Hand Drawn (and Hiked) by McCall 🌻

Good morning from New Jersey! I’m writing this from my parents attic and feeling more millennial than ever. After four days of being eviscerated by mosquitoes, I can’t wait to be back in the thin, bug-free air of Colorado.

Mini Musings

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want from this newsletter. The more I ponder it, the more I realize my primary goal is through the effort of publishing once a week, and consistently showing up, to become a better writer.

When I draw, I’m always dissecting the drawing prior to figure out what I could have done better, what I loved, and what I need more practice on. With writing, it feels like it’s easy to just show up and hope some magic happens when you start typing.

Ever read a really good book? I’m talking the kind that keeps you up well past midnight because you can’t bear to put it down, and feeling yourself narrating your own life in the author’s writing style. Your mind doesn’t think about the trails and tribulations of your own life because it’s still unwinding from the thrill of it all. If they wrote a rhetorical question answered in the next sentence? I’ll think that way for the next 36 hours after I finished the book.

On the flip side: ever read a book where you just trudge through? Don’t highlight a single thing, re-read the same paragraph multiple times because it’s nearly impossible to focus, and you’re just glad when it’s finally over?

I want writing to feel a lot more like the former experience than the latter. Not just cranking through this for the sake of hitting publish, but letting myself go deep, think deeply, and excavate whatever thought from my mind with the best adjectives, adverbs, and hyperbole I can come up with.

Life’s better when we’re consciously taking it in, not cruising through on autopilot and hoping something cool happens. My constant wish for myself (and all of us) is to just be conscious for it and not slip into the monotony of my phone and my life.

Artiste In The Making

I went into New York City this past weekend and was lucky enough to have a slow Sunday morning to show one of my favorite people all of my favorite spots.

Of course, there was Laughing Man Coffee and then a saunter downtown to my favorite bookstore in the world, McNally Jackson in the Seaport.

I lived about 5 blocks from McNally Jackson from 2019-2022 and trips there were frequent. With an attached coffee shop, the ambiance was unbeatable, and I was living in one of my favorite low-interest rate phenomenons: working for a startup that would pay for all books their employees bought. We had a limit of $500 per year and I ran through that $500 that it was nobodies business.

All that to say, when I had a break in commissions and wanted to draw something for myself, McNally Jackson’s storefront was the easy choice. If the storefront looks familiar, it’s probably because of this iconic #BoxedOut campaign they did back in 2020.

I spent about two months making my drawing of their storefront and hung it up in my room for about a year after. When it came time for me to move out of New York, I felt like it deserved to go to the owner of the Seaport location.

That was one of my first true experiences of witnessing something being elated because my work brought their favorite place to life in a new way. He put it on display upstairs and promised me it would be there for a “long, long time” — so it was simultaneously the best thing ever and also not surprising at all when I saw that he framed it and hung it up.

I love that place. I love all the people who work in it and all the people who frequent it. And I (selfishly) love that my work gets to be a part of that place.

Do me a favor and buy your next book from them. Pretty please.

The Wild, Wild West

Welcome back to avalanche fun facts! This week, we’re talking about glide avalanches. It’s tough to see, but in the photo above there’s a small waterfall that connects the two snowpacks on the front mountain, dead center.

I spent ~2 days staring at that waterfall and wondering how running water affected the snowpack stability, and then low and behold; I got in my tent after the second day of camping and opened my avalanche book to a chapter about glide avalanches.

While glide avalanches can consist of wet, moist, or completely dry snow — running water is a massive cause for them. The name is exactly what it sounds like: the entire snowpack loses its grip on the layer beneath and glides down the mountain.

Glide avalanches occur especially in spring, when the underlying ground is smooth — typically on grassy slopes or wet ones. Take, for example, when the snow is melting and creates a sort of layer of running water beneath the snowpack itself. In the photo above, there’s a consistent stream of water running beneath the snowpack, forming the waterfall between both snowpacks. A couple fun photos below:

Although they’re prevalent in the spring season, they’re definitely not exclusive to it. If you’re wondering “what’s the difference between a glide avalanche and a slab?” after last weeks’ newsletter, I did too. Similar to slab avalanches, glide avalanches have a distinct, broad fracture line, but their main difference is with a glide avalanche, the entire snowpack is released. Not just the slab itself.

What I’m Noodling On

⚽ The Women’s World Cup is well underway and this goal by Brazil is just too smooth

💅🏼 I loved this quote from the think piece about the phenomenon that is Barbie marketing: “Barbie's font and pink coloring are distinctive because it's been built over years and years and years. For the rest of us, that means turning up, regularly, in the same shape and with the same message again and again.”

📚 As always, obsessing over the latest edition of Hello Hayes’ newsletter

PS: I’ll be off the grid from Friday - Wednesday while I’m at Lake Powell, so no newsletter next week. I’ll make it up to you the week after and make the next one extra spicy.

Don’t forget about me! Please!

- McCall 🌻

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