From the Field
Field Notes
Real skills. Real stories. Everything you need to get your family outside and build something that lasts.
DispatchDispatch 39: The Power of Having Nobody Around
When I was 15 years old, I got sent to a wilderness therapy program somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains for eight weeks. There were eight other boys in the group and two rotating staff members. Every day we hiked close to ten miles, stopping at a...
DispatchDISPATCH 38: I'm Still In It.
I’m not perfect. I fail more than you probably think. It’s easy to assume that if someone shares lessons, they must’ve mastered them. That if they speak with conviction, they’ve conquered the struggles in their life. I...
DispatchDISPATCH 37: Rubber Balls, Glass Balls, and Four Burners
I read a metaphor this week about life being made up of rubber balls and glass balls. Drop a rubber ball and it bounces. Drop a glass ball and it shatters. The hard part isn’t juggling them. It’s knowing which is which. I went down a similar...
DispatchDispatch 36: What Is a Man?
For a long time, I thought being a man meant becoming dangerous. Not dangerous in the fake, performative way. Not loud. Not arrogant. Not “alpha.”I mean capable. The kind of man who can handle himself. The kind of man who can build, fix,...
DispatchDISPATCH 35: Perfection is Dystopian
There’s a seduction in clean systems. Perfect order. Perfect compliance. Perfect rules. No friction. No mess. No exceptions. No excuses. Sounds kinda like peace, doesn’t it? But peace that requires perfection is not peace. It’s a cage...
DispatchDISPATCH 34: Don’t Let Familiar Become the End of the Story
This week our family is back in Colorado, looking at homes. My wife and I have been talking a lot about the tension between returning to what’s familiar and comfortable, versus taking a leap of faith and carving out our own chapter. The truth is...
DispatchDISPATCH 33: The Things Worth Doing Are Usually Miserable
This weekend I chose to do something that was both hard and worth it. We went to the coast to hunt sea ducks on the edge of a forecasted storm of “historic proportions” in North Carolina. I’d never seen conditions like it. We were up...
DispatchDISPATCH 32: The Vehicle
Life doesn’t give most of us perfect starting conditions. We don’t always come from the families we wish we had. We don’t always get to chase what we love right out of the gate. Most of us have bills to pay. People who depend on us....
DispatchDISPATCH 31: The Narrow Path
This week, at a dinner party, my wife asked me a strange question.“What would you think about if you didn’t have hunting?”I didn’t even pause.“Fishing.”Everyone laughed. But the question stayed with me. And this...
DispatchDISPATCH 30: The Year That Had To Count
We ended the year quietly, on purpose. My wife and I dropped Surrey off with extended family, loaded the dogs into the truck, and drove up to a tiny cabin tucked into the woods. No cell service. No noise. Just a small pond cold enough to take your...
DispatchDISPATCH 29: The Family Test
This week has been challenging for me. When all the personalities in my family come together, it’s hard to keep my mouth shut. Old habits show up fast. Reactions beat restraint. The work feels heavier when it’s deeply personal. I can write...
DispatchDISPATCH 28: When to Move On
There’s a moment in the woods when you realize the sign you’ve been following is no longer real. The trail looks right at first. Old tracks. Broken brush. Enough evidence to keep you hopeful. You tell yourself the animal’s close....
DispatchDISPATCH 27: The Bird That Teaches You to Look Twice
The American woodcock is an old bird. Not old in age, but old in design. It’s been doing the same quiet work for a very long time, mostly unnoticed. Long before modern hunting seasons and wildlife agencies, woodcock were a subsistence bird....
DispatchDISPATCH 26: Let the Chips Fall
I’ve spent most of my life trying to wrestle outcomes into place. Tech sales. Brand building. Hunting seasons. Different arenas. Same impulse. Work harder. Push more. Force the result. But there’s a quiet truth that keeps meeting me in the...
DispatchDISPATCH 25: The Power in Learning to Play the Balance of Life
Life isn’t a perfect balance. It’s a constant act of adjusting the load in each hand. Some seasons demand more endurance. Some demand more attention. Some demand more humility. The trick isn’t to juggle everything with perfection....
DispatchDISPATCH 24: The Best Time To Strike
A buck stepped out yesterday. Bigger than my last one. I could see it in the spread, the color of his face, the heaviness of his neck, the way he moved with the quiet confidence only mature deer carry. But the body was off. The mass wasn’t...
DispatchDISPATCH 23: Your Partner Is Everything
There’s a point in your life when you realize that the strength of your path depends on the person walking beside you. Not because they carry you. Not because they fix your problems. But because they believe in who you are becoming. A good partner...
DispatchDISPATCH 22: Where Convenience Ends
We live in a world that’s more connected than ever, yet somehow, we’ve forgotten how to connect. It’s too easy now. A like, a comment, a quick text. The illusion of friendship without the investment. My father used to tell me,...
DispatchDISPATCH 21: Quiet Saints Among Us
My daughter and I flew to North Padre Island this week to spend time with my grandmother. Her health is declining. Moments feel slower. More meaningful. Finite. We trick or treated on the island. We drove the golf cart along the shoreline. We swam in...
DispatchDISPATCH 20: The Fire or the Shortcut
We live in a world obsessed with shortcuts. Everyone wants comfort without effort. Ease without understanding. But nature doesn’t work that way. Aldous Huxley warned us.“Man has an almost infinite appetite for distractions.”He saw how people trade truth...
DispatchDISPATCH 19: Final Quarter
Opening day of rifle season in North Carolina arrived with the kind of anticipation that sits deep in your chest. I had bowhunted the entire month of September, but this was different. This was us. Together. The morning had burned off into...
DispatchDispatch 18: Dreary Days
When I was a kid, I loved a good rainy day. If it wasn’t coming down too hard, my brother and I would head into the woods, exploring the new dynamic. It made everything feel more adventurous, like we were on some great excursion where threat was...
DispatchDISPATCH 17: Who the Hell Is Wilderness Father?
I’m thirty-four years old. I was born in London to a Danish mother and a Texan father. We moved to Marietta, Georgia, then back to England until right before 9/11 when we settled in Atlanta. As a kid I had no purpose and too much energy. I got kicked...
DispatchDISPATCH 16: The Curious Case Of Brook Trout
I spent the weekend up near Sparta, North Carolina. When I pulled into the campground the sky split open. Rain hammered down for hours, like the land itself wanted to test us before letting us in. Our host was an avid fly angler in his early 30s who’d...
DispatchDISPATCH 15: The Chickens Have to Go
This week my wife and I sat down to talk about how we can simplify our lives. I had just watched an interview with a billionaire who said he prefers his freedom of time over maintaining yachts, jets, luxury cars, or giant homes. That hit home for...
DispatchDISPATCH 14: Speak Your Truth
This week we witnessed a travesty. A father, a husband, a man who stood for what he believed in was assassinated in front of his family for expressing controversial opinions. As a father, a husband, and a man who also holds views that aren’t always...
DispatchDISPATCH 13: A Strip Search, a Backpack, and the Truth
The summer I was fifteen my mom and dad made the decision to send me to a wilderness therapy program because I was constantly in trouble at school and had developed a serious drug habit. My mom drove me to a cabin in Clayton, Georgia. I thought it...
DispatchDISPATCH 12: THE HUNT FOR PEACE AT HOME
Hunting grounded me in a way I can’t fully describe. It feels like it was always in me, like it was waiting to be woken up. My dad only hunted occasionally. My mom and her parents never hunted. My dad’s father shot a small buck once and went on...
DispatchDispatch 11: Sickness, Loss, and the Secret That Builds Grit
I was wrecked this weekend. Fever. Chills. Ear infection. Respiratory infection. My daughter brought home something nasty and I spent three days in bed. But even sick, I did my writing. I hobbled outside and shot 21 arrows. Deer season in North...
DispatchDISPATCH 10: WHAT IS PURPOSE?
I’ve spent a lot of my life asking this question. The idea that my nine to five could be my purpose has always felt hollow. A paycheck to execute someone else’s dream isn’t purpose to me. It’s a means to keep your belly full and the lights on. When I...
DispatchDispatch 9: NO REWARD?
I started actively creating things in 2010. It began with rap music. I’d spend hours in college in the back shed of an international cooperative in Austin, Texas rehearsing the same lines over and over until I got the take exactly how I wanted it. My...
DispatchDISPATCH 8: THE NEXT THING
I’ve been restless for as long as I can remember. Maybe it started when we moved around all the time as a kid. Maybe it’s just how I’m wired. But the feeling never left. I rushed through childhood, blew through college, always itching for something...
DispatchHow much risk is healthy to expose your children to?
The other day I asked my wife if she thought it’d be alright to take our daughter down to the river to swim. It was hot, the air was heavy, and that water looked perfect. She paused, then said, “It flows through town. What if there’s E. coli? What if...
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DispatchDISPATCH 7: Mud, Music, and That Fine Line
The plan was to camp along the river with my daughter on my buddy’s property. That was the real goal. Time outside. Sleeping in the tent under the stars. Slowing down for a few days. We had been talking about catching a Jason Isbell show too,...
DispatchDispatch #6: Stepping Stone or Tombstone?
At 34, I’ve learned that ease doesn’t teach you anything. When life runs smooth, I get soft. Comfort dulls the edge. I start to drift. But when life breaks me open, I wake up. All the moving in my childhood built something in me. Adaptability. Grit. The...
DispatchWhen the trail disappears...
We camped at the trailhead and started the climb in the dark. No map. Just the crunch of our boots and the sound of our own breathing. We thought we were taking the standard route to the summit of Longs Peak. Turns out we’d veered off. We were on the...
DispatchDispatch 4: The Real Fight Starts at Home
Last week after work I drove seven hours north and crashed at my buddy’s parents place in Maryland for a week of fishing. At first light we took his brother’s boat out and caught Rockfish off of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. Then we headed to...
DispatchDispatch 3: Find the Good, No Matter What, No Matter Where(Especially With Sand Tigers)
I’ve lived in 11 different places in my lifetime: England, Georgia, Utah, Denmark, Argentina, Florida, Thailand, Australia, India, Colorado, and now North Carolina. Each move brought uncertainty, discomfort, and a hell of a lot of lessons. But every...
DispatchDispatch 2: Fire, Chaos, and Hamburger Dust
I burned down a house my sophomore year of high school. It was the day before homecoming. My buddy and I were out exploring the 40 acres of no man’s land behind our school, like we had been for weeks. After football practice, we would off road in his...
DispatchDispatch 1: Passing Down What Saved Me
I want my daughter to grow up in the outdoors because I know what it's done for me. Growing up, I never really felt settled. We moved back and forth between countries for my dad’s job. I was constantly thrown into activities I did not choose. My...
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