Going to the Mountains is Going Home - Intro


I'm Jack Foersterling. I'm a mountain biker, skier, writer, bike mechanic, slackliner, Eagle Scout, fisherman, rock climber, hammock-enthusiast, amateur iPhone photographer, longboarder, camper, and all around adventurer. Graduating high school in 2012 I sought to escape the Midwest that I had spent the last 18 years in and find something new. I landed myself at the University of Denver in beautiful Colorado. Growing up in Boy Scouts and eventually reaching my dream of Eagle Scout, I have always strived for adventure, from building mountain biking trails in my backyard, to living out of the back of a car for 5 days in Moab, Utah spending the days biking and exploring. I have always found peace within nature. There's something about leaving the fast-paced society that too many of us are stuck in and simply going on an adventure. John Muir said it best over 100 years ago,

"The tendency nowadays to wander in wildernesses is delightful to see. Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. Awakening from the stupefying effects of the vice of over-industry and the deadly apathy of luxury, they are trying as best they can to mix and enrich their own little ongoings with those of Nature, and to get rid of rust and disease. Briskly venturing and roaming, some are washing off sins and cobweb cares of the devil's spinning in all-day storms on mountains; sauntering in rosiny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, brushing through chaparral, bending down and parting sweet, flowery sprays; tracing rivers to their sources, getting in touch with the nerves of Mother Earth; jumping from rock to rock, feeling the life of them, learning the songs of them, panting in whole-souled exercise, and rejoicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of pure wildness. This is fine and natural and full of promise. So also is the growing interest in the care and preservation of forests and wild places in general, and in the half wild parks and gardens of towns. Even the scenery habit in its most artificial forms, mixed with spectacles, silliness, and kodaks; its devotees arrayed more gorgeously than scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild game with red umbrellas, — even this is encouraging, and may well be regarded as a hopeful sign of the times." -John Muir, Our National Parks, 1901

Looking out my dorm window I see the now snowcapped Rocky Mountains in the not-too-far distance. To me they are more than just something to look at, they are somewhere to go, to explore, to write about, to be at home in, and that is exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life.


-jf