Ben hit my radar because fellow members of our team listen to his podcast religiously. He has a penchant for taking things seriously, for using his life and his body as an experiment, and he therefore engages life not theoretically but with that “grab the reins and hold on” attitude that defines pioneers in frontiers everywhere. What follows is a deep dive into the multiple wells that Ben has been exploring lately—wells that I believe overlap with the interests of the And Sons tribe but that may be explored or thought about slightly differently than we typically would.

The Copper Triangle is a route that weaves and climbs its way through the Colorado Rockies, from the Copper ski resort up and over Fremont Pass to Leadville, then over Tennessee Pass and Battle Mountain to Minturn, and finally skirting Vail and the 18-wheelers blasting along I-70 to the top of Vail Pass, ultimately, like any good triangular shape, back to the dirt parking lots of Copper. It’s beautiful, sometimes terrifying, certainly punishing on the underprepared, and our chosen way to spend the day.

As the wind kicks up, the footprints ahead of us wash away in a matter of seconds, and the lone alpinist ahead fades into shadow. His footsteps are all but gone by the time we reach them. The feeling is eerie—we walk on the spine of the mountain, a drop-off to the valley below on our left, white void of a slope to our right, and in front the ever-rising face of all that is yet to be done.

During our second year of marriage, my wife and I lived back to back. We had moved to the Twin Cities so she could attend her Masters of Nursing program, and I picked up a job tending bar to pay for our (then) small monthly bills.

The program was intense, demanding late nights of study and long days of classes and practicum, which left us little time together. That and my meager income didn’t allow for many dates, since even grabbing takeout would blow our budget. Between the two, it seemed that our lives were a recipe for stress and anxiety, which isn’t exactly the best thing for a young marriage.

My life feels cluttered, or, rather, my brain does. You know that feeling when you borrow your friend’s iPhone and their apps are cluttered with unread notifications? You were only trying to use their Google Maps, but you can’t help but notice that they have 2,365 unread emails, 73 notifications from Instagram, Strava, and Podcasts combined, and now you can’t remember where you were trying to go with the maps because you’re so distracted by the notifications. You just want to go in to each app and click everything and clear it all out. Just me?

Halfway up the verdant mountainside of the Sentinel by the Sea (a hill by comparison to the Rockies, but glorious by Irish standards as it rises from the North Atlantic) my wife Susie looked back at me, and I saw a familiar gleam in her eyes. Though she was raised in a flat place, Susie has the soul of a peak-bagger—a term we use in Colorado in reference to those people who aim to reach the summit of as many mountains as their legs will carry them up.

Well, it’s finally summer. With that comes gloriously long days, board shorts that don’t fit quite right after a winter of hearty meals, and the call of water. Here in Minnesota, we’ve got lakes galore (way more than 10,000), but at the moment, I’m missing the tide. There’s something about the ocean. Something about salty air and the endless horizon that has hooked men for thousands of years—it pulls us out into deep water to hunt for food, explore new lands, and test ourselves in an environment quite indifferent to our fate. Water so often symbolizes life. The ocean has the vastness of God about it.

For years my wife and I were terrified of the prospect of pregnancy. It felt like the death knell of all our dreams. If we got pregnant, how would we travel to Japan? When would we get scuba certified and dive the great reefs of the world? Would we have to give up all those nights with a bottle of wine split between us, those early morning ascents of Colorado 14ers, our sleep in general?

I’ve been tending to my inner 8-year-old recently. The holiday season brings him to the surface year after year, but for the most part I ignore him or push him down under a blanket of distraction, sugar, and alcohol. He gets me into trouble and makes me feel vulnerable and stupid, so I’d prefer if he not be so vocal. Beer is great for shutting his voice down. For a while.

Alex Burton is both friend and coworker and was telling us stories from a backcountry ski trip he took last year through the mountains of Colorado. He was in the midst of prepping for another trip this year when we knew we had to grab him and hear some more about this story.

As I continue to wade into the waters of my twenties, I have made an attempt to build a toolkit. I have done so in order to learn to rely on myself, to attempt to fix what is broken and learn from my mistakes. What I have now is an odd assortment of tools inside a fabric bag. It's hardly coherent. But it is demonstrably pragmatic.