An unnatural history of wildfire in the American West — Note: This is a modified excerpt from my book, Where Land Becomes Sky: Life and Death Along the Colorado Trail, available now. The Hayman Fire began in the confines of a fire ring on June 8, 2002. The flames spread, igniting nearby debris and leaping to the crowns of surrounding…

Matsunaga Teitoku on the beauty of impermanence — There’s a saying among Buddhist circles that captures the differences between three of the most popular Buddhist traditions: “Zen is for poets, Tibetan is for artists, and Vipassana is for psychologists.” The saying is imperfect, as generalizations tend to be, but there’s some truth to it. Vipassana stresses the importance…

The sport began much earlier than you might think. — Note: This is a modified excerpt from my book, Where Land Becomes Sky: Life and Death Along the Colorado Trail, available now. California’s Bay Area is often cited as the birthplace of mountain biking. Back in the 1970s, Bay Area riders began renovating old road bikes from the 1930s and…

On the symbolism of the ensō — The Infinity Circle. The Circle of Enlightenment. The Zen Circle. The Ensō. The symbol has many names, and its interpretations are even more numerous. …

A short history of the Colorado Trail — Note: This is a modified excerpt from my book, Where Land Becomes Sky: Life and Death Along the Colorado Trail, available now. The Colorado Trail. It’s a 485 mile-long path of singletrack, hiking trails, logging and mining roads extending from the mouth of Waterton Canyon, where the Rockies rise with…

The Zen Buddhist concept of “beginner’s mind” is the antithesis of the Dunning-Kruger effect. — In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman identifies two systems of thought that are inherent to the human mind. There is System 1 thinking, and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking, Kahneman says, is instinctive, emotional, fast. It’s intuition, the tendency of the…

To clean them up, we need regulatory reform. — Note: This article is a modified excerpt from my book, Where Land Becomes Sky: Life and Death Along the Colorado Trail. Climb toward the heights of Colorado’s Kokomo Pass, some 20 miles northeast of Leadville and 12,000 feet above the sea, and you’ll be treated to spectacular views. The Sawatch…

Robert Wright on the relationship between thoughts and emotions, and the Buddha on mindfulness as a roof over your head. — Meditation is hard. I know, that sounds counterintuitive. What could be easier than sitting? Spend some time meditating, however, and you’re likely to be swept up in a flood of thoughts and emotions, many of which aren’t very pleasant. A passage from the Dhammapada reads: We are what we think. All…

Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve is an otherworldly landscape. — Late in the year of 1806, a 27-year-old United States Army Lieutenant by the name of Zebulon Pike led an expedition to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Commissioned to explore the region in search of the headwaters of the Arkansas River, Pike led his men and mules over the Sangre de Cristos…