|Friday Web Round-up

Adventure

• Grand Trunk Road (trailer)
• The Last Ice Merchant
• A Life Well Lived -- Jim Whittaker
• Everest: A Time Lapse Short Film
• Dan Ross - Drawing Different Lines

Environment + Sustainability

• Toxic waste spill in northern Alberta biggest of recent disasters in North America (Nathan Vanderklippe, The Globe and Mail) 
• Permies
• Rios Libres: Environmental Dispatches – Episode 1, The People (The Cleanest Line) 
• Rios Libres: Environmental Dispatches – Episode 2, The History (The Cleanest Line)
• Techno-Fix--Michael Huesemann & Joyce Huesemann believe technology won't save us or the environment, but rather hastens collapse. (Utne) 
• Hemp History Week 2013 (Prana)
• The Fascinating Story Of Hemp (Prana)
• POW! David Letterman’s Epic Rant Against Fracking (Liberals Unite)
• Global warming: Not too late to rein in climate change, group says (Pete Spotts, Christian Science Monitor) 
• One Percent for the Planet

Health + Food

• 29 Amazing Vegan Ice Cream Recipes (BuzzFeed)
• Vegetarians live longer, researchers find (Grist)
• Why the King Amendment Would Preempt State GMO Labeling Laws (Mother Earth News)
• Will my 'paleo' diet prevent cancer? (Mother Nature Network)

Technology + Science

• Fairphone is going to be a real thing! (Treehugger)
• Yosemite's Iconic El Capitan Mapped in High-Res 3-D (National Geographic)
• Pixlr
• Digital Public Library of America

Animals

• Wild Orca Puts on Amazing Aerial Display (Adventure Journal)
• The Cutest Interspecies Animal Friendships (BuzzFeed)
• 20 Unlikely Animal Friendships (BuzzFeed)
• Biological clocks 'beat quicker' in cities (BBC)

Psychology

• The Question That Changed Everything for Me (Storyline)
• Why French Kids Don't Have ADHD (Psychology Today) 
• The Riddle of Consciousness (Gary Marcus, The New Yorker)

Craft

• Charlotte (film trailer)

Humor

• You Had One Job

Music

• The AJ List: 17 Of The Best Songs About Mountains (Adventure Journal)

Bonus

• Better World Links
• Christian Ethics

|Friday Web Round-up

Adventure (Travel, Sports, etc.)

• Top 5 Travel Tips from a Wayfaring Aficionado (Simple Life. Good Life.) 
• Smiley’s Project: Mt Waddington (Prana) 
• Collin’s Climbing Day (Prana) 
• Shipwreck survivor recounts drama on high seas (Michael Martinez, CNN) 
• Climbing in Catalunya Spain and advice from Granny (Beth Rodden) 
• Kickin’ it with Llamas, Watching Guanacos Fly By (Chris Werner) 

Conservation

• Cooking Up a Conservation Victory in Canada’s Sacred Headwaters (Shannon McPhail, The Cleanest Line) 

Health (Mind + Body)

• Amputee Designs New Finger With Bike Parts (Derek Pettie, Wend) 
• Stress erodes employee health -- and corporate profits (Arianna Huffington, Chicago Tribune)

>MORE: Christian Social Ethics/Action

>MORE: General Social Ethics/Action

|Mortality and the Good Life

Sean O'Neill is the brother of rock-climber and adventurer Timmy O'Neill. Despite paralysis in Sean's legs, the two recently attempted to climb a significant wall in Yosemite. You can learn about their experience in the short video Pull. In that video, Sean reflects on the window that his paralysis has opened for him. "I do see a more positive side of a lot of people. People see me; it brings out their own mortality. So it's been kind of a gift to see such a nice side of people all the time." 

When aware of life's trajectory, people are kinder.

The Psalms also highlight the connection between wisdom and an awareness of one's mortality. "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Ps. 90:12). When I'm mindful of the transitory reality of life, I'm pushed to reflect on how to make my life count or how to live well, and much of living well is living well for others--empathy, compassion, solidarity, community.

Whether we are 15, 45 or 75 years of age, wisdom calls us to use the awareness of life's passing seasons to reflect on how to make the most of our days and on how to write a good chapter today for my life's book. To that end, here are two links that while aimed at different age groups are worth considering by people at any stage of life:

• Stop Waiting For God To Tell You What To Do With Your Life (Justin Zoradi on Donald Miller's blog, Storyline)
• It Ain't Over (Ed Dobson) 

BONUS: If you still have some free time, here are two other articles that speak to me about the "good life."

• Peace Farm Inspires Kingdom Living
• Our Primary Goal is Love

|Male Bonding [UPDATE]

"Men don't bond unless they risk their lives together." --Kaj

That line is from the chapter "The Pain Will Bind Us" in Donald Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Donald explains:

I have a friend named Kaj who used to run an outdoor school in Canada. I went to visit him a couple of times, and each time I noticed he had a remarkable men's group at his school. The men tended to bond like brothers and respect each other and treat each other with dignity. I asked him once how he got the guys to bond like that, and Kaj said he believed the key to getting men to bond was to have them risk their lives together. (Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, p. 185)

One game they played together was Capture the Flag but with an incendiary twist. "Instead of flags they chucked little bottles of gasoline across fields into each other's campfires. The team whose campfire burned down last won. I honestly thought somebody was going to die" (p. 186). This conflagration was followed by jousting on bikes with flaming spears.

The day after reading this deep social and anthropological analysis, I watched a live online feed, where Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk shared about their two ordeals on Meru's Shark's Fin [UPDATE: the video is available here]. Here's a trailer from the film being made about the two expeditions (see also):



These three men were deeply bonded. They spoke openly about their concern and respect for each other and also for other friends who had died in the mountains. Conrad had married the wife of a deceased buddy and raised his children. Jimmy had held Renan in his arms after a serious accident, all the while thinking Renan would die there.

These stories made me smile as I thought about the beastly guys who've been important in my story. The night before watching the trio recount their Himalayan climb, I had slept in an old t-shirt with a hole burned in front where Dr. T shot me with a bottle rocket in the heat of battle almost two decades ago. Yes, bonding at the edge of death, or at least 1st degree burns. Thanks to all the great men of valor with whom I've had the honor of sharing life's battles!

|Of Mountains and Valleys

Swiss alpinist Ueli Steck is a master of moving high in the mountains. His training, technical expertise, and eye for product design are unbelievable. Here is an example:



[see more here and here]

Yet even Ueli Steck cannot live in the mountains. He lives in the valleys. Only a very small fraction of his life is spent on the summit of the many peaks he climbs. Mountain tops call us upward, but we do not live there.

That is the message of "The Place of Exaltation," today's reading at My Utmost for His Highest (Oct. 1). Commenting on Mark 9:2, Oswald Chambers wrote:

We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life— those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength.

Yvon Chouinard and others have called mountain climbers like Ueli Steck conquerors of the useless. This is not meant as an insult but merely a realistic assessment. Yvon knows well that when you get to the top, there is nothing there. Stand-out climber Chris Sharma states the same, saying we climb for fun, unlike scientists who are doing important work like cancer research. Thankfully, the top has not been entirely useless for Yvon because he has allowed it to shape who he is. He has become a top advocate for ecological conservation because of his time in wild places. Similarly, Oswald Chambers speaks about how the mountains also shape us as Christians.

We are inclined to think that everything that happens is to be turned into useful teaching. In actual fact, it is to be turned into something even better than teaching, namely, character. The mountaintop is not meant to teach us anything, it is meant to make us something. There is a terrible trap in always asking, “What’s the use of this experience?” We can never measure spiritual matters in that way.

Chambers captures all of these meanings for Christians--connection with God on the summit, being changed in the experience, and also descending to serve others. It is said that more mountaineers die on the way down from the summit than on the way up. There are many reasons for this. Climbers may expend too much energy on the way up and don't have sufficient reserves to make it back down. Or bad weather has moved in while they celebrated on the summit. Or they lose focus and make simple mistakes leading to a fall or disorientation. Chambers speaks to this need for strength for the descent as well as the life one lives back in the valley.

We have all experienced times of exaltation on the mountain, when we have seen things from God’s perspective and have wanted to stay there. But God will never allow us to stay there. The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain. If we only have the power to go up, something is wrong. It is a wonderful thing to be on the mountain with God, but a person only gets there so that he may later go down and lift up the demon-possessed people in the valley (see Mark 9:14-18). 

Having experienced the fulfillment of the mountain top experience, may we descend with strength, grace and courage to live and serve well in the valley.

|Recovery and Rebirth

Stories of athletes recovering from injuries or finding new life given new constraints speak to me. They encourage me to do a better job of responding to my own changes and to live each day more fully.

• Diane Van Deren (seizures; video) 
• Bhava Ram (back; article) 
• Sarah Watson (knee, video)
• Craig DeMartino, The Season 2.6, 2.11, 2.14, 2.20 (various; videos) + Climbing Mag Article
• Murderball (various; documentary)

These three documentaries also relate to health, but they address lifestyle issues rather than injuries or adventure.

|Outdoor Action Videos

These videos shared by Radical Reels are noteworthy:

• Radical Reels 2012
• kayaks
• kayaks 2
• bikes
• snowboards

If you like those, you may also appreciate these collections:

• Patagonia Videos
• Rock and Ice Videos
• The Season

The North Face videos on Hulu.com:

• Between Heaven and Earth
• Light of the Himalaya
• Legends of the Lost World

MORE

#22 The Smiley’s Project: Bugaboo Spire’s East Ridge

From the Prana blog:

Bugaboo Spire's East Ridge from Mark Smiley on Vimeo.

MORE

#14 180 Degrees South

180 South Trailer from Malloy Brothers on Vimeo.

#13 Ueli Steck's Triple Speed Climbing Record

#2 Jimmy Chin on Assignment

On Assignment from Camp 4 Collective on Vimeo.