Originally published in Vancouver is Awesome’s print edition April 22, 2013, and here shared in original form for posterity and your enjoyment. (Note: i am no longer a part of the company, accessed from public internet resources)
the kind and wise Simon (with Maltese Falcon)
Pirates with Keyboards ~ (Dev)eloping Hoot Company Culture
by Dave Olson
Inside of HootSuite, we often hear about what people think our internal company culture is like. From typing cats, to crazy rumours, all we can say is that it’s different and possibly weirder than you might expect.
My point of view is a bit unique as I joined HootSuite as the first non-technical employee from the outside. At that time it was me, the CEO, and a core group of developers (devs). From my time here in the nest, I have a few observations to share about what makes our largest department unique.
A Culture of Camaraderie
Dev culture is dev culture. Throughout the company, we have programs and activities to connect different departments together in social settings. This is critically important when companies scale by bringing in different disciplines like sales teams, partner and affiliate programs, and marketing. These all have their own distinct cultures and the devs consistently show off their pieces of flair.
Dev camaraderie is forged during late night coding sessions and time sensitive problem solving, leading to a mutual professional respect. Of course this respect also manifests itself in foosball duels, nerf gun battles, stacks of pizza boxes on release night, and even arts and crafts.
We don’t have to manufacture culture… it grows organically.
#FunFact: One of our front-end devs, Eric, routinely sketches pictures of his colleagues on the back of cardboard or notebook paper… he’s even been known to make shrines to colleagues who are celebrating a birthday.
No Dev left behind
Devs helping devs! at CRAB park
Devs want to produce code which gets used. In some big companies, programmers will digitally write poetic code which never sees light of day due to company direction changes, internal bickering, or lack of coordinated execution.
At HootSuite, my dev colleagues seem to thrive on developing code which is both deployed quickly and will be used widely. This isn’t just for senior devs, the egalitarian approach means all worthy code is used no matter who wrote it.
Devs own their projects and are thus responsible for figuring them out. It’s a collaborative atmosphere where small task forces develop to address specific problems, and they’re given an opportunity to choose their tools in order to fulfill their mandate. This stands in opposition to being pushed into a dogmatic technical solution from someone outside the team.
Front Row View of Rapid Growth
There’s a big difference between managing services and writing code to serve a 100,000 user market, compared to a 5 or 50 million user market. At HootSuite, we have a unique view of the challenges around scaling rapidly – and globally.
Faced the challenges of ensuring services are up around the clock, everywhere, in many languages, while also coexisting with major social network service providers, our devs flourish. This situation offers incredibly valuable skills and experience which can only be gained in this kind of rare environment.
Keep in mind, HootSuite isn’t just for helping people sell more widgets or sharing what they had for lunch… HootSuite plays a role in major world events including theEgyptian Revolution, where Twitter and Facebook were blocked by the Egyptian Government, but HootSuite remained functional. So for 36 hours, we facilitated the voice for the revolution, the counter-revolution, major media, and even the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
Fortunately, one dev added right-to-left scripting for the iPhone, which allowed people to use HootSuite in Arabic in the midst of the struggle. Luckily for us, the systems were able to sustain 7000% growth overnight from Egypt.
Nimble & Agile
Ryan and Simon in their whites gearing up for the HootSuite summer retreat.
Each morning, the devs gather around a cardboard sign that reads “what i’m doing.” While circled around a screen with columns of cryptic tickets, much like medieval monks contemplating the gospels, they massage every idea and distil each into a domino-like line of micro tasks. These tasks are then dutifully moved from column to column until released into the wild.
Keep in mind, projects will go from idea to completion and release in a matter of days. As was the case in the Secure Profiles Tool which came on the heels of noteworthy social media PR conundrums from Red Cross and Chrysler.
From idea on Thursday, to product release and announcement on Tuesday, this is more than just agile – this is yoga-like flexibility!
Oldschool is still school
When I first arrived with small group of devs, I noticed how they relentlessly worked to ensure quality. Three years later, the core founding devs still work hardest and continually lead by example.
They’re doing it because they love doing it, and the passion and tenacity is contagious to the juniors. While HootSuite enjoys attention from the outside, at our core, the devs are guardians of their culture and work to bring the newbs to rarefied air rapidly. No room for b-lists skills in this tribe.
#FunFact: Our “QA Dude” has documented HootSuite’s good times with a seemingly endless stream of wigglies. These fun snaps capture the bits of our growth and culture that the major media will never see including our semi-secret shotgun ritual at each million milestone.
Passion Fueled
Melon slingshot in the back alley of HootSuite HQ during the dev olympics!
While some companies can get away with displaying ‘fail whales’ and stock outage messages when things go awry, we take a different approach at HootSuite. With a global audience doing remarkable things from managing social at heavy hitting brands or sharing mom’s clam chowder recipe, we take our system seriously.
I recall the morning when the Amazon Web Services Cloud went offline, and i noticed our normally serene CTO’s brow slightly furrowed(!) This let me know that we were in for the long haul on this problem. I headed for a large coffee.
Without missing a beat, our systems admin (who is constantly on the ready for the zombie apocalypse with a CB/HAM enabled transformer jeep) headed out the door to Army and Navy saying: “i’m gonna need a toothbrush, a towel, and two packs of smokes.”
Fifteen hours later, we were back online (the first such company of the downed companies), and through some resourceful and ingenious solutions, we had data in store back up and running. We also managed to spin the Amazon outage chaos into apositive story and a case study.
Hero-worthy
While HootSuite’s brand is often manifested via our Owly mascot, lists of the notable brands using the tool, and our noble CEO’s face seemingly *everywhere*, within the company we all know that without the devs rocking the keyboards with precision and dedication, we’d be nowhere. Further, what they are doing is far from vanilla – there’s some heavy duty, wild tech going on under the hood and a crew which is encouraged to actually innovate, not just talk about it.
Whether through arduous nights of coding, wearing pirates outfits, or staging their very own watermelon Olympics, the devs at HootSuite have forged a contagious culture of innovation and perfection, delicately balanced with skullduggery.
To them, i say, “Thanks for letting this liberal arts community guy hang out with ya.”
“One of the early presidents of the Berdoo Hell’s Angels was Bobby Zimmerman. On our way home from the 1964 Bass Lake Run, Bobby was riding in his customary spot – front left – when his muffler fell off his bike. Thinking he could go back and retrieve it, Bobby whipped a quick U-turn from the front of the pack. At that same moment, a Richmond Hell’s Angel named Jack Egan was hauling ass from the back of the pack toward the front. Egan was on the wrong side of the road, passing a long line of speeding bikes, just as Bobby whipped his U-turn. Jack broadsided poor Bobby and instantly killed him. We dragged Bobby’s lifeless body to the side of the road. There was nothing we could do but to send somebody on to town for help.” Poor Bobby.
Can you change the oil in your car yourself? Do you know how to change the oil filter? Do you have a tool kit available? Do you have a tool kit that has several types of pliers, Phillips screwdrivers and slotted screwdrivers? And there is a lot else. To be a self-sufficient human being at this point in history means you need to know a few things, and you can’t always — especially if you are not rich — rely on calling up somebody to come and fix it for you and charge you a lot of money. I am not talking about knowing how to grow your own food or how to cast lead to make your own bullets or something like that, although that would be relevant at times; but just what everybody has to know. My older son, Kai, who lives up in Portland, is forty-three now… He grew up on the farm in the country, or whatever we call it, and he said to me just a couple years ago: “You know, almost none of my friends my age understand what I am talking about when I say I have got to do this with my engine, or I am going to tune up my weed-whacker, or I have got to do some more plumbing, or I have got to get a proper snake for the drain. They never learned anything about fixing thing, or about tools.” Everybody lives in a house, okay? So everybody should be able to do something with their house.
This is a piece of writing by my pal Chris Trottier which i kept because i like it and sharing it here so i can find it again and also so maybe you’ll read and enjoy. No big deal. Links included so you can follow Chris’ myriad endeavours, all of which are fascinating.
When I was 12-years-old, it was the perfect place to go exploring — and get lost.
On a typical foray into Burns Bog, I encountered a hippie-type fellow by a creek. He was shaking uncontrollably, almost in a convulsion — but he seemed all too aware of the creek.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“The water,” he replied in a panicked voice, “It’s going to eat me!”
“Why don’t you just walk away from the water?” I inquired further.
He seemed ponderous for a moment. “Because if I do that, it will sense my vibrations and attack!”
I thought that was funny, then walked off. 20 minutes later, I came across a bucket — and had a brilliant idea. Filling up the bucket with water, I walked back to the panicked man.
Walking towards him, he seemed more frightened than before. But that didn’t stop me. I dumped the whole damn bucket of water over his head.
“AHHHHH!” he screamed.
Then he rolled over, and he started violently shaking. He was shaking so hard, his eyes rolled back. Immediately he started gargling as though he was drowning.
Just then, another bearded dude — this one with glasses — popped out of the trees.
“What the hell did you just do?!” he screamed.
“I was just having a little fun with him!”
“FUCK!!! YOU LITTLE SHIT! Jimmy was just coming down from his acid trip!”
I felt something well up inside me — I knew I did something horrible. And I ran the fuck away never to return.
To this day, I don’t know what happened to that guy.
NOTE: Appeared in accordionist Geoff Berner‘s newsletter, thought is a sizzling piece of writing so posting/sharing here so i don’t lose it.
Also worth noting, saw Mr. Berner with Ms. Mark and their pal Kris Constable in Victoria at Copper Owl a few years after this dispatch… might have a photo somewhere. Oh and Carolyn Mark also does songs with NQ Arbuckle, another quirky, interesting songmaker.
Carolyn Mark’s wit is legendary. I’m not talking about scripted, tested yuck-fodder. I mean spontaneous, off-the-cuff, whip-smart wit. I once saw her at a summer festival, and some white hippies approached the stage before she began her set. They wanted to know if she minded if they “jammed along” with her on their African djembe drums. She leaned into the mic and earnestly explained to them that she loved “jamming”, but she wouldn’t be able to jam with the djembes, because “both my parents were actually killed by hand drums. So they’re very traumatic for me.”
Carolyn Mark is not dead. But I think people ought to be paying tribute to her now, while she’s around to feel embarrassed about it. And people should be covering her songs. Say you’re a musician. Say you’re making an album. Are you absolutely sure that you could not possibly cut one of the 10-15 songs of yours that you’re thinking of putting on there, and replace it with a Carolyn Mark song? A Carolyn Mark song adds Vim, Cleverness and Betterness to any recording—guaran-goddamn-teed! Or your money refunded.
Her work is best described with a phrase that another genius, Sheila Gostick, once used on her own gig poster: ”Funnier than comedy, sadder than music.”
Here are some samples of her cleverly heartbreaking lyrics,
“Don’t you worry, it’s not over, it’s just that after last night, I thought I’d take a break from being president of your fan club.”
Or
“I’m too lazy to beat myself up over being too lazy to, you know, beat myself up.”
Or
“Read my lips you fucker: chew that gum again, we’re through.”
Or this classic—
“Don’t come over, baby. You’re not invited. Love is so much better when it’s un-requited. So go to Hell, leave me alone, and please don’t answer, baby, when I call you on the phone.”
And my fellow musicians, no one I know couldn’t identify with Back in Chumpville:
“Just when I think that I’m through with that town, thinking I’m up just to find that I’m down. I’m back in Chumpville again.”
One time Carolyn and I had a day off in Bergen, Norway. We decided to try to stay out of trouble by lurking in at Jörgen from Bergen’s house. Carolyn has a lyric from “Port Moody”: ”It’s the nights without shows that get me in trouble, restlessness grows, and appetites double.”
Jörgen had a video copy of “Hardcore Logo”. It’s a movie about a fictional Canadian punk band. In the movie they make a big deal about how this tough bunch of crusty punk tough guys are gonna take the long hard road across western Canada in their van, in the wintertime!
As the Toronto actors were hyping up the toughness of their western road-warriorness, I looked over at Carolyn, immaculately dishevelled in polka dot pyjamas, sipping red wine. It occurred to me that the manly fancy-pants fake punkers in the movie were moaning and groaning about doing something that Carolyn had cheerfully done at least twice a year for the majority of her adult life. And stayed up till at least 5 am each night of each show, partying with her local pals, before the 800 km drive each day, laughing and telling dirty jokes along the way. For crying out loud. I promise you that If Chuck Norris tried to live Carolyn Mark’s lifestyle, he’d be weeping like a baby and begging to be taken to a Swiss sanitarium inside 5 days.
Not everyone likes Carolyn. She is not polished and laquered to a sheen, like the Robot Horror People of New Country. She’s been “shushed” for talking (loud) in all the finest venues in North America and Europe. Like love itself, or a hurricane, Carolyn respects no boundaries. It’s just how she’s built.
Once, in London, Ontario, I watched as she and DD determinedly brought their red wine glasses out to the fire escape to smoke, retreating back inside each time the manager lady came out to scold them about bringing alcohol outside, which you can’t do in Canada, because if you did, society would collapse. Time and again, as soon as the lady was gone, DD and Carolyn exchanged a solemn look, lit up, and stepped back out with their wine. Finally, the exasperated lady came out and shouted at them, “Do you two just think that the normal rules of human behaviour just DON’T APPLY TO YOU??!!!!!” DD and Carolyn responded by solemnly looking at each other again, looking at the lady, looking back to each other and collapsing in a fit of helpless laughter. The manager lady told them that they should go home. This of course caused greater laughter to ensue.
That total lack of respect for all the rules about everything is what makes a Carolyn Mark show a True Experience. It is not like watching television, or even Youtube. It is spontaneous, unpredictable, full of humour and rueful truth. And the songs are deceptively, expertly crafted missiles of equal parts nasty observation and strange comfort. The world would do better to hear them. So before you go out there and sing bloody bloody “Hallelujah” one more time, think about singing “Edmonton” instead. ”Hey, do you remember me? Oh yes, we’ve met before. I’d like to ride your coat-tails, or just nail them to the floor.”
Background: They say, “Read All Over (as in read all over town or the literary pun joke, what’s black and white and re(a)d all over… ) is about celebrating the booknerd in all of us, highlighting book lovers in Vancouver and is published in Vancouver is Awesome.” Indeed, my contributions were included in the series and archived here for convenience.
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Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most.
Poet, podcaster, pundit and chronic documentarian from his earliest days, Dave Thorvald Olson spends his time writing, painting and listening to vinyl albums on the back porch while gazing at Lynn Valley’s mountains and trees. He’s traveled to 25+ countries working very odd jobs including mushroom farmer, grape picker, college librarian, submarine tour guide, beach club host and now, dot-com community wrangler. He enjoys hot springs, counter-culture, collecting ephemera and swilling microbrews. You many have caught his stories at SXSW, Northern Voice, TEDx, or Pecha Kucha. Literature fans will enjoy his spoken word podcast series calledPostcards from Gravelly Beach.
Photo courtesy of Dave Thorvald Olson
How do you like your books served up best – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…
I especially like tracking down hardback vintage editions of my favourites and set them on the top shelf of my case alongside dog-eared paperback versions. Example: a rare Catcher in the Rye with photo of Salinger; an unedited version of Kerouac’s On the Road scroll; andDr. Zhivago in Russian (just for fun). While I usually travel with paperbacks, I hauled a massive edition of War and Peace to Belize just to enjoy it more on the porch. I also buy lots of library cast-offs. Never tried an audio book, or an e-book for that matter.
The one book you always recommend is…
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke – elegant soliloquies, devoid of pretension, about pulling the best out of oneself – particularly when writing.
What books have changed your life?
Walden/Civil Disobedience – Thoreau showed me that words are the source of public and private revolutions rather than violence.
The Catcher in the Rye – Salinger’s renegade first-person, colloquial narrative is nuanced & powerful and still underestimated in ability to transform.
Dharma Bums – Kerouac’s chops & sincerity shine through in this earnest story which coaxed millions to put their boots on!
The Backcountry – Following Gary Snyder’s steps in a Kyoto train station shaped my journey and trueself while heading into the Japanese hills.
Desert Solitaire – Crusty Ed Abbey’s seasonal treatise is both elegant and bombastic plus ecologically important for the past & future.
War and Peace – Satisfyingly critical life lessons tangled within Tolstoy’s epic cast of thousands in a revolutionary soap opera of class & honesty.
Bonus: Siddaharta by Herman Hesse; Rommel Drives Deep into Egypt by Richard Brautigan; Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce; Post Office by Charles Bukowski; Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis; and, Walking Up and Down in the Worldby Smoke Blanchard.
Where is your favorite place to crack open a good book in Vancouver?
On a Crab Park bench – glancing up at tugs and freighters – continued on the Seabus as needed.
What book makes you feel like a kid again?
The Adventures of Tintin. I have a complete collection of the stories (including the previously banned “Soviets” and “Congo” escapades) about this renegade Belgian reporter and his eclectic band of co-conspirators.
The story about the creator Hergé is equally compelling as he started the series for a Catholic newspaper and carried on during Nazi occupation.
Your life story is published tomorrow. What’s the title?
Trips to Elsewhere: A Shoebox of Anecdotes and Incidents
My contribution (which came as a request for a “My Megaphone” 350 word piece and turned into a 950 feature piece) created the theme for the cover with this stellar artwork.
Here’s the article and i’ll add a few links and notes at the bottom for reference. Now, does someone want to make a Google Map of the spots?
Vancouver is always on some “best of” something list extolling luxurious skiing or exotic bistros, but it’s rarely mentioned amongst North American art culture capitals. San Francisco gets credits for its psychedelic pioneers and New York is known for art school punkers, with beat poets traipsing in-between the coasts. Even Montreal is known for jazz, comedy and underage drinking, and Ontario holds claim to the Group of Seven artists.
When it comes to art culture, I’m not talking about big dollar art conversation like “Oh, where shall we move the gallery?” Rather, I’m referring to the creative forces that bubble up from the underground, as evidenced in my wily ’80s adolescence at the York, Commodore and dingy warehouses in what’s now the yuppie enclave of Yaletown. (Of course, the cops were always there to shut the fun down —some things don’t change.)
You have to scratch a little bit to find this Vancouver where explorers found a cheap place to figure themselves out — back before shiny towers and grinning faces of realtors permeated the landscape, back before the teal-hued Expo daze, and even before the immortalized Gastown riots (we didn’t exactly miss out because the ghosts are still out there to inspire your renegade activities).
So put on your boots and get on the bus for a tour of Vancouver’s renegade past:
Magazine photo by @kateleg — Inside magazine photo by @kk
I traveled several splendid seasons on Grateful Dead tours and never once heard about Jerry and the lads stirring up interest for a show at the Pender Auditorium with free shows at Second and Kits beaches on August 5, 1966 — naturally, each was shut down by the excessively diligent law enforcement. Of course, any decent ‘head will tell you about the legendary free show at Golden Gate Park, which happened a year later with throngs of civic and fan support.
Before breaking in LA, Tommy Chong toiled as a guitar player and promoter at colourfully-named Chinatown clubs: New Delhi Cafe, T-Cabaret, Elegant Parlour and Shanghai Junk — plus brought in future Motown artists to blow the roof off The Blues Palace at the (now sedate) corner of Broadway and Alma. After continual shutdowns (despite re-employing strippers as comediennes), he split town with the only Hispanic kid in town who he’d hired away from carpet laying biz to become the vanguards of Californian stoner culture in the ’70s.
Meanwhile, around the corner, a left-handed whiz-kid named Jimi from Seattle killed the hours while visiting his Granny by wailing on his guitar in a chicken restaurant before heading to England so someone would listen and give a shit about what he was up.
Blocks away in West End cabarets, my great Uncle Lorne entertained town dignitaries and miscreants alike as a lounge singer in a seedy but sophisticated circuit —as a kid oblivious to the violent underworld, I always wondered why he couldn’t bend the knuckles on one hand and covered them with rings.
Further out of town, the founding fathers of creative housing recently arrived from Finland in the 1890s stuck poles in the swampy land which no one wanted near the wild cannery town of Steveston and said, “This is where we live.” Generations lived on in net sheds, boats and ramshackle huts, creating their distinct community until authorities and land-grabbers tried to reclaim Finn Slough. The hardy descendants carry on—partially prisoners of charm and confusion over land claims—far from ideal, but somehow faring better than evicted residents north shore’s intertidal Mud Flats and even the recently thwarted land lease holders of Hollyburn.
Yup, my Vancouver isn’t the city of glass and resto-lounges; it’s stumbling upon the site of the Victoria Argyle Club—run by my ol’ dead Gramps who made sandwiches for pool sharks and olden slackers who never needed a job.
My Vancouver is the motorcycle shop on site of Bumper’s—a short lived all-ages club in Whalley where metal heads sneaking mickeys hung on one side and the grab-bag of punk/goth/new wave kids smoking cloves stayed on the other. No one much ventured to the floor except the seminal night when DOA, The Spores and my friends Abortions on Toast opened the whole world to the 13-year-old version of me.
Up King George a bit by the infamous bus loop was Stardust roller rink (apparently re-opened?) where 6th graders somehow were allowed to stay out all night copping feels and rollerskating circles to REO Speedwagon.
Just across the river where the ALRT used to end, I’d use paper route money to pickup a requisite punk camo jacket from the dingy surplus stores on the waterfront behind the Army and Navy store, the same one where my Mom bought clunky Chinese boots each year for the first day of school.
Now my boots haul me along the trail named for G7 artist (and WW1 battlefield painter) Fredrick Varley, who frolicked in the ‘20s and ’30s between Lynn Valley and Jericho Beach. The fiery Scot finally split town — 18 months behind on rent — after sparking the Vancouver art scene with the first schools and exhibitions in this industrial outpost.
I showed up at school most every day, hung out at libraries and even won the school science fair, before traveling to 20-plus countries learning the secrets of pilgrims and Templars. But never once did I hear about these Vancouver legends and connections. Discounted perhaps? Ignored? Who cares. I know it now.
My Vancouver isn’t the one where it’s often harder to get a beer than Utah, where clubs of hooligans thrive in reckless packs while a low-end live music house can’t get a license. Mine is the same one eagerly celebrated by foreign draft dodgers zipping across the border with Kerouac in their back pocket and even the chain smoking ESL students who pick here for some sense of intrigue and history beyond the glossy brochures.
And now this is your Vancouver too, whether you know it or want it. Get your boots on and find it.
Story by Dave Thorvald Olson
Photo by Kris Krug
Dave Thorvald Olson is a Vancouver-based writer, producer and podcaster. Online, he’s better known as Uncle Weed and can be found at UncleWeed.net.
A rethink on West Lake cabins warranted – Like the Schleswig-Holstein Question. Some are easy. Like the Hollyburn Mountain cabins question. BY NORTH SHORE NEWS AUGUST 24, 2007
On Strawberry Hill – The hippie exodus to Canada from the United States was not a mass migration, but it was close. Is it time to rethink this period, then and now? BY CHRIS TURNER — SEPTEMBER 2007 ISSUE OF THE WALRUS
More about Fire lookout tower in Cascadia… the low down the mechanics of running these operations and the rugged folks who made it happen. Plus name checks for the town of Sedro-Wooley which i’ve spent time in years ago.
Story posted on Aug. 12, 2002, last updated June 15, 2010
Regarding Jack, Gary and Phillip:
The most famous firewatcher was Jack Kerouac, who spent part of the summer of 1956 in the tower at Desolation Peak near Mount Hozomeen and the U.S.-Canada border. Like some other watchers of the day, he anticipated his time there as a period of reflection and meditation and cleansing in the solitude. His friend, poet Gary Snyder, signed on as a fire lookout earlier — at Crater in 1952 and Sourdough in 1953, but was blacklisted by the Feds and did not return for 1954, the “high summer of the great fear,” as historian David Caute described it. Snyder’s Reed College friend and fellow poet Philip Whalen manned Sauk Mountain in 1953, then Sourdough in 1954 and 1955. Snyder was the one who alerted Kerouac to the joys and solitude of the mountains. All those sites north of the Skagit are part of the Mount Baker National Forest that was originally patrolled by the legendary ranger Tommy Thompson.
Whatever Kerouac thought he was seeking, he found what many others did: monotony and boredom after the initial excitement. We learn from the Ann Charters biography, Kerouac, a Biography, that Jack came up from California in mid-June 1956, attended a fire-watching school for a week and then spent eight weeks on the mountain after being packed in on muleback. On the climb upwards he saw the charred snags that stood witness to the flash fire of 1919 that led to name of Desolation, part of the Starvation Ridge area. Nary a fire threatened his assigned area that summer so he spent much of his time on the routine chores of chopping wood, collecting bucketsful of snow for washing and cooking, communicating on the two-way radio, pacing about on the narrow trails, chewing Beech Nut gum and smoking his roll-yer-owns.
He slept on a wooden bunk with a rope mattress in the sleeping bag Snyder helped him pick out in Oakland. To amuse himself he baked rye muffins, played a baseball game with a pack of cards that he’d invented when he was a boy in Lowell, and picked a few sprigs of alpine fire and a wild flower every day to put in a coffee cup on his desk. Jack wrote at the desk facing away from looming Mount Hozomeen on his north, the dark, naked rock of Hozomeen coming to symbolize for him ‘the Void,’ with its clouds and thunderstorms, the two sharp peaks of Hozomeen looming in his window as he lay in bed, ‘the Northern Lights behind it reflecting all the ice of the North Pole from the other side of the world.’ During the long afternoons he sat in his canvas chair facing ‘Void Hozomeen,’ listening to the silence of his cabin and making up haikus. His experience that summer is the kernel of his later book, Desolation Angels, the companions he imagined dancing out of the fog along the ridge. The North Cascades Institute in Sedro-Woolley offers a course based on the experience of Jack Kerouac and his writing.
mixed-media art library, global diary, project dossier and whole life documentation
