Wesley's Hideout
Note Aug 19, 2026 3 min read
Why I Stopped Swinging a Pulaski Three seasons on trail crew, a foreman named Deb, a rockslide that closed a section for a summer, and the specific morning I decided I wanted the quiet more than the crew. Note Aug 17, 2026 3 min read
The Voice on the Other End Twice a day I talk to a dispatcher named Ruth for about ninety seconds, and one July morning that call was the only human voice I heard for a week and a half. 
Game Aug 14, 2026 2 min read
Patchwork ★★★★★ A two-player quilting game that fits in a jacket pocket and gives me something to actually think about between smoke checks. Note Aug 11, 2026 3 min read
The Woman Who Waited Out the Squall A through-hiker named Dana climbed up out of a squall in my fourth season, sat on the platform railing, and we played two games of Hive before she went back down. 
Book Aug 8, 2026 2 min read
Desert Solitaire ★★★★★ Abbey's season alone at Arches, before the road got paved, reads like a field report from someone doing roughly my job with a lot more opinions about it. 
Game Jul 24, 2026 2 min read
7 Wonders Duel ★★★★☆ A card-drafting civilization builder rebuilt from the ground up for two players, with a structured pyramid of cards and three routes to winning. 
Book Jul 8, 2026 2 min read
Where the Crawdads Sing ★★★☆☆ A marsh girl raises herself alone and it turns into a murder mystery, and the isolation is the part that rings true while the plot mostly doesn't. Note Jun 4, 2026 3 min read
What I Don't Carry Anymore Five seasons of hiking the same 4 miles up in June has taught me more about what to leave at the trailhead than what to bring. 
Game May 22, 2026 2 min read
Targi ★★★★★ A two-player-only worker placement game built around a shared four-by-four grid of tiles, dense enough to eat a whole slow week up here. 
Book May 9, 2026 2 min read
Station Eleven ★★★★★ A flu wipes out civilization and Emily St. John Mandel writes about the twenty years after like it's a quiet, patient thing worth surviving for. Read it over three nights up here and kept the radio off longer than usual. 
Book May 5, 2026 2 min read
The Overstory ★★★★☆ Nine lives braided around trees, some of them among the best writing about forests I've read up here, some of them dragging once the plot has to catch up to the theme. 
Game Apr 25, 2026 2 min read
Star Realms ★★★★☆ A deckbuilder small enough to fit in a coat pocket that somehow still wants an opponent across from it more than most two-player games I own. 
Game Apr 23, 2026 2 min read
Hive ★★★★★ No board, no paper, twenty-two hexagonal tiles in a cloth bag, and a two-player game with more bite than most things three times its weight. 
Game Apr 16, 2026 2 min read
Jaipur ★★★★★ A two-player trading game that fits in a jacket pocket and somehow still has real tension in it, camel herd and all. 
Game Apr 12, 2026 2 min read
Onitama ★★★★☆ A five-by-five grid, sixteen pawns, and five movement cards that reshuffle the whole logic of the game every single match. 
Game Apr 7, 2026 2 min read
Lost Cities ★★★★☆ A card game about five expeditions and the discipline of not chasing a bad one, small enough to ride in a shirt pocket up the trail. Note Mar 29, 2026 3 min read
What the Day Actually Looks Like An hour by hour account of a smoke-watching shift, which is mostly waiting and looking, and how little of that people believe when I tell them. 
Book Mar 9, 2026 2 min read
Educated ★★★★☆ Tara Westover grows up in rural Idaho with no birth certificate and no school, working her father's junkyard, and eventually earns a PhD from Cambridge. The mountain in this one isn't scenery, it's the whole argument. Note Feb 18, 2026 3 min read
The Logbook Before Mine The tower was built in the thirties, and a stack of old logbooks in a footlocker under the bunk goes back further than I can account for, including one lookout who apparently named the weather. 
Game Feb 15, 2026 2 min read
The Fox in the Forest ★★★☆☆ A trick-taking game for exactly two, with a small deck, fairy-tale art, and a scoring system that keeps you from ever fully pulling away. Note Jan 23, 2026 3 min read
The First Two Weeks Back in Town Every October I come down off the mountain into Missoula and every October the same specific thing catches me off guard, five years running now. 
Book Jan 20, 2026 2 min read
A Gentleman in Moscow ★★★☆☆ A Bolshevik tribunal sentences Count Rostov to house arrest in a Moscow hotel for the rest of his life, and Amor Towles spends thirty years there with him. Charming company, though I wanted a little more weather in it. 
Book Jan 14, 2026 2 min read
The Martian ★★★★★ Mark Watney gets left for dead on Mars and solves his way out of it one calculated problem at a time, which is close enough to how I spend a bad week up here that I read it in two sittings. 
Book Jan 5, 2026 2 min read
Into the Wild ★★★★☆ Krakauer's reconstruction of Chris McCandless's last months holds up better than the myth around it, mostly because Krakauer keeps arguing with his own sympathy. Note Jan 3, 2026 3 min read
The Day the Mule Comes One packstring, once a season, up the same 4-mile trail, and how much a person can look forward to fresh onions when they've been gone eight weeks. 
Book Dec 26, 2025 2 min read
Wild ★★★★☆ Cheryl Strayed hikes eleven hundred miles of the Pacific Crest Trail with a pack too heavy and boots too small, mostly to outrun her own life. I've got professional opinions about the pack weight. Note Dec 21, 2025 3 min read
The Storm That Kept Me on the Stool A dry lightning storm in my third season, six hours on the insulated stool with the legs pulled in, and the strike I watched hit the ridge across the drainage. Note Dec 16, 2025 3 min read
The Week I Counted the Logs Nine days of low cloud and zero visibility in my first season, and the increasingly ridiculous ways I found to fill hours that had nothing to watch. 
Game Dec 9, 2025 2 min read
Santorini ★★★☆☆ A clean abstract about building and climbing towers that plays well two-player, though the plastic pieces are a genuinely bad idea to carry four miles. 
Book Dec 2, 2025 2 min read
The Road ★★★★★ A father and son push a shopping cart south through a burned country with nothing left in it, and Cormac McCarthy strips his sentences down to match. Not a book for a bad week alone in a tower, but I read it anyway.