Month: July 2020

1. A four-day, 65-mile walk along the Texas coast from Texas Monthly’s David Courtney. This is just fantastic and this sounds like an ultra marathon waiting to happen.

And so, in late March we set off for an epic coastal excursion that would allow me to spend my days immersed in the fine art of beachcombing and my nights beneath a starry South Texas sky. While the rest of the world was hunkering down in isolation, I was going to partake in some social distancing of a different sort.

2. Alsace.

Photo by Vered Caspi on Unsplash

3. GQ’s Alex Shultz interviews Kilian Jornet, the Spaniard ultrarunner who has a pretty simple life and just runs all day and that sounds fantastic.

I wake up at 6 or 7, eat a small breakfast, and go for a longer workout. It could be a long day in the mountains—six or seven hours—or it could be two hours on flatter land trying to go fast. In the afternoon, I will go for a short one-hour run or ride on the bike.

4. Outside Online’s Alex Hutchinson writes about the difference between effort and pain. The funny thing for me is that pain used to happen quite a bit for me because I was putting forth a significant amount of effort and now I don’t think I feel pain, but my effort output gets pushed. If you haven’t almost shit yourself while working out, then you haven’t pushed yourself (I’m being extreme here, but it’s true for me).

5. This so reminded me of Reno 911, especially getting away and then being apprehended again.

1. I don’t even fish that much, but found this fascinating. Basically an untouched part of the world.

2. Bitter Southerner writes about burning the South. Not in that way, controlled burning to reduce wildfires.

By helping forest managers do more controlled burns, Warwick’s crew can help reduce the likelihood and severity of wildfires, enhance biodiversity, and increase the amount of usable habitat for species as big as the black bear and as small as the bog turtle, the smallest turtle in North America found only in the Southern Blue Ridge.

“At The Nature Conservancy, we realize we’re not going to save the world by just managing our 5,000 acres here and 4,000 acres there,” Warwick said. “In western North Carolina alone, there’s a million acres of public land that’s not getting fire like it should.”

By bringing fire back, everyone wins.

3. Via Outside Online, what we know about pain is probably, maybe wrong.

The first way we get chronic pain wrong, says Starrett, is that we assume it occurs in the muscles or bones or, in the case of psychological disorders, the mind. However, more recent work in the field of pain science reveals this isn’t the case. Persistent chronic pain is a bio-psycho-social phenomenon. In other words, it manifests from a combination of issues arising in our bodies, minds, and communities. While acute pain (e.g., a broken wrist, a sprained ankle, or transient anxiety or depression) recedes with targeted treatments, chronic pain does not. Thus, Starrett says, it requires a much more holistic view.

4.

5. I don’t have a lot going on this week and it’s been incredibly busy so getting 5 things to read and or look at have been challenging. Have a day. A good day.

1. This is Engelberg, Switzerland and holy smokes is this beautiful. You can do an alpine cheese tour! A cheese tour!

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

2. I had never heard of the 1950 World Cup win of the United States over England, 1-0, via Men In Blazers:

Today is the 70th anniversary of USA 1 England 0, World Cup 1950. The greatest shock in Tournament history. An amatuer US team dropped England’s finest. The only goal scored by the man carried off the field here, Joe Gaetjens, a Haitian-born part-time dishwasher, who headed in a cross from the American captain/gym teacher Walter Bahr. Helped by a series of heroic saves from undertaker/goalkeeper Frank Borghi, the United States hung on for a heroic victory of which we should still be proud. While English papers proclaimed the death of English football, the American coach, Bill Jeffrey, proudly announced, “This is all we need to make the game go in the States!” It would prove to be just the first of many false dawns for U.S. soccer. Only one journalist, Dent McSkimming of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, saw the game live, and the New York Times, at first believing the reported victory to be a hoax when it came through on the wire, buried the story. We raise a glass to the memory of these American legends 🇺🇸🙌🍻

3. Via Outside Online the story of the volcano explosion at New Zealand’s White Island (just last year):

Last December, around 100 tourists set out for New Zealand’s Whakaari/White Island, where an active volcano has attracted hundreds of thousands of vacationers since the early 1990s. It was supposed to be a routine six-hour tour, including the highlight: a quick hike into the island’s otherworldly caldera. Then the volcano exploded. What happened next reveals troubling questions about the risks we’re willing to take when lives hang in the balance.

4. Via Domino, the story of Marcus Bridgewater, his garden in Houston, and his TikTok Garden Marcus (this made me smile):

In the years since adopting those first few plants, Bridgewater devoted himself to learning everything he could about gardening—and in the process he also learned more about himself. “A friend told me about some plants they saw on sale, and so I went and bought a lot of basically dead plants, and then I started doing everything I could to bring them back to life,” he says. “I realized that you can’t make anything grow, but you can foster an environment where growth is a byproduct of living. That was a profound life lesson.”

5. It’s kind of difficult (at least for me) not to love elephants and rhinoceros. Well, these are some fantastic photos of elephants in India and how they and farmers are trying to figure some things out, via SideTracked Magazine:

Even in the midst of mounting fear and anger, efforts are underway to help protect both elephants and farmers, and to help them find common ground. The situation for elephants throughout India is dire, but so many people work literally day and night to help fix this complicated crisis. NGOs such as the Wildlife Trust of India have identified 101 zones where the elephants’ natural movement between patches of forest is being blocked. They have engaged a wide network of local volunteers and NGOs to serve as Green Corridor Champions, such as Sonia Jabbar, inspiring the owner of the Nuxalbari Tea Estate to create safe passages, conduct awareness-raising campaigns for villagers, and supply tools to help people better coexist with the wildlife at their front door. Innovative solutions, such as alternative fencing, crop insurance or banks, new laws for train speed and signals, and research to track elephant movement and habits are all underway in the effort to decrease the conflict and create a healthy coexistence.

1. It’s still morning, right? It’s been great having a place to stay, but not so good not being at home. I love my home and I don’t know if a lot of people feel that way. The good thing is that I get to see my parents every day as we completely crash their pad. I feel like we are imposing, but we really aren’t. Also, when renovations are done at your house, the construction is messy, but the painting. The painting is what causes you to move out.

2. Via Conde Nast Traveler, how African-Americans helped shape the first U.S. National Parks.

“African American soldiers in 1899, 1903, and 1904 were some of the first park rangers in the world, not just in the United States,” says Shelton Johnson, a Yosemite park ranger who has committed himself to preserving and sharing the history of African American stewardship within the national parks through decades of work.

Between 1891 and 1913, the U.S. Army was the designated administrator of both Yosemite National Park and Sequoia National Park, with two troops of up to 60 men assigned to each park. Buffalo Soldiers—African American soldiers supposedly given that name because of their association to the western frontier—of both the Ninth Cavalry and 24th Infantry were included in these numbers. Racism, discrimination, bigotry, and the threat of violence were a large part of the experience of African American soldiers within the U.S. Army at this time. But for the bulk of the Buffalo Soldiers, who were veterans of either the Philippine-American or Spanish-American wars, joining these companies was a ticket toward financial security and thus became a gateway to being a guardian of the western wilderness.

“It makes sense why African Americans would join the army—because that was a path up and path out,” says Johnson. And no one took advantage of that path more than the ever industrious Charles Young. The third Black graduate of West Point University, Young became the military superintendent of Sequoia National Park in the summer of 1903.

3. Via Pocket, the story of Simo Hayha, the Finnish marksman who had 500 kils by sniper rifle.

4. John Prine via Open Culture:

I remember everything
Things I can’t forget
The way you turned and smiled on me
On the night that we first met
And I remember every night
Your ocean eyes of blue
How I miss you in the morning light
Like roses miss the dew

I’ve been down this road before
Alone as I can be
Careful not to let my past
Go sneaking up on me
Got no future in my happiness
Though regrets are very few
Sometimes a little tenderness
Was the best that I could do

5. It is Independence Day and I haven’t said a thing about it thus far. ESPN’s Katie Barnes on WNBA Maya Moore and he quest to free Jonathan Irons who was serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. Moore spent an entire year, literally quit her job, in order to see this through. Imagine that type of sacrifice for someone else’s freedom. Real freedom.