New here? Start with the introduction and walk the series in order.
-
Finding Base Camp: The Lake With No Obvious Upstream Source
High in the Sierra Nevada, I sat beside a clear alpine lake with no obvious upstream source. As my son climbed toward Mount Humphrey, I began considering the source of my own inner life. Perhaps Base Camp is not something we create, but a sanctuary within us that we must learn to recognize, tend, and…
-
Only That Day Dawns
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Conclusion” I believe I first copied these words onto a card in 1981. I was attending Mesa Community College and taking a philosophy class from Dr. Robert Smith, one…
-
Finding Base Camp: A Place to Wake Up
I was exhausted, shivering, and kneeling outside my tent beside a Sierra lake when something unexpected happened. Beneath the moonlight, I became extraordinarily aware of the mountain, the lake, and myself. I was awake. But what does it mean to awaken—and could Base Camp be something we already carry within us?
-
Finding Base Camp: What Are You Carrying?
I knew exactly what my backpack weighed: 23.36 pounds without water. But a scale couldn’t tell me whether I had packed wisely—or measure everything else I was carrying. What belongs in the inner pack, and what is it finally time to put down?
-
Which Self Must Be True
A Shakespeare quotation carried on a handwritten card for more than forty years raises a deeper question: before we can be true to ourselves, how do we distinguish the deeper self from the passing weather within us?
-
Finding Base Camp: The Green Line Through the Wilderness
After crossing Piute Pass, I had a map, trusted counsel, and a bearing. Then I saw a green line promising a trail through unfamiliar terrain. There was just one problem: the trail didn’t exist. What happens when the appearance of certainty becomes more attractive than the work of maintaining bearing?
-
Finding Base Camp: The Long Ascent – When We Forget to Look Up
Sometimes the work of climbing consumes our ability to notice the mountain. On a difficult ascent toward Piute Pass in California’s Sierra Nevada, I discovered that Base Camp doesn’t begin when we finally arrive. Sometimes it begins when we simply stop, breathe, and look up.
-
Preparing to Find Base Camp
In a few weeks I’ll shoulder a backpack and hike into the High Sierra. But the real journey has already begun. As I prepare my body for the climb, I’m discovering that the deeper preparation is learning to remember what we’ve carried from the beginning—and why every Base Camp points us toward Home.
-
Two Hungers of the Soul: The Hunger for More
The hunger for applause asks, “Who saw me?” The hunger for more asks, “What lack I yet?” In this second part of The Two Hungers of the Soul, Dr. Brian Winsor reflects on the rich young man’s question to Jesus through the lens of quiet farm life in Northern Alabama: walking with Tyler, tending gardens,…
-
The Two Hungers of the Soul: The Hunger for Applause
The trail doesn’t validate your parking or your ego. It asks only what you are carrying now. In this reflection from the Sipsey Wilderness, Dr. Brian Winsor explores the Validation Treadmill—the hunger for applause, admiration, approval, and external confirmation that we still matter. With Epictetus, Jesus, Siddhartha, Carleigh-dog, and a flooded tent as trail companions,…
-
The Attention Economy: Power of Lures – The Maka Feke
Some dangers in the wilderness do not chase. They entice. A lure succeeds not by force, but by intimate knowledge of the creature it means to catch. That is why the makafeke matters here. It reveals a deeper truth than mosquitoes alone can give: the modern Attention Economy does not only distract us. It studies…
-
The Attention Economy: The Swarm – How attention is erroded
In 2015, my wife and I entered the Sierra Mountains with Danny and Melanie through Onion Valley and over Kearsarge Pass into that austere granite country that strips life down to stone, sky, breath, and effort. Somewhere along that stretch, the mosquitoes became biblical. They did not stop the journey outright. They did something subtler.…