Author: pburke

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Summer Rain

I often feel like there’s just not enough time for everything. The pressing responsibilities of various aspects of my life — work, parenting, creative projects — all weigh on me, and fully attending to any one of them feels like neglecting the others.

Then I’m given an opportunity to slow down. Right now it’s an unexpected summer storm pouring down around me. I’m on the porch of a home I love, at the tail end of a busy weekend, and there is a dome of rain and white noise and o-zone around me. Something about it brings me back to the present. My regrets about the past and worries about the future are paused, and I am calm. Finally.

I had a similar experience this winter when we were late leaving for a long weekend at a cabin due to last-minute issues with a work project. When we finally got on the road, I was stressed, disappointed, and worried, and the weather was beginning to turn. The drive was only about two hours, but the snow was coming down quickly. When we got off the highway, the roads were covered, and anyone with any sense was not driving around. We pushed on, forced to go slowly, following tracks made by cars that had gone before. When we finally pulled up to the little cabin we had rented in the forest, there were three or four inches of snow on the ground. I lit the wood stove, heard the fire pop and crackle, and looked out at the fresh snow. We were here, miles from anything, and could hunker down for a few days of peace and quiet. The tension melted away.

These sorts of nature-induced therapeutic moments always surprise me when they happen. Rain and snow seem to trigger my brain to calm down, and put a little distance between me and my concerns. But maybe I can create that distance in other ways: a walk in the woods, a quiet morning on the porch, a cup of tea while listening to a record.

Summer ’21

I haven’t been reading or thinking much this summer. I’ve mostly been doing. We just returned from a great vacation to Vermont, where I celebrated my 37th birthday on an island in Lake Champlain, at the camp I’ve been visiting since I was a kid.

Today I took some time to make an Iceland page. Right now it has some background on my interest in Iceland, a handful of resources I have found fun or useful, and a list of all the Iceland-adjacent books I’ve read in the past year or so. Later, I’d like to write up a day-by-day travelogue of our 2019 trip to Iceland, with photos, but that is a bigger project.

There are things I could complain about, but I won’t. Life is pretty good, really, and I am feeling more confident I can make some changes that will make it even better.

The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig

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Started Apr 11, 2021
Finished Apr 15, 2021

Voices
by Arnaldur Indriðason

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Started Mar 7, 2021
Finished Apr 10, 2021

Diversions

Recently I’ve become a bit obsessed with rock climbing. Just learning about it, but not doing it (yet). It started with a video that popped up on YouTube of professional climber Adam Ondra teaching a newbie version of himself, via split screen, the basics of climbing. Ondra has dozens of videos, mostly him “sending” extremely technical routes, including the preceding attempts and failures. I appreciate how earnest and enthusiastic he is about climbing, even if he is also clearly very serious and driven to excel. (Turns out he is almost certainly the best in the world at the type of climbing he does.)

After that introduction, I was reminded of the movie Free Solo about climber Alex Honnold’s rope-free ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite. I knew about the movie but hadn’t seen it, so I watched it one Saturday morning a few weeks ago. It was as much about Honnold the person as it was about the actual climb — his determination, the years of planning and preparation, the strain on his personal relationships, even the dynamic of being filmed by friends who might have to watch him fall to his death. It was a great film about an interesting person and an absolutely legendary feat. The movie itself felt quite similar to Man on Wire, which is about Philippe Petit’s high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. That stunt remains completely gob-smacking to this day, but Honnold’s achievement is on another level. Whereas Man on Wire had elements of a heist movie — how will they pull this off without getting caught? — Free Solo is really about one person’s mastery of his chosen field.

In interviews, Honnold likes to talk about risk versus consequence. Free solo climbing is obviously very high consequence, especially on a big wall like El Capitan: If you fall, you die. But the high risk can be mitigated somewhat through planning, conditioning, practice, patience, and so on. Many people have climbed the route Honnold chose, and their goal typically is to prove they are capable of doing all the component parts. Honnold knew he could do the parts. His quest instead was for mastery: to put in the work necessary to do it all perfectly, then prove it to himself by executing when only perfection would do.

Soon after seeing Free Solo, I watched The Dawn Wall, a movie about a pair of climbers doing the first free ascent (with ropes and safety gear but without other climbing aids) of a different part of El Capitan. The two movies came out around the same time, and while they are ostensibly about similar topics, they are very different. The Dawn Wall was about Tommy Caldwell’s decade-long obsession with piecing together a route over the blank face of El Cap, finding a climbing partner in Kevin Jorgensen, then training together for several years before completing their 19-day first free ascent. In contrast to Free Solo, which was about individual mastery and life-or-death consequences, this story was about obsession, perseverance, and friendship. Another excellent film; I’m really not sure which one I preferred.

Since then I’ve continued my diversion into climbing. I’m excited about it for now. If that continues, I may eventually break out of my comfort zone to take a beginner class at a climbing gym.

Keep Moving
by Maggie Smith

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Started Mar 23, 2021
Finished Mar 31, 2021

The Philosopher's Flight
by Tom Miller

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Started Feb 26, 2021
Finished Feb 28, 2021

Silence of the Grave
by Arnaldur Indriðason

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Started Jan 24, 2021
Finished Jan 31, 2021

Miss Iceland
by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir

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Started Jan 20, 2021
Finished Jan 23, 2021

Wintering
by Katherine May

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Started Jan 10, 2021
Finished Jan 20, 2021