“Late Capitalism is as good an excuse of any for not getting out of bed, but huddling under the covers worrying about Donald Trump is a very inefficient way of sticking it to the man.”~ Laurie Penny I found a note from my brother while rummaging around in my office the other day – a…
Category: mountain culture
What Do You Actually Need to Be Happy: A Packing List (adapted for families)
I first had the chance to share this piece at Arc’teryx’s The Bird blog. Thanks to Sarah Leishman for giving me the green-light when I said I wanted to write “something about adventurers trying to maintain their minimalism after having a kid without writing a mommyblog…” My husband gets the job of going through our…
30 days of power posing
“You have 61 days left in the year,” said the email. “What will you keep space for?” Cue panic-breathing. And: delete. This week, I interviewed someone I’ve often wanted to talk more deeply with. I used an assignment as an excuse to sit down for four hours with a woman I admire, an extremely low-profile,…
Going hands-free
About 50 days before our baby was due, an acquaintance at a dinner party asked, “So, do you have your bag ready?” “What bag?” asked my partner, the whites of his eyes showing. He’s the logistics guy. He’s the list, plan and equipment guy. If there’s a bag to be packed, he’s the one making…
The Dirt on Food
“Fuck calories,” says Krista Scott-Dixon (@stumptuous). “Fuck vitamins. Fuck ‘willpower’. Put real cream in your coffee. And have an avocado too. Your relationship with food and eating is your relationship with life.” Her book, Fuck Calories and Other Dietary Heresies rethinks nutritionism manifesto-style – it’s a 41 page debunking of dieting BS, distilled down to…
Say yes to the dancing
My friend has a brain tumour. She mentioned it to me once, almost as an aside, when we were catching up over coffee, and as I mind-rifled through all the things I actually did know about her, trying to fit this new fact into the matrix – her work, her bullshit detector, the power and…
When Stone Speaks
In the History of Big-wall Climbing, Even Geology has Something to Say In May, this story I wrote for Mountain Life Annual 2016, was shared online at https://www.mountainlifemedia.ca/2017/05/stone-speaks-history-big-wall-climbing-even-geology-something-say/ Here’s an excerpt. “Every rock has a story,” my kid announces suddenly. He’s three. He speaks mostly gibberish. But the poet Anis Mojgani nailed it when he…
Zero Waste meets bee-love in Squamish-based khala cloths
When Asa McKee goes to work in his home studio in Squamish making khala cloths, the plastic-free food wraps he invented with wife Tamar, he cranks the tunes (Grateful Dead, live concerts only) and starts cooking down beeswax, sourced from bee-first apiaries. “The whole house gets super warm and floral-smelling,” says Tamar. It’s planet-friendly, kid-friendly,…
Geography Lessons
15 years ago, the fella and I cut loose from an entry-level mainstream life (starter house in the burbs, grown-up jobs), to live out of 1987 Toyota Tercel and drive around North America, dirt bagging our way through the best rock climbing destinations we could find. I kept an angst-ridden journal, (“what is the purpose…
Own this space: Secrets about life I learned from my mountain bike
The psychologist was not telling me what I wanted to hear. We were skyping across time zones, navigating work, kids and continents and I had a pretty clear idea in my head of what I wanted from him. Damn head-mechanics. I was looking for an expert to back a theory – to offer up neurological…
Lisa Richardson Bylines 