We were two or three weeks into building a cabin when the first two-by-four became the target of a sudden, white-hot flash of anger. It was the summer of 2018, in the middle of Washington鈥檚 emerald-soaked Cascade Range, and I was on the phone with my father, seeking advice about some framing conundrum, while my longtime friend Patrick (who goes by Pat) was wrestling a 16-foot board toward a miter saw. When the whir of the blade stopped, it became immediately clear that he had cut it wrong. The sawdust still airborne, Pat reached down, grabbed a two-by-four with the conviction of a Baptist preacher, and sent it flying into the forest with a short, crisp, 鈥�Fuck.鈥�

A lot more lumber would end up in the woods. We screwed up countless times from morning to evening, wasting precious daylight hours. Constructing a cabin was a task that one might say we were 鈥渘ot entirely prepared for.鈥� Sometimes, during those months of toil, our anger burned so intensely that we thought the boards we threw into the woods might never land. They鈥檇 just keep flying, the wood breaking down over time and separating into smaller and smaller pieces until they vanished, as our brains exploded from frustration and worry.

In reality, the whole project was borne out of frustration. A few months earlier, Pat and I had what were arguably good careers: I was a reporter at a national magazine in San Francisco, and Pat was a copywriter at a tech company in Seattle. We were lucky enough to have good bosses and colleagues who had become friends. But we were deskbound聽and felt caged by the typing, phone calls, Slack chats, and emails, all performed under the hum of fluorescent lights. We were overwhelmed by the uniformity of it all聽and troubled that we seemed incapable of finding contentment in jobs that many of our coworkers appeared to cherish.聽Sometimes we hoped for an excuse to quit鈥攁 blowup after a failed project or an absurd request from a boss.

We knew we were fortunate to have good jobs鈥攁nd this was well before our country was facing a pandemic and massive unemployment鈥攂ut we were facing the existential crisis that comes from spending your days doing something you don鈥檛 enjoy and wondering if this is how the next five, ten, 20 years will play out. We were in our thirties, young, but not so young. We鈥檇 seen the articles linking sedentary lifestyles to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and misery. We wanted to get out of our respective offices and try something different.

We knew how insufferable it would sound: a couple of discontented millennials deciding to leave stable jobs to do 鈥渟omething more meaningful.鈥� People would think we were a couple of wannabe Foster Huntington dropouts. But being a trope and being free seemed better than being trapped inside for the better part of our thirties.

For the past five years, we鈥檇 joked about various alternatives to our day jobs: scuba dive instructor, skydiving teacher, maybe own a cool hookah caf茅 with live music. But one option didn鈥檛 seem as ridiculous as the others: leaving our desks to build a cabin from scratch.

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The biggest fracking fight in the country is now taking place in Colorado. And the most important man in the ring is 45-year-old Shane Davis, a self-identified fractiv颅ist, who wants a total ban on the practice. Some activists focus their energy on civil disobedience, others on protests. Davis crunches data, digging deep into state and industry records to illuminate fracking鈥檚 damage across the state. He even speaks in statistics.

鈥淔orty-three percent of all operator spills have already caused groundwater contami颅nation in Weld County, Colorado,鈥� Davis says. 鈥淥ne point seven million gallons of toxic waste was never recovered from the ground.鈥�

Davis distributes those findings via his website, , to environmental activists, ranchers, and homeowners, who then use them to enact local moratoriums and bans. 鈥淪hane is not just a thorn in the side of Colorado鈥檚 oil and gas industry, he鈥檚 become a model for other fractivists and a nexus of information,鈥� says , a reporter who has covered the energy industry for 15 years. 鈥淢uch of the resistance building along the Front Range is due to his efforts.鈥�

While working with the Sierra Club in late 2009, Davis was researching a matter unrelated to fracking: the dumping of 172 barrels of toxic waste, allegedly buried near a river north of Denver. An activist who goes by the name Nancy Drew sent Davis to the , where by law data on the state鈥檚 fracking activity must be logged. The site wasn鈥檛 a secret, but it was nearly impossible to navigate.

鈥淚t鈥檚 like, which door do I go through to get the data I鈥檓 looking for?鈥� says Davis. The answer: all of them. It鈥檚 less a matter of technical wizardry than suffering through 鈥渢housands of hours鈥� of distillation. To remedy the situation, Davis is creating a user-friendly site supplied with the industry鈥檚 own data. 鈥淩esidents can plug in their address and pull up the information they need,鈥� he says.

He鈥檚 also branching out. Davis is employing the same methods of data extraction for activist groups in California and Florida, and he鈥檚 giving seminars across the country, creating a legion of data miners who can spur their own movements. It鈥檚 that spread of information that Davis believes will win against what he calls a 鈥渞ogue industry.鈥�

鈥淭his is a method that the industry cannot beat,鈥� he says.

See 28 more of our predictions on the big moves coming in 2015.

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