The unDefined Blog

Inspiration and stories from the mountains, cultures, peoples, and perspectives of our world.

Morromico Bay, Chocó, Colombia | July, 2018

Featured Posts & Collections

Garbage Day

By all accounts, he wasn’t an easy man, my grandfather. He pushed hard, asked a lot, expected excellence - or at least excellent effort - from all around him. But, also by all accounts, he didn’t have the easiest beginnings, so his idiosyncrasies can at least be understood, if not justified. Sadly, I never met […]

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Hands

November 24, 2005, Nimaj, Rajasthan, India It was impossible to capture him. His face was topographic, lines etched deep, a storybook of years spent smiling and laughing, toiling and struggling, living under the blazing sun of central Rajasthan. Wende and I were back in India, this time taking our mothers on (what was then) an […]

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Are there any survivors?

As I wrote Tuesday’s “Mountains of Memories” post Do Hard Things, the photo of my friend Peter atop Bienn a’ Chruliaste made me think not just of the beauty of wilderness solitude, but also the loneliness and isolation felt by me - perhaps by many - during our current challenging times. So, a Thursday Thought […]

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More articles and essays…

Do Hard Things

September 28, 2023, summit of Beinn a Chrulaiste, Glencoe, Scotland. A client and good friend of mine - we’ll call him John - has a motto: Do hard things. For most people, it would be just that - a motto, a slogan more political than practical, more aspirational than actionable. But not for John. In […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION MOUNTAINS OF MEMORIES PHOTOGRAPHY

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Deep in the Pickets

September 6, 2014, on Luna Col, Northern Pickets Range, North Cascades, Washington. Scroll to the bottom to see the view in a full VR panorama. The evening was about as peaceful as could be imagined, which was a welcome break from the preceding days. Four of us - Dave Morton, Sid Pattison, Jeremiah Watt, and […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION MOUNTAINS OF MEMORIES PHOTOGRAPHY

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Troublesome

October 21, 2020, Juniper Pass, Colorado The clouds didn't make sense. They were rising in the north, high above skyline, towering into the upper atmosphere as I drove my kids to school along Evergreen Parkway. We got to the S-curves and it finally made sense. Those weren't clouds in the colloquial sense, they were towering […]

MOUNTAINS OF MEMORIES PHOTOGRAPHY

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Twin Floods

September 12, 2013, on the banks of the Bhagirathi, Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India "The river is insane," Wende texted via satellite. I was confused: She couldn't know that, at that moment, I was sitting on the bank of a raging Bhagirathi River in the hamlet of Gangotri. Sure, she of course knew I was in India, […]

MOUNTAINS & ADVENTURE MOUNTAINS OF MEMORIES TRAVEL

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