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Iceland: Week 4

More than half of last week was spent outside, hiking in the Highlands between Landmannalaugar and Thórsmörk on the Laugavegur trail. I’ve had my eye on this trek for a long time, and it lived up to all my expectations. I went with a guided group, 16 of us in total, and hiked 40 miles over 4 days, traversing 6,000 feet of elevation gain across wildly different landscapes. It was often cold, windy, and rainy, but with fabulous views, otherworldly scenes, and a chance to have my morning coffee at the foot of a glacier — an excellent mix of Type 1 and Type 2 fun.

Going with a group has distinct benefits, particularly as a solo traveler. For one, I had someone to talk to, and our guide turned out to be wonderfully low-key and happy to answer all my questions. It also meant that I only had to carry a daypack, as the company transported our other bags as well as food. We stayed in mountain huts, originally constructed in the 1970s by a hiking club, which are simple structures filled to the brim with sleeping mats and a kitchen. Lots of people stay in tents as well, and there are shared bathroom facilities for everyone. For 1,000 ISK you can buy 5 minutes of hot shower time. Overall, accommodations are basic, but having tubs of food for our group transported by vehicle meant meals could be a couple notches above backpacker food.

I have photosets on Instagram for each day (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4), so I won’t overdo it on the photos here, but below is a brief daily overview.

Day One: Landmannalaugar

Landscapes at Landmannalaugar
Leaving the lava field at Landmannalaugar, approaching the hut and campground

The trip to Landmannalaugar from Reykjavík took about 3.5 hours, which would make it possible to do as a very long day-trip. We didn’t actually start on the Laugavegur Trail this first day, but did a four-hour hike through the colorful landscapes and lava fields of the area. It was the windiest of all the days, and threatened to downpour as it had the the day before. But the rain remained scattered, with patches of blue sky, and it was a great introduction to the trip.

We stayed in the hut in the center of the above photo, the only one on the trip with hot water on tap since this was a geothermal area. A hot spring runs in front of the hut, feeding a pool a short distance away, which felt amazing to soak in after the hike. It was my first natural hot spring in Iceland and it was fun to see how you could moderate the temperature by positioning yourself within the pool. As you moved closer to the river it got uncomfortably hot, but you could also get extra heat by digging your feet or hands into the pebble-covered ground.

A very Icelandic scene: sheep grazing with people bathing in a hot spring in the distance.

Day Two: Landmannalaugar to Álftavatn

The second day was the longest, at 15 miles, and was technically two segments of the trail as we passed by the Hrafntinnusker hut halfway through. It also had the most elevation. The day started with steamy geothermal landscapes, including steam vents and mud pots, giving way to rockier and snow-covered terrain as we passed over a mountain pass. The trail only opens in mid-June, because the snow pack is too deep before then. We were continuously going up and down, as the trail runs through numerous valleys, although some were still filled with snow that bridged across them. You have to be careful as you cross those because the snow melts from both the top (sun) and bottom (hot springs), potentially obscuring the true depth of the snow you’re walking across.

Steamy hot springs provided an otherworldly feel throughout the day.
The landscape became rockier and snowier mid-day.

The hut at Álftavatn was the best of the trip with more spacious quarters and a generously sized kitchen, beautifully situated on the edge of a lake. The multi-hour steep downhill trek to the campground wrecked havoc on our feet, but just before arrival we had our first river crossing and the freezing cold water helped to sooth the swelling. There were four river crossings in total on this hike, and I carried an extra pair of water shoes for them. They were bone chillingly cold, but a fun part of the experience as I’d never done it before.

The hut at Álftavatn.
Camping area at Álftavatn, next to the lake.

Day Three: Álftavatn to Emstrur (Botnar)

The third day saw a dramatic shift in scenery, away from the colorful geothermal hills to a stark black and green landscape. It was rockier, and much flatter than previous days. There was another river crossing less than an hour into the hike, and I think there is where I made the mistake of not fully cleaning all the tiny rocks out from between my toes after the crossing. By the end of the day I’d discovered that the smallest toe on my right foot was lacerated where it joined my foot; I think a small stone had abraded it all day as a walked. It wasn’t terrible, and better than getting a blister, but made the final day of hiking a bit uncomfortable.

River crossing
Much of the day was starkly black and green. There’s no life up there, no birds or sheep.

The siting of our final huts at Emstrur/Botnar was beautiful, situated in a valley next to a glacier, but they were also the most cramped. It was raining steadily when we arrived, which means the 21 people staying in tiny hut #2 were all huddled inside trying to dry off.

The Emstrur/Botnar huts.
Glacial view from the hut.
Packed sleeping quarters.
We had to eat in shifts in this tiny hut because there wasn’t quite enough room around the tables.

Day Four: Emstrur (Botnar) to Þórsmörk

On the final day, the trail ended at Thórsmörk, one of the only native forests in Iceland. You could observe life returning as the day progressed, with a few birds flying over canyons and ewes leading their lambs around the hills. During this segment we travelled between the Mýrdalsjökull and Eyjafjallajökull glaciers, ending in a flood plain with clear views of both. Between the biggest river crossing, feeling a bit weary, and my slightly wounded foot, I ended up relying on my hiking poles more during this segment. I used them periodically throughout the trail when I felt the need for additional stability, like going down a steep and muddy decent, but there was always a tradeoff between holding my poles or my camera.

Valley with Mýrdalsjökull galcier in the background.
These signs were found throughout the trail. Punching the letters out of metal is smart, as I doubt that a painted sign would last very long in this environment.
My group at the end of the Laugavegur trail. We were a mix of people from the USA, Canada, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Norway.

We didn’t stay in the hut at Thórsmörk, although they did let us relax there while waiting for the bus to arrive. There are additional trails in that area that looks great, and three huts in total. Most of the people doing the full hike were foreigners, but I was told that Thórsmörk is a place that native Icelanders regularly come to recreate. I might try to make my way back here, for a day trip or a night in a hut. But the season for the Highlands is very short: basically mid-June to mid-September.

Getting back from the hike I laid low for a couple of days, catching up on sleep, laundry, and email. But I was able to register for my classes, and getting the syllabus’ and schedule provides me with a sense of the structure that I’ll have starting August 18th. I’ll share more as things get going.

The weather in Reykjavík had been dreary all week, but yesterday in it was nearly perfect for the Pride Parade. Clear blue skies, upper 50s, and a massive celebration of diversity and equality. Perhaps the biggest difference about Pride in Iceland versus the US right now is the fact that the Prime Minister attended and spoke at the celebration.

Noted & Done

  • I’m noticing that the light is starting to change. When I moved here last month it felt like daylight when I went to bed, now it feels like dusk and I’m awake to see an actual sunset.
  • A Highland bus from TREX is bookable for a self-planned trip to Þórsmörk or Landmannalaugar. They aren’t cheap at ~$228 round-trip, but the alternative is to rent a car that can drive through deep rivers. Apparently these buses can handle up to 2 meters of water.
  • Registered for my classes at the University of Iceland.
  • Checked out Góði hirðirinn, a second-hand shop, and got some fun and random things for my apartment.
  • Went to an event billed as a SuperCollider Session at Mengi, which showcased students from the Iceland University of the Arts playing pieces they developed through a music programming course.
  • Finished reading the book The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks.

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Iceland: Week 3

Last week started with a day-trip to Vestmannaeyjar, or the Westman Islands, an archipelago off Iceland’s southern coast that I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. Of course I did — it’s an island off an island — I’m always up for the next most isolated spot. There were a couple of things I knew about Vestmannaeyjar ahead of time: a volcanic eruption forced an evacuation in 1973 and it’s home to Europe’s largest puffin colony.

View from the top of Eldfell volcano
The cliffs along the harbor

Over the last few years my interest in the islands was piqued by a few different pieces of media. The first was a movie called The Deep, a 2012 Icelandic film about the real story of a fisherman who survived a shipwreck and managed to withstand the cold of the North Atlantic for 6 hours while he swam home to Vestmannaeyjar, eventually walking dragging himself to shore and walking home across the lava fields. Great film, but hard to find.

Luckily the other two are readily available, and both about puffins. First is the 20 minute documentary Puffling (full video on Vimeo) that follows people on Vestmannaeyjar as they work to rescue baby puffins (which are called pufflings!) that get lost in the town and need to be taken back to the cliffs. And finally the New York Times Magazine writer Sam Anderson recorded a podcast about his experience of traveling to Vestmannaeyjar and rescuing pufflings. I highly recommend both.

I didn’t get a chance to save any lost pufflings, but I did get to see hundreds, if not thousands on the Stórhöfði peninsula, the southernmost tip of Heimaey island. The only experience I can compare this to was visiting Mykines island in the Faroe Islands in 2018. There, we walked amongst the burrows, watching puffins poke their heads in and out. The cliffs on Vestmannaeyjar are too steep for that, you’re looking down and across at a hill filled with burrows. But the number of puffins is noticeably greater and there is a small viewing shack that can shield you from the weather.

In general, the Westman Islands reminded so much of the Faroe Islands, especially the uninhabited rocks standing alone with a forbidding lack of shoreline. There are 16 islands in total, of which only Heimaey is occupied, but 6 others have a single hunting cabin perched on them, like an isolation look-alike contest with the Faroes’ Stóra Dímun. The southernmost island of Surtsey is brand new, having been formed by a volcanic eruption in just 1967.

I also hiked to the top of the Eldfell volcano, the one that erupted in 1973 covering the town in ash and lava. It’s an amazing view from up there, and provides a sense of scale to the eruption and destruction. What are now lava fields were once houses, and as you walk through them there are signs indicating a house, or the church, or the power plant is buried below you. The Eldheimar museum memorializes and tells the story of the eruption, and it’s incredibly well designed. The museum building itself is constructed around a house that was excavated from the ash and left in situ.

The Eldheimar museum is the building in the bottom left.
The old Kiwanis Club is 16 meters below this plaque.
An excavated home that was completely covered in ash during the Eldfell eruption in 1973

In other news, I finally completed all of the administrative tasks I’d been working on. I got my residency card, after going back to the Directorate of Immigration in person to nudge them to complete it. That opened up the ability to upgrade my phone plan to full capabilities. I also got my student ID card from the University of Iceland, which gives me access to buildings after hours and entitles me to various discounts like a half-price monthly bus pass. I also made a second trip to IKEA and a local retailer Elko, and now have pretty much everything I need for my apartment.

I’m certainly not jet lagged anymore, three weeks in, but I do feel oddly time shifted in various ways. It’s probably a combination of the time zone (4 hours ahead of Eastern) and the fact that the sun doesn’t set until midnight. It’s an awkward shift, because just as I’m looking to get some sleep the work day is ending in the US, the news recaps are available on my podcasts, and many people I know are getting off work. Also, I think my body is confused by the temperature, which is in the 50s and I’m wearing a puffy coat every day. Don’t get me wrong, I very much prefer this to sweltering heat, but my body still gets confused that it’s August.

Noted & Done

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Iceland: Week 2

My first week in Iceland had a lot of necessary logistics and administrative tasks, getting settled in my apartment and wrapping my head around living in a new country. But in my second week I was able to start exploring, not just around Reykjavík but more broadly into the countryside and Highlands.

The week began with my mind back in the USA since Emoji had a vet appointment to clean his teeth and extract at least one. My little guy is an old man by dog standards, and because of his heart condition it always makes me nervous when he has to go under anesthesia. The procedure went okay, but when they got a better look during surgery they discovered that many additional teeth needed removal — they extracted 14! Apparently dogs have ~42 total, but given that he’s lost 10 in the past that means he’s down to less than half. He’s doing okay, but every dog owner on the streets of Reykjavík can attest to me missing him as I stop for lengthy conversations with their pups.

My city explorations this week were long exploratory walks, reaching beyond the tourist streets to find myself on industrial corridors and inside abandoned WW2 bunkers. I’ve always liked to see a city this way, through the alleys and backyards. I hiked around Öskjuhlíð, a forested area near the Perlan Museum, walked along the southern coastline penned in by the domestic airport, and stumbled upon unexpected finds like the clubhouse of the Icelandic Radio Amateurs (ÍRA). I hugged the edges of the harbor through the Grandi District, stumbling onto gems like the The Living Art Museum hidden among the fishing trawlers and shopping centers.

But more importantly, I got outside the city. Classes for my graduate program don’t start until August 18, so my goal is to take advantage of my flexible schedule before then to see some parts of Iceland that I’ve never visited before.

On Wednesday I went to the Hveradalir geothermal area in Kerlingarfjöll, a mountain range in the Highlands between the Langjökull and Hofsjökull glaciers. It’s an stunning place, where boiling waters create steam that billows through the muddy hills, mixing with fog to continually obscure and reveal the mix of greens, browns, reds, and snow white of the landscape. I was in Yellowstone earlier this summer, which felt like a geothermal opener to this main act. The hills were steep and muddy, and the slow ascent and decent of other hikers provided a useful sense of scale when looking out over the vast landscape. This was my first time in the Highlands, and I loved it. The road there was as rough as I’d been warned about, probably the worst I’ve experienced outside of Costa Rica, but landscapes were otherworldly.

The view as you enter into the Hveradalir geothermal area in Kerlingarfjöll.
Most of the hiking paths are along these ridges, which are reinforced with wooden planks on the steepest parts, but given the mud I should have brought my hiking poles for stability.
This view came just after descending a portion that was completely fogged in, with maybe 15ft visibility. The weather varied a lot over the hours that I was there.
Snow lingers through late July. Our guide showed me a photo from earlier in the Spring where his van was driving through recently plowed snow that formed a tunnel as tall as his vehicle.

I also went to see the volcanic eruption happening on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Last week the Sundhnúksgígar fissure had its 9th eruption and while it had calmed down a lot there was still a chance of seeing flowing lava. So on Saturday I joined a group heading down the peninsula, and hiked in to a newly established viewing area roughly a mile from the most active crater. There was a hill at the site, completely surrounded by recently cooled lava flows. I couldn’t miss the opportunity to walk across that field to see newly created lava spouting from the closest and highest viewpoint, although now I see that there is official guidance against doing that. 😬

It rained sporadically, which hissed and turned to steam as it filtered through the cooled and blackened crust of the lava’s exterior and hit the molten core. In the shortened distance from the top of the hill I could see with my naked eyes the magma spewing violently from the crater and a river of lava flowing down directly into the field between us. It’s honestly quite humbling to witness the power of the earth like this, a fact that was reinforced on the drive back as we saw where flows from previous eruptions had encroached on the town of Grindavík and destroyed roads and pipelines in the area around the Blue Lagoon.

A closeup video of the eruption, shot through my 50-200mm Fuji lens. Good for capturing, but my binoculars provided the best view.
The lava field from the recent eruption, with the hill I climbed up for a better view.
The edge of the lava flow, which I was told advanced about 20 meters since the day before. If you peered in closely in certain spots you could see the red hot lava underneath. Near the edges it also smelled of burning, likely from the moss it was consuming as it advanced.

Noted & Done

  • Got my pool card, which I can use at any pool in the city of Reykjavík.
  • Saw Victor Shepardson at Nordic House.
  • Saw Tonik Ensemble at Nordic House.
  • Saw Skúli Sverrisson & Óskar Guðjónsson at Mengi.
  • Figured out the laundry situation in my apartment building.
  • Waited to hear back from the Directorate of Immigration about my residency card (I was supposed to get it this week).
  • Finished reading Your Absence Is Darkness, a novel by Jón Kalman Stefánsson. It’s the third book I’ve read by him, and like much of Icelandic literature and movies it’s both beautiful and tragic.
  • Visited the Gullfoss waterfall on the way to the Highlands.
  • Visited the Seltún Geothermal Area on the way to see the volcanic eruption. A very interesting, if short, trail through bubbling pools and steamy ground. Similar in scope to some areas I saw in Yellowstone.

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Iceland: Week 1

I live in Iceland now. It feels surreal to say that, and also a relief since getting here has been a lot of planning and work. So much of my life has been upended in the last year that all I can do now is lean into even more change, to claim some newness as my own and expand the cone of possibilities far enough that it contains and reveals a new future.

I’ve been in Reykjavík for a full week, which I’ve spent figuring out how to furnish a tiny apartment, finalize my immigration, and wrap my head around how to manage daily activities from grocery shopping, to transportation, to banking. Moving to another country is almost nothing like showing up as a tourist. I walk around and explore the same as I might if I was visiting, but I store the information differently: sorting and rearranging how it will fit into my life in the coming weeks and months. There are gobs of tourists around, and even though I’m brand new I feel the need to stand apart from them, to not be perceived as a traveler, to act as the resident that the Directorate of Immigration considers me for the next year.

I’m here as a graduate student at the University of Iceland, getting a Master’s level certificate in International Affairs, focusing on the Arctic. What originally caught my eye was their micro-credential in Arctic Studies, a one-semester program that’s no longer offered to international applicants. But the first semester of the International Affairs program can be structured to largely replicate the Arctic Studies courses, and allows me to extend my studies through a whole academic year. I’ve long been fascinated by the Arctic, and it’s intertwined challenges of climate change, geopolitics, natural resources, and indigenous cultures. As a designer, I want to contribute to important problems in the world, so I’m here to learn and discover what role I might play in the complexities of the Arctic. Classes start August 18, so I still have nearly a month to settle in.

Noted & Done

  • Figured out the bus system, Strætó, which uses a digital ticketing system called Klapp. Quite good, and Google Maps has realtime bus info.
  • Took the bus to IKEA where I spent over 6 hours deciding how to furnish my new apartment. Took advantage of their electric van rentals to bring it all home.
  • Got my photo and fingerprints taken. This was the last step in my immigration process and enabled me to get a kennitala, or National ID, which is necessary for all other administrative tasks.
  • A volcano erupted and I can add a new weather event to my lived experience: volcanic haze.
  • Got an Icelandic phone number; ported my US number to Google Voice. So the old number still works, but hit me up if you want the new one.
  • Got an account on Ugla, the University of Iceland intranet where I can sign up for classes.
  • Registered for a student ID.
  • Got internet for my apartment.
  • Opened a bank account with Landsbankinn, which was interesting after having read the book Iceland’s Secret about their role in the Icelandic financial crisis.
  • Visited all the grocery stores to see what they have and how much it costs. Everything here is very expensive, so shopping around is a must.
  • Went to the local public pool, Sundhöllin, which was lovely. Multiple hot tubs, a cold plunge, sauna, steam room, etc.
  • Went to a couple of music performances and most of the record shops.
  • Met a lot of cats on the street.
  • Went to a food truck festival.
  • Walked a lot.
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How to easily watch foreign television shows in the USA

I’m a huge fan of Nordic noir, and while some of the best Nordic TV shows have had limited runs on platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, it’s been hard to find an easy way to watch most of them. Inevitably, it requires traipsing around the murkier parts of the internet, or firing up a VPN to pretend you live in another country. But recently that’s changed with my discovery of two online streaming service dedicated to bringing foreign TV to international audiences.

OTT platforms for foreign TV

Topic and Mhz are both platforms that license foreign television shows, which are often hugely popular in their home countries but unavailable outside of them. They allow you to browse their catalogs by country, so you can binge on a region once you find something you enjoy. Topic positions itself more directly as a place to watch “crime shows” and has more of the Nordic options I was initially looking for. Mhz seems to be anchored around a large French catalog, but offers a wide variety as well. They also carry a limited number of movies.

Amongst their similarities is that they’re both built on the Vimeo OTT platform. The Vimeo website explains that OTT means “Over The Top,” industry jargon for delivering video straight to consumers without an intermediary like a cable platform. In practice, it means that Vimeo provides a tech platform for video delivery that includes white-labeled mobile, TV, and web apps along with a content delivery backend. This means that beyond some basic color and logo choices the two services look and work exactly the same. The design of the Vimeo OTT apps is not great — it’s lacking even basic features and has some questionable UI decisions — but it gets the job done.

The main value of Topic and Mhz bring is their licensing deals, although I’m watching a show right now that indicates Mhz owns the copyright to the English subtitles, so it appears that they go the extra mile to make content accessible when necessary. They’re also both reasonably priced ($5.99/mo for Topic, $7.99/mo for Mhz) and offer generous sign-up discounts.

Foreign TV show recommendations

On Topic, I have watched and recommend the following:

On Mhz I mostly signed up in order to watch 3615 Monique (which has garnered the terrible name “Cheeky Business” for an international audience), a show set in 1980’s France centered around the launch of the Minitel. But I’m also excited about watching:

I mostly wanted to tell everyone about these new services, but there are also great international shows on more mainstream streaming services as well:

Finally, the show I’ve most enjoyed recently is is the Icelandic political drama Blackport. While it’s great to see that Topic recently acquired the streaming rights, it’s not yet available on the platform. In the meantime, if you can’t wait, you can stream it with English subtitles directly from Ruv.is as long as you run a VPN that makes it look like you’re in Iceland. While that doesn’t live up to the “easy” approach that this post is about, it’s honestly worth it for this one:

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TIL — Web apps can define media controls

For years I have enjoyed following Simon Willison’s blog, where he writes about various open source projects, technical tips and tricks, niche museums, and other topics beloved by people named Simon. He had a recent post encouraging people to blog more, and with the downfall of Twitter I’ve thinking about that myself. A format he uses, and evangelizes, it to simply share things he learns in the form of Today I Learned (TIL) posts. It’s a great idea — when you learn something new you’re excited about it, why not just get it out there and introduce it to other people.

TIL about the Media Session API, which lets web developers customize media notifications, artwork, and playback controls. What does this mean in practical terms? When you’re listening to audio on your phone with an app like Spotify or your favorite podcast player, the related artwork will show up on the home screen along with playback controls like “skip backwards 10 seconds” or “next track.” The audio also responds appropriately if you press pause on your headphone controls, or tell Siri to stop playing. Native apps have long been able to hook into these OS-level controls for media in a way that web apps couldn’t. But now they can — with the Media Session API.

I may have heard inklings about this in the past, but ignored it because support wasn’t there yet. Looking again, it now seems broadly supported, including the all important mobile as of iOS 15. If this capability had existed back in 2012 I would have written News Now as a web app, which would have been way easier and more fun. I don’t have the appetite to rewrite that now, but I’ll be holding on to the knowledge of Media Session API for future projects.

This capability would be perfect for projects like the Syrian Cassette Archives. They already have it set up so that when you save that website to your home screen it runs like a self-contained app. The only thing missing is the media controls.

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Laurel Highlands Thru-Hike, May 2022

Over the last few years I’d had my eyes opened to the wealth of public lands in Western Pennsylvania, and enjoyed discovering all the various hiking trails. One of my favorites is the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail, a 70-mile route from Seward to Ohiopyle that winds through State Parks, State Forests, and State Game Lands. The diverse landscapes it connects include imposing rock outcroppings, tangled rhododendron tunnels, and quiet fern-filled forests. When I started a sabbatical a few months ago there were a lot of things I needed a break from — to stop doing — but one of the few concrete goals I had was to complete a thru-hike of the Laurel Highlands.

I’d never done any overnight backpacking, so this trip required a bit of planning, learning, and training to pull off. But last week I successfully completed the 70-mile hike, and really enjoyed myself! Below are some day-by-day notes for my own documentation that might hopefully help others who are interested in planning a similar trip.

The Route

The Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail map has been hanging on my office whiteboard for over a year, where I mark off the sections that Molly and I have completed together. These are 6–8 mile out-and-back hikes, so while we’ve seen a lot of the trail it’s been fairly slow going, and difficult to fill in some of the more remote gaps.

The trail runs from Ohiopyle, PA (mile 0) to Seward, PA (mile 70) and I hiked it in reverse because the segments worked out a bit better for me and it seemed more celebratory to end in a bustling small town full of outfitters and restaurants, rather than a quiet parking lot.

One of the things that made this trip seem doable, as a first-time backpacker, are the eight different shelter areas along the trail. Each one contains a handful of three-sided Adirondack shelters with integrated fireplaces, which can be reserved ahead of time. The shelter areas are well maintained by the PA DCNR, who provide cut firewood, bear-proof trash containers, and clean outhouses.

The spacing and number of shelters allows for a variety of different itineraries, and I decided to do the hike in five nights, starting Monday morning and ending on Saturday afternoon.

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Building our own bot

When I first met Molly, nearly a decade ago, we didn’t live in the same place. She was on the east coast, I was in Chicago, and though she did move closer we still spent our first 3 years in separate cities. In an earlier era we’d probably have a box full of letters representing that period of our relationship. But thankfully, the medium of our time allowed for more continual connection, and instead we have a phone full of text messages.

I really didn’t text that much before we met, here and there to coordinate plans. But with Molly it’s always been something different, a steady stream of communication, a connective thread, a heartbeat. Even after moving to Pittsburgh together it was still important, with both of us traveling so much. I’ve probably exchanged 1000X more messages with her than everyone else combined.

A few years ago, having accumulated 7 years worth of messages, I wanted to find a way to look at this trove of texts. On the iPhone, Apple makes it hard to look back more than a few days, requiring screen-by-screen scrolling and no good way to search. The Messages app has a clear bias towards recency, but I wanted to zoom out, to sift through this virtual letter box that we’d built up bit-by-bit. Luckily, after some digging, I learned that deep within the obscured file structure of an iPhone backup was a SQLite database containing all of our messages. Stripped of its proprietary interface, I could get my hands on a searchable version of our distanced ephemera: every sleepy “goodnight,” anticipatory “boarding now,” and phatic “&&&” that meant nothing and everything all at once.

A database is funny place to find your memories. With this tiny SQLite file, I could effortlessly recall exactly what we we talked about 100 days after we met, analyze our most commonly used words, and map the frequency and times we were in touch. That was sort of interesting, but also not particularly surprising or revealing. After playing with it for an hour or so I discarded my initial ideas for potentially visualizing this dataset. There was certainly a lot to work with, but it seemed like it would result in the kind of vapid navel gazing found in most quantified self projects.

Instead, I decided to use the database not as an archive, to be cataloged and analyzed, but as a seed, to train an AI that would make new text messages based upon our history. This plan seemed like more fun, and was a chance to learn about new technology that had only recently become more accessible. The idea was to create our own private bot, trained on all the text messages we’ve ever sent each other. I wanted it to send us one text a day, not a verbatim Timehop-like reminder of something we’d actually said in the past, but an original quip — conjured from the mind of a weird little AI whose only knowledge of the world was the texts messages we’d sent each other.

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Time for a Sabbatical

Slippery Rock Creek in McConnells Mill State Park

Some years pass so quickly that annual rituals seem to fold on top of each other. It’s Halloween again? Dress the dog up in the costume that it feels like we just bought. It makes him look like a UPS driver and he freezes in place until we take it off. Snap some photos, pack it away, spin around the sun again. The suitcase is never put away: unpack, repack, download the podcasts, make the coffee, board the plane. Repeat.

It’s a cruel correlation that time can go quickly when things are going well. Being busy, productive, it’s a lubricant for your calendar. The slippery days glide forward, the summer is scheduled before it’s begun, and honestly it all feels fine because the rapids of life push us forward, through the shallow waters and treacherous whirlpools. We move, we maneuver, and it feels like advancing even if we’re not sure what towards.

Two years ago it felt like the world just stopped, and to a large degree, it did. The pandemic hit at the precise moment I was already making a major change. I’d been living and working in different cities for three years, and the travel had taken its toll. Year one was exciting, year two felt worth it, year three relied on routine and repetition to mask and cope with burnout. A plane is not a bus, no matter how much you distort the idea of a commute to include one. I spent half my time away from home, and the other half away from work. How could I bring my whole self to anything?

I needed to recombine into a single me, grounded in place instead of flying and fluttering in-between. The cure for burnout, I thought, was to live and work in the same city. That, of course, was back when we thought of our work and our bodies as coinciding, before Zoom made our forward-facing gaze the only corporal consideration that matters. I never got to find out if that’s what I needed, since the day I started a new job, in the city I live in, was the day the coronavirus shut the country down. The unification of work and life remained forever pending, a mirage that disappeared as my company evolved from local to distributed.

Working from home sounds nice, and some people love it. At another time, in other circumstances, that might even include me. But I’d already been remote half-time for three years, and that’s part of what I wanted to change. I kept telling myself I was lucky, that I could work from home, unlike so many others. But still. Days filled with video calls have a way of collapsing the boundaries between work and life, while precluding any natural sense of togetherness with coworkers. It’s convenient but isolating, efficient but stifling. It was not a cure for burnout.

There’s a joke about COVID Standard Time, where today is March 744th, 2020. It speaks to the stuck-ness of the pandemic, to the impassable obstruction that’s blocking the river we were floating down. For the last two years my world has shrunk to the inside of a row house, as I peered out through screens of various sizes to watch the world fall apart. A deadly virus, racial violence, an attempted coup, and now Putin’s war.

There is much about the world that I can’t change, so I have to focus on what I can. After two years, I’m still feeling burnt out, only more-so. I need a do-over, the chance to reboot and maybe take a different path. So I’m taking a sabbatical.

I don’t have a set time frame, but I want to give myself enough space that I might be surprised by the outcome. There’s not an explicit goal, but I want to do more writing, reading, learning, and making. I’m not sure what my work looks like at the end of this, but I know that I’m more motivated by learning and collaborating with people I like, than I am by profit or competition.

Most of all, I need to take some time to reorient. When the river gets jammed up it gives you a chance to ask if you’re even heading in the right direction. Maybe I missed a turn along the way, maybe I just need to stop for a picnic and keep heading downstream. Either way, I’m taking some time to figure it out.

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Abandoned coal towns of West Virginia

The last movie I saw in a theatre, before the pandemic shut everything down, was a 4K restoration of the 1987 film Matewan at the Carnegie Science Center’s IMAX theatre. It’s a film about union labor organizing in a West Virginia coal mining town, and the violent struggle between the company and workers. It stars Will Oldham, one of my favorite musicians, in his first cinematic role. Both the director and Oldham were in person for the screening and held a Q+A after the film.

Although Matewan is a real place, the film was shot about a 100 miles northeast in the abandoned town of Thurmond, West Virginia. Both towns were built along the railroad, with the tracks in Thurmond acting as a “main street” for its commercial strip. Until 1921 those tracks were the only way to access the town, which served as a thriving hub for the local coal mining community along the New River. Thurmond’s peak was in 1910, when it supported multiple hotels, banks, and even a movie theatre. Over 75,000 people passed through the Thurmond depot that year.

A few weeks ago we visited the New River Gorge National Park, which Thurmond now sits within. After winding deep within the gorge you enter the town by crossing a one-lane railroad bridge, near a dramatic bend in the New River, to discover what is effectively a ghost town.

The Thurmond depot, built in 1904 after the 1891 original was destroyed in a fire. Thurmond remains an active Amtrak stop, so the depot is still in operation (although it was closed on the day we visited).
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