Miles of Quiet
Episodes

Every episode, newest first

Show notes, timestamps and a full transcript on each one.

12 episodes
No. 12 · Aug 31, 2026 · 12 min

The Mental Benefits of Hiking: What the Outdoors Has Taught Me

Everybody lists the mental benefits of hiking; this is my attempt at the real list. I recorded this one a little differently. Most of these I write at a table, or in the van with a notebook, thinking it through ahead of time. This one started in front of a fire a few nights ago, out past Bend on a road I won't name — built slow, from small stuff, no rushing it — with a notebook I never opened, trying to answer the question I said at the very beginning I'd get around to eventually. What has any of this actually taught me? Not the skills. I can read a river now, mostly. I can fix the van, usually. I can build a fire in the wind. Those aren't nothing, but they're not what I mean, and they're not why you're still here.

No. 11 · Aug 24, 2026 · 12 min

Why Is Fire So Mesmerizing? The Campfire as a Technology

Why is fire so mesmerizing? A few summers ago I found out what one can do to three strangers. I shared a clearing with two guys I'd met that same afternoon. Dispersed site, forest service road, one flat spot and three parties who all wanted it. We were polite about it — nods, small talk, everybody on their own patch of dirt. Then somebody got a fire going and offered to share it, because building a second one six feet away would have been strange, and within an hour the three of us were talking like we'd known each other for years. One of them told a story about his father I don't think he'd told many people. I know I said things I don't usually say to strangers. In the morning we drove off in three directions and I never saw either of them again.

No. 10 · Aug 17, 2026 · 11 min

Catch and Release Fishing as a Philosophy

There's a thing I do at the end of every fish I catch and release that I've never really explained to anyone. I hold it in the water, facing upstream, and I wait. Not for a photo. I wait because the fish is tired and needs a minute in the current before it can hold itself steady again, and I'm not going to let go until it can. Sometimes that's ten seconds. Sometimes my hands go numb in the cold while I crouch there waiting for a trout to decide it's ready. And then it just goes — one kick, back down into the green water, and I never see it again. That's the whole point.

No. 9 · Aug 10, 2026 · 12 min

Public Lands and Why They Matter More Than People Realize

This morning I woke up on a piece of public land that belongs to me. It also belongs to you, and to a few hundred million other people, which is a strange kind of ownership but a real one. I was parked on a national forest road in the Cascades, a few miles up a gravel track, nobody around. I made coffee and watched the light come up through the trees. I didn't pay anyone for the privilege, and nobody could tell me to leave. I've woken up like that thousands of mornings now, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to understand what actually makes it possible. It isn't the van. The van is just the tool.

No. 8 · Aug 3, 2026 · 12 min

Solo Camping: What Solo Travel Does to Your Brain

On the third night of a solo camping trip last summer I caught myself talking out loud. Not to anybody — there was nobody within probably fifteen miles of me. I was cooking over a small fire and realized I'd been narrating it, out loud, to the fire, to the pot, to no one. Then I stopped and listened to how quiet it was, and noticed I wasn't embarrassed. There was nobody there to be embarrassed in front of. That's a stranger feeling than it sounds like the first time you really notice it.

No. 7 · Jul 27, 2026 · 12 min

How to Read a River for Fly Fishing

Learning how to read a river is the fly fishing skill nobody can hand you. I pulled up to a river in northern Idaho last fall that I'd never fished before — off a gravel road I found on a paper map, most of a day's drive to get there. And when I finally walked down to the bank, I didn't make a cast for almost an hour. I just stood there and looked at it. To anybody watching it would have looked like I'd forgotten why I came: a man in waders, rod in hand, doing nothing. I wasn't doing nothing. I was reading it.

No. 6 · Jul 20, 2026 · 12 min

The Case Against Peak Bagging

Peak bagging, collecting summits off a list, is something I did plenty of before I knew better. I got to the top of something in the Sierra a few years ago. A good one — long approach, thin air, ranges stacked up behind ranges going blue and then gray. It was genuinely beautiful for about ten minutes, and then I noticed I was already thinking about the walk down. That's the part nobody says out loud about a summit: it's the exact middle of your day, not the end. You climb all morning to get somewhere you cannot stay.

No. 5 · Jul 13, 2026 · 12 min

Is Van Life Worth It? What Van Life Content Gets Wrong

Is van life worth it? Start with the part nobody films. It's a little after eleven, I'm parked at the far edge of a grocery store lot, and I'm on my stomach with a headlamp reaching into a cabinet because the water pump is making a sound it shouldn't. Nobody films this part. And this part is most of it. Van life content is real estate photography for a lifestyle — the made bed, the ocean out the back doors, the best ninety seconds of a life sold as the life.

No. 4 · Jul 6, 2026 · 11 min

Living in a Van: Why I Left a Career for the Road

People ask how I ended up living in a van, and they want the moment — the meeting where I stood up, the sunrise that rearranged my priorities. There wasn't one. There was a fine job that slowly stopped fitting, a layoff and a breakup that arrived in the same season, and a used Sprinter I bought partly out of clarity and partly because I didn't know what else to do with myself.

No. 2 · Jun 22, 2026 · 12 min

Is Fly Fishing Hard? What Fly Fishing Teaches You About Patience

Is fly fishing hard? I've been at it for six years and I'm still not good at it. That's not modesty — I lose fish I should land, and there are whole days the river just says no. Somewhere along the way I stopped being frustrated by that and started thinking it might be the point.

No. 1 · Jun 15, 2026 · 12 min

Is Boredom Good for You? Boredom Is the Point

Is boredom good for you? I've come to think it's the most useful thing that happens on a hike. There's a four-hour stretch of forest service road in the Cascades with no views, no water crossings, nothing to look at but trees. I used to treat it as a tax I paid to get to the fishing. Now it's the part of the trip I look forward to.