When Outside Magazine editor Michael Roberts contacted me in the late Fall of 2017 I was thrilled beyond words. At the time I was on the road working my annual gig for the nonprofit Choose Outdoors reporting on the journey of the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree. Michael called me out of the blue while I was shopping at a Walgreens in Helena Montana. As I roamed the aisles looking for alcohol wipes, Altoids and AA-batteries he asked me to write the cover story for the May issue. Let’s just...
There’s a moment in public speaking when you know you’ve got them. Someone in the back of the room shakes their head. Tongues click with disgust. Oh the injustice! A sharp intake of breath from the third row sets the hook as others gasp, right on cue. A grown man wipes a tear from his eye. Then, at the end, there’s the question I’m so often asked: “What can we do to help?” Over much of the last two years I’ve traveled around the country presenting to audiences on...
On the last night of the SHIFT Festival in Jackson, Wyoming the organizers hosted an after-party at the Organic Lotus Restaurant. By 1:AM a steady beat of house music still roused a group of at least 30 Millennials to dance away the night well into the morning. Damp with sweat I sidled over to the bar for a drink of water. Even after a double hip replacement it doesn’t take much to get this aging Gen-Xer out on the dance floor. Inspired by the energy and enthusiasm of...
Much of the past weekend I spent happily lamenting an embarrassment of excellent choices. It seemed that the third week of October 2017 was an exceptionally good moment in time to explore, discuss and celebrate the emergence of diversity within the environmental conservation movement. There were at least four events across the country that brought together people of color to share their efforts to make the outdoors more welcoming and accessible to a broader cross-section of the American people. Sadly I was only able to attend two of...
When my friend Aimee Copp, the director of the Adventure Film Festival invited me to come to Boulder to take part in this wonderful event she asked me, “So James, what are your working on?”. I immediately told her about an exciting story that I’m writing for Alpinist Magazine about a French climber who died on Aconcagua in 1995. She asked me to appear on stage at the Boulder Theatre to tell this remarkable story. If you’ve read the memoir of the great American climber Lynn Hill you may...
After a long day of watching movies and a late night of drinking, I slept with a man I love. Certainly no lapse of judgement, my friend Jeremy Collins invited me to share his bed in the Boulder Adventure Lodge at 1AM rather than drive twenty miles back to Golden through a sloppy storm of rain, sleet and snow. A few weeks earlier at another one of the many film festival events that we attend together, he joked with a crowd during a Q&A that we had shared...