Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall

Mornin! Things with my full time gig have been ramping up lately - leaving me with way less time to (1) create this newsletter and (2) do it in a meaningful way that I’m proud to hit publish on.

For the next two months, I’m going to try out sending this bi-weekly. I hate to scale down so quickly after creating this, but I’m a firm believer that something is better late than half-assed.

See you at the bottom!

Mini Musings

Lately, I’ve been shifting my focus to small wins. Slightly less anxious going into meetings than you were a month ago? Small win. Feeling better than you did an hour ago? Small win. Journaled 2 out of 7 days a week, when you used to do 0? Small win.

With summer officially coming to an end this week, here’s some of my small wins:

• Only getting one sunburn all summer (on the back of my ears ‘cause I was a dingus and forgot to put any there)

• Learning the names of all my neighbors on my street

• Getting back into my coed soccer league & connecting with my team

• Listening to my body when it needed lots of sleep a break from alcohol

• Letting myself feel scared as hell at my new job and taking constructive criticism

• Eating my veggies (always a huge W)

As we prepare to head into the new season of life, it’s a beautiful reminder that a new season entails the loss of the previous one — and that every moment is the last time we’ll get to experience that moment.

Experiencing life’s highs means being emotionally vulnerable, and painfully exposed to the lows. The theme of these “wins” was experiencing the highs and lows of everything, and making sure I felt alive and never closed myself off.

Artiste In The Making

Anyone else need a reminder that growth is slow? I’ve officially passed the 3 year mark from when I took up drawing, and lately it’s been way too easy to fall into the comparison game.

There’s always exceptions, but the vast majority of work takes time and repetitions to get to the level you want; there’s no such thing as overnight successes. Anyone who seems successful either earned their spot over time or is a fraud — there’s no middle ground. You can quote me on that.

Some examples of slow growth?

• Mr. Beast made YouTube videos for 3 years (!!) before getting any attention on YouTube. Before he took off, he said the videos were just for himself

• One of my favorite creators, Grace Donner, worked in social media marketing for ~3 years before she was laid off and became a full-time content creator. Her content is so good because she spent 3 years learning the framework of successful content and marketing

• If, like me, your For You Page on TikTok features a lot of Hello Hayes advice videos and you’re wondering how she possibly writes so beautifully, it’s because she’s been freelancing and working as a writer for over 5 years

I have biiiiig goals of where I want to be with my art in the next year (starting with a full-blown Crested Butte series, as featured above), and researching for this section felt like free therapy.

The Wild, Wild West

I don’t have any hiking updates for this week, BUT my plan for this Sunday is to attempt my first-ever solo 14er. For now….. drumroll please… AVALANCHE FUN FACTS.

This week, I’ll give you a rundown on Continental Avalanche Climates — and really, the type of avalanche climate that spawned this entire section (rewind to me being shocked to hear CO was some of the deadliest avalanche terrain in the US a few months ago). Further from the influence of the ocean, continental avalanche climates are much colder than maritime zones, with consequently drier and lighter snowfall. A lot less snow falls in these interior zones, too: commonly a couple to a few hundred inches per year.

Much of the Rocky Mountains fall within North America’s main continental avalanche climate belt; so does the Brooks Range of Alaska (not included above).

With frequent incursions of Arctic air, extensive stretches of clear high-pressure weather (with consequently frigid nights), and leaner snowpacks with steep temperature gradients, continental snowpacks often include weak layers of depth hoar. (Depth hoar = something that deserves it’s own rundown — we’ll cover that next time). These can persist for weeks, even months, resulting in a high potential for dangerous and hard-to-predict slab avalanches.

Heather Hansman said it best in Powder Days when she talked about avalanches — it’s nearly the same cycle every year. A good snowfall comes early in the season, everyone gets psyched, and then nothing comes for a few weeks after that. That first layer of snow is exposed for weeks (until more snow falls) and gets all the vapor drawn out of it by the air, creating an insanely unstable layer. More snow comes, but it’s falling on extremely weak depth hoar — creating major avalanche danger.

If you want to track avalanche danger and reports in real time this winter, here’s one of my favorite resources. Nothing beats reading the report for your zone, though!

What I’m Noodling On

🪿 After listening to Hungersite and Aracadia on repeat for the last year, I’ve officially embarked on the journey of listening to Goose’s discography on my drives lately. It’s a wild, insanely fun ride

📝 My dad sent me this piece by Scott Galloway on losing religion and the rise of nihilism in America nowadays. I’m still working through it (it’s take me a few days to chew on anything as in-depth as what Galloway puts out), but it’s already a banger

👕 One of my favorite small businesses, Raw Rebellious, just launched their fall line and everything is too good. Picture the comfiest sweatshirts and t-shirts ever + the coolest designs and that’s what they’re constantly churning out

See you in two weeks!

- McCall 🌻

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