This weekend a printing press in Texas is warming up its rotors and ink jets just for me. For me, that is, and the 90 million people of Ethiopia for whom I wrote the book it’s about to print. Are you cringing right now? Did I really just say I wrote a book for 90 million people? You’re right, I … Read More
Osito And A Frog Named Turtle, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com and Osprey Packs Osito is a poodle, which may explain why he’s never been an animal person. I’ve tried to convince him otherwise over the past ten and a half years. We’ve gone through cows, hippos, squirrels, and a warthog, but these are all temporary fascinations of mine, and of little consequence to the poodle. Somehow, I thought the … Read More
Running With Haile, An Additive Adventure Entry
In Conjunction With OutsideTV.com This is how it happens. One person has the idea to run 13,286 kilometers—the distance from Vancouver B.C. to Mekelle, Ethiopia—to raise money to build a school in rural Ethiopia. It’s hard for one person to run that far himself or herself. So they ask for others to join them. One of the people who signs up … Read More
Me, As a Dot. An Additive Adventure Entry*
I have no idea who the people are who will change my life in the next two years. I had no idea, two years ago, that a woman making a spontaneous stop in a Patagonia store in California would change mine now. Susanne Conrad caught a glimpse of a tall hardbound book called Vertical Ethiopia: Climbing Toward Possibility in the Horn … Read More
Bigger This Time
Believe the hype, drink the cool-aid, make the trip. That’s my motto this month. I didn’t start it. My friend Sara did. Actually, an intuitive did. Or, to be precise, my decision to go see an intuitive. A month ago, while driving through the dark streets of Bozeman, I called Sara in Bend. We’d both lived together in Boulder a … Read More
Waypoint Namibia: Big Walls, Desert Mirages, and Perseverance in the Darmaland and Beyond. *
On June 1st, Peter Doucette, Kate Rutherford and I completed Southern Crossing: a 1300-foot 5.11+, grade 5 rock climbing first ascent on the Brandberg, Namibia’s highest peak. But that’s only part of the story. There’s also a 2,000+ year-old painted giraffe, 108-degree temperatures, eight days at 15km/hour over washboard roads, scorpions, laser sharp granite cracks, crumbling granite faces, and 1.7 … Read More
Purple Flying Skies. Namibia 5
People here call Namibia “Easy Africa.” The roads, when they’re tarred, are great. You can get a fully kitted out 4X4 with bed linens and a lantern. You can car camp at the base of that mound of granite pictured there: Spitzkoppe. It was what brought me here in the first place. Kate and I have spent the past week … Read More
Mobile Home, Africa Style. Namibia 1
This is where I’m going to live for the next five weeks. The tent, not the lawn. The tent is going to Namibia with me and the lawn will stay here outside of my house in Boulder. (The poodle, unfortunately, will also stay at home.) There is chance this tent will get trampled by an elephant. Either with me inside … Read More
Ethiopian Birr
As of January 2nd, 345 Ethiopian Birr (ETB) was the equivalent to $37.99. On that day my publisher set the price for my book and now, a month and a half later, my book is stamped with both prices on the back. The ETB price comes first and this, and the very fact it is on my book, makes me … Read More
Arrival
The call comes in the middle of my third cup of coffee. I load into the car and wonder just how much space 500 books will take up in my wagon. It’s industrial where I am going; gray buildings of concrete and steel compete with each other for light. Is this the part of life that makes you an adult? … Read More