17/06/2026
The Olympic high country is medicine for the soul
Alpine meadows alive with wildflowers dancing under snow-capped peaks, fragile and cosmically beautiful, make me feel what I can only describe as childlike wonder
I’m so grateful to be alive while we still have pristine, untouched wilderness to explore and marinate in. I’m not sure future generations will be so lucky.
Some go to the mountains to escape “real life”
For me, Real Life only exists far from cars and strip malls and concrete buildings with right angles.
Not an escape, but a head-first immersion into the realest life that one can hope to experience.
What’s real about industrial processed food? What’s real about sitting at a desk and communicating via Slack? What’s real about AI generated approximations of the human condition?
The shape that a glacier carves into the bedrock of this planet is real. Filtering all of your water from an alpine stream is real. The mountains, the plants, and the symphony of rivers and birds and wind, all real.
The further we get down this road of industrial, technical, “progress”, the further we get from the real.
We trade mountain views for screensavers, communion with the birds for communication with AI chatbots, and experiencing life firsthand for living vicariously through pictures on a website.
Nature doesn’t lie. Nature doesn’t exploit. Nature shows us the way to the truth.
What’s real to you?
🎸
