I'm teaching an environmental philosophy senior seminar at Sterling College this semester titled Posthumanism. The premise of the course is to think about how it might change our relationship with both one another and with the non-human world if we reframed our perspective to no longer see humans at the center of the world. We begin … Continue reading philosophy
Under a low gray sky and into a steady soaking rain at 9:30 on the morning of August 1st, I set off from the Den Norske Turistforening / DNT hut at Ny Sulitjelma, planning a run of 50k by day's end. After climbing the 400 meters to a high pass between Norway and Sweden, I soon … Continue reading The Resolution of Experience: The 2017 Arctic Trail Run
Tomorrow morning I leave from the southern terminus of the Nordkalottleden just north of the old mountain mining town of Sulitjelma. Nearly a year of preparation – physical, logistical, mental, financial – all lead to this singular effort: to run the 800 kilometers of the Nordkalottleden in good style, with reasonable speed, and without injury … Continue reading Climate Run — Here we go!
On our last full day in Svalbard, Orion and I made a wide arc across the ridges east and south of Longyearbyen yesterday, covering the summits of Sukkertoppen, Gruvefjellet, Trollsteinen, and Lars Hiertafjellet, while arcing across the ridge behind the glacier, Larsbreen. The skies were the clearest of our week-long visit here, and the views were … Continue reading Melt: Dispatches from the High Arctic
When the Paris Climate Accord was first made public in late 2015, I wrote that some of my greatest hopes for the agreement were not necessarily in the non-binding limits to greenhouse gasses, but in the language describing the role of people -- social systems, communities, traditional knowledge, and indigenous cultures. You can read these … Continue reading We’ll Always Have Paris
During my run north along the Arctic Trail in August, I will pass through substantial sections of Norway, Sweden, and Finland en route to Kautokeino from Sulitjelma. The trail's 500 miles, which traverses much ofSápmi, the homeland of the Sami, can be divided according to countries, border crossings, biomes, topography, habitations, and, maybe most interesting, by reindeer … Continue reading Reindeer and Climate Change
For our second class meeting in Sterling's introductory A Sense of Place course, we read the introduction to Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, in which she writes: The thing about a crisis this big, this all-encompassing, is that it changes everything. It changes what we can do, what we can hope for, … Continue reading Hold fast your hope
Amid the political, social, and emotional tumult across our national stage this year, I have treasured my time training as a time to step outside the web of tweets, truths, media blackouts, funding cuts, posturing, and 'alternative facts.' Maybe to help me find some solid footing, during my hours (and hours) running, I've spent a lot of … Continue reading Facts and science in a complicated world
Den längsta resan är resan inåt. -Dag Hammarskjöld I talked about Climate Run: Iceland this morning with about thirty middle school students at the Albany Community School here in Vermont. Among the questions they asked during and after my slideshow was "what was your favorite part?" I … Continue reading What’s Next…?
Over the past couple of months, I have been giving Climate Run: Iceland presentations around Vermont and the eastern U.S -- from talks at Burlington, Vermont's The Outdoor Gear Exchange, Mount Mansfield Nordic Ski Club, to a standing-room-only audience at The Catamount Trail Association, and to a packed auditorium at the Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, Ohio. It's always exciting to … Continue reading Resonance
Climate Run 