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…

Everest Trash to Treasure: A Battery with a Story

I've got a lot of things in my office, old and new, bought and found and scavenged and given to me. They're disparate items, lots from Everest, many from the hinterlands of the Rockies, others from the ramparts of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya. Many of these items, from tent poles and pitons to salt […]

MOUNTAINS & ADVENTURE

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Earth Day 2024: Hope, not Carnage

Looking for other Earth Day thoughts and inspiration? Check out these posts. As I sat down this morning at the keyboard to write - to write about the Earth, about Earth Day, about our world - my hands began quickly, almost automatically, to click out a treatise of doom, a tome of despair about the […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION

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Real - Not AI: To the North Col

To say that Everest has changed in a century is to grossly understate the matter. Physically, of course, the mountain has changed little. It’s a bit warmer perhaps, and bit less snowy. The monsoons are a bit more erratic. But it still rises high, steeply, to dizzying altitude and, as yet, there is no escalator […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION MOUNTAINS & ADVENTURE

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Aiming Forgiveness

I’m tormented by the news these days. War in Ukraine. Horror in Israel and Gaza. Increasing tension and bluster across the globe. Political vitriol and animus domestically. It’s hard, sometimes impossible, to see a bright side, an outlet. So, I turned back to a post I wrote six months ago but never published, one about […]

ESSAYS & INSPIRATION

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