S14 Poler Communique

C A M P

V I B E S

COMMUNIQUÉ S U M M E R

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COMMUNIQUÉ 2014

VOL. 1

4 HOME IS WHERE YOU PARK IT

ISSUE 1

34 ALEX OLSON

12 CAMP CHEF

42 HOT SPRINGS

20 LORI D.

48 MAP OF EMOTIONAL STATES

26 NAHANNI REFORESTATION

50 WEST AMERICA

32 DR. DAN

58 ONE FOR THE ROAD www.polerstuff.com

Communiqué

Home Is Where You Park It

HOME IS WHERE YOU PARK IT FOSTER HUNTINGTON Interview by Benji Wagner / Photos by Foster Huntington

Foster Huntington left a job in New York in the summer of 2011 and moved into a camper. Since then, he has driven 100,000 miles around the west, surfing, camping and photographing. His new book Home Is Where You Park It is available now.

Tell us about your new book, Home Is Where You Park It.

What do you think the worst thing about it is?

A few years ago, I started taking photos of campers. I had just moved into mine and was obsessed with idea of people living and traveling out of their cars. This book is a collection of these photos and some stories from people I’ve meet on the road.

That you go out to dinner with a group of friends and everyone spends half the time with their head down staring into their phones. I’m as bad as anyone. I need to work on it.

What’s the strangest misconception someone has had about you?

Do you think young people are gravitating to the outdoors more than they used to?

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That I’m a trust-funder.

It’s so haught right now.

Do you have any other books in the works? What’s next for you?

Do you think our culture is becoming more visual?

I think the internet and smart phones makes everyone a photographer. For a lot of people, photos and video are more easy to consume than an article. People’s attention spans are shorter. Photos take fractions of a second to figure out.

This summer I’m building two tree houses and a skatepark in the Columbia River Gorge. I’m really excited about it. It’s weird to be setting up roots after being homeless for the last three years, but I love the Northwest and can’t really live in a city. I grew up five minutes from the place where we are building the tree houses.

What do you think the best thing about the advent of social media is?

What would your last meal be?

The democracy of information and breaking down of institutions. The cream should rise to the top. Hopefully the net stays neutral. It’s great how one person could say something and it can be heard all over the world.

Maybe some salmon or a bone-in steak of sorts.

You can follow Foster on Instagram @fosterhunting and online at www.arestlesstransplant.com.

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Camp Chef

Why do you think Portland has become a place associated with food and the culture around it?

What’s a food experience that changed your life, a moment you reflect on again and again?

Portland is a very European city; it’s surrounded by small farms, wine country, lots of rivers and it’s close to the coast. It has an independent attitude. I’m not sure we need a grilled cheese food cart on every corner, but in Portland we’re certainly covering all the food groups. We are very lucky -- something is really happening here.

I had a rabbit tamale at Frontera Grill in Chicago several years ago that shaped my thoughts on food. It was so simple and tasted like all the ingredients in it.

It had Amish chicken from Indiana, a simple red sauce, and it was all about sharing at the table. I had cooked all this “fancy” food for so long that once I fell in love with the idea of conversation and sitting around a table and sharing a meal, it changed everything. Somehow real Mexican food led me to Italian food. Since then, it has been all about ingredients, farmers and seasonality.

What is your primary source of inspiration from outside the world of food?

Don’t you think eating outside is inherently better than eating indoors?

Music. Pink wine. I read all kinds of books on farming and gardening. What I’ve learned about agriculture has had a deep influence on what I eat and what I put on a plate for a guest at Ava Gene’s. Wendell Berry said it best: “A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one’s accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.”

Whether you are eating burritos on a stoop, BBQing in the backyard or having a quick meal in the mountains there is something magical about it to me. Eating outside is the best, it’s exactly as you said – there’s something magical about it. It’s real, and chances are you’re slowing down and having a really good time, living a memory. Not to mention the fact that if you’re eating outside you’re most likely in a season of the year that’s abundant with fresh local ingredients, so it’s simple and honest.

Why do you think people eat so poorly overall when they go camping?

Isn’t it just as easy to pack and make food good or bad? I think some people tend to get ahead of themselves when they go camping. They think it’s time to cook like Lewis and Clark. But most of those people don’t -- and can’t -- cook at home, so it’s not a good outcome. For the people who really are Lewis and Clark – amazing.

Keep doing it. Cedar-planked possum, righteous.

A lot of people don’t have experience cooking with cast iron. Could you tell us why its great?

Cast-iron skillets conduct heat efficiently, go from stovetop to oven and last for decades. When loved, seasoned and stored properly it is virtually non-stick and will last longer than you!

For people who are less ambitious or have fewer skills, a little planning goes a long way. When I go camping, I want to eat well but I don’t want to work hard.

So, for example, I’ll cook some farro the night before or hard-boil a few eggs, maybe prepare a salsa. Most importantly, I’ll shop right. There are so many great ready-to-go ingredients these days, so shopping right helps a ton. The idea of camping is to be out in nature, relaxing and getting away from it all, so simpler is better. And to succeed at simple, you need to plan, plan, plan.

You can follow Joshua on Instagram @jj__mc and online at www.avagenes.com.

CAMP CHEF JOSHUA MCFADDEN Interview & Photos by Benji Wagner

There is a Simpsons episode I love with a song called “You Don’t Win Friends With Salad,” but it turns out some people do win friends with salad. Joshua is an artist that chose food as his medium. I don’t think he would say that, but I will. He has cooked in some of the top kitchens in San Francisco like Lark Creek Inn and Roxanne’s, in Chicago at North Pond and in New York at Franny’s, Momofuku, Blue Hill and Lupa.

In 2011, Joshua moved back to Portland and set up shop at Ava Genes and Roman Candle Baking Company.

We took a day off to go car camping up on Mt. Hood and Joshua made us some food using our new cast iron skillet that we are excited to share with you here.

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FARRO WITH TOMATOES, RAW CORN, MINT, BASIL AND SCALLIONS Serves 4 3 cups of farro Salt and black pepper, preferably from the mill A clove of garlic Extra-virgin olive oil, otherwise known as EVOO 1 pint of torn croutons 1 bunch of basil 1 handful of mint leaves 1 handful of basil leaves (you can mix varieties) 1 bunch of scallions, sliced 4 ears of corn 1 pint small fruit tomatoes (the real name for cherry tomatoes) a good red wine vinegar dried chile flakes

Cook the farro the night before: cover the farro with water in a large pot. Add a little bit of salt to taste, like 2 to 3 tablespoons. You should taste the salt but it should not be too aggressive. Smash a garlic clove and throw it the water, too. Bring the water to a boil and turn it down to a simmer. Keep tasting the farro until you reach the desired level of doneness (chewy but not mushy). Strain the farro through a colander, and then spread it out on a sheet pan to cool. You could add a nice glug of extra-virgin olive oil at this time and toss it around -- great for flavor, as it will be absorbed while the farro is hot.

You should also prepare the torn croutons the night before: Find a nice piece of country bread and tear it up, crust and all, into bitesize pieces. Mix the torn bread with olive oil, salt and black pepper.

Bake at 400 degrees, checking every 4 to 5 minutes and moving the outside croutons to the center of the sheet pan so they cook evenly.

Don’t let them get rock hard; leave a little bit of chew in the center.

Remember, I said plan, plan, plan, so you can even go as far as to pick the herbs and slice the scallions the night before. If you do, just put a little damp napkin in the bag you store it in to keep them happy.

When it’s time for dinner at the campsite, slice the corn kernels off the cob with a knife and slice the big tomatoes. All you need is one big bowl -- in goes everything. Mix and taste, adjust seasoning, including some chile flakes for heat, and simply make it taste good.

Don’t be shy with the EVOO!

CAST IRON GRILLED STEAK WITH CHARRED SCALLIONS & ROMESCO grass-fed steak -- you could use flank, sirloin, rib eye, t-bone, even a tenderloin 1 head of garlic a couple branches of rosemary and thyme, some sage if you have some around 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil 1 knob of butter, if you have some (find some -- it makes it nice) salt black pepper, preferably from a mill 1 bunch of scallions

ROMESCO SAUCE There are so many different and amazing recipes for romesco. I encourage you to find one you like and make it often. You’ll find yourself eating, dipping, coating and mixing all kinds of things in it. Romesco sauce can hold for up to a week in the refrigerator, if not longer. Some good grocery stores carry romesco – the best will be made by the store and kept in the refrigerated aisle and dated.

I love cooking steak in a cast iron pan, even if you start it off on one side over the grill and then finish it in the pan. I love to baste it during cooking, which gets some garlic and herb flavor into the steak. If you use the butter along with the oil, the brown-butter flavor and smell may be one of the best things you’ve ever experienced.

leave them in the paper skins) and toss them in the pan in the oil, infusing the oil with garlic. Do not let the garlic burn! Now toss in the herbs. After around 4 to 5 minutes, turn the steak over and then toss in the butter. The butter will brown, which is what you want, but don’t let it burn and get black.

You can select a cut of steak by what looks good while you’re at the market. The amount is up to you, a little goes a long way since you have a big ol’ grain salad to enjoy with it. The most important thing is to let the beef come to an ambient temperature before you cook it. Take it out of the cooler a good hour before it hits a pan or a grill. All the steak needs is salt and black pepper. Make sure you use a paper towel to wipe off any moisture before you apply the salt and before it hits a pan. If you leave the moisture on the steak, it will actually steam and evaporate before the searing happens. This is more info than you need, but it’s cool to know and it really does affect the sear. And sear equals caramelization, and that, my friends, is flavor -- sugar browning.

Now tilt the pan so all the liquid comes down towards the handle.

Use a spoon to baste the steak with all that flavorful liquid. The timing depends on the size of the steak as well as the cut. Flank, for example, could be done in 5 to 7 minutes, but something thicker will take more time. Get a rough idea of timing by asking the butcher at the market. Once you take the steak out of the pan, let it rest for the same length of time as it took to cook (this is a life-changing tip, by the way). This allows all the juices to remain in the steak. This is, again, a good thing.

Once the cast iron pan is nice and hot, in goes the olive oil. Lay the steak in the pan and don’t move it. Smash the garlic cloves (you can

While the steak is resting, throw those scallions in the hot pan and char them up. They will only take 1 to 2 minutes.

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Camp Chef

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Lori D.

LORI D. Interview & Photo by Benji Wagner

Lori Damiano makes paintings, animations, zines, films, quilts, gardens, miniature sweaters and pies. We met a long time ago and I once deeply insulted her because I told her my mom’s pie was so good she shouldn’t bother making me a pie. For some reason she forgave me. Some artists have a hard time finding their ‘voice.’ Lori is not one of them. As far as I can tell, her work is an organic extension of her soul. If you don’t like it, you can run and hide. If you love it like I do, you can stand in awe.

Lori earned a BA in film/video from UCSD and an MFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts. She is the Animation Dept. Chair for the California State Summer School for the Arts and teaches in the Animated Arts program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is also a member of the Resource Council at Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Tell us about the large scale mural you just painted for the new Poler Flagship store....

Festival parade route. That is fine by me because I love marching bands. Also I have listened to the sweet sweet music of construction going on in the store all around me; saws, drills, hammering, industrial vacuum, sanding, all the hits. My favorite thing I have gotten to listen to though while painting this mural is the snippets of conversation and gossip when people are walking by outside and their words float through under the doors. My fascination with my fellow humans endows these fragments with great value and they do not go unappreciated.

Haha! By “Large Scale” are you makin’ fun of me for saying it was a really BIG painting? I’ve only painted this big once before but it was just to create a background for my paintings to hang on in an art show in Australia. I wanted to make a painting that is like a big window you can look through as if it were a bit of a menu for adventures in the Pacific Northwest landscape. I hoped people would look at it and feel excited to get out there and think, “How are we gonna use this day? What should we do out there? Let’s go!” It is loosely based on lots of trips I’ve gone on as well as local legends. It features many cameos in miniature.

Do you know any good jokes?

I have heard so many good jokes but I can never remember them, and even if I think I do, I always tell them sort of out of order and mess them up. Your daughters tell my favorite jokes.

I always think of you as someone who had no choice as to what their voice was as an artist, your voice and your work seem to flow so naturally from you? Is that true or was it more of a struggle finding yourself?

What would your last meal be?

I have always loved to draw and I think my sense of humor has really defined what kinds of stories and images I am interested in representing. I also really enjoy people watching and a lot of my images feature some of my favorite observations of humans. As far as a drawing style, I don’t have much in the way of technical skills as a drawer per se. I studied filmmaking and animation but never painting or drawing, so I just try my best to get the idea to come through in the image.

Dove Vivi Corn Pizza.

I feel you have an ability to make the somewhat mundane appear magical through you work. How do you find that in everyday life? How do you stay inspired by the simple things?

The times that I am the most happy are when I find myself being undistracted by my own ever-swirling mental clutter and am instead focused outward on the people or creatures or plants whose presence I am in. If I can be present to the moment I am in, I feel that I reap the greatest rewards in terms of bearing witness to the ceaseless beauty, compassion, comedy, etc. going on all around us. I think, for me, I try to focus on subtleties and details that inform the nuances which color and texture our every day experiences. If I can re-present those tiny recognizable truths in my images, I can get closer to carving out for a moment, a space of wonder, where the seemingly mundane gets a little bit of the spotlight and is unpacked to reveal how much is really going on there.

What other artists are you currently fixated on?

Oh man...this could take all day. Here are a few: Thom Lessner, Andrew Jeffery Wright and Rose Luardo - Comedy Dreamz, Jim Houser, Nat Russell, Carson Ellis, Souther Salazar and Monica Choy, Marc Bell and Amy Lockhart, Faye Jaime, Leif Goldberg, Lilli Carre, Jo Dery, Stefan Gruber, David Wien, Jodie Mack, Jennifer Levonian, Nick Damiano, Kevin Nagler, Zach Erickson, Vanessa Davis, ahh so many more! I could go on and on....

What do you listen to while you paint?

What else should we talk about?!

I usually listen to a lot of different kinds of music: classic country, classic rock, metal, organ concerts, rap, etc. I like listening to the radio too. KBOO, NPR, XRAY, KOOP from Austin, TX, WMMT from Whitesburg, KY. While working on this mural I have also heard a lot of marching bands because two parades marched past while I was painting. The store is on the main Rose

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Beats me!?

You can follow Lori online at www.lori-d.com.

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Nahanni Reforestation

NAHANNI REFORESTATION Interview by Nahanni Wagner / Photos by Daniel James

When I was a kid, my dad ran a tree planting company. He named the business after me, calling it: Nahanni Reforestation. I spent a lot of my early youth in deep Northwestern British Columbia, hanging out in the camps with the dogs and the cooks, lost in my imagination. A few years ago, after I had my own kids, I realized I had no pictures of myself as a child and asked my dad if he had any; a question which he answered by dropping off a huge bag full of trays and trays of slides that had been stashed in his basement. It turned out he had a great eye and had documented all aspects of life as a tree planter. These were shot on Kodachrome, mostly between 1977-1980. This brief interview with my father, Daniel James, is an excerpt from a book length project I will be funding on Kickstarter.

Follow along on Instagram @nahannireforestation.

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Nahanni Reforestation

What is tree planting?

What were the main structures of the camp and how did you determine where to set up camp?

Tree planting is reforestation: the planting of baby seedlings after trees have been cut down for lumber. They leave big “clear blocks,” large selections of clearcut forest that then get replanted.

We would set up camp close to where we would be planting, close to the cut blocks, and also close to some body of water. We would have a large tent with a propane stove or a wood burning stove where the cooks prepped all the meals. There was a large common tent where the planters would eat and hang out together after the work day. We played a lot of music together, music was a big part of camp life. We would build a sauna in every camp, beside the lake or river or ocean. After work we would get naked and take a sauna and then jump into the cold water to get clean. It was great.

Where did it get its start?

Tree planting used to be allocated to the wives of the loggers. They would plant the seedings after the clogging but it was not sufficient enough and the forestry companies started contracting out the work.

How did you get started tree planting and what made you want to start contracting on your own?

How did you get into the remote areas and get all that gear in there?

Dirk Brinkman and some boys from Ontario, and Bart Simmons, were the first people to run independent contracting outfits. My first camp was working for Dirk up the Kingcome River with Jenny, who was pregnant with you and we ended up having you in that camp. I delivered you in a teepee on the shore of the Kingcome River (laughs).

Pretty crazy. Tree planting is really hard and I figured there had to be an easier way to make money at it. The season after, I was asked by Bart Simmons to run one of his Coast Range camps and got on really good with a couple of the forestry guys and they told me I should come back next season and bid, so I did.

In the interior we would load up the big trucks, the 3-ton and the crummy and truck it all in on the Forest Service (logging) roads.

Sometimes we would have to helicopter all the gear in if the roads were washed out. On the West Coast we would get in sometimes on a fishing boat or load a barge with all the trucks and gear and float in.

Sometimes we used a float plane. Bear, one of my planters, lived on Cortez Island and owned his own float plane which I got drive once.

Speaking of bears...?

How many people worked for your crew starting out? Did your crew grow over the years, where did they come from?

Yeah there were always bears, mostly little brown and black bears, but there were a couple of grizzlies. If you left an orange in your tent you might come back to find it ripped to shreds. They would wander into camp following the smell of food. The cooks would run into them in the root cellar (underground food storage) or poking their heads into the cook shack. We would make lots of noise and they would take off or the dogs would scare them off. Just had to be careful if the cubs were around.

My crews were small, about 25-30 people. I had various people work for me, some from the neighborhood where I grew up in Lynn Valley in North Vancouver, high school buddies who I played music with. A couple of Jenny’s brothers, Arnt and Trevor, were steady planters. Val met and married Arnt... In fact there were four couples that all met in my camp one year and got married. A couple of my sisters worked for me, even my mom came out and cooked one year. My twin sister, Debbie, worked with me for eight years and was one of my most steady planters. The women were actually better planters than the men. Really steady planters, everyday. Sometimes the men would plant 2,000 trees one day and then couldn’t get out of bed the next. One time a crew of mountaineers came across our camp and worked out the rest of the season with us.

What made you start taking pictures?

I just wanted to take photos about everything we saw and did, it’s such a unique experience. We would have a slide show at the end of the season. I always wanted to write a book about tree planting but never got the chance. It’s pretty cool that now these pictures can tell the story.

I’m really flattered and tickled that you want to make a book.

Where did you plant?

How long did you contract for?

We planted on the West Coast up in Mackenzie, Northern B.C., Canada.

I started Nahanni Reforestation when I was 21 and ran it for 10 years 1977-1987.

What is the tree planting season? Did you ever get to a location and were not able to plant because of weather?

How many trees did you plant over that period of time?

We planted about 12 million trees.

The season is pretty short. It runs February to early June. After that it’s too hot for the baby trees to survive. It wasn’t unusual for it to snow a few times in early season. It would melt after a couple days.

Mostly it was just rainy, lots of rain.

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You can follow Nahanni Reforestation on Instagram @nahannireforestation.

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“DON’T DO ANYTHING I WOULDN’T DO.” DR. DAN DOUGLAS

Communiqué

Alex Olson

ALEX OLSON Interview by Benji Wagner / Photos by Johnathan Mehring

We are excited to launch our latest collaboration with Nike SB–the Poler X Nike SB Verona–worn here

by Alex Olson. Alex is a professional skateboarder that divides his time between NYC and Los Angeles.

It seems like skateboarding is going through a big change where some are pushing it towards being a sport and others are pushing it towards being art. What do you think about that?

Ha, well thank you for giving me that credit, but I don’t think we’re that progressive….

Well, I just mean you’re willing to say that form and style are what people really judge in skateboarding somehow, and people don’t necessarily say it, but there’s no doubt that everyone watches people and loves the way that they, you know...style is a huge deal for everybody.

I think you’re right. I think that….yeah, it’s true. I mean, I think there are just two sides of it. It’s kind of like history repeating itself from the early 90s where there were these big companies and [skateboarding] was really big and it was marketed to a certain audience. Then there was the World Industries, the 101, and all that, the Blind video and Blind the company, and I think all of those were more appealing. And then the big companies just seemed stagnant and out of date, and that’s what it seems like now, I think. It’s history repeating itself in a way. Where these big companies are not on the pulse of certain things.

And it’s also a generational thing, where all those guys are so much older now that they can’t be that relevant anymore. I think that’s probably where it really comes from, just like, all those dudes just aren’t relevant anymore in many ways. Just like ideas and all that…coming up with new stuff, it’s just stagnant right now. And all of these little companies are just more appealing.

Yeah, like in any sport. You know, but yeah, I just try to make the comparisons you know, like, you can watch Ali and not know a thing about boxing and you can tell that he’s good just by how graceful he is. Or Michael Jordan. Obviously those guys are the top top-tier guys, but still, there’s something to be said about it. They had the mechanics but also they had the style to go with it to raise them to that level that people put them in. I think growing up with my dad and stuff, he came from where skateboarding was more based on your style than tricks because tricks weren’t really developed yet, so it was more style-based. He’d always talk about how that was more important than a trick, so I think I just come from that train of thought from my father. I think Dylan too, he comes from a surf background and his dad surfs and all that, and again that’s where my dad comes from, the surf background, where that all mattered. And now, I think a lot of people are more fixated on the progression of it more than making it look good.

You recently launched your own brand, Bianca Chandon. What led you to pulling the trigger and launching your own brand?

I had a lot of ideas and I wasn’t able to see a lot of them through or they would just get kind of lost and fall through the cracks, and so I wasn’t really happy where I was. I just think I needed a change. I tried to go with Brian (Anderson, 3D Skateboards) because it was the more sensible thing to do at the time and I think my heart just wasn’t in it and it didn’t seem right, so I just wanted to do what I wanted to do originally and start my own thing. And it’s a lot better now.

What photographers, designers or artists have you been fixated on lately for inspiration?

Vivian Sassen for photography. She isn’t a conventional fashion photographer where it’s just a portrait. She more uses the body in shapes and uses clothes differently and uses action and movement more so than just trying to make a girl look pretty. She’s more trying to make a photo look interesting in some way and kind of approaching it more as a fine art I would say, so she’s definitely a huge inspiration with everything. And she uses color and…she uses everything right. She’s amazing…she makes me wanna shoot fashion and stuff.

It seems to me with Bianca you’re trying to influence skateboarding with aspects of culture that aren’t obvious to other people. How do you see art forms like dance and fencing or other things you reference in relation to skateboarding?

Well, I think that take is trying to make it more like, “Hey, it’s not a sport. It’s more of an art or more of a dance.” There’s no scoreboard. You’re judged on your style and your form. It’s more like dance, and dance is considered an art form, so I kind of realized that and I’m trying to project that idea. I think I heard that idea a long time ago as a kid and it seemed correct and right and made sense more so than, like, trying to make it into a sport where you can try to make money off it.

And Mark Borthwick. He was a big photographer in the 90s who shot a lot of early purple stuff. He had kind of the same style where he shot interesting photos in a fashion context and made it not so fashion-y but kind of applied a mundane approach to it. It was a very interesting, different style, his photography. The styling was good.

But favorite artist…for a long time my favorite artist has been Robert Heinecken. Look him up. He taught at UCLA and was from LA.

It’s always been kind of funny to me that some people will knock you or Dylan or other friends of yours as being kind of too concerned with style or form. To me, it’s just sort of like, I think everybody is concerned, but you guys are willing to own it and show it more and I think other people are more afraid to show it and they act like they aren’t but they really are. What are your thoughts on that?

And designers, Junya Watanabe, he’s good.

Yeah, he’s great. He’s a legend.

Yeah, exactly. You know, all the Japanese designers are the best. I’m trying to

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Alex Olson

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Alex Olson

think of one other one. No, all the Japanese. They dress correctly, they kill it.

They literally…they’re amazing. When I’m in Japan and I walk down the street I’m like, “Oh, you guys actually care about what you wear and you wanna show it. Thank you.” Literally, I was like, so happy. I was like, “Oh wow, people care about clothes actually and care about how they look.”

We should go to Japan together. That would be great.

No problem. I’ll go there no problem.

Let’s go, seriously. I’m ready. It’s my favorite as well.

No, but you just walk down the street and you see a forty-five year old man in a cowboy outfit and you’re like, whatever man. Live it. You know what I mean?

John Wayne. Seriously.

I love it, man. My wife tells me I’m a Japanese woman inside.

I’m a Japanese transsexual inside, for sure.

How important is music to you in terms of how it relates to skateboarding? I know you love music. And as a follow-up, do you think skateboarding would have progressed without video parts being set to music in the same way?

If you look at skating and music, music pushed skating. In the 70s and early 80s, everyone started getting into punk rock and that drove skating into a culture. A bunch of people saw that and it also changed the music where skating and punk rock became…not one thing, but they complemented each other. Same with early hip-hop and skating. Whenever you hear a song and you skate, you automatically think of a certain person or a certain time.

And I think music got lost, or people didn’t care about music as much, or maybe just culture got lost because music wasn’t around. Like nobody cared about music anymore because you can just download it and all that and I think that’s when the style thing kind of died and kind of just became really plain in the early 2000s. That’s when Napster came around and that’s when, you know, everything kind of went through a weird standstill. The internet.

But it seems like even now when you’re picking a song for a video part it’s like a huge part of the whole production.

Oh yeah. That’s also a big issue. I don’t think people care about that anymore, or as much as they did back in the early…I don’t know. Music is important with skating because it kind of is just another way of finding out what that person’s into in a way, you know? But I know there are a lot of skaters that have parts who are like, “I don’t care. Pick a song for me.”

That’s wild. I would never imagine that you could even be like that at all. To me it’s like, picking your song would be the most epic decision.

Yeah, but Benji, you’re a lot different than most and you come from a different background.

Yeah, I know, but it’s just funny to me. Like, if I was in your shoes it would just be like this thing I would just sweat over for years. It’s so important.

Yeah, but you’re like a huge cinema buff where you know how important music is to set up a scene. It’s the same thing.

You can follow Alex on Instagram @olsonstuff and follow his new brand Bianca Chandon @biancachandon and www.biancachandon.com.

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Poler X Nike SB

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Hot Springs

HOT SPRINGS Photos & Words by Yonder Journal

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY CAN MANIFEST ITSELF IN VARIOUS FORMS. From the mercurial geyser, the ominous steam vent, or the innocuous ‘hot spring’, the earth’s core reaches and reverberates a violent millennial history long since consumed and crust over by a habitable planet we suffer, sin, and survive on. An elusive history is all we are left with. A history that hides in remote areas attainable only to those who are engaged enough to stop, listen and feel for a past that at times seems to want to do anything but be discovered. For further explorations on hot springs and other topics visit Yonderjournal.com.

You can follow Yonder Journal on Instagram @yonderjournal and online at www.yonderjournal.com.

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Illustration by Lucy Engelman You can follow Lucy online at www.lucyengelman.com.

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West America

WEST AMERICA Interview by Benji Wagner / Photos by Jordan Hufnagel & James Crowe

Everyone has that friend that talks about doing something big, something exceptional, but few ever really take the plunge. Our friends Jordan and James talked a lot about building custom motorcycles and riding them from Portland to Patagonia, and they actually did it. The result was a life-changing journey that we can live through these amazing images. We caught up with Jordan just after his return, while James was still en route home.

Give us a brief synopsis of the trip you just returned from!

My pal James Crowe and I just rode our motorcycles from Whistler, BC, Canada to Ushuaia, Argentina at the southern tip of South America. We rode as much off-pavement as we could, got off our bikes to do some awesome treks, met wonderful people and camped in the most amazing places and some of the most luxurious ditches. Basically we just spent many months punishing our bodies as hard as we could so that we could suck every last ounce of awesome out of our time on the road.

What did you learn from the trip that you never thought of before leaving?

I learned how to proficiently cross borders. That one snuck up on me a little, I never even thought about the hassles of border crossings before this trip. Luckily James had read every trip report ever on ADV Rider and was mentally prepared. Now we are both pretty awesome at it.Â

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What do you miss about living on the road the most?

Did you and James ever duke it out on the road, was there any bad blood between you? That’s a lot of miles together.

Hangin’ out with James everyday, eating his butter soaked cooking, being so tired that you just pass out as soon as your tent is up, not having a phone or a use for one, getting to pull the “I haven’t been around the internet for a while” card and it being the truth.

It’s funny, James and I have spent every day for the last six years working in our shared metal fabrication shop together and gone on many shorter motorcycle trips with just the two of us. Our bond has always grown stronger with every trial. Then, the last year before we took off on this trip, James moved back to Whistler B.C. and we weren’t a part of each other’s everyday anymore. On top of that we both fell in love with some radical women and were living a very different program leading up to the trip than we had the rest of our time together. So the first month or two of the trip we were having a little trouble settling into our thing together again and it made for some tense moments here and there. The beginning of Baja was rough and we hit a pretty serious road block in La Paz with our ferry ride to the mainland of Mexico that could have easily been a trip ender. Thankfully we pushed through it all and soon enough ended up back in our happy place together. We kinda went the opposite direction you hear most of these stories go, the more miles we covered the easier it was between us. I love James with all my heart, and it’s awesome to have put our friendship through such an ultimate test and know that we will always be there for each other through thick and thin, good and bad.

In your mind, what are the similarities between bicycles and motorcycles other than the obvious?

They are both tools to get rad on two wheels.

What did you forget to bring that you regretted most?

I missed having music around all the time. We spent most of our time in remote areas. I have never owned an iPod or anything like that, so I didn’t think to bring one with me. Whenever we got to be around music I found my self soaking it up as much as I could.

What did you miss the most from home other than people?

What area you visited would you like to return to?

Food. I am super spoiled with all the clean organic delicious options up here in the Northwest and couldn’t wait to get that kind of food back in my mouth.

I can’t wait to return to Colombia. Some of my best memories of the trip are there and we left so much to explore in the future. El Cocuy was pure magic.

You can follow Jordan & James on Instagram @wearewestamerica and online at www.wearewestamerica.com.

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COMMUNIQUÉ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF / CREATIVE DIRECTOR BENJI WAGNER ART DIRECTOR NOAH LEE

ONE FOR THE TRAIL.

PHOTOGRAPHERS JAMES CROWE, JORDAN HUFNAGEL, FOSTER HUNTINGTON, DANIEL JAMES, YONDER JOURNAL, JOHNATHAN MEHRING, BENJI WAGNER ARTISTS LORI DAMIANO, LUCY ENGELMAN CHEF JOSHUA MCFADDEN

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