Welcome to my new blog, called View from the End. This site plays two roles. It is:
- A journal of my experiences on the Appalachian Trail February 19 – July 23, 2023
- A collection of book reviews, poems, and articles on topics I have been thinking about (some reflective, others informational, most regarding nature and climate change) – more frequently arriving in 2024
I am deeply honored to have you join me. This first piece is a reflection on the blog title, View From the End.
Like my intended approach to this site’s forthcoming blog posts, I considered my blog title deliberately but avoided excessive rumination. I purchased the domain name after roughly a minute of consideration, wary of trapping myself in indecision. My thinking was simply this: I will make a blog with my view on nature, climate change, and modern America, told from one member of Gen Z (the end, at least, of the alphabet).
Once my thoughts subsided into deeper reflection the following day, I realized the phrase “view from the end” had planted a mental seed from which much fruitful reflection could emerge. In this first post, I will expound upon this reflection to frame the essence – the specifics are yet unknown – of what this blog might become. These reflections begin with a favorite image.
The end of certainty
The cover of Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends is a black-and-white sketch of two children and a dog grasping a precarious peninsula of concrete (the end of the sidewalk), dangling over empty space. One child in particular kneels at the end of certainty and peers over the vacuousness beyond, eyes wide and stupendous. What courage! I wonder, in a literary sense, what it means to identify the edge of certainty and to gaze still further, past the end.
I imagine that, in their playful naivety, these children are slightly terrified (one more than the other) but tremendously excited at perching on this cliff (kids’ lack of rationality is beautiful). Adrenaline flooding, they are hyper-aware, fully alive. They are immersed in the precious creative space of discovery. As adults, can we still relate? How many of us decided in adolescence that being on a precipice, whether physical, mental, or social, is fully terrifying rather than exciting? Then our bodies became instruments of protection rather than exploration. The blank spaces beyond became danger, not possibility.
We mature from the crazed youths perched on the end of the sidewalk to respectable, sane adults for good reasons. We learn that uncertainty is paralyzing and that danger can destroy. We become comfortable enough to find no need in continued exploration. Or we are exhausted from the continuous risks of day-to-day life and cannot afford to take risks recreationally. Being on any precipice is risky, so all are valid concerns.
The fact is, however, the world is uncertain. There seems to be a collective recognition of this following a global pandemic, an ongoing European land war, and another year of escalating natural disasters as the climate warms. I argue that our ability to adapt and respond to these challenges demands kneeling on the end of the sidewalk, eyes wide and stupendous. My sincere hope is that this blog, as it develops, can be a voice from my edge of certainty, in a world of uncertainty, peering into the vacuousness beyond.
The brink
I recently attended my college commencement ceremony. I was in the class of 2020, but the pandemic rain checked our commencement, along with every other large gathering worldwide. Two years later, under a blazing sun, my graduating class assembled on the football field, the awkward mortarboards not broad enough to block the blinding rays and heat from overhead, unless you crooked your neck for the duration of the address.
The commencement speaker crooned a few reassuring platitudes in closing, then delivered a memorable final line: “as you are Gen Z, I’m not sure what letter is next!” The students around me shot each other confused looks. Was this a humorous observation? Or perhaps it does allude to the existential uncertainty my graduating class feels amid climate change and the subtle gloom of economic unease, mass shootings, overpopulation – this hard-to-refine modern sense of malaise. Hopefully not. Most likely, it was a lighthearted remark to help dissipate the lingering cloud cast by the pandemic, which had delayed our gathering. Upon realizing the confusing remark concluded the address, we join in tentative applause. I sit pondering. Perhaps demographers intentionally lettered the generations starting at X thinking that we were not far from the end.
I allow myself – and I must not be the only one – to feel apocalyptic ambiguity more than I would like or admit. We are all shaped by, and perhaps contribute to, strangely catastrophic cultural messaging. Since I’ve been on the internet, crisis content is as ubiquitous in our communication as the towering golden arches are when driving down any interstate in America. In 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert warned of an ongoing catastrophic extinction event comparable to paleoclimate’s famous mass extinctions. Hollywood recently offered us Don’t Look Up. Science journals and popular media have begun discussing a “cascade of crises.” Reporting on natural disasters now includes estimates of how much more likely or destructive climate change had made these events and a reminder that destruction and frequency will only increase.
To be clear, this crisis content is important reporting on real phenomena. Don’t Look Up and climate dystopias work because their fictional portrayals speak (cynically but validly) to our lived reality. It’s fact, not perception, that climate change is exacerbating disasters, and obvious fact that habitat destruction has slammed the accelerator on the extinction rate.
No one, however, has the emotional bandwidth to live in climate anxiety (or pandemic induced anxiety – we all learned this firsthand) perpetually. It’s safer to either live in the oddly comfortable assurance of the impending doom of human society or to briefly acknowledge future risks and then press on with life’s more pressing needs – feeding oneself, progressing in a career, shopping online, jetting off for a vacation.
Viewpoints and lenses
Because I cannot meaningfully live in either climate despair or climate ignorance, thinking about the interface of climate change and society becomes a constant itch in my brain. A host of writers help scratch this itch, including Edward Abbey and Katharine Hayhoe, Rachel Carson and David Wallace-Wells, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Sylvia Earle, and Ezra Klein. For me, these authors speak direction, solace, empathy, and action to my disorientation. For others, there are a host of other accomplished communicators who perhaps speak more clearly to their situation.
This blog will not be like the writings of the eminently talented and experienced authors above. This blog will be chaotic, a collection of journals from the Appalachian trail, descriptions of natural beauty, poetry, and articles on varied topics. Still, I will share my own perspective and thoughts from the edge with humility and imperfection. These pieces will share the unifying themes of risk and nature, climate change and society, uncertainty and modern America.
It takes hubris to insert yourself into internet discourse. This post itself is a first step toward peering over the edge of the sidewalk. I confess that I feel like Shel Silverstein’s children, eyes wide and bulging at the prospect of vulnerability on the cruel internet. My primary motivation for writing publicly is simply the urgency of climate change and its interconnected societal issues. I do not claim to have a special or new perspective on these issues, but as a society, I think we must talk more about real issues and their potential solutions (and less about celebrity gossip). By and large, the internet seems to disagree, yet we forge onward.
The blog eschews overt partisanship, though no doubt, some will view its language through a political lens. I will say it now and will say it again: talking about social policy and climate change is not inherently partisan, but it is inherently political. Since I will therefore discuss political topics, some will no doubt read parts through warped political lens (all lenses, even corrective lenses have a warping effect; this is not a bad thing). As in all of life, we ought to strive to keep an open mind, recognizing that disagreements often stem from viewing the same information through different lenses. We can recognize that our lenses are shaped by different worldviews, so we may never find common ground. This should never preclude constructive discussion, which allows us to still learn something from one another. This blog is more soliloquy than dialogue, but I still ask you to approach it open mindedly. If you disagree or have something to add, I welcome your insight. I have a contact page (I will be generally reachable on the trail) and article comment sections (comment privileges conditional on decent human behavior).
Fields of discovery
After finding a copy of Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends to view the cover art, I read the collection’s titular poem. It actually concerns nature more than risk-taking. In the poem, Silverstein invites us to “walk with a walk that is measured and slow” to “the place where the grass grows soft and bright,” to “leave this place where the smoke blows black.”
In a culture of hurtling from one thing to the next, simply walking with a walk that is measured and slow is itself a wonderful act of temerity. It is also a necessary ingredient for deep thinking. It is no coincidence that the Silverstein describes that the end of the sidewalk lies far outside the city, “before the street begins.” In nature, not the city, the fields of discovery are fertile. Many posts here will be written from the Appalachian Trail, outdoors. In this setting, I hope to find the courage to write from the edge, to walk slowly and deliberately both on my feet and in my writing, and to share reflections from the natural surroundings.
Welcome all – friends, family, internet acquaintances. What an honor it is that you would spend some of your valuable time reading these words. This is View from the End. It is a varied and personal perspective on nature, climate change, and modern American society from me, a 24-year old steeped in science, possibility, and change. It is my attempt to share thoughts from the end of the sidewalk, from the Appalachian Trail, from the edge of certainty. It is a perspective from someone at the end of the generational alphabet, a member of Gen Z. On this blog, like my commencement speaker, I’m not sure what letter is next!
