It started in the dead gray light of a new year, me and Robert, two restless lunatics with cameras and too much caffeine in our systems. We needed a way out. Not just out of town, but out of it all. Out of the noise, the screens, the sterile machine of modern life that grinds your soul down to a fine beige dust.

The plan was simple: once a month, pick a place we’d never been wild, remote, untouched if we could find it and hurl ourselves into it with nothing but cameras, boots, and a healthy distrust of society. Sometimes just for the day, sometimes a whole weekend. No repeats. No excuses.

Six trips in and it’s already changed us. Toketee Falls, Quartzville Creek, Big Springs Sno-Park, Whistler’s Bend, Coffin Mountain, Silver Falls. Each one left its own scars and revelations. Each one peeled back a layer of static from our brains and reminded us what it feels like to be human again.

Out there, everything’s raw. Time dissolves. The clock doesn’t matter when you’re ankle-deep in freezing mud waiting for the light to hit just right. Nature doesn’t care about your deadlines or your inbox. It swallows you whole and if you’re lucky, it spits you back out a little cleaner, a little more awake.

Photography wasn’t the goal, it was the excuse. The camera became a compass, a reason to keep moving forward through moss and fog and snowstorms. It sharpened our senses, turned the world vivid again. Every click of the shutter felt like defiance, like screaming into the void:

“I’m still here, goddammit. I’m still alive.”

The modern world hates that kind of clarity. It wants you distracted, sedated, soft. But out there, I can hear the Norse gods stirring, Odin in the treetops, Thor in the thunder rolling over distant hills. The old voices are louder in the wild. They remind me that life is short and brutal and worth fighting for.

Next up is Iron Mountain. The seventh trip. A jagged beast waiting in the mist. We’re not going for leisure, we’re going to test ourselves. To see what’s left in the tank. To find out if the madness still has teeth.

And we’re just getting started.