A Proper 'See You Later'

Author

McCall Moore
May 08, 2025

A Full Life

Gooood morning! I had a whole newsletter planned about how spring skiing is finally here, but today’s a special day: one of my best friends in the entire world moves from Denver to Amsterdam today (hi, Emma!). Naturally, I’m sitting here thinking about life, love, friendship, growth, and all the beautiful things that define my friendship with said friend. So let’s write about it.

Backcountry Chronicles

Steamboat sunset feat. my sunshine girl

When I moved to Denver 3.5 years ago, the one thought that plagued me was: what if I never find my people?

Living in New York, a mere ~30 miles from where I grew up made community almost a non-thought. I had a plethora of friends from home, my brother, my brother’s friends, a handful of college friends, and if all else failed — my parents were a quick train ride away.

You know those friends who just make life slow down in the most meaningful way? Where you could spend 30 minutes with them, but for the full 30 minutes, you just know, intrinsically, that you’re seen and understood. I have more of those friends than I could’ve dreamed of 4 years ago.

Everyone’s favorite hot-button topic on Substack right now seems to be community — Gen-Z’s lack of IRL community, the death of the third space, the state of modern students and lack of communities at college — but I think it’s pretty simple. Community makes for a good life. And a good life asks something of you.

Sure, it’s easy to stay at home in my cozy as f*ck apartment, to come up with an excuse why I can’t make it to XYZ commitment anymore, to stay cozied up with my book (or worse, my phone), but those alternatives don’t ask anything of you.

A good life asks you to show up when it’s uncomfortable. It asks you to talk to strangers. To reach out to the friend-of-a-friend and ask them to get a coffee (or a beer at Zuni!). It asks you to stretch the boundaries of yourself. To try new things. To get up early. To drop everything for something you may not want to do.

As I’ve been finalizing my latest collection of pieces for the gallery I have today (!!!), I’ve been thinking about the agency I feel over my own life when I’m on a skin track; or more broadly, the agency I feel whenever I’m doing something difficult.

I never want to wake up at 4:45AM, lug my skis, boots, skins, backpack, bibs, and two jackets out of my apartment and down to my car, but I do it because I know what’s on the other side of that is worth it. I want to see the sunrise from the top of one of my favorite mountains. I want to feel myself getting stronger week over week and prioritize my health and longevity.

You know the feeling when two incredible pieces of literature fall into your personal zeitgeist in the same week, both written by completely unrelated authors, and somehow play off each other perfectly? That’s how I felt about this substack article A Good Life Is Inconvenient and Kyla Scanlon’s newsletter that plopped into my inbox last week.

Paraphrasing simply won’t do Kyla’s work justice, so here’s a few excerpts:

There is a seeming collapse of meaningful connection across genders, class, and politics. Much of this is the bending of post-pandemic social infrastructure where we lost shared norms and collective rituals. But what replaces trust and community? Transactional connections. Platforms monetizing loneliness. Algorithmic tribes that offer a false sense of belonging, but really just reflect your preferences back at you. Every social interaction, from friendship to romance, is increasingly refracted through an economic lens where it is optimized, ranked, gamified. (And to be clear, there are beautiful elements of the Internet and dating apps, but the pendulum seems to be swinging towards negativity).

Critical thought, ambiguity, creativity, all the beautiful things that probably define what being a human is, are all replaced by optimized, immediate answers. We no longer have a shared reality—just overlapping simulations.

And a bit further into the idea of a degrading social commons…

Here’s a quick way to tell if a space has healthy informational commons: Can you describe reality without immediately sparking an argument? Can we agree on a common language, basic facts, or even what words mean? Increasingly, the answer is: No.

The informational commons - language, reality, and basic consensus - is collapsing because we've monetized division. Social media platforms aren't built for clarity or understanding; they're optimized for engagement, outrage, and polarization. Algorithms don't reward nuance; they reward certainty, controversy, and emotional triggers.

What replaces consensus reality? Loyalty realities. Tribal realities. Personalized realities!! We no longer debate ideas or solutions - we debate whose facts count, whose feelings matter, whose truth wins. Truth itself becomes a loyalty test, not a shared ground. And without a shared informational commons, cooperation becomes impossible. We don’t solve problems, we fight over who gets to define them! Language is weaponized and reality is fractured.

And when I thought it couldn’t get any more on point: Tracy Clark-Flory’s substack about teens using ChaptGPT to talk about their relationship problems dropped into the fold, too. Hello???? Are we… good? No? Cool!

Jokes aside, gabbing to your friends about a boy may feel like you’re beating a dead horse for the 400th time, but that’s what connection is built on. It’s the human condition. We’re scrapping our own existence for parts and letting our entire lives be put up for sale in the name of growth, monetization and optimization.

A good life isn’t built by AI. It demands you make yourself uncomfortable, try new things, meet new people, cry a little, and love a lot.

Here’s a fun example: 3 years ago, my brother’s friend put me into a group text with a girl he knew because he thought we’d get along. She lived in Denver and I had just moved to Denver. So I reached out, we got a beer and chatted about our lives and I thought “maybe I just made a new friend.” And now, here I am 3 years later, crying happy tears that she’s moving to Europe. Just fricken love ya, EK.

Artiste Break

Tonight’s opening night of the art gallery I’m showing a few pieces at, so in honor of dipping my toes into the gallery world, here’s one of the pieces I’m premiering at the gallery, along with the official title and description I submitted.

Side note: I debated drawing the light drop shadow on this one for no-less than 30 minutes. I’d never draw a drop shadow before, but couldn’t stop noticing that all my favorite hyper-realist artists included them in most, if not all, of their pieces. I ended up going for it (as you can see above) and I couldn’t be happier about it. A nice little reminder to push yourself.

Title: Keys To The Castle

Description: When I first got into backcountry skiing, Loveland was my safe haven. Too scared to show up to my AIARE1 without any idea how to use my bindings, but way more scared to get myself into trouble in the backcountry — the $50 spent for access to groomed, avalanche controlled terrain was worth its weight in gold. You see a bright red pass, I see the keys to the castle. The start of a new chapter. An obsession, born.

To Go Snacks

🎙️ One more podcast! Cody Townsend made a guest appearance on Alex Honnold’s podcast to talk about, of course, the Fifty+, but also the intricacies of ski mountaineering vs. traditional climbing, risk tolerance, and some of his favorite couloirs

🔥 The Department of Natural Resources in CO concluded their report on wildfire season last week and concluded that we can expect a normal season. My biggest takeaway, honestly, was learning that over 90% of wildfires in Colorado are human-triggered

🎧 All hail the Giggly Squad press tour (and whoever their publicist is). I was full-on belly laughing in my apartment at this interview they did with Chelsea Handler 

🎿 This New York Times article about avalanche science and the journalist’s subsequent AIARE1 experience had me gripped from start to finish. A great reminder that, at the end of the day, it’s way more difficult than it should be to speak up in the backcountry

⛰️ A fun read: the founder of the legendary site 14ers.com opened up about the origin story of the website

See you in two weeks! Emma, see you SOON!

- McCall 🌻

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