¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ

Paddy: can you point to a specific experience outdoors that then transformed into a sculpture?

John: I showed a group of people a film, of looking at this river that's right in front of my house, and then suddenly noticing that there was a rock in the water.

that was moving upstream.

Paddy: Really

John: Yes. Really?

Paddy: was just stuck in an eddy line

John: No, I made that. This was a, this was a kinetic artwork.

My grandson was upstream about a hundred yards with a cable attached to a rock that was about this big

Paddy: Oh my God.

John: And he was pulling it so that it was going. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Underwater. , We're standing and we're looking out into the world, and we see the leaves moving and we see the beautiful colors of everything.

But then suddenly we see something moving out there that has intention that moves in some way as if it was conscious when it happens, is so fascinating that your whole awareness [00:01:00] just goes zooming in to this rock that's under the river. Like, what is it doing?

Why is it,

Paddy: Well, if I saw a rock underwater

moving upstreams, I would, probably sit down for a little bit and drink some water.

John: But there, and so my kinetic art would be to do this on a city park, an invisible rock that no one could figure out ever how it happened that just was constantly moving up and down the river course.

Paddy: A sentient rock.

That's

John: its, it,

Paddy: MUSIC

PADDYO VO:

In college, I wanted to be an artist, but I couldn’t paint or sculpt or take interesting pictures, so I became a literature major with a focus on poetry. I started smoking a pipe, joined our lit magazine, and organized guerilla poetry readings. When I wasn’t storming the coffee shop to interrupt quietly studying students with a portable PA system through which I shouted free verse, I walked the botanical garden and tromped along the river that [00:02:00] ran through campus. I hoped time outside would inspire the poem that would make me great, while I scribbled all the other poems into a notebook as they occurred to me.

This will shock you, but I did not in fact become the next great American poet. They say bad poets turn into good writers, and I can confidently say that most of what I’ve written since college is much better than my poetry. And to this day, when I’m outside, I’ll get an idea that eventually becomes an article. I wouldn’t call myself an artist per say, but I’m creative in that I make things, like this podcast. That said, I’ve never seen my adventures themselves as art—but kinetic artist and skier John King sure does.

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John creates moving sculptures that he dreams up during his time outdoors, which often replicate the movement of animals or wind [00:03:00] or water. He sees his adventures as similar to his sculptures, and takes it one step further: In John’s estimation, the memories of those adventures are pieces of art, too. He compares returning to these memories to watching a standing wave in a river; they’re always there, changing and morphing and twisting into something similar but new.

John, you could say, is a pretty heady guy.

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John’s most audacious outdoorsy art piece was his 1978 backcountry ski tour from Durango, Colorado to the Medicine Bow Range near Fort Collins. After placing supply caches the previous summer, John and his friends Alexander Drummond and Peter Vanderwall began in mid-March with newfangled fiberglass nordic skis and a pole-free tent that John sewed himself. When they completed the route six weeks later, they had skied 490 miles and climbed 65,000 vertical feet; they crossed the Continental Divide SEVEN times. They were [00:04:00] unrecognizable—gaunt, and sunburned, with boots held together by tape.

Their route influenced the design of the Colorado Trail and the locations of the 10th Mountain Division hut system, but the journey itself has never been repeated.

It’s hard to overstate how jaw-dropping this feat of endurance, mountain know-how, and physical and emotional perseverance was at the time, given how much was unknown and how rudimentary the gear was. A wonderful new documentary called Moving Line captures all of this beautifully, but the most remarkable part for me was hearing John expound not on the triumph or the tribulations, but on the artistic merit of the pursuit itself. In his estimation, John’s tracks on that trip sketched lines that extend into his present day and beyond toward his future. Because, for John, movement is creation, and expedition is art—and that’s a line my 20-year-old poet self wishes he wrote.

MUSIC FOR [00:05:00] A BEAT

First things first, burnt toast. What's your last humbling and or hilarious moment outside,

John: All right. the, The hilarious ones, have to do with trying to go swimming on January 1st and the ice breaking around the little hole I chopped in my river here.

I live outside of Lyons, on the North Saint Rain Creek.

one of my contracts with living on the river involves having to go in, and take a plunge in the river, January 1st as my first order of, activity.

Paddy: Of the year, every

year. And this is just a contract you have with Mother Nature.

John: It is a contract I have with the river itself.

Paddy: Okay. and how did that go?

John: A lot of times the model was to turn the shower on, here, get it running hot, and then go out in a bathrobe and, submerge and then make my way quickly back to the house.

What you have to do if you do this same thing is you have to say to the river when you're underwater, bring it.

It's [00:06:00] about, I wanna say five, four or five feet deep and plunge go underwater. Open your eyes underwater. Come up, go down, do it again to make sure it's correct

Paddy: And that's when you say bring it

John: yeah, that's when you say bring it when you're underwater, And you know, I can imagine voices speaking to me. And the, the river said, don't use the shower.

Paddy: Okay.

John: So I just kind of humbly walked slowly back into the house and.

Paddy: Oh,

John: just sit in the cold. God dammit.

Paddy: Okay.

John: This is a cold plunging thing. You have to be into that to, to know.

Paddy: Well it sounds like the

river has broughten it to you.

John: That's correct.

I don't know. Is that amusing

Paddy: That was great. Are you kidding? Yeah, that's great.

Alright, let's get into it.

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Did you first start skiing as a kid?

Is that where your sense of adventure and your drive to pursue adventure first started?

John: I grew up downhill skiing. My parents were downhill skiers and my grandfather was a downhill skier,

but he skied with a, a board with a [00:07:00] leather strap, over it downhill skiing up in the high mountains of, uh, new England, Mount Washington Tuckerman's Ravine

Paddy: Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: So this was a pretty wild activity. I can remember standing on the back of my father's skis, holding onto the back of his legs. And that's how I began skiing,

Paddy: That is amazing. So it sounds like you come from a.

John: coming from a ski background.

Paddy: Well, a ski background, but also a long line of, pursuers of adventure and pursuers of,

uh, outdoor fun.

John: That's true. And that's been in my family for generations.

Paddy: And were they also artists

John: well, I mean, as an artist I consider everybody as an artist. but some people are not engaging that part of themselves very much so. I think my family has a history of the art, of nature, of nature connection,

I think mother's line of the family, grandfather mother, [00:08:00] me, they were all doing canoe trips and, hunting moose in Maine and, My father's side came from the city my father discovered nature when he was in college he went up and ended up in New England being a, a guide carrying people's packs up Mount Washington as a summer job while he was in college.

Paddy: So it was, maybe in the, in the DNA on the maternal side, but the paternal side, it was more of like an antidote

to city

John: did it. He went out and did it. Yeah, that's right.

Paddy: And so then when you moved to Colorado to go to college, do you think that is where your desire not just to have fun go and enjoy and have a deep connection with nature, but your desire to push yourself physically in the mountains, did that

coincide with your desire to create art?

John: I've always been, a creator, I've always been a maker I was as a kid, building a, roller coaster in my [00:09:00] backyard out of two by fours and roller skates and the neighborhood. Kids were crashing down this thing and hurting themselves.

And I was doing that when I was 10. So I think that was just my nature to be, a visionary creator

Paddy: And build and move,

John: and make things that Yeah. And move.

That's true. And the moving was kind of being, in play.

I declared an art major, which was a, challenging thing for me to decide to kind of go against all of the, uh, lawyers and accountants of the world and say that I was gonna be something else. My parents approved, but basically the culture didn't,

Paddy: Sure,

John: and so to be an artist meant to be an outsider or a stranger or someone that was pursuing their own vision.

Paddy: Yeah.

John: So I was doing that in college successfully, and I was also going to the woods to nature doing essentially creations in nature. And I'm not sure I'd made the [00:10:00] link in my mind that these were essentially the same action

I'm not like a blank slate and I have to go out. Into nature and then aha, something happens out there. I think it's, more like the wellspring is the same location I've been informed by this whole life that I've lived in nature.

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I had experiences in my youth before Colorado, that were, formative. and let me just touch on two of them. One is, when I was in high school, I was dating the Finnish, exchange student, I ended up visiting her in Helsinki.

And she took me out into the Wildes of Finland and showed me cross country skis, and we put 'em on and we skied off into a hut.

And I had never done that before, and so I, basically imported cross country skiing. I was one of the people that had done it in a different country before anybody was doing it here.

And so I knew about this way of moving on the land and up there, [00:11:00] it's Nordic skiing, it's flat country. , And so gliding and sliding and moving effortlessly, was something I got put into my head by dating this Finnish girl, the other one was, when I was a kid, I went to, summer camp.

it was a summer lakeside camp that with sailing and, and we lived in this thing called out camp where we lived in our own tents and one of the counselors said, oh, there's this thing called Outward Bound. When you grow up and become an adult, you might want to do go to Outward Bound. When I got outta college, I hitchhiked to, Minnesota.

Paddy: Uhhuh.

John: And joined Outward Bound, because I knew how to ski. They took me in as one of their, early instructors in their brand new winter travel program that they were just setting up, in Minnesota. And so here I was being an, an, uh, an Outward Bound instructor at age 20.

I worked a couple sessions and then I decided that Outward Bound, I wasn't getting the experience, which [00:12:00] was supposed to be self revelation, you know, outward bounds about finding yourself. so I informed them that I was gonna ski across the, uh, quetico in the boundary waters, which is about a hundred mile wilderness.

from up in Canada, back to the Outward Bound Camp by myself and they basically let me do it. But that wasn't the thinking of Outward Bound, that you should do this stuff alone,

Paddy: do you feel like you weren't having these self revelatory,

John: Yes,

Paddy: experiences that you desired? Was it because you were in a group or because you were leading

John: I think it's 'cause it wasn't hurting enough. It was too easy.

Paddy: It wasn't hurting enough.

John: I don't, you know,

Paddy: it, there's not enough pain cave for you, John.

John: just being a kid at that point. Yeah. It, well, it was sort of like vision quest I guess. That kind of, that that was the, thing I, you have to somehow be burningly alone at, uh, 35 below zero.

Paddy: [00:13:00] which you can do pretty

John: Which is pretty easy to do.

Paddy: In Minnesota, in the winter. Oh yeah.

John: On that trip to talking about taking a cold plunge in the river, I was skiing up some little creek in the morning at 35 below zero, having left my campfire behind and under my left foot, the ice broke

Paddy: God.

John: and I fell forward onto the ice.

Paddy: Oh my god

John: And this was black water running on one side of me, and I had this huge pack on my back, 50 pounds, and half of my body was hanging into the icy death.

Paddy: Yo, what did the river tell you then, John?

John: It said, get the fuck outta here.

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Paddy: In the spring of 1978, you and two pals set out on an epic ski traverse of Colorado from the

San Juan Mountains in Durango North to the medicine bow range near Fort Collins.

It was a six week,

490 mile trip with a total of [00:14:00] 65,000 vertical feet of ascent, which

is bonkers stats. You three were the first to do it. no one has repeated

And your route inspired the Colorado Trail. I have a ton of questions about this adventure. And I'm very curious about how much actual skiing you all did. You were on lightweight fiberglass Nordic skis, which in my experience of, Nordic skiing, turns a good skier basically into a newborn deer wobbling

and lurching in every direction.

So did you guys have fun on the downhill

of this adventure? Like, were you making actual wiggles and giggles on this?

John: Oh, that's good. Were we wiggling and giggling? yes, uh, but not the way you would on your gear

Paddy: Describe the downhills, 'cause the

ascents sound like just grueling trudges,

John: No, no. The ascent are fun. It's all fun.

Paddy: what?

The ascents are fun. Oh, John. [00:15:00] Oh, John, are you one of these,, absolute animals

John: No,

Paddy: beat themselves

up onto the

John: no. This is a cold plunge thing. It's a, you have to just enjoy going up. You can't go super fast. You gotta select a route and the route has to be like this, so, and it's better that way and you find this kind of way up, and it just takes a long time. Basically,

Paddy: the uphill is fun if you go slow

John: if you go, if you just look around and enjoy it, there's a great view that they're not throwing things at you snow and bushes, like when you go downhill.

This is maybe a, a Nordic skiing principle. It's not about getting to the peak. It's about crossing the land. It's about moving over the land.

Paddy: So then did you see your skis as just the best form of cross country transportation rather than this like joy delivery system? That's how I see skis

as, yeah.

John: That's, that's a good way of putting it.

Well, and the only problem, I like [00:16:00] joy. I like the delivering, I like downhill skiing, but I don't want to drag the stuff up there.

Because the whole thing about cross country is glide.

That's the magic. You're on roller skates

It's funny 'cause the real thing that's the most fun thing on the downhill stretch is to get some ridge that goes, I want to say eight miles. Out there and to not descend down into the cirque Lake, but to ride this ridge out just on and on and on and on. And you, you basically get seven miles of travel for free.. And you're standing on these little wobbly things, but it's just going, it's great.

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Paddy: Wonder is the thing that I continued to feel as I was watching. documentary moving line about the 78 expedition, because you say a lot of things that made me stop dead in my tracks, and one of them is specifically kind of about a ridge line.

You said you gained this ridge line, this. this arduous [00:17:00] climb. And then you got up there and it felt like a big, deep breath, and you looked onto this roller coaster of a ridge line in front of you that it felt like extended far out for the rest of your life.

John: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Paddy: Oh, like John, I mean, even now just talking about it like makes the hairs on the back of my neck, stand up.

So talk to me about that specific moment

John: I actually remember that moment

and. Talking to Alex as we were skiing out at the very end of our journey, coming down out of Rocky Mountain Park and having crossed this pass, that's the same one that Trail Ridge goes over and then skiing out north and it was the, conveyor belt that was going out

and we were on it.

And to know that as it was happening and see it. And I turned to him and I said, you see where we're, we are now. This is a moment that we'll be aware of for the rest of our entire existence [00:18:00] as a key moment.

Paddy: and when you say conveyor belt going out, was it the, timeline of your life, metaphorically speaking.

John: Well, so if we go to metaphorical,

cause I was talking about literally the terrain and

Paddy: sure. Sure.

John: skiing out of that trip. I, I, I think it's a wonderful thing to recognize, that you're here with somebody else and that that moment. You can see it in each other's eyes like this is it.

to have gotten to have experiences like that with other human beings, you know, is incredible.

And here I'm at the other end remembering them.

I was utterly changed. that's what this life is doing to us. Is utterly a, changing of the movement.

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Paddy: One of the things that particularly stood out to me in the film is when you said, now looking back on life as an artist, I could consider these lines drawn on the land as magnificent artwork. Expedition is art. It seems to me that you have [00:19:00] had this belief of the connection between your artistic impulse and your adventures outside since you were a little kid

on the back of your dad's skis.

But what did this trip, the 78 Colorado Expedition do to strengthen that belief?

John: It's basically like I got myself up into the high country. And it was like being at a monastery or something. I, I lived there.

and I went back every day. I got up and, and I was in the same place. And it just went on and on and on and it wasn't gonna end.

The state of being in it was endless. And it was so great to be in that we spent almost a week setting the Cashs out and getting this whole thing and answering some unanswered questions about. Where we were gonna find things on

Paddy: terms of route.

John: Yeah. Even just where can we put this cash up here and then get to it later?

We didn't, take any notes on where those caches were.

Paddy: Geez. [00:20:00] Wow.

John: Yes. So we went out, and we hoped we, we'd, we knew we'd be able to find there again

there was all this thinking and mechanics and planning and weighing everything in the pack and wondering if you could take two tubes of wax or one and a half, on and on and on.

And then we skied away and. Everything got silent, like all the noise of preparation and thinking and,

and we're just skiing up some ridge,

and it, it is like the thing just comes over you like a wave breaking, like, oh, you're here, little kid you're here now.

Paddy: Was there ever a moment within all of that, even with that great feeling where you were like, This's pretty hard. This is pretty awful. This is, we are really, really pushing ourselves to the limit physically. Maybe I've bitten off a little too much. Was there ever a thinking of that

John: I don't think so.

Paddy: Wow. That is incredible to me. I mean,

I

John: it's 'cause I already, I already

Paddy: around the

John: the water. I already survived the falling in the ice [00:21:00]

Paddy: Oh, in Minnesota you were like, uh, this ain't nothing.

John: this kid,

Paddy: Lemme tell you about cold. This is not cold, man.

John: Well, I can remember as a, as a younger person, sitting around a campfire at night at, 35 below zero, and you have to pee. Right? So you get up and. Either put your skis on or walk about 30 feet away from the fire and face the black void of sky.

And,

it's an entity and it, it's an entity that can eat you whole. It can just, just suck you up.

All you have to do is step away from that fire.

And it's weird 'cause I think in some ways when I did that back as a kid, I walked out there and I looked at that entity and I said, bring it,

bring my death.

Paddy: really,

John: Yeah, you're facing the cold, like, oh my God,

Paddy: And so were, was this part of all of the expeditions was just that, I want to get back to looking into the void.

John: I think so

Paddy: Jesus. what does [00:22:00] that teach you?

John: Well, the voids a good thing to look into.

Paddy: Why

John:  It's like you could use a little more of that, a little more spread of that. Get some void on you.

I think. It's probably transcendent of human life. You think, God, this is a great planet. I am glad I'm visiting from another place

Paddy: John, I feel like I'm kind of floating around right now. I'm, I'm detached and fully attached all at the same time. Wow.

John talk, talking to you is, is, uh, singular.

John: Oh, I'm glad. It's not too bad. It's not too hard on you.

Paddy: are you kidding me? My brain's exploding with questions and, ideas all at the same time

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

PADDYO VO:

More mindbending conversation with skier and kinetic artist John King after the break.

Paddy: MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL MIDROLL

so prior to this trip, would you have described yourself as like a powder skier?

John: No, I had downhill gear and I would go [00:23:00] skiing, but to me, this was an entirely different sport and activity. We were Nordic skiing in the mountains basically. And so trying to get as far back in and up some crazy place and then glide out as far as you could.

Paddy: After the trip, would you put on Alpine equipment and go to a ski area and think like, oh man, look, this is so much easier. Or did you have the opposite feeling of like, this is worthless, like this isn't teaching me or pushing me. I'm not in the wellspring at all. I'm

John: Yeah, it was probably closer to that. And by the way, I have downhill skied my, pretty much my whole life. But, of the two, that's the one that would drop away as being less meaningful to go to the ski area.

Paddy: Yeah. Do you think that the trip, made you feel more of a skier or a deeper connection to wintertime?

John: when it happened, I thought of it as a, a sort of a magnificent thing to have gotten to do.

Paddy: Yeah.

John: I, so I [00:24:00] felt a, a sense of, not accomplishment, but like, wow, , that was a wonderful, creation in my life. A benchmark of some kind, but then I immediately kept doing the same kinds of experiences in Yellowstone and other places around.

Paddy: Well, how does the 78 expedition measure up against those? Is this the trip or the adventure? the outdoor creation of art that everything else is measured against?

John: probably only in terms of the scale of it, it's just so massive so far, so many days. So on and on. in terms of other, experiences that they were equally as deep hanging out in Geyser basins, watching the buffalo in the back country of Yellowstone in the winter when there was no one in the park. One wasn't better than the other. They were

just, wow. The Colorado trip was it was so kind of definable as a thing,

Paddy: because it what, because it took a year of, of planning and then

John: yeah. It was such a, such a [00:25:00] big deal to create it and then do it, back when I was younger, I would've said that that was the most single, uh, significant single event that I'd experienced in my life.,

Paddy: What changed that perspective?

John: Oh, I, watched my, daughter , disappearing into the clouds in front of me in Yellowstone, skiing up some ridge and turning back at me and going like, bye as she pulled out of sight into a whiteout when she was like, 17.

And I thought, this can't get any better than this.

We skied for, 10 days or something, and in Yellowstone and went down this ridge that nobody there was no trail on and therefore hadn't been done in the winter. So we, uh, skied along a route that was. Nobody knew about,

and there were moments along the way that were just, this is it.

It's this is the whole thing.

Paddy: Yeah. Just, just this is the best that life can

John: this is the best that life can give.

Paddy: So that's really interesting to me I believe that much in life [00:26:00] depends upon a shift in perspective and immediately upon finishing this gigantic trip in 1978, you know, you're saying it's this single most important adventure, artistic expression of your life. Fast forward to a few years later, and your daughter is, you know, going NN Nana dad when she into, , this curtain of white in Yellowstone, and you're like, I don't even remember the Colorado trip.

This, this, you know, like, so Does the importance of a thing, whether it's an adventure or a piece of art, , decrease over time,. Is it because it's happening right here, right now

John: now is now. right. I can tell you a story about today,

about somehow being at that place,

and that's, by the way, where the new art is taking place is now..

it becomes, less of a, importance because it's been done and installed.

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Paddy: With both art and the adventures, the expeditions that you've been on, which are many,

John: Yeah. [00:27:00] Many, many,

Paddy: the National Park Crossing, the Yellowstone Crossing, the Yellowstone ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ with your daughter, the Grand Canyon, the 78 Colorado Expedition. Do all of these things, Do they teach you all something different or do, they just continue time after time to allow you to tap into the wellspring. It's just a

way for you to get back to the spring?

John: I would say it's more of the latter,

It's almost like,

I'm an old guy and there's this thing about, that's called being unstuck in space and time.

And while I was mentioning that thing about my daughter skiing up this ridge, which is still like 30 something years ago,

I was there. I was able in my memory or my awareness to actually be there looking at her skiing.

Up

and then the rest of the time, I can't remember it. it's like the things get fuzzier, but more, more intense

memories are, visit-able you can go back into this thing.

I think what [00:28:00] happens is they become, magnificent moments

where it was all there and it was all happening That every, everything I wanted, or everything I was about, or all of the wonder of it is expressed in a single moment.

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Paddy: you know, you've said that expedition is art but do you also believe that. Art is Expedition.

John: Art is journey. For me, it's a journey with an unknown destination.

It's a, a hunt or a search or a, inquiry along a path.

your thing is more, it's because the expedition's gonna drag you along and you're, you're gonna have to be out there suffering.

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Paddy: this idea of, Either it's incredibly difficult or, or somewhat impossible

to bring the experience of being outside back with you

into the day to day, despite the challenge of capturing that feeling. Have you tried to bring all of your expeditions back [00:29:00] home with you, and do you continue to bring them back every time you remember them?

John: I bring them back every time I remember them. , I have better access to those experiences as a component of my now

Paddy: Hmm.

John: than I used to.

And I think I probably learned that along the way

Paddy: Do you think that there are lessons that we can only learn through deep immersive, far out, and extended adventures like your expeditions? And if so, what are the lessons or what is the single lesson?

John: I, I wouldn't wanna say that you can only learn 'em that way, but I think that there's lessons that can be learned through this type of activity of putting yourself so far out into something. that it's very much a way of gaining access to something. and the second part though is that to have the chance, to be there and it's funny, it goes back to the thinking that it's hard to ski uphill.

Um.

[00:30:00] Be there in some kind of, enjoyment of whatever things. The, the comment you've heard is, uh, the weather's always good. It's your, clothing that's lacking.

Paddy: Yeah. No such thing as bad weather. Only

bad gear. Or bad attitude.

John: Right. Well or bad attitude. Yeah.

Paddy: Yeah.

John: That, that's maybe the only thing

out there in the deep, in the, in the forest. Watch out for bad attitude.

You tend to project and then experience whatever you're carrying.

So now we're going metaphorical. That's why you want your pack to be as light as possible.

Having a heavy pack is a metaphor of need.

Paddy: Mm.

John: Here's all the tools I have. I can't get through the day without this special knife that does this to my camp stove.

The idea that you, you suddenly, you're out there with nothing and you just, you say, oh, this is interesting.

I found, here's a, a pine needle. We'll make something. So the lesson is, kind of [00:31:00] being here, in a cheerful, creative consciousness. You get all kind of creative about how to be here.

Paddy: How does that knowledge help us?

John: Well, I just think it helps you to, you're living in a dream. Everybody agrees this thing we're living in is, is a dream that your notion of reality is, is kind of projected onto it.

are you having a good time with your dream? If not, change the dream.

From within it.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

Paddy: It is time for the final ramble. One piece of gear that you can't live without.

John: all right. And this is where, and I've had several conversations 'cause I read your three final questions. And I thought to myself, who is this guy?

Paddy: I would love for you to answer that too if you would like.

John: Well, the, these questions may be going, whoa, what?

Paddy: . Alright.

I hope that's a good woe. [00:32:00]

John: I'm just gonna roll. if I was going anywhere to do anything. I would take a six by eight nylon tarp.

Paddy: Oh, that is a great call. best outdoor snack.

John: I was talking with someone this morning and I said I wanted to say, uh, beaver feet.

Paddy: What

John: cut the feet off dip 'em a little. You could put a little horseradish on 'em if you want.

Paddy: Okay, I'll go with it. Cool. what is your hottest outdoor hot take?

John: This comes up a lot actually. In asking people about current events,

people that are my age are sort of upset about current events and talking about things like that. And this is, uh, called out loon-ing, the other person,

you say something that I think is really stupid and loony,

And so rather than coming back on you and like saying, well, that's stupid.

Yeah. I want to say. Oh, I've got an idea that's stupider than [00:33:00] yours.

Paddy: So your hottest outdoor hot take is be more stupider.

John: Be. Be more instead of less.

MUSIC IN THE CLEAR FOR A BEAT

John King is a skier and kinetic artist...his sculptures move and they're very beautiful and very cool.  He's created kinetic public art works for cities all over Colorado and even towns in Florida, China, and beyond. His work has been described as often whimsical, always hopeful, and is appreciated by children and those with no formal art training. He lives in colorful Colorado where he enjoys all things outdoors. Like the time in 1978, when John and pals, Alexander Drummond and Peter Vanderwall, became the first to ski across Colorado.

The film version of John's incredible ski adventure is called Moving Line, and it's a project from Black Mountain Productions, based in Durango, Colorado, made up by the filmmaking and producing brothers Cameron and Turner Wyatt. Their [00:34:00] mission is to tell unique stories about the magic of the mountains and boy oh boy, does Moving Line nail it. You can watch the film at the Denver Film Festival Wednesday November 5th and again on Thursday November 6th. If ya can't catch it there, it's premeiring online for FREE on Friday November 8th. Check it out at Moving Line Film Dot Com. You should watch it, it is so very great.

Extra special thanks to the Wyatt brothers, Cameron and Turner, for helping with logistics and recording for this episode.

And remember, we want to hear from ya, you wonderful and I'm assuming very good looking listener you. Email your pod reactions, guest nominations, a quick retelling of any recent ski dreams you've had - god, I love those -, and whatever else you want to tell and/or ask us to ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Podcast At ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Inc Dot Com.

The ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ [00:35:00] Podcast is hosted and produced by me, Paddy O'Connell. But you can call me PaddyO. The show is also produced by the storytelling wizard, Micah "Don't mistake exercise for recreation...unrelated, can someone get me a snack and a water" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by Maren Larsen.

The ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Podcast is made possible by our ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Plus members. Learn about all the extra rad benefits and become a member yourself at ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ Online Dot Com Slash Pod Plus.

Paddy: John, I think you've given me a lot to think about and I mean this as a huge compliment, I feel like I am floating in outer space

John: Perfect.

Paddy: way into the void right

now. Thank you.

John: That's great,