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

Tracee Metcalfe: No Creation Myth Needed

I remember when I first heard the term. Charley Mace and I were a couple pitches up a mellow, fun route in Clear Creek Canyon, trying unsuccessfully to outclimb thunderstorms, and talking about climbing, ego, and the like. One mutual climbing acquaintance kept coming up, one whose ego had come to define his persona, his […]

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Juneteenth Greatness

My paternal great-great grandfather, James T. Norton (1844-1883), was a man of few words. Or, at least that’s what his journal from 1865 indicates. It’s been sitting near my desk for years. I’ve scanned the pages, faded scribbles in pencil recording minute datapoints about each day with little fanfare: weather, movement, rations, commands, engagements. Even […]

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Xenon and Zen

Mesmerized. There’s no other way to put it. The scene unfolding before me was captivating, subtle hues of warming a jagged Himalayan sea, blues morphing, glimmers of amber and crimson flashing on distant ridges, shadows etching an impossible landscape. It was still frigid here, sunlight not yet penetrating the frigid shadows of the West Ridge […]

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More articles and essays…

Let's go Higher than Everest

Together, let's go higher than Everest to raise funds in honor of Sam Heughan's 45th birthday and support dZi Foundation in its support of and partnership with 50,000 people in rural eastern Nepal.

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION NEWS

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Which Way Are You Going?

I love spring runs, and today was no exception. The morning air was crisp, a faint frost coating aspen catkins, mist enshrouding the reservoir, no sound aside from my footfalls and the cheery hoots of a Northern Saw-whet Owl. Up ahead the trail split, a fork I’ve arrived at many times before. The choices were […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION

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Lovejoy, McIntosh, Lincoln, & Law

“Your great-great-grandfather, Frank Richmond Milnor, sat right here in 1858,” my grandfather said, pointing to an unremarkable spot near the riverfront in Alton, Illinois. “He was just twelve, listening to the seventh Lincoln-Douglas Debate.” My sister and I nodded, listening absently, the study of our rapidly-delaminating ice cream cones of greater focus and import than […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION

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Numbed

I was going to write about chaos. The chaos raining down upon us by a populist fearmonger and his pedestaled, unelected, too-rich-to-really-care sledgehammer-wielder. The infantile shattering of all vestiges of American decency, a skulking retreat to shuddering isolationism and xenophobia paradoxically cast as a symbol of impending greatness. The resounding dearth of humanity in the […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION

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