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I have a little document I keep here called The Kyle Project and in it I have a little section called Priorities:

1. Family and community
2. Health
3. Do good with my wealth
4. Outdoor adventure (hiking, biking, camping, snow sports, etc)
5. Learn new things
6. Build good stuff
7. Adventure!

Somehow nowhere in that list is publish Seasons of Kyle on time, which is why you’re getting this installment so late.

Happy Winter Solstice!

As I finally sat down to write this (yes, quite late), the first thing I did was open up Purple Air to see if it was safe to sit on my balcony — which means one thing: it’s officially Summer a.k.a. Smoke Season. In fairness, it’s been a pretty typical spring up here in the mountains. We’ve had a few hot spells, a few late snows, thunderstorms, and even some rain. The grass is just now starting to dry out, the wildflowers are starting to fade, and the air has mostly been clear. Of course what’s typical to the long arm of history is a bit of an anomaly to recent experience. So it’s been a bit of a weird one. In a normal way.

Last time I sent out a letter, we had just started primary framing on Aster Pines (have I mentioned that’s our name for the house?). Today it’s a whole house! Well, at least it’s the shell of a house.

This winter has been the coldest warmest snowiest driest winter that California has ever experienced. We have seen highway-debilitating snow, forest fires in the heart of winter, a near endless string of sunny days, bitterly cold dry spells, and warm summer-like afternoons.

It has been a winter unlike any other (as all winters are).

In between battling 2ft thick ice dams, I’ve been reading a lot of Alex Steffan’s The Snap Forward. It’s probably my favorite speculation on our climate-driven future. His general premise is that due to inaction on climate change, we have committed ourselves to a future where things will feel as though they suddenly snap forward. The slow, predictable change most people expect will not happen, instead we will face discontinuity. This idea of discontinuity resonates deeply with me, and it feels a little bit like a skeleton key to modern life.

As I sit by the fire writing this letter, South Lake is a picture perfect winter wonderland — trees are drooping heavy with snow, roads are narrow and lined with snow banks, and all the eaves are lined with icicles. And there’s another ten feet of snow forecasted through the weekend.

I need not remind you this is one of my favorite things.

Ten days ago, this was a typical summer scene and the ski resorts were all closed — nothing but mountains of dirt. It hadn’t even been cold enough to make snow. December 2021 will likely be the latest opening date for the ski resorts and the largest snowfall in recorded history — the driest and wettest simultaneously.

One day after I sent out my belated Spring letter that focused on the loss of our Summers, the Caldor Fire picked up and burned through 20,000 acres of dense forest in 24 hours. When the day started, we were slated to attend a 200+ person community potluck that evening. By 10am I knew it wasn’t going to happen. By 4pm the AQI was hovering around 500, ash was raining down all over town, and the organizers finally made the call to cancel the event. A week later as the fire officially reached mega fire status (100k acres), we packed up our pets and important belongings and headed down to Palm Springs. One week later, the fire crested Echo Summit — 30 miles away from its start — and triggered a mandatory evacuation for the entirety of South Lake Tahoe. The next morning the fire burned down The Old Cabin at Leaping Daisy.

Not a single structure was lost in South Lake. Miraculous is the wrong word. It was a historic effort by firefighters who fought all night to keep the wall of flame descending from Echo Summit from devouring neighborhoods. This is not a case of firefighters stopping a fire. The fire went town. And not a single structure was lost. Fire maps do look like this.

For those of you who don’t know, I own an old high elevation cow camp in the Sierra Nevadas with my friend David. It’s home to a 99 year old hand-hewn log cabin, a chainsaw milled post & beam horse barn, and a few smaller bunk houses. It’s been a source of great joy and fulfillment over the years. We call it Leaping Daisy, or sometimes just The Ranch.

Now for the sad part: the rancher who grazes cattle around the ranch called yesterday, and let me know the old cabin and all the bunk houses burned down in the Caldor Fire.

If I had to pick a favorite season, it would be Winter. I’ve described this feeling a couple of times already, but I feel like I’m still discovering just why my heart pulls me this way. Lately, I’ve started to appreciate that my love for Winter is rooted in contrast — it’s the differentness of the season that draws me toward it. So in many ways, my love of Winter is tied to my love of Spring and Fall. They sit inside a positive feedback loop — a good Fall leads to a better Winter, which leads to an even better Spring. It’s why I love living in the mountains where I get to see the seasons change. It’s why I love California, where you can visit any season you want with a few hours driving. And it’s why I anchor this newsletter to the seasons, no matter how late it comes. And this one is quite late.

Over the past few years I’ve felt myself putting more and more pressure on Spring. Feeling frustrated when we get a late snowstorm, impatient when the trails are slow to melt out. This is weird — Spring always comes, perhaps a little early or a little late, but it always comes. And why would I feel nervous about a season? The other day, I was reading and it hit me:

I’m a sucker for the romanticism of Winter.

It feels like low sun angles, frosty mornings, and trees heavy with last night’s snowfall were purposefully designed to steal our hearts. Who doesn’t love to watch the snow fall? (Who loves to shovel the snow that’s fallen?) As Winter approaches, the days get shorter and the plants retreat below the soil, the season pulls at me to slow down and retreat.

It’s always a good idea to watch the weather in the mountains.

A few months ago, Jessica & I loaded up the 4Runner for the last wheeled expedition down the ranch. We’re used to doing this trip every year now, but it never has a set date. Let’s call it a planned spur of the moment trip. It all depends on the weather. We head out with a few cases of beer, dried foods, snacks, and any materials we might want for winter projects. We put away the equipment, roll up the hoses, stack up the firewood, and make sure everything we don’t want crushed is under a roof. The next time we visit, we plan on skiing down. This year our weather window came at the beginning of November.

Summer in the mountains of California is always a bit fickle. We don’t get the always-chilly dreary days that San Francisco and Portland. We don’t get the pummeling summers of Los Angeles. We don’t get the constant humid overcast summers of the South. We tend to get all of the above, all at once — crystal clear summer days intermixed with abrupt cold fronts and short-lived thunderstorms. It’s one of my favorite aspects of living here — we get the weather, unedited.

But that didn’t really happen this summer. It got hot and it just stayed that way. Warm, stagnant air hung in the mountains in a way I’ve never seen before. It felt very much like the rest of our world right now: stagnant.

It feels like many of us are waiting. Waiting for this to end. Waiting for something to come back. Waiting for things to get back to . But how long are we going to wait for? What if there isn’t a normal to get back to? Have we ever returned to normal before?

There is another timeline where things aren’t like this. A timeline where the dream that is America became a reality. A place where any person — regardless of race or creed — could come to this country and find a welcoming home. If they were industrious enough, they could build a good life out of nothing but hard work, honesty, and determination. Their children would look forward to a better world with plentiful food, cleaner waters, and longer lifespans thanks to advancements in medical science. Their public infrastructure would be even more robust — advances in technology constantly paving the way to faster transportation, less pollution, and seemingly infinite abundance. Those children would look at America as a warm embrace — a place of refuge for the downtrodden, a place whose systems benefited any who came to its shores, a place that valued honesty and hard work, and most importantly — a place to thrive.

This is not our timeline. Ours is one where America realized into a nation that focuses the majority of its wealth and industry on war and violence. Our is a nation where its children can expect to live shorter, more difficult lives than their parents. Ours is one of riots and protest. Protests around a simple phrase: my life matters. The response to this from our government is violence — tear gas, flash-bangs, beatings, choke-holds, rubber bullets, and massive numbers of civilian casualties. Our timeline is one of secret police kidnapping citizens and throwing them into unmarked vans. Mafia-like sheriffs refusing to service 911 calls to libraries because they wrote a letter supporting Black Lives Matter. It is a timeline where many citizens see Black people saying my life matters and their first response is BUT!. The only moral response is nothing more, nothing less. Anything but a is a when someone is asking to matter enough to continue breathing. It is heartbreaking to see so many of my fellow countrymen perform mental gymnastics to prove that, actually, state sponsored violence result in so many citizen lives being ended. That it is somehow for police to drive MRAPs through cities in peacetime. That it is somehow for police to murder civilians should they happen to feel threatened by a cell phone.

I can’t help but feel there’s something in the air these days. A pandemic sweeps the world. Capitalism continues to crumble under its own ineptitude. Republicans are giving out unconditional handouts to the poor. Earthquakes are shaking Tahoe. And, of course, people are hoarding toilet paper like it’s going to grow into an apple tree.

It must be spring!

Hey y’all,

Happy winter solstice! And welcome to issue #2 of my personal newsletter. If you missed the first one, you can read a little bit about why I’m writing these over here.

Since moving to the mountains, I’ve found myself falling into a familiar pattern around this time of year. In early November, we get a few hints of snow, the aspens start to turn colors lighting up the valleys with color, and the mosquitos finally die off. It’s a wonderful time to be outside during the day. As the temperatures drop, it means it’s time to start using the wood stove at the cabin and enjoying a good book in the evening. It’s one of my favorite times of year. But the falling temperatures also serve as a warning of the work to be done. In the middle of winter the ranch lies under around ten feet of standing snow twelve miles past the last plowed road. That means all the projects need to get wrapped up, equipment put away, pipes drained, and Christmas trees harvested before there’s too much snow to make it in with a car. Pretty soon it’s feeling like there’s no time at all to finish the things that need doing and I’m wishing for the snow to hold off just one more month.

Hey y’all,

Over the past few years, I’ve had a couple of friends send out semi-regular emails letting me know what they’ve been up to (shout out to Justin & Laura) and I’ve really enjoyed it. No fighting Facebook algorithms to find their posts or notifications popping up on my phone — just a nice letter from them in their own words. I also think there’s something to be said about slowing down and writing longer-form pieces now and then. So here’s me trying it out. I’m calling it Seasons of Kyle, and this first issue comes along with the fall equinox — or as most people know it — the end of summer.

The first time I set out to write this, I started off with a summary last few years of my life. A couple thousand words later, it was obviously way too long and boring to suffer through. so let’s try a more condensed version:

Joined GitHub. Built some cool stuff. Saw a little company turn into a big company. Managed far too many people. Quit GitHub. Left San Francisco. Moved to Dunsmuir, CA. Learned to fly fish. Cared for my Dad. Learned a lot about patience and brain diseases. Got screwed by greedy executives. Got a dog. Bought an old high-elevation cattle ranch in the Sierras with a friend. Dug a lot of holes. Cleaned up a lot of mouse nests. Re-learned the value in digging a hole. Moved to South Lake Tahoe with Jessica. Snowboarded a ton. Did a bit of consulting. Bought a house in South Lake. Then GitHub got acquired and bunch of fake money suddenly turned into real money. And well, things changed.