Diversity

Alpinist, Climbing, Diversity, In Memoria, On Assignment / 16.10.2017

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...

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Adventure Film, Alpinist, Appalachian Trail, Climbing, Diversity, Essays, Film Festival, Film Review / 13.10.2017

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...

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Commentary, Diversity, Fly Fishing / 19.09.2017

On my 51st birthday, Chad Brown, a friend and colleague, took me fly fishing on the Clackamas River in the pouring rain. Two days earlier I saw the forecast for showers in the city of Portland, Oregon. It didn’t look good, but I hoped for the best. At 5AM Chad arrived at my hotel with his chocolate lab named Ax. The handsome dog lifted his head for a quick scratch behind his ears as I ignored the bright orange sign on his tactical harness that said, “DO NOT PET”....

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Commentary, Diversity, Photography / 01.09.2017

A recent blog post described me as “a champion in the effort to bring more diversity to the outdoors.” As much as I appreciate the compliment, the statement appears as the cutline to a photograph at the head of an article that goes on never to mention anything that I might have done to earn the title of “champion”. The author never contacted me for a quote or even referenced a single one of the 800+ stories published on this blog or the scores of magazine articles, radio...

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Diversity, Interview, National Parks, Podcast / 12.07.2017

At 95 years young National Park Ranger Betty Reid Soskin is a national treasure. Stationed at the Rosie The Riveter/World War II Homefront National Historic Park in Richmond, California she interprets the cultural narrative of life in America during one of the most turbulent periods in time. Drawing on her personal experience through the 1940s she offers a compelling look into the past that helps us to understand who we are today and chart a course toward a brighter tomorrow. As an African-American woman who endured and survived...

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Appalachian Trail, Diversity, Interview, Podcast, Through-Hiking / 22.06.2017

Outside Magazine recently featured a wonderful essay by the writer Rahawa Haile. This young woman from Miami, Florida had successfully through-hiked the Appalachian Trail. Walking solo, she made the journey of 2,179 miles from Georgia to Maine under the power of her own two feet over several months in 2016. In her fascinating story, one passage in particular stood out. "Throughout my youth, my grandmother and I took walks in Miami, where I’d hear her say the words tuum nifas," Haile wrote. "It meant a delicious wind, a nourishing...

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