Multi-day:
Epic Trip #1:
- Get up early and drive up the Parks Highway.
- Take a right at Cantwell onto the Denali Highway. Bring a spare tire or two. You’ll have to drive in about 30 miles to get past Native land and onto public land to camp. Take your time driving this road, which is mostly gravel, and bring a spare tire and know how to change it. It’s beautiful! Camp at Clearwater Creek (about 60 miles in).
- The next day, drive to the Tangle Lakes area and camp there for the night.
- The next day, drive to Delta Junction. The drive there is gorgeous. Get ice cream at the shop at the “Y” of the Richardson and Alaska Highways. Get a bison burger while you’re in town too! Take a right onto the Alaska Highway toward Tok. Go to Tok and head south on the Tok Cutoff Highway. Camp somewhere along the Tok Cutoff.
- The next day, drive home (or go to Valdez!). On your way home on the Glenn Highway, like Lion’s Head near Matanuska Glacier.
Epic Trip #2:
- Buy tickets for you, your friends, and your vehicle for the ferry between Whittier and Valdez.
- Head south and take the tunnel to Whittier.
- (Add an extra day by spending the night in Whittier and hiking the Blackstone Vista trail!)
- In Valdez, camp at the military campground.
- On day 2, explore the town of Valdez and the waterfalls in the canyon north of town.
- On day 3, drive north on the Richardson Highway. Stop in Thompson Pass for a day hike and check out the glaciers (but be careful!)
- Keep driving until you see the turnoff for Chitina and McCarthy. Drive to McCarthy.
- Camp in the private gravel lot at the end of the road near the footbridge.
- Spend a day or two exploring McCarthy and Kennecott mine. You absolutely must hike out to the Root Glacier!
- The next day, drive home (or camp near Caribou Creek). On your way home on the Glenn Highway, hike Lion’s Head near Matanuska Glacier.
Most Epicest of Epic Roadtrips:
Combine Epic Trip 2 with Epic Trip 1. Start in Whittier; do Valdez and McCarthy; go north to Delta Junction after McCarthy; after Delta Junction, turn around the way you came and go back south to Paxson to drive the Denali Highway, then take the Parks Highway south back to Anchorage. Give yourself at least a week!
Here is the graduation commencement speech I gave yesterday...
First, class of 2024, congratulations. You made it.
Secondly, I’m flattered that you allowed me to speak today, this last occasion when you are a captive audience to anyone in the Anchorage School District. And it was a brave choice to choose an English teacher to give this speech, especially one so notorious for his tangents. You willingly signed yourself up for a speech likely to contain big words and obscure poetic references. That’s brave.
You know what else is brave? Those of you wearing high heels today. Have you seen the gauntlet that is this graduation stage? That is brave.
But here’s the thing: You are a brave class. Because you had to be.
In seventh grade, many of you watched as your middle school started to shake and crumble around you. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
A few weeks later, as terrified 12-year-olds without your own school building, many of you entered the halls of Chugiak High School to continue your education, gripping your chairs at every aftershock and sharing a building with bearded 18-year-old seniors driving big, loud pickup trucks. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
A year and a half later, you were told you couldn’t come back to school. You spent a portion of the most formative years of your life hunkered down, watching as disease and civic strife spread around you. And you were brave. Because you had to be.
Then came your first day of high school. At 7:30am on August 20th, 2020, you opened your Chromebooks. You logged into your Zoom link, found yourself in the waiting room, muted your mics, turned on your video, and took a nervous breath as your 1st-hour teacher admitted you to your first day at Eagle River High School.
A brief tangent: You guys were so cute! After all, how do you look and act like a brand-new, sophisticated high school student when high school is online?
Some of you logged in to your first day of high school looking like an aspiring Twitch streamer. You had fancy headphones, multiple monitors, mood lighting, and impressive webcams. Some of you showed up trying to look like sophisticated high schoolers with your perfect “fit” –your hair and makeup were perfect, your clothes were carefully chosen, your room was clean – only to find that your “perfect fit” only occupied a tiny square on a screen where no one could really appreciate it. Some of you logged in from an executive-looking desk in a home office looking like important 14-year-old real estate brokers. And some of you entered your first day of high school by peering bleary-eyed from beneath a cavern of blankets like some sort of scraggly, pubescent troll. You were all, kinda adorable.
…
Brief tangent on a tangent: Ya’ll own a surprising number of cats. And a surprising number of those cats like to walk across your keyboard and into the view of your webcam in the middle of class. It was actually super cool to meet your pets.
And while I’m trying to be amusing, I’m not trying to be flippant. You all walked hard miles those years. Some of you lost loved ones. Some of you struggled with the isolation of Covid, the dark depths of mental health struggles, difficult family dynamics, and a world that seemed off its axis. But you were brave. Because you had to be.
You continued to walk hard miles during your sophomore year as you desperately tried to catch up on your learning by intently listening to the muffled, masked voices of your teachers… You had to figure out how to be around people again. And again you were brave. Because you had to be.
Class of 2024, you’ve walked a lot of hard miles. And please forgive the “dad pun,” but despite all the hard miles you’ve walked, when I look out at you right now, I still see a lot of good souls…
…
At this point, you might be like “Ok Johnson, I get it. We were brave because we had to be. What’s the point? What are you really trying to say?”
Brief tangent: If you’re asking those questions, then on behalf of the Eagle River High School English Department, I’ll call that a win (or a “dub,” as you young people say.) If, at the end of your high school career, you’ve learned nothing else from your English classes, I hope it’s how to ask the deeper questions. Because life is deep, and life is complicated. Please never lose the curiosity and passion to ask yourself, and the people and the world around you, the deep and hard questions in life. Likewise, I hope you never lose the desire to listen deeply and to read deeply to find the answers.
But back to my main point about bravery, which is twofold:
First, I hope at this point in your life, and after all those English classes, you realize that life is full of competing narratives. And almost none of those narratives hold a monopoly on truth. ..For example, imagine you are ten, and you’re in trouble with your parents because you and your little brother got bored, decided it would be a good idea to toss a cantaloupe around, and broke a light fixture in the kitchen. (Sorry mom) It’s amazing how quickly two very different narratives emerge from two people who have each experienced the exact same event, especially when the threat of being grounded hangs in the air.
My point is this: Consider your own narrative. It’s easy to fall into the easy narrative that you are simply the powerless protagonist at the mercy of forces far, far bigger than you.
That narrative might make for a good story, but I’m not sure it makes for a good life.
I also think you’ll find that adult life is littered with the wreckage of people who have simply surrendered to that narrative, to the story that they are the helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control.
I would challenge you to consider a different narrative, a deeper narrative. I would challenge you to adopt the narrative that you are, in fact, brave, that you have walked a lot of hard miles while managing to maintain a good soul, and that you are capable of walking a few more.
My second and final point about this “bravery stuff” is this:
You were brave because you had to be.
But now, in just a few minutes, you get to be brave not because you have to be, but because you get to choose to be.
You get to choose to be brave in the face of injustice. You get to choose to be brave in the face of an uncertain future and an uncertain world. You get to choose to be brave in the way that you live and in the way that you love.
And class of 2024, here’s the really cool thing. You have so much practice at being brave... Because you had to be. I think that the class of 2024 has had more practice being brave than any other graduating class in recent memory. And I also think that everyone in this audience can agree that the world could use more people who live bravely and who love bravely.
And so, class of 2024, choose to be brave. Whether you become a plumber or a pilot, a soldier or a ski bum, a dental hygienist or a doordash driver, think bravely. Speak bravely. Live bravely. And please, please, please…love bravely.
Congratulations class of 2024, and as each of you bravely step off of this stage (especially those of you in heels), I hope you step into a remarkable future.
I don’t think it’s ever easy to perceive ourselves accurately. After all, we are stuck inside our own heads 24/7, and that can be a crazy place. More specifically, I think young women often have a hard time seeing and understanding their value. They often dramatically undervalue themselves.
It’s a fine line – you want to accurately understand your innate value (and I think it’s absolutely critical for your future), but you also don’t want to be egotistical or delusional. I think one important way of understanding your value is to look at both your advantages and accomplishments.
Advantages
Your advantages are the things that are outside your control, but still give you value. Advantages can include things like:
- Natural intelligence
- A stable or reasonable family life
- Physical beauty
- Financial security and the opportunities your parents' finances have given you
These are all things you have, but that you have not earned. You won the genetic lottery. You were born into a good family. You got your mom’s looks and your dad’s brains (or vice versa!) These are all elements that “give you value.” Because you have a good family, you aren’t carrying around a ton of trauma and will likely be a good parent yourself. They taught you good habits and skills. Because your parents are financially comfortable, you’ve had the chance to do events, trips, clinics, and camps that have made you a better educated, well-rounded, athletic, or spiritual person. Because you are pretty, people treat you with a certain deference other people don’t experience.
You don’t have to feel guilty about all these privileges, but you should certainly feel humble about them. Give thanks that you ended up born into a good family. Give thanks that your parents' genetics resulted in good looks. Give thanks that you were born with a good mind or the financial resources to pursue your passions. (And thank your parents!)
Even though you haven’t “earned” these advantages, it doesn’t mean they’re not advantages that increase your “worth.” Intelligence, financial stability, and a good upbringing are increasingly rare qualities in young people. By having these qualities, you have already surpassed many of your peers. Just be humble; you didn't earn them.
Accomplishments
Accomplishments, on the other hand, are things you have earned (and worked hard for). Be incredibly proud of your accomplishments. Academic and athletic excellence don’t just happen – they are the product of lots of hard work, determination, grit, and intrinsic motivation. You absolutely should celebrate yourself for the ways you’ve excelled as a consequence of your own actions.
On the other hand, understand on a deep, deep level that your accomplishments don’t define you. You are not your GPA. You are not your athletic scholarship. You are not your SAT scores. All of those things are simply data points that chart easily on a graph. If you place your worth on these “data points”– as many young women do – you are setting yourself up for disappointment and a twisted self-image. If you place too much value on your accomplishments, then inevitably when your GPA takes a hit, or you don't get accepted to that college, or you bomb the SAT, or you don't get the scholarship…it can feel absolutely crushing.
A good way to figure out whether you are placing too much of your self-worth on your accomplishments is to pay attention to your thoughts and feelings when you don’t achieve something (or don't achieve it to the level you had hoped). If, in situations like these, you find your thoughts becoming, “I never do anything right. I’ll never be a success. I’m not as smart/pretty/charming/confident as _________. I’m a fraud. I’m stupid. I’m a failure. I’m worthless” you know you’re mind is lying to you because you’ve placed too much worth on the things you accomplish instead of who you are.
Why I hate the word “worth” but still think it’s important
First, I hate using the word “worth” when talking about people. After all, the world is not a marketplace where human beings are on sale, each person a combination of features and selling points with a different price tag. On the other hand, I think the single biggest hurdle holding most young women back is their mistaken, under-valued sense of self-worth.
Why does any of this matter?
Simply put, because the next ten years of your life are the most important. The decisions you make in the next decade will likely put you on a trajectory for several decades to come.
What I see, time and time again, are young women who have so much to offer the world and the people around them, but because they don't see their own value, they sell themselves short. Instead of finding friends that inspire them to be their best selves, they find friends who bring out their lesser selves – petty, dramatic, shallow, or judgmental – because “I’m not cool/pretty/popular/smart enough to be friends with those other girls.”
Even worse, I constantly see young women who put up with waaaay too much shit from their romantic partners because those romantic partners “claim” they see and appreciate the girl’s worth (when they’re not being an awful person and manipulating her insecurities and poor self-image).
If you’re an upperclassman, let me offer a suggestion. Ask your parents to tell you stories about people they’ve known in life who have sold themselves short. Adult life is littered with broken friendships, families, and marriages. It’s littered with adults who fell short of their promise. Many of these situations result from one person not truly understanding their worth, and as a result, settling for careers, friends, partners, and lifestyles that harmed, maimed, or stunted them. They underestimated their worth, and they paid dearly.
Better yet, ask multiple middle-aged women what advice they’d give their younger self. I guarantee 90% of them will say something along the lines of “I wish I trusted/liked/valued myself more when I was younger.”
A final thought on self-image
One of the most liberating insights you can ever have is simply this: Our minds are ridiculous liars. Our brains are laughably bad at being objective or accurate. That can be a liberating thought when you realize the voice inside your head telling you “You are worthless” is really just the deluded ramblings of a brain that is very, very wrong very often.
Make the coming decades ones in which you grow into your truest, deepest, best self. The trick to doing so is both remarkably easy and remarkably hard: Know, in your deepest heart, that you have incredible worth. Know that you are worthy of surrounding yourself with friends, partners, careers, and people who see your worth as well. Spend the coming decades surrounding yourself with people excited to work alongside you to nurture your best self and who help you bring that best self to the world.
…and know your worth.
I want to take a brief moment to explain how my wife and I do our best to minimize risk when our kids go backcountry skiing. Obviously, avalanches are the biggest concern, though tree wells, hypothermia, frostbite, or skiing injuries are also possible. For the sake of this post, I’ll just focus on avalanches.
Here’s what we have done with our kids as they began to participate in backcountry skiing:
Only allow them on low-angle, low-risk terrain at first.
This is probably the most important point. Before our kids had touring gear, their first few trips were boot-packing or snowshoeing up the mountain to ski down. As the kids began to backcountry ski more and got touring gear, we had three places we allowed the kids to go independently due to the very low avalanche risk. These places have allowed our kids to independently practice their backcountry skiing and safety assessments in a low-consequence place. As the kids began to drive, the first two places on this list were the only places we’d allow them to ski solo.
It should be mentioned that whenever there’s been dynamic weather (new snow, wind, sunny days in the spring) we’ve prohibited them from even skiing these places for a day or two (or only before midday in the case of spring skiing). While it’s very unlikely these places will slide, it’s always possible.
Hunter Pass in Hiland Valley/South Fork
We’ve only allowed the kids to ski the terrain and gully directly underneath the pass. The vast majority of that slow is very low-angle with trees and brush that can help anchor the snow. Be aware that anything outside of this specific terrain carries a larger risk of slides. This is a great spot for the kids to get in several laps and isn’t terrible to snowshoe due to the low-angle slope.
“Tequila Bowl” in Arctic Valley.
Tequila Bowl is the large, low-angle bowl/slope coming off of Mt. Gordon-Lyon. It’s easily visible from the Arctic Valley ski resort. It’s very low angle, to the point you can hardly get in ski turns for most of the decent because you have to keep your speed up to get back to the parking lot. This was my boys’ first backcountry trip with me, and they used snowshoes. There are a few caveats with this location:
- On skier's left as you descend from the top, there is a cornice. I’ve never seen it slide, but I insist the kids stay away from it.
- Once the ski resort opens, you must travel on the west side of the valley, outside the ski area, to access the peak. However, it’s a very popular spot and always has a good up-track on that west side of the valley.
- The terrain surrounding Tequila Bowl is steeper and could slide.
Turnagain Pass: Tincan below the timberline.
Honestly, the drive to Turnagain Pass is scarier to me than this terrain. When skiing, if you descend before the treeline ends, the risks of slides are minimal. The terrain is much like Alyeska – lots of mountain hemlock, cliff bands, rollers, meadows, and a lot of other cool terrain. However, there are a few caveats with this location as well:
- It’s best to go with someone who has skied it before. The biggest issue is ensuring your downhill route gets you back to the parking lot. If you ski straight down, you’re going to have a long hike/skin back to the vehicles. Additionally, going with someone who has skied this spot before will ensure your kid doesn’t end up on the top of a cliff he/she doesn’t want to ski! However, there are no enormous cliffs or anything you couldn’t find a way around.
- The kids need to keep each other in sight! The biggest concern here is tree wells. The snow gets incredibly deep, and a fall into a tree well could be dangerous if the kids don't have someone to dig them out.
- There are a couple of slopes on the way up to the treeline that, while small, are steep enough to slide. In theory, you could stay in the trees and avoid most or all of these. This is also the most popular spot in Turnagain, and there should be plenty of other skiers to put in a skin track and test out the slope.
Check weather, avalanche center reports, and ensure kids have very basic avalanche knowledge
I follow the Hatcher Pass and Chugach National Forest Avalanche Centers on social media. I have also heard that this year there will be an avalanche forecaster for the Chugach front range near Anchorage! Beyond their snow condition/avalanche reports, each of these centers also has a website with observations from the public and reported avalanches alongside the official condition reports.
I also check the forecast. Skiing in a blizzard sucks, and I’m typically more worried about road conditions than anything. If dynamic weather is expected or just occured, I tend to request they stay on very mellow terrain or wait a few days for the snowpack to settle and stabilize.
Even if your kid hasn’t had official avalanche safety training, they need to know that if they hear “whumphs” or see shooting cracks in the snow, it’s time to turn around and go home. No exceptions.
Require them to bring a Garmin
Sometimes we track them; sometimes we ask them to text us at regular intervals.
Enroll them in an Avy 1 class
If your kid falls in love with this pastime, it’s well worth your money to get them fully certified with an Avalanche Level 1 course. The Alaska Avalanche School is offering its annual 3-day class for teens January 2nd-4th ($475). It’s best if teens have a full touring setup, required safety gear, and a little experience ski touring.
While I don’t believe a book is in any way comparable to actual field experience through a class, you should also buy one or more of the books below and insist your teen reads it cover-to-cover. (You should too!):
- Staying Alive in Avalanche Terrain (This one is often considered the gold standard, but the ones below are good primers or supplementary texts to this one.)
- Avalanche Essentials: A Step-by-Step System for Safety and Survival
- Snow Sense
Give them the proper safety gear and require them to practice their skills.
Your kid needs an avalanche beacon, shovel, probe, and helmet to backcountry ski safely. Just as importantly, teens need to know how to use the gear. With my kids, we went to a park at night to practice using an avalanche beacon to find someone. The kids would close their eyes and wait in the car while I buried an avy beacon somewhere in the field. Their job was to find the beacon as quickly as possible using the correct grid method. As my boys got more proficient and adventurous, we bought our boys avalanche packs (they have an inflatable airbag you can deploy if caught in a slide.) It’s not a panacea or a license to ski stretchy terrain, but there’s plenty of research suggesting that the packs do save lives. We purchased the electric-powered ones so that the kids could practice deploying them a lot without the need to refill CO2 cartridges. (FYI: They’re stupid expensive!)
These tools are never a replacement for good decision-making, and I’m proud to say that my kids have never triggered a slide or needed to deploy their airbags. They knew, from day one, that if I wasn’t satisfied with their safety assessments and decisions, their backcountry skiing days would be over. I also made sure to instill a deep fear of avalanches in them, and I still constantly remind them that “no ski run is ever worth your life.” They have proven themselves to be safe and reliable which has allowed them more freedom.
Final thoughts:
Let your kids go with their friends up to Hunter Pass. They can hike or snowshoe up to the pass if they don't have touring gear. It tends to be really, really safe if they stay directly below the pass on their way up/down. It’s also a popular spot with lots of other skiers keeping an eye on each other. While I think it’s critical they have an avalanche beacon, probe, and shovel and know how to use them, it’s a great place to spend a day playing in the snow with minimal potential consequences. If they don’t want to hike/snowshoe far, they can just build a jump and mess around in the Alaskan wilderness!
If your teen becomes passionate about backcountry skiing and wants to venture further, it’s time to pony up some serious money for quality touring gear, an Avy class, and perhaps an Avy pack. (More details here)
Consider participating in this pastime too! It’s a great bonding experience and you’ll learn together!
Have your teen go out with a more experienced backcountry skier! There’s a surprising number of local teens that backcountry ski and can help orient and mentor newer skiers.
Parents,
I won’t pretend to be an expert at parenting. (My own kids can certainly confirm that fact!) But I think one of the best things my wife and I have done as parents is to keep video games out of our house and to grant our kids a lot of freedom to explore the wild lands around us.
I maintain that spending time in nature gives young people the quiet self-confidence that they desperately need. Quite simply, that quiet self-confidence can't be supplied by video games or all the other “safe” comforts of modern suburban life. When people (of any age) complete a difficult trip, deal with discomfort, push their perceived limits, and make lifetime memories, they discover their own sense of strength, competence, and independence. And as Alaskan parents, we have the perfect “proving ground” for our kids to explore.
Teens are desperately trying to prove to themselves, and to those around them, that they’re “adults.” In nature, kids overcome their fears on the ski slope, rock wall, or hiking trail. They discover that they’re more physically capable than they thought. They have to make serious decisions about their and their friends’s safety.
These experiences give teens a deep sense of competence and responsibility. All of a sudden, the upcoming math test, the teenage crush, and the friend drama are placed in their proper perspective. If your kid spent the last Saturday confronting his or her fear of skiing off a cliff, the scary math test doesn’t feel as scary anymore.
In my opinion, backcountry skiing offers many benefits to our teens:
- It’s a lifelong activity. People of all ages backcountry ski.
- It provides exercise and adventure during our long winters.
- It’s a social activity. Backcountry skiing often isn’t safe unless you go with others.
- Cool people do it. I find that folks who backcountry ski are some of the happiest people I’ve met. After all, backcountry skiing requires a child’s heart. You have to be stoked to go spend the day frolicking in the snow. I think it may be the single best activity for meeting other fun, responsible, adventurous, outdoorsy people.
- You can (should!) do it with them! Even if you don't backcountry ski yet, if you’re proficient on downhill skis or a snowboard, it provides a perfect teen/parent bonding activity. Take an avalanche safety class together. Drool over skis and equipment together. Explore new slopes together. Because of the not-insignificant safety considerations when backcountry skiing, it provides an excellent opportunity not only to recreate with your teen, but for them to demonstrate their risk-tolerance, safety assessment, and decision-making skills.
A note on safety
I won’t pretend backcountry skiing is without risk. Avalanches are a very real threat, but one that can be mitigated by following the advice below. (Also, please reference this post where I talk in-depth about safety considerations.)
- In my opinion, anyone participating in backcountry skiing MUST take an Avalanche 1 course. (The Alaska Avalanche School offers a class each year just for teens.) There are also abundant low-angle slopes that teens can ski with an essential 0% chance of an avalanche.
- Backcountry skiers must go with other people proficient in winter backcountry travel. Decisions in the backcountry need to be made by consensus among other educated adventurers with similar levels of risk tolerance.
- Backcountry skiers MUST have the correct gear. For teens, an avalanche beacon, shovel, GPS device, probe, helmet, and airbag-style avy pack are essential items.
As a parent, I think that the hardest part of letting our kids go backcountry skiing is feeling like they’re not safe. It’s a lot less anxiety-producing just to keep them at home. I’m not sure there’s any way around the fear we feel as parents when our kids are in potentially unsafe situations. That said, I think there are ways to deal with our own anxiety and fears:
- Kids must unequivocally prove they have a proper sense of risk tolerance. They need to earn our trust (incrementally) until we feel confident they can make safe, independent decisions in the backcountry.
- It’s easy to inaccurately perceive danger as a parent. Avalanches are scary. But if your kid makes safe decisions in the backcountry, objectively, they’re far more likely to die on the road to the ski slope than on it. I think it’s easy to allow irrational fears to negatively affect our decision-making as parents.
- We have to understand that our own anxieties are worth the experience, independence, confidence, and memories our kids will gain. To me, this has been the single biggest reason I allow my kids to adventure in the backcountry, despite the fact that I’m a bundle of nerves while they’re out there.
A note on boys
I think time in nature is especially important for boys. Video games in particular pretend to give boys all the things they need. Games promise adventure and risk. They promise a memorable story. They offer the chance to work together with friends to accomplish something.
The problem is that none of it is real. I see a significant difference between boys who are “gamers” and boys who are active and adventurous. I think we’ve allowed our boys to live a pathetic version of boyhood simply because it keeps them “safe” and well-supervised. In the meantime, I think they are losing out on critical experiences and personal growth during one of the most important developmental periods of their lives.
It is my firm belief that boys must prove to themselves that they are men. I think that means doing really hard things. By confronting fear and facing real challenges, they learn so, so much about themselves.
Okay, you’ve sold me on this idea. How do we get started?
Backcountry skiing is expensive to get into*. To get fully outfitted with the gear to safely backcountry ski, it’ll cost about $4,000. But the required gear and training last a long time. Especially if your kid is done growing, the gear you buy them will easily last a decade or more. You can also buy much of this gear used, or you can sell it if your kid outgrows it or loses interest.
Growing up, my parents offered me a pretty good deal. For any expensive outdoor gear, they would offer to pay half the price. As a teen, whether it was tents, backpacks, skis, or rock shoes, it made buying that gear feasible on an adolescent budget. By my parents asking me to pay half the cost, it ensured that I was invested enough in the activity to drop my own hard-earned money.
Rough Costs (new):
- Skis - $850
- AT/Tech bindings - $500
- AT/Tech Ski boots - $800
- Ski skins - $150-200
- Avalance beacon - $350
- Probe and shove - $100
- Helmet - $100
- Avy pack - $1700
- Avalanche 1 Course - $450
- Garmin – $400
* You can do it cheaper, especially if your teen just wants to try it out. If you can find someone with a backcountry setup with frame bindings, you can adjust the bindings to your kid’s boots and they can try it out for the day (as long as they're in mellow terrain and have all the safety stuff too.). Also, “boot-packing” or snowshoeing up the slopes is possible. It’s way more of a workout, and not nearly as efficient, but that’s how I did all my backcountry skiing back in high school!
Here’s my confession: I (try to) fall asleep by writing graduation speeches in my head. I acknowledge that it’s a weird habit and rarely helps put me to sleep. But here we are.
The speech I’ve been constructing now for several weeks has this basic claim: Words matter. I was thinking, for instance, of the way we tend to decide that two words mean basically the same thing, even though they don’t. And I think the consequences of this intellectual laziness – where we decide that one word means exactly the same thing as another – can have profound consequences personally, socially, politically, etc.
For instance, I’ve discovered that there is a fundamental difference between the words “nice” and “kind,” but we often decide that they’re the same thing or that the differences don't matter. I think that’s a grave mistake.
For me, “niceness” is an action. Opening a door for someone in “nice.” Loaning someone a pencil or a jacket is “nice.” Giving money to charity is “nice.” And niceness often has very little to do with how we feel about the person we’re being nice to. I generally have no problem being nice to students, co-workers, strangers, or family members that I don't particularly like. Being nice is simply the action of following prescribed social rules or norms that are polite or civil. It’s not particularly hard, and it’s not particularly meaningful.
Oxford defines nice as “pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.” Most of us have no problem being pleasant or agreeable to people that we don't like, don't respect, or don’t ever want to see again. We simply put on our “nice” facade, smile politely, act appropriately, and move on with our day. That’s not to say that acting nice can't be a struggle. If you’ve ever had a teacher you didn't like, you know it can be a challenge to keep up the facade of niceness for nine months. It can be a struggle to be nice to irritating peers or rude strangers. But “nice” lives at the surface, and niceness can easily mask the hatred, resentment, disgust, or apathy that you really feel. While I think that we all should be nice to each other, if only to make everyone’s day a little more pleasant, I don't think niceness has a lot of intrinsic value. It’s a series of actions that anyone can take without a lot of thought and without a lot of heart. It is, at it’s best, “satisfactory.”
Kindness, on the other hand, is something far different for me. Kindness is a state of “being.” It’s primarily about the way you are, not the way you act. It’s a way of feeling, thinking, and living. I don’t think that there’s anything surface-level about kindness. Like a garden, developing kindness is something that takes time, effort, care, and nurturing. The roots of kindness must go deep.
I think kindness requires deep inner work, and I think the garden analogy is an apt one for describing this work. For instance, to plant a garden, the first thing you need to do is to ensure that you have good soil. At the core of kindness is the deep acknowledgment of someone else’s humanity. That’s the “soil” you need to cultivate. You have to see them as a person, as a soul. You have to see them as someone who is terribly flawed. They have weaknesses. They have insecurities. They have thoughts and regrets that keep them up at night. They don’t feel okay at times. They worry if they’re worthy of love. When we are able to see others as messy, imperfect, but ultimately good people, we have prepared a place for the roots of kindness to grow deep.
I think one of the best ways to acknowledge someone else’s humanity is to listen. Deeply. And if you listen long enough and deeply enough, you’ll see that this other person, whether you like them or not, is simply another messy human being just like you. When I say listen deeply, I mean to listen with an empathetic ear. Put yourself in their shoes. Feel their emotions alongside them. Listen for the hurt or doubt or sadness in their voice. Listen carefully to the ways their own narrative is hindering their perceptions and progress.
To use another analogy, when you listen, consider yourself to be a doctor. Your job is to diagnose the hurt, doubt, or sadness so that you can best treat it. It’s only once we know where the pain truly resides that we can treat someone’s deep inner pain with the medicine of kindness. For instance, if you were to go to a doctor with a knee injury, but he treats you for a cold, you’ll undoubtedly thank him for his care and for the medicine. But his treatment hasn’t helped your pain. Listen carefully so that you can treat the pain where it really lives.
Coming back to our garden analogy, once the soil is prepared, the next step is to plant the seeds of kindness that will eventually bear fruit. We’ve got to dig even deeper in the soil to make this happen. We all need a “why.” Why are you seeking to be kind? Why are you attempting to heal others’ hurt? Why do you or should you care?
Much like there are many different types of seeds to plant, there are many answers to these questions. You may cultivate kindness from a place of religious duty. You may cultivate kindness from some philosophical belief or personal sense of purpose. There are lots of seeds to choose from. Recently, I’ve found my “why,” and it’s the result of answering perhaps the biggest philosophical question of all: What does it mean to live a good life? The answer I have recently discovered for myself is simply this: “Give more than you take. Leave this world better than you found it.” For me, this answer to what it means to live a good life necessitates that I live a life of kindness.
Finally, I want to make one more observation on kindness. I think kindness grows best when we have an optimistic view of the world and other people. I think kindness grows best when we assume that everyone in this life is doing the best they can, even if their words, beliefs, or actions are misguided, hurtful, or selfish. For instance, if you go to the doctor’s for a broken leg, chances are you aren’t going to be your “best self” when you’re there. You’ll be in a lot of pain. You’ll walk funny or maybe you won’t be able to walk at all, but you’re still going to hobble around the best you can. You might be cranky. All those things are a natural response to the pain of a busted leg. After all, you’re human. And you hurt. When we can look at others’ at-times unimpressive actions, words, or beliefs as a symptom of pain, instead of fundamental flaws in their character, we learn to be compassionate with others even when it’s hard.
Being nice is…nice. It is, in fact, “satisfactory.” But being kind grows us as people. It’s the result of work and patience and nurturing. And maybe it leaves the world a little better place than we found it.
For the past three days, I have been participating in 8-hour classes preparing me to teach AP Language and Comp. There are only four students, including myself, and a teacher. After having been a student in a high school classroom for the last three days, I’ve got some thoughts:
- Teachers are terrible students. We have side conversations. We’re on our phones. We don't pay attention. I’ve made this observation ever since I became a teacher. It is some pretty hilarious and hypocritical situational irony.
- It’s hard warming a chair all day. After each day of training, I come home mentally exhausted. There is simply so much information to digest. The fact that many of you finish school, participate in sports practice for several hours, then do several hours of homework is impressive. While you all undoubtedly have much sharper, growing brains than I do, full-time school in a classroom, in addition to other responsibilities, is no joke. You ought to congratulate yourself for relentlessly grinding through 9 months of school
- Peers and teachers can be irritating. For instance, when a student only wants to talk about his/her personal experience instead of the topic at hand, it can derail the whole class and waste an hour. The same can happen with teachers. Our teacher is this sweet retired teacher/grandma lady from the Midwest. She’s lovely but often goes on tangents by sharing personal anecdotes. As the king of tangents and anecdotes, I’m sorry. I imagine many of you spent days in my class bored out of your mind desperately praying I'd stop talking about myself. I gotta trim down the stories and only share the really interesting ones. Also, people who interrupt are super, super irritating. If you are not given the time to fully develop your thought before someone jumps in with their own, it makes your ideas seem unimportant. That hurts. If I interrupted you this year, I’m sorry.
- Patience and compassion are valuable traits. I could tell by the end of today, when the rest of my peers had lost interest and started packing up their stuff before class was over, that the teacher was hurt. Even though I too was desperate to go home and totally burned out, the ability to sit quietly and give your attention to another person is a real gift, especially in a classroom setting. Likewise, when a teacher or peer is telling yet ANOTHER personal story that’s not at all related to the task at hand, by realizing that this person wants to be heard and by listening attentively, you demonstrate a silent, powerful form of compassion.
Anyhow, this is purely my ramblings. Hopefully, NONE of you are thinking about the dynamics of the classroom, but are busy having an epic summer instead. Freshmen Sophomores, thank you again for being so respectful in class this year.
Now that the last of my teaching obligations are over, real summer has begun! Over the last week, I've gotten in a couple of hikes, gone gold-prospecting with my brother, and gone fishing with River and some friends in Seward. The fishing was slow, but we managed to get 14 fish. More importantly, I feel like I'm finally in "summer mode."
As I think I shared in class, I believe we often miscategorize the term "freedom." I think that many Americans today believe that freedom means buying whatever gun you want, eating whatever highly-processed food you want, using (and abusing) the land you "own," or being able to afford luxuries like vacations and second homes and expensive toys. In my mind, those things are not real freedom. Real freedom, in my opinion, is the ability to wake up on a summer day with no obligations, no "shoulds" or "musts", no personal or societal ideas norms, and no plans. Just a day stretching out in front of you without plans. A blank canvas. Freedom exists in those days that are full of potential. Freedom exists when your mind is at peace, your actions are intentional, and your time is unencumbered. That is freedom. That is summer.
With that tiny philosophical rant, here are a few pictures:
My first week of summer has been pretty mellow. I got the garden put in, and River and I have been busy selling thousands of dollars worth of plants. (Pics attached.) River has been climbing, paddle boarding, skiing, sledding, attending bonfires, and hunting bears and mushrooms. Elias is working on a trail crew in Chugach State Park, and he'll be camping out 4 days a week in the backcountry with his crew every week this summer. They'll be working on the South Fork trail most of the summer.
We ended up canceling our yearly Memorial Day halibut fishing trip due to bad weather, but honestly, I desperately needed a few days to catch up on life, and I'm glad we stuck around this weekend.
I'm currently writing this draft letter on lunch break for my AP Lang training. While I'm not thrilled about being in a classroom at the moment, I'm trying to look at this as a way to be a better "gift" and to show more love to next year's students and you guys in a couple of years. After this training is over, real summer begins.
Salmon fishing, hiking, and gold prospecting are the first items on my list, and we'll see where the summer goes from there!
*My father-in-law and I built our house entirely ourselves when I was in my early twenties, and my in-laws live right across the street. Over the years, we've had chickens, ducks, and milk goats. We live up on a really steep lot on Bear Mountain. The state park is right outside our front door, and wildlife like bears, moose, and lynx often visit.
I recently wrote an email to a student that had me thinking about the difference between loneliness and solitude. Both are situations where you are alone, but the critical difference, in my mind, is your mental state and your intention.
In loneliness, we crave interaction with others. We are alone and we don't like it. We feel unsupported, isolated, and unloved. We enter this state from a place of scarcity. Company feels scarce. Friends seem scarce. Connection feels scarce. Loneliness is no fun, and it's easy to revel in our own dissatisfaction.
Solitude, on the other hand, is totally different. It's a conscious choice to remove ourselves from the hustle and bustle of life. We seek to live more slowly and engage in deep inner work.
As a guy who admittedly spends way too much time in his own head, I find that I crave solitude. I rarely feel lonely anymore, and I actively seek time by myself. As a teacher this is ironic, but after a day of interacting with well over a hundred teens and colleagues, I'm desperate for a reprieve. As I've gotten older and accepted that I spend a lot of time in my head, I've increasingly learned to make my head a " fun" place to hang out. In other words, I've come to really enjoy my own company and thoughts. This is no simple or easy process. Our minds are often mistaken, irrational, and potentially harmful. But if we cultivate a deep interior life -- if we've come to terms with who we are and what we value -- then spending time in solitude feels like a breath of fresh air.
I often use the analogy of a dog. All day long, we are "on-leash." There are obligations and expectations and social norms. But once we enter into a state of solitude, we get to let our minds "off-leash." We get to wander around and explore interesting things. There's something to be said for cultivating a deep interior life so that, when you are "off-leash," you have a lot of fun.
Thomas Merton is one of my personal heroes. He passed away a while ago, but he was a Catholic monk who lived in the US during the twentieth century. He was acquaintances with Martin Luther King Jr. Here's a great quote by him:
"The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is exiled constantly from his own home, locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person."
If you find yourself alone this summer, consider spending time in solitude, not loneliness.
About the author and this site:
I have been a high school English teacher for well over a decade. Besides teaching English-related content and skills, I've increasingly found that students hunger for personal connection, good adult models, and ethical and moral advice. This site is an attempt at that goal.
When I'm not teaching, I can be found hiking, skiing, hunting, fishing, gardening, beekeeping, or participating in any number of other outdoor activities.
This is simply a personal website with a repository of recommendations, advice, and random thoughts. It's not in any way connected to my job or related to the school district.