Gear Reviews
Ben Kilbourne
Patching Experiments on EPL200 Ultra Fabric
Poetry
Ben Kilbourne
The Fire's Job

it is not a mountain anymore

it is now an idea of the shape

of the memory

of a dream

of a mountain

Gear Reviews
Ben Kilbourne
Searching for a Backpack that is Durable, ...

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I made this video to explain why I’ve made some of the choices I’ve made as I keep on trying new backpacks.

Searching for a Backpack that is Durable, Light, and Carries Heavy Loads
Links to Other Writing
Ben Kilbourne
Good Gear Lets You Be Present

Then my attention turned to the pack I was wearing. I was 11 miles into the first day of testing the YAR Gear Mountain Drifter 38 Liter pack and needed to pay attention to whether or not it was working. Suddenly aware I hadn’t spent all that much time thinking about it during those first 11 miles, I promised myself I would try and pay better attention from then on out. I hadn’t noticed undue pressure on my shoulders, hips, or back. All I really did remember from the last 11 miles were the large volcanic stones in the trail, prickly pear, agave, alligator juniper, piñon, yuccas, and countless birds. I remember the looming blue triangle of the Mazatzal Mountains dusted lightly in snow creeping slowly closer to me like one of the pyramids of Giza chained to a winch and cranked heavily across the ground. Is that how they were built? With that thought came a flood of associations. “When the great – pyramids – dragged themselves out to this spot – sickness sank into the little one’s heart,” I sang loudly, remembering the beautiful and dark Jason Molina song.

Links to Other Writing
Ben Kilbourne
Take This Poem on Your Next Trip

“The road seen, then not seen,” begins the poem “Santiago” by David Whyte.

The road seen, then not seen, I think, walking down Woodenshoe Canyon in Bear’s Ears National Monument in late November. The red trail below my feet leads into piñon and juniper and turns and disappears within them. The path seen, then not seen. It dips into a willowy wash and is nearly gone, only seen where snake grass is occasionally matted down by past feet. The road seen, then not seen.

writing

The Elegy I Can’t Help But Write

I can’t sleep. The inflatable pad underneath me feels torturously unstable. I am tempted to push it aside in favor of the cold, lumpy ground. Hours pass and I wonder if I have been thinking about anything at all. I roll onto my other side again and listen to the tent fabric scrape against a dead finger of greasewood. I had reached the San Rafael Swell in central Utah just in time to start walking up a narrow canyon patinated with dark streaks of desert varnish. The deep sand slowed my pace as wind-broken rain scattered out of the orange west. I planned to walk for at least an hour and a half, but the storm clouds made evening arrive early. At the first sign of flatness I dropped my pack and listened as caterpillars dropped out of the cottonwoods above me like weighty raindrops.

Driving Through the Summer Storm

Near the Drum Mountains in central-western Utah the virga approached us, and we sped towards it in my 1993 Nissan truck. Dark blue and humanlike it swept the plane. It touched down somewhere, its feet the fleeting monsoon, welcomed by reaching greasewood and shivering russian thistle. Lightning cut across the dark form and we entered the deluge. Flash and boom inside of it, and flash and boom again. The rain transitioned from a heavy downpour to individual drops and the drops lessened and we looked back and the great dark form was now behind us; we had passed through its body. Lightning hit the sagebrush and greasewood plane where we had just been.