense, not to mention fantastic sample and vocal-heavy ambient dub and trip-hop influenced pieces sort of reminiscent of early Thievery Corporation. Highly Recommended.

San Francisco's "Girls" have recently released their debut LP, the aptly-named "Album", which is a tremendous listen from start to finish, and with such tracks as "Lust for Life" [which by now has gone practically viral on the indie music blogosphere, and rightfully so!], "Laura", and "Hellhole Rat race" bubble over with a refreshingly earnest intensity and catchy, sing-along in the car kind of hooks. Difficult to quit listening to.

From the far reaches of western Australia in the remote city of Perth comes 19 year old wonderchild 'Shazam', who's new EP, "Pool Party 2008/2009" is on Bang Gang 12's and is one of the best new electronica/nu-disco/house EP's to come out in a Longgg time. Parisian's take note, the Australian scene is giving you a good run for your money as the premier electronic dance music producer today, with band's like The Presets, Grafton Primary, Theater of Disco, and Miami Horror dominating the cool party kids blogosphere as of late. Shazam's crew, Bang Gang, has become the most sought-after party DJ's down under, and hopefully will hop over the Pacific to this hemisphere sometime soon!!

The Requester's 2 DJ's from Barcelona who met through the massive big-room club scene on the sunny Mediterranean Coast and nearby party mecca of Ibiza, recently collaborated to release a sort of teaser EP, featuring a handful of song's "Strong Love", "Chrisis", and "Pianobytes" being the strongest cuts. Their energy and intensity is reminiscent of live set's by Kavinsky or Surkin, where the shear wattage of synthesized noise being produced is usually enough to blow-out speakers [see: Justice at Monolith Festival 2008] or get you dancing, preferably the latter. Anyways, I am awaiting this being pressed onto vinyl for some real fun spinnin' these tracks live. Stay tuned to them, and for a free sample, head over to the wonderful world of rcrdlbl.com and search "Requesters."

12/9/09. Skiing today was great. To be certain, I've had better powder days, even earlier is the season that this in fact, but the sensation I get skiing powder in the trees by myself is one that lends itself to making incomprehensible noises, shouting, laughing, smiling, and generally forgetting anything bad in the world. I often hear of ski bums waxing poetic on the joys of powder in similarly arcane and abstract ways, which, to the non-skiing public, must seem rather narcissistic and silly, after all, what could several feet of cold, frozen water provide that so transcends all other earthly experiences. I've been fortunate enough to have some great earthly experiences, while we are on that note. Traveling to remote parts of northern Canada and Europe to paddle some of them more pristine rivers left, sailing small wooden boats on the Maine coast under warm sunny skies, climbing mountains and walls all over the western U.S, I feel quite blessed on the whole. During trying or otherwise stressful times though, I find my mind always reverts to skiing memories; as a friend said recently, we all need our "happy place", sort of spiritual center of contentment and well-being [forgive the digression into nebulous hippy-speak] that brings everything "back in focus." For me, it seems memories of skiing powder are among the most vivid and intense one's I have.... thinking back on some of the best run's I've ever had; Highlands Bowl on a 2 foot pow day last April, East Vail backcountry skiing untracked pillows for 3,000 vertical feet, chutes under bluebird skies in Whistler, I realize I can recall these obscenely small and seemingly insignificant details that have become trapped in my recollection, suggesting some meaning more than I can understand. To many, myself at more mentally lucid times included, skiing at this level of obsession must seem kind of ridiculous, after all ,it is expensive, time-consuming, potentially dangerous [see: avalanches, trees, cliffs, ect..], and as of now, not generating any income, as I haven't quite gone pro yet, hah. So why devote so much energy to it? Much like climbing, skiing is not just a "sport" or "leisure activity", but a lifestyle with a complex and evolved culture around it, more so than any other "sport" I can think of. Bullshit, you say? Allow me to explain. Skiing, much like climbing again, is fairly easy to pick up if one has a little money to acquire good gear, the fortune of living in a well-suited location [such as Colorado], and a little athletic coordination. However, it is REALLY hard to become truly great at. Proof? 85% of skiers on the hill are relatively intermediate. Ok, so this sounds like I'm being an elitist, arrogant prick. Maybe I am. Hear me out. "Getting down something hard" is not necessesarily equal to being a highly skilled skier. Having the confidence AND ability to quickly and stylishly navigate steep, technical terrain, make fast, smart decisions on turns, terrain, and conditions. The best skiers are like stealthy, reclusive powder ninja's. Your laughing at me now. I know you are. The thing is though, they ARE. See the recent interview of big mountain [I hate that term, but it's an industry norm so I'm going to use it] skier Seth Morrison on ESPN's website [of all places!]. Anyways, Mr. Morrison is discussing skiing one of our mutually loved local spots, the East Vail backcountry. Let me state the brief disclaimer that East Vail is steep, mostly treed [read: really tight trees], and has "hidden" cliffs all over the place. People die there every year and it deserves respect. Anyways, sorry for that downer, but on a more upbeat note, it is some of the highest quality "sidecountry" accessed terrain in the state, and Seth in his interview stressed this. He also talked about keeping a low profile, not letting star-struck kids follow him to "the goods", and staying safe by choosing not to huck and ski the trees instead when the conditions are sketch. He also mentions wearing relatively low-profile outerwear, and being aware of what is going on around you at all times. Great advice from one of the best. My experience skiing, especially at Vail, is that there is almost always decent powder to be found somewhere, but sometimes you really gotta be creative/stealthy to find it. That does NOT mean cutting ropes, skiing avy terrain alone, et cetera. Not condoning this by any means. Just pointing out that skiing "creatively", ie, keeping an eye out for hidden stashes, having the conditions and your gear dialed in for you before you step on the hill, and respecting your limits are a surefire way to get the most out of skiing. If you are not a true "local" but poach all the same stashes that the locals do, this can lead to some drama; I remember last season scoping out a wicked clean line at the Beav from the chair and then actually managing to drop in at the right spot on the hike to hit it perfect, well, turns out a crew of Avon kids was right above me getting ready to drop the same face, me and my friend simply did not see the, but in any case, there was plenty of pow left for them. They didn't seem to pleased by our presence, however, enough so to inquire whether we "had avy gear" [we obviously did] and "knew the area at all" [just as well as them I imagine]. In any case it was kind of an unfortunate incident and made me think sometimes jealously/secrecy in skiing can be just as bad as in climbing, when someone develops some no-name crag and suddenly it is "theirs." In conclusion, we have learned one thing in this long, inconsistent, and highly opinionated diatribe: I love skiing. Oh and I think I might have got some minor frostbite from Vail today. So worth it. :)

-Phil.

12.13.09.

As is write this, I'm in the midst of finals, but also greatly relieved to be ending a rather stressful semester on a high note personally and acdemically. Last night, the 3rd Gentleman's league party went smashingly, at Mr. Retzloff's beautiful house in downtown Boulder. Attendance, sartorial prowess, and alcohol selection were all top-notch, as I have come to expect from these gatherings, hah. Just the break I needed from finals and the end of the semester life-in-transition stress. Anyways, after the party at Oliver's house, we chilled over at a friend's house before someone getting my ass home at 3/4 in the morning-ish from downtown Boulder.... a cab may have been involved, details are still a little peripheral at this time. I somehow ended up in a slightly grumpy/combative mood by the end of the night, think it was just the culmination of finals stress, and my disappointment at some aspects of the party.... it was a great gathering and I felt lucky to say that I knew 3/4th's of the people there and many are good friends, but I guess I was sort of hoping to meet someone more there.... well, you know what I mean. Such is life I suppose. No one there really interested me that much in that regard.... I guess I'm just so blahhh blahh cool blahh blahh handsome blahh blahh... who cares right? Don't want to be one of those vapid narcissistic bloggers, though I probably already am. Ah well... it seems the next significant other in your life often comes around without any prelude or warning, and certainly not at some contrived, pre-arranged social gathering of people I already know and intend on staying quite platonic with. Today I got outside climbing for the first time in ages, since right after Thanksgiving I suppose, with this nice respite from the recent nuclear cold in Colorado. Hopefully things will simultaneously work so that the mountains will get nuked with snow and Boulder will be warm/sunny.... wouldn't that be nice! Then I could go ski pow in the mountains AND go climbing outside around here. At this point though, feelings of winter skiing stoke have replaced climbing stoke, sand all my bro energy is dedicated towards shralping the gnar, err.... whatever that means. In any case, it's supposed to dump in Vail tonight, and I am studying my ass off for my calculus exam on Wednesday while severely pre-occupied mentally with thoughts of the back bowls which will likely open with this next storm, my NEW BOOTS(!!!) on the way here in the mail [09' Technica Agent AT boots], and the lovely pow-pow I will hopefully be skiing on wednesday through the weekend. Things are shaping up pretty decently in the mountains snow-wise thus far... not quite the month of epic dumps [contextually appropriate phrase, ok!] that characterized last December, but we will get there. What is really great about Vail is that because most of the terrain resembles something akin to a grassy alpine meadow in the summer, they can open terrain with virtually no base, as opposed to Pali at A-Basin, which has large rocks protruding everywhere even in "fat" mid-season conditions. I'll take nice consistent pow runs over core shots, thank you, even if they aren't quite as "extreme" [edit: nothing in my experience in-bounds at the resorts is really that "extreme", ok, so you have places like the Crested Butte hike-to bowls, Highlands Bowl and Snowmass's Headwall in Aspen, and Palmyra Peak in Telluride, but these are mostly just hard to get to and not super steep or technical, except in small chutes and cliff-avoiding.] I did ski something last year at the headwall at Snowmass which I'm pretty sure wasn't officially open at the time, but appeared to be a named chute and had a couple tracks down it; basically it was a narrow, steep chute cutting this 200'-ish cliff, maybe pushing 65 degrees at steepest [if you don't know how steep that is, lean against a wall until you are about to fall over], and involved some technical moves to get around a craggy 25 footer that split the bottom section. Definite "no-fall" terrain at the top, but super fun turns!! This type of stuff I think is more common at the Canadian resorts and over in Europe, but for obvious reasons [mainly involving liability/danger] is rare to find in-bounds at big American resorts. One of my best experiences in Whistler a few years ago was dropping into the "coffin", a super narrow, short chute of maybe 200 meters vertical, right under the peak chair on Whistler Mountain. Some local kids egged me on and said apparently it doesn't fill in enough to be skiable on many years.... wooo when I dropped in I could see why. A dozen of so jump turns and then a 50-degree ish straightline out onto the open bowl below... what a rush. Haven't found anything comparable in bounds since. Looking forward to hopefully stepping it up [safely!!] in East Vail this season.... there's this incredible pillow line that's kinda easy to miss/hard to get to, which involves a series of pretty techy 10-15 foot successive pillow drops into tight trees.... looks incredible, on a deep but not too sloughy day, it would be killer. Also wanna drop some bigee's in Benchmark Bowl when it's deep in there... that terrain is soooo good!!