Chasing the Grid with Barefoot Hiker Ken Posner

Transcription by Jerome Kazlauskas

[00:00:00] Ken Posner: I think the mountains like it. They like it when people go out and try, but they'll also throw some challenges your way—rain or getting lost or running well on food and injuries and unfriendly animals, all that sort of stuff—that's part of the game.

[00:00:21] Brett Barry: To say that Ken Posner enjoys a good challenge might be an understatement. A former Army Ranger and decades-long Wall Street analyst, Ken now serves as senior VP at the nation's largest mortgage servicer. During his downtime, Ken likes to decompress with competitive outdoor adventures and a bit of record-breaking here and there. He's run more than 100 marathon-length races, completed the 350-mile Long Path in record time, thru-hiked the John Muir Trail, and he's now on a quest to climb 1,000 mountains barefoot. On his website, barefootken.com, he lists, as some of the motivations for this self-created challenge, the calmness, which comes from focusing on the basic act of movement, the spirit of adventure, and a sense of light-footedness. The challenge we're focusing on today, however, is chronicled in Ken's new book "Chasing the Grid: An Ultrarunner's Physical and Spiritual Journey in Pursuit of the Ultimate Mountain Challenge." If you listened to our last show, you heard about the requirements for membership in the Catskill 3500 Club. Those being climbing to the summits of 33 peaks over 3,500 feet and repeating four of those hikes in the winter, so 37 summits. The grid goes 12 times further, pushing participants to climb 35 Catskill High Peaks in every month of the calendar year, so 35 peaks, 12 climbs each—that's 420 hikes/climbs, and in Ken's case, a bit of barefoot running and a minimalist approach to sustenance and gear. For Ken, challenges like the grid-transcend athleticism. It's a spiritual practice, each step connecting him to the earth and echoing the transcendentalist ethos of luminaries like Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some of the passages in Ken's new book, in fact, tie very closely to 19th-century nature writing. The Catskills' own John Burroughs would feel at home reading Ken's descriptions of mountain flora along the trail. Ken's meditative observations and metaphorical prose serve as a counterpoint to prior challenges where raw speed was the name of the game. "Chasing the Grid" is Ken Posner's chronicle of a new kind of challenge embracing purpose, patience, and introspection. Stick around for a Streamside Chat with Ken Posner on "Mountains, Movement, and Mindfulness," right after this...

[00:03:13] Campbell Brown: Kaatscast is sponsored by The Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like The Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call (518) 763-6854 or email mountaineaglenews@gmail.com. This episode is supported by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past and learn about the ingenuity of the historic milling industry! Watch the waterwheel bring a working sawmill to life! Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond! For more information about scheduling a tour or about their 2025 events, visit hanfordmills.org.

[00:03:53] Ken Posner: Well, hello everybody, my name is Ken Posner, and just to keep things short, I'm a runner, I'm a financial analyst, and I'm trying to be a writer as well.

[00:04:02] Brett Barry: Well, more than trying, you've—you're now in your third book, right? So can you tell me—first of all, the first two books that I know of—"Stalking the Black Swan" and "Running the Long Path," and even though "Black Swan" has a natural sound to it, it's a totally different book, so can you just give me a sense of what those two books are about and how they kind of tell us what your life is about in a way?

[00:04:28] Ken Posner: Sure, and I've spent years working on Wall Street and then in corporate America, and "Stalking the Black Swan" was about my role as a research analyst, and it's, of course, inspired by Nassim Taleb's concept of "The Black Swan," which is that huge surprise, which turns people's worlds upside down like the GFC, the great financial crash. "Running the Long Path" was about setting a record for the Long Path back in 2013 when I was spending a lot of time doing ultrarunning, and I became aware of this mysterious path with the aqua blazes, and that was a huge adventure for me and a huge challenge, and it was a great introduction to the beauty of the Hudson Valley and particularly the Catskills, as the Long Path goes straight through the Catskills on its way to the Capital District.

[00:05:22] Brett Barry: So we've done an episode on the Long Path with Casey Kelbaugh, who wrote an article about it for The New York Times. His goal was not to do it quickly. His goal was to do it and to get from his place in the city to his place in the Catskills, but what was your goal with the Long Path and that achievement?

[00:05:42] Ken Posner: Well, my goal was to break the record, and so this was—I had just turned 50 years old, and the question for me was, "Could I step up to something bigger and tougher than I had ever done before, and could I move myself through nature unaided using just a little bit of equipment and cover the ground?" And the way that I imagine our ancestors used to do back in the day when, you know, there weren't roads or even much in the way of paths, but they had to be out in the environment to hunt and scout and trade, and so I was in part trying to reenact a little bit of that connection, but also I wanted to see what I could do and if I could push the throttle forward and engage the afterburners and really get out there at speed.

[00:06:40] Brett Barry: So what was the record, and breaking that record, what are some numbers attached to that?

[00:06:45] Ken Posner: Well, the record had been 12 days, and I was trying to get out there in 7 days, and I fell short of that. I finished it in 9 days, and since then, by the way, some very talented runners have gone out there. The Long Path has attracted a lot of attention. A fellow named Jeff Adams has the current record, which is around 7 days. Kim Levinsky just went out last year and set the record for women, and so she had a huge adventure, getting caught in torrential rainstorms, and I had rainstorms, too. When you go out and do something like this, I think the mountains like it. They like it when people go out and try, but they'll also throw some challenges your way—rain or getting lost and running low on food and injuries and unfriendly animals, all that sort of stuff—that's part of the game.

[00:07:39] Brett Barry: And so for you, 9 days took you from what was point A and what was point B?

[00:07:43] Ken Posner: Point A was right across the George Washington Bridge in New York City, and the trail [the northern terminus of the trail] is in Thacher Park, the Helderberg Escarpment overlooking Albany.

[00:07:57] Brett Barry: So your career and hobby include a lot of challenges, and, you know, pushing yourself—where does that come from, and give me a little sense of some of the other challenges that you've engaged in.

[00:08:10] Ken Posner: Well, sure, and, you know, I had—and continue to have—a corporate job, which is similar to many people, and corporate jobs are demanding, and they can be stressful because of the competition and the volatility in the markets and the high expectations that investors and the leaders in the companies have for everybody involved, so over time, I began to balance that out with running, and in fact, I saw colleagues, you know, getting sick, and that's a challenge in today's world for everybody. Health is not to be taken for granted. I was promoted on a couple of occasions because other people had health issues and dropped out, and that was a bit of a troubling pattern. I thought, you know, in my late thirties/early forties, I needed to start investing in myself if I was going to sustain myself for the long term, so I got back into running, and I got into marathons, and I gradually got into ultramarathons, and it was a great formula for many years. It was like sort of a barbell approach to life. On the one hand, you know, the super intense work environment—super high-tech, but all sorts of digital analytical, you know, sharp pencil kind of work—and on the other hand, getting out into nature, and it wasn't just about the speed, but it was about the intensity and the effort, and that's what I didn't always get from the desk job.

[00:09:33] Brett Barry: In fact, you said in your book, and I'll ask you to read this if you wouldn't mind.

[00:09:40] Ken Posner: The long sedentary hours inside my windowless office were becoming difficult to endure. Staring at the screen, I felt my body going slack and my mood turning stale. There was this nagging thought, as irritating as a splinter, that something was wrong with the world. Here I was working endlessly for money, but money to spend on what? On fancy food and drink, expensive clothes, a renovated and redecorated apartment—in other words, on things that didn't matter. Whereas there was such vast wealth, namely the joy and beauty experienced outdoors, available for free.

[00:10:21] Brett Barry: That section of the book is called "The Life of Quiet Desperation," which comes from Henry David Thoreau.

[00:10:28] Ken Posner: And that's right, and I went through a part in my life where work hit sort of a plateau or an air pocket, for various reasons, which gave me more time to run, but I began to struggle with some chronic injuries, and suddenly, I realized I was at risk of becoming one of these quietly desperate people, and that was not appealing to me.

[00:10:52] Brett Barry: And this led to...

[00:10:55] Ken Posner: So this led to the grid.

[00:10:56] Brett Barry: Grid.

[00:10:57] Ken Posner: So the grid was a huge pivot for me. It was a pivot from what I had been doing with ultrarunning to a different kind of project.

[00:11:05] Brett Barry: You dedicate this book to your Mom and Dad. I don't know who you dedicated the first two books to, but I'm wondering if there's any significance other than the obvious, which is that they're your Mom and Dad. Any connection to this particular book?

[00:11:19] Ken Posner: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm a big believer, as you can tell, in getting outdoors and experiencing nature and making that part of life, and so I love to see it when kids get that opportunity, and at this point in my life, I've done a lot outdoors, and I'm grateful and thankful, but let's talk about formative experiences and my mom and dad, so I do recall when I was about 12 years old. We were on vacation in New Hampshire, and by the way, I grew up in Chicago, so it was an urban environment [not a lot of nature besides a few trees growing in front of the house], and in New Hampshire, we went on a hike up Mount Jefferson, and I'm sure we would've been the classic unprepared hikers wearing blue jeans and no maps and compass. We had a little bit of a picnic lunch, and my father got lost and thought, you know, strolled ahead, and my mom worried about the fog and the two kids. We sort of bounced back and forth between them, so no big deal, just a family vacation but that was 50 years ago, and I still remember that, and by the time I got to college, you know, I wanted to do Outward Bound, and where did that idea come from? So I think those—the formative experiences for kids—can be really important. Just a little exposure to the outdoors—that might be the seed, so for sure. Thank you, Mom! Thank you, Dad! Among all the other great things you've done for me, that trip up Mount Jefferson was life-changing.

[00:12:51] Brett Barry: So, Ken, you've become known, among other things, for barefoot hiking. Tell me about that. Why, when did you discover that this was something you might want to try, and do you always hike barefoot?

[00:13:05] Ken Posner: So today, most of what I do is barefoot, but, you know, I started for reasons that were 1000% pragmatic because in the famous book "Born to Run," Chris McDougall argued that, you know, barefoot training could help you avoid overuse injuries by getting you back into a more natural gait in a more natural form, and the theme here is that technology has great benefits, but it also has costs, and shoes can mess up, for some people, your form and predispose you to injuries, so I was exploring it, and, you know, barefoot running is hard, but I got this idea: why don't I try a barefoot hike? And I went up Peekamoose, and the huge surprise to me was how much fun it was, and it's, you know, not necessarily fun in the sense that, you know, rocks are not comfortable to walk on for sure, but you get this amazing contrast between the annoying gravel, and then you get up to the top, and it's the smooth dark mud in the boreal zone or a smooth sandstone slab or moss, and it's that contrast that makes it just wild, so it's, you know, definitely type 2 fun, but it was so engaging that I rapidly lost interest in shoes.

[00:14:20] Brett Barry: Explain type 2 fun.

[00:14:22] Ken Posner: Well, type 2 fun is the fun that's maybe not fun in the moment. It's got an element of challenge and pain, like running an ultramarathon, so barefoot is definitely like that. It's got the intensity and the challenge, but it's just, you know, an empowering and super engaging experience.

[00:14:38] Brett Barry: Have your feet developed resistance to pain or discomfort in a way that they hadn't when you first started doing this?

[00:14:48] Ken Posner: No.

[00:14:49] Brett Barry: No.

[00:14:50] Ken Posner: Feet are soft, and, you know, as you do more barefoot, you get, you know, some thicker skin, but feet are never going to be as strong as rocks or particularly gravel, and so what barefoot teaches you is to be mindful. You've got to place your feet carefully. It's more about form, and instead of, you know, trumping or trudging through the wilderness, you place your feet. It's more like prowling through the forest, and, you know, that's what people did for a million years before we invented shoes, and shoes are great because they allow you to go so much faster, but you lose something. There's always a trade-off.

[00:15:30] Brett Barry: So let's get right to the grid. You have written a new book. It's called "Chasing the Grid: An Ultrarunner's Physical and Spiritual Journey in Pursuit of the Ultimate Mountain Challenge." What is the grid?

[00:15:45] Ken Posner: Well, Brett, many of your, you know, listeners will be familiar with the Catskill 3500 Club, which has designated a list of high peaks, and that's the way beginning hikers get engaged with the Catskills. They say, "Okay, here's a list of the peaks." I will go visit them, and by doing so, I qualify to be a member of the club, and I get a patch and a certificate. It's sort of a structured way to get into hiking in the mountains, and every mountainous region in the country pretty much has a list of high peaks and typically a club and some kind of recognition. Now, the grid takes it to the next level. To complete the grid, you have to do the list of high peaks in each month of the year. Now, it doesn't have to be one year. You can take as long as you want to complete the grid, but by the time you're done in the Catskills, you would have 35 high peaks times 12 months, which is 420 separate climbs, so it's a big project. It's very simple. The goal is to get to know the mountains really well, to see them at all points in the year as they change from spring to summer to fall to winter, and at the same time, the goal is to learn about yourself as you go through these experiences.

[00:17:02] Brett Barry: So 35 peaks—each peak is climbed 12 times a year, but not necessarily in the same year, so in other words, you're going to hike Slide Mountain every month of the year and get a sense of what that mountain is like throughout the calendar year.

[00:17:20] Ken Posner: Yeah, and it's such a cool experience because you're going to hike Slide Mountain in summer when the air is hot and sticky and still. You're going to be there in May when the black flies are buzzing around your head and nipping at you. You're going to be there in December, and maybe there'll be, you know, 3 or 4 inches of snow, or in February, and maybe those ladders on the far side of Slide are totally covered in ice, and you're trying to get down in your snowshoes without twisting your ankles, so the experiences are totally different, and that's what creates such a powerful experience with 420 experiences, which are all wildly different, and as a person, you keep changing, so some days you're out there and you're full of energy and you're feeling great, and some days you're dragging along and depressed by the fog and the cloud and clouds and the grayness, so it becomes a very powerful experience as you accumulate these 420 climbs.

[00:18:22] Brett Barry: And so it's more than a physical challenge. It's a mental challenge. It's a form of meditation, maybe, and inward reflection.

[00:18:31] Ken Posner: Oh, absolutely, and some people will describe it as a spiritual practice. Now, when I started the grid, I was, you know, full of energy. I was a frustrated ultrarunner who was dealing with injuries, and I was like, "Well, here's a different project I can undertake," and I just threw myself into it, still in the mindset of thinking of everything as a physical challenge, and everything we do outdoors has a physical challenge component, of course, but I quickly became entranced by the sights and sounds, so I had, you know, read Thoreau's famous essay about "Autumnal Tints," the beautiful colors of our sugar maples and red maples and everything else in the fall. I discovered the grid in early January, and I headed out immediately with the goal to start categorizing the tints of winter, which are more subtle, although sometimes you have a gray day that's cloudy, and suddenly, the clouds break, and you have the shock of electric turquoise blue from the sky shining through, so the winter is different from the fall. That was my initial fascination, and as I started to finish up the project, I began thinking about integrating the lessons of the mountains back into my, you know, daily life in the cubicle behind the laptop and how I could combine the passion of the outdoors with the, you know, the need to be productive.

[00:19:54] Brett Barry: How did you find the time with your, you know, day job and everything else in life to get this done, and how long did it take you? I know that speed wasn't part of this particular challenge, but I'm curious how long the challenge took.

[00:20:06] Ken Posner: When I discovered the grid, which was quite coincidental and very random, you know, I had already been running and hiking in the Catskills for many years. You know, things like the Escarpment Trail Run or that Long Path thru-run I mentioned, so I discovered that I had already completed about a quarter of the grid, just coincidentally, and, of course, that made it feel like I was almost done, and I was not because having 300 more peaks to do is a lot, and I have an attitude when I'm taking on a meaningful and important project. I want to get it done. I want to get it done fast because life goes on, and, you know, health is not guaranteed, time is not guaranteed, and other things come up, so I really threw myself into it, and I finished off the remaining 300 in 2 years. By the way, it did require taking a leave of absence from work, so, to your point, time, you know, was a bit of an issue, particularly for the winter climbs, which can be quite slow, but yeah, after 30 or 35 years working, I was starting to—my batteries were starting to run low, and part of what the grid was was a way to do a reset, and this is my favorite Burroughs quote, you know, he said, "I go to nature to be soothed and healed," and that's how a lot of us think about it. You know, it's a break from the day-to-day grind in the super high-tech digital world we live in, but he also said, "I go to nature to have my senses put in tune once again," and that's what I mean by a reset, and so as I spent time on the grid and back in nature, I was learning, you know, not only the idyllic experiences of nature, the beautiful fall days, or the other joyful experiences, but also the painful and challenging aspect. You know, some people love the winter, but not me. I do better in the heat, and I'm a summer person, and so the winter climbs could be quite difficult if there were 2 or 3 feet of snow and you're postholing to your knees, you know, and you're not going at the rhythmic, you know, consistent pace that runners are used to. You're going, you know, a mile an hour. You're going sometimes a mile in 2 hours if you're breaking trail, or once I even—I climbed fir straight through the woods and it was very steep and it was heavy snow and the sun came out and it started melting, and that was one mile in 3 hours, and so I started thinking, you know, nature is painful as well as pleasurable, but you get this range of experiences, and that's where the passion comes from, and so the tail end of the grid was a project integration in the sense that I wanted to bring that passion and excitement from the outdoors world back to my cubicle, if you will, and, you know, find the excitement there again because life is too short to be dragging yourself through things that are no longer fun.

[00:23:02] Brett Barry: And did it stick?

[00:23:03] Ken Posner: Yes.

[00:23:04] Brett Barry: And gave you a new spin on your career?

[00:23:08] Ken Posner: Yes, it really did. It really did. It was a huge reset. You know, as I emerged in my mid-fifties, for all the hiking and running I had done, I felt like I was in the desert and needed water, but I just needed more nature in my life and a lot more nature, and isn't this, you know, sort of surprising again, given how much I've done? There is this question: how much nature do you need in life? And for some of us, the answer might be a lot.

[00:23:37] Brett Barry: And the grid gives it to you.

[00:23:39] Ken Posner: That's right.

[00:23:41] Brett Barry: You say in your book, "Indeed, my mind was positively spinning, for the grid seemed like an opportunity to channel my energy into a distinctive goal where speed would no longer matter," and so this was a whole new type of challenge for you, where other challenges have been very speed-oriented.

[00:23:58] Ken Posner: That's right, and speed's still important to me. One of the things I've learned painfully over the years is there's a right speed for everything you do, and sometimes it's all out. You know, I was just at a 5K yesterday, and I ran what for me now was pretty much all out, but when you're in the mountains, there are different speeds, and sometimes they're quite slow, and that's the right way to move.

[00:24:19] Brett Barry: John Burroughs also wrote, and you quote him in your book, "You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush," and you say, "Six months ago, I'd never heard of a nuthatch. Now, they followed me everywhere, so I think that's another thing that separates something like the grid from other challenges that are, you know, set up to get them done as quickly as possible, and the grid with its revisits to the same place—you're noticing things that would just pass you by."

[00:24:49] Ken Posner: That's right, and John Burroughs wrote, "To learn something new, take the path you took yesterday," but the nuthatches were funny, and, you know, the grid was a different experience for me because as an ultrarunner I was, you know, totally focused on moving through the forest, and I was so intrigued by the sights and the sounds and the patterns, but they flew past at speed, and it was hard to notice things, but while doing the grid at a slower pace, I began to see how much there was. I was just out bushwhacking the other day, and somehow I had noticed bindweed, but I had never gotten quite as tangled up in it as I did. This was Packsaddle in Pine Island on the way to Evergreen. I've never seen so much bindweed, and it crawled up into, like, waist-high ferns, and it created just a complete mess to get through, but, you know, everything is different, and you start seeing and observing. The book "Chasing the Grid" has an appendix, and I list out 300 species of different things I identified while I was in the mountains. Not because, you know, I'm a botanist—I'm not—or a naturalist, but it was so cool to start to recognize the other people in the forest and learn their names, whether they were trees or flowers or frogs or bugs or lichens or moss or funguses, so there's just a whole world. One of the things about the grid that was truly amazing for me was it taught me to open my eyes and see things, which is what we're talking about, and again, it's back to that theme of technology, and we—we all know this with Google Maps—it gets us where we're going, but if you're like me, I have no idea how I got there, and I would never be able to find my way back. It's the same thing in the mountains. I've talked to people, and they're like, "Oh yeah, we've been to the Catskills. We couldn't see anything, and, you know, in the summer, the vegetation is quite thick, but as you're out there, you learn to start seeing the small things, and so, for example, the trail from Table to Lone, which is a social trail. It's not an official trail. I think it took ½ dozen visits out there before I finally found it. I always would slip too far downhill towards the Neversink and miss, you know, miss the saddle. One day I just stopped, and I said, "Look, I've got to follow the crest of the ridge," and I realized that there were little sparkles of light. You couldn't really see much in the fir-spruce thickets, but there were little sparkles of light, and when they equalized on either side, you realized, "Okay, I'm on the exact crest," and when I finally got that right, there was the trail right in front of my feet where it was supposed to be, and it just took me multiple tries to find it. Or, the other amazing thing is you're out bushwhacking, and you're trying to find your way to some mountain, and it's, of course, completely invisible in the thick foliage until you see it through a gap in the leaves, and it's only a few inches wide, but there in the distance is a little line of spiky trees, and they're a little bit duller green because they're farther off, and you're like, "That's the shoulder, and now I know where the mountain is, just from that little tiny clue." So that was a great lesson from the grid. You know, the mountains taught me how to, you know, open my eyes and see again.

[00:28:19] Brett Barry: I feel like you were starting to write a little bit like Burroughs in some of this book, and there's a particular excerpt that I pulled that I think is a great example of that. Would you mind reading this paragraph here in bold?

[00:28:34] Ken Posner: The trees here were strong and good-looking, like young athletes, and wearing such fine jewelry: clumps of beard lichen hanging a foot or longer, thin plates of hooded tube and hammered shield lichen filigreed upon the bark, pale green tufts and tendrils of ghost antler and boreal oak moss sprouting from the twigs. Now, I went through a phase where I was just totally obsessed by lichens, and so you're seeing a little bit of that in this paragraph, but what Burroughs and especially Muir convey—they convey the life that's in the forest, and, you know, philosophers and scientists debate and have for centuries and continue to this day. What is consciousness? What is the spirit? What is the soul? And when you're in the modern world, there's a tendency to self-identify with, like, your driver's license. That's me, that's my serial number, and that's my license to operate a vehicle subject to the rules and regulations and liabilities, you know, thereof, but when you're out in the mountains, you realize the sense of self expands and becomes much more inclusive and connective, and that's why Burroughs and Muir are such great authors at conveying that sense, and something like the grid will help, you know, the rest of us experience a little bit of that.

[00:29:59] Brett Barry: That metaphorical prose, I think, could come straight out of one of Burroughs' essays.

[00:30:04] Ken Posner: Yeah, and Burroughs too, you know, he uses quaint terms like, you know, "manliness and virility," which we don't use today because we recognize men and women and other people, you know, all have strength, but there is a sense of strength and the importance of strength running through his writing, and I think part of what the mountains do is they teach you to be strong to manage yourself in a wild environment, and, you know, that's not something we want to lose.

[00:30:34] Brett Barry: Thoreau comes in quite a bit too, just if nothing else for the simplicity of how you approach this, and I also want to tie in what I would consider type 3 happiness here. You talked a little bit about it, the hot and sticky weather, which you enjoy when I don't so much. The black flies—that type of thing that seems like another level from type 2 happiness, which you explained before—but you say the forecast for the first weekend in July called for a high of 96 and plenty of humidity. Such wonderful weather, such luscious conditions. This was the perfect time to drop gear, go light, and push the envelope on minimalism and simplicity. 96 degrees and plenty of humidity would keep me in the house with the air conditioning, but you had a different approach, and you said before that you enjoy hot weather, but tell me a little bit about the minimalist approach and how weather would inform how you would make those decisions.

[00:31:31] Ken Posner: Yeah, the minimalist approach. I mean, I think on the one hand we all have to be minimalists. Otherwise, you're asking to be overwhelmed by the complexity of the world, but my experience of the grid pushed me further in a minimalist direction, so I ended up doing a lot of hiking barefoot. I stopped carrying food and water. I stopped mostly using bug spray. I would do silly things like go out at night and turn off my light and stumble around in the darkness or practice something called natural navigation, which is when you learn to find your way through the forest off-trail without using a GPS or map and compass, and so all of these are minimalist trends. They're all about rediscovering latent human abilities, which technology tends to replace today, so it's about going back to finding human strengths, and again, to me, you know, we use technology, but there's a trade-off, and you don't want to become dependent on it and lose sight of who you are deep down and what you can do, so that was a big part of the spirit of the grid for me.

[00:32:36] Brett Barry: For you, who's highly experienced, when would it be dangerous to not bring food or water or some of these other things that hikers are told you must have?

[00:32:48] Ken Posner: Well, I mean, look, I'm not here to suggest anybody should go out and do something, you know, that they're not prepared to do, but there are dangers on both sides of the equation, and so, for example, I would tell hikers and runners who can't go out and do a day hike without bringing snacks. You should be thoughtful about your metabolic strength because metabolic illness is what some people point to as a root cause for, you know, the obesity and diabetes epidemics today, and even potentially the root cause for all sorts of other chronic ailments. I'm not trying to tell anybody what they should do, but thoughtfulness and mindfulness are important, and when you're going to push yourself, what we're doing out in the Catskills or other athletic endeavors is a form of training, and you're doing it to push yourself into a zone of discomfort and challenge so you can learn to manage yourself in these kinds of higher stress regimes, but no, you don't want to, you know, go out and do something crazy and get hurt.

[00:33:52] Brett Barry: But was there a limit to the length of the trail that you would say, "Yeah, for this one, I'm gonna—I can't not bring water," or were you relying on natural sources?

[00:34:03] Ken Posner: Before I ran the Long Path, I did a Google search to see if anybody had ever died of hypothermia in the Catskills in August, and the results came out blank, so I figured for that run I didn't need to bring much in the way of warm gear. That came back to haunt me later on during a thru-running attempt in the Catskills where I was. I did not have enough gear, and as a result, that run was unsuccessful, and I was able to manage myself out of that situation without problems, but it was unsuccessful, so getting the right balance is appropriate. You know, it's funny, I was out on the John Muir Trail a couple years back, and to keep, you know, doing a thru-hike—so every ounce matters—I decided, look, there are water sources at a minimum every five miles, and so I'm not going to carry water at all. I'll just drink up when I get to the water sources, and sure enough, I walked past one of the water sources, and soon, it was high noon, and the sun was beating down, and I was really unhappy, but I survived, and I—so I went back to carrying, you know, call it ½ liter of water, learning from that experience. In the Catskills when I attempted the thru-run, oh, I had terrible cramps, and there I had no real choice because if you go from—you cross the Esopus, and you go up for and over towards Balsam Lake Mountain and then back down to the Dry Creek. That's a long way without any water sources, or I was out last weekend on Packsaddle, Pine Island, and Evergreen. There's no water up there, so if you run out of water, it's unlikely that you're going to expire from dehydration, but you may start to have, you know, unproductive time. You may end up going slower and being thirsty and uncomfortable, but these are the kinds of challenges that we all learn to deal with in the mountains. It's an unmanaged environment, and so your mindfulness, your thoughtfulness, your preparation, and your ability to manage yourself when things go wrong—this is what we're trying to learn and do when we're out here.

[00:36:14] Brett Barry: And everyone should be in tune with their own bodies, so, you know, for me, I don't drink a lot of water, but if I take even a 4-mile hike, if I don't have 2 liters with me, I'll panic.

[00:36:26] Ken Posner: Well, you got—you nailed it. Brett, we've got to be in tune with our bodies, and, you know, what I would tell young people is, you know, as you get older, the platform starts to lose some resilience and better. If you can understand how it works throughout your whole life, then you can make those decisions more thoughtfully and with better—hopefully better—outcomes.

[00:36:49] Brett Barry: Let's talk about the sustainability of the grid.

[00:36:51] Ken Posner: Uh-huh.

[00:36:52] Brett Barry: If every hiker did the grid, it wouldn't be good, right? It might not be good.

[00:36:58] Ken Posner: Well, I think if every hiker did the grid, I think that would be wonderful in the sense that I believe the more that people get out into nature, the more they can balance out the challenges of the digital world, which are extreme, but if everybody did the grid, you would have some usage management issues, which the Catskills already has.

[00:37:21] Brett Barry: So how do we balance that with leave no trace principles or giving back in some way to trail maintenance?

[00:37:29] Ken Posner: First of all, you know, I would compliment the DEC, which is managing the Catskills and, you know, overall responsible for protecting the environment, but also they need to manage how people use the resources, so they've been studying with help from the Trail Conference, you know, what to do about the growing usage, particularly the bushwhacking and the social paths that are emerging on some of the high peaks, and it may well be that the right answer is to put in place official trails since there's so much usage up there, but what I think is great about the grid community and more broadly the 3500 Club and the other organizations and people who have the experience is a lot of these folks give back by volunteering so you have people volunteering with the Trail Conference to maintain the trails and keep them open and you have super experienced people like Ralph Ryndak, who was one of the first folks to complete the grid. He does amazing work taking people out on the trails and teaching them and guiding them because most of us start as inexperienced hikers, and we need the guidance, and people like him, I think, do a great service to the community as sources of knowledge and guidance and coaching and counseling. After I did the grid [recognizing that the Catskill High Peaks can be crowded, particularly on, you know, holiday weekends and nice summer days], you know, I've gone on to other projects like The All Trails Challenge, which just entails walking on all the trails in the Catskills, and that will take you out into the Western Catskills, where in many cases you'll rarely see another person. I was out hiking the Northern Catskills a few weeks ago, Mount Pisgah and Richmond Mountain. I was out there all weekend. I saw one other person who was a Trail Conference maintainer doing his work to keep the trail open so those of us who are heavy users can move to other places. There's a lot of room out there for more people to go out there and experience, you know, the benefits of nature.

[00:39:32] Brett Barry: How did you celebrate finishing the grid, or did you?

[00:39:36] Ken Posner: A lot of the grid I did by myself, in part because I was at various points in various different statuses of being injured and moving more slowly than a lot of my trail running friends. The last hike, I invited a lot of friends to come, and we did it as I decided to make it a unique, minimalist, adventurous kind of deal, and, of course, it was Kaaterskill High Peak. It had to be Kaaterskill, and it was in December, and I decided, "Why don't we make it a little bit more interesting by hiking it at night without lights?" So we got a group of folks together, and a friend brought a bottle of champagne. I don't drink anymore, but I didn't bring any water, and I got thirsty, so I had a few swigs at the top, but the fun was finding our way through the forest, and, you know, of course, the moon went behind clouds, but it's amazing what you can see even with diluted, you know, ambient moonlight, and when there's snow on the ground, of course, it allows you to see a lot. Trying to go through the forest in the summer without any lights at all is quite a bit more difficult.

[00:40:49] Brett Barry: We've touched on this a few times, but if you could sum up, what did the grid teach you about yourself?

[00:40:57] Ken Posner: Well, the grid taught me a lot about myself, and in the book I talk about coming face-to-face with my inner demon, who happened to be this long-dead spirit of some scout or messenger who was frustrated because he could no longer run, which was sort of strangely reminiscent of my own situation at that point, and so I, you know, back to your question, Brett, about, you know, the energy, right? The inner demon would tend to push me to move fast, and it would tend to get extremely frustrated when I couldn't, and sometimes, especially barefoot, I would get quite frustrated. I remember going up Southwest Hunter, and it was in October, and I showed up barefoot, and the car thermometer was like 32 degrees, and I'm like, "This is not good." This is not what I was hoping for on a nice fall day, but I went on anyhow, and I—as I was bushwhacking up Southwest Hunter from Diamond Notch from the lean-to on the pass or the saddle. I noticed there were specks of frost on the ground, and I'm like, "Okay, I need to move quickly to generate body heat to keep, you know, my feet at risk from going numb, which is not a good idea," and, you know, at that point I got tangled up along Beech Branch or something, stag my backpack, and, you know, it just held me up for a second, and I started to get sort of frustrated and mad, and it's like, "I've got to keep moving quickly to generate body heat," and then I got into just a massive tumble of rocks, and I had to pick my way through this stuff, and there was no way to move fast at all, and the wind was starting to pick up, and my feet were starting to go numb and it was just total frustration and I think I started shouting out loud in, you know, in frustration, and I remember my agent read that part of the earlier draft, and she was like, "Ken, do you have an anger management problem?" And I don't think so, but I think I've got the same challenge that a lot of us have. We have energy. We're operating in a complex environment, and we encounter challenges, and we got to figure out our way through these challenges, and that means managing that energy so it doesn't get out of control, and that's hard when the stakes are high. So, by the way, I was able to finally get on top of the mountain, but the barefoot was, you know, part of me realized I needed to work on patience, more self-management, more self-control, and some of the grid was about that.

[00:43:42] Brett Barry: Did you do the whole thing barefoot?

[00:43:44] Ken Posner: On that—not the whole grid, but that trip I did.

[00:43:47] Brett Barry: Yeah.

[00:43:48] Ken Posner: I got up to the top of Southwest Hunter, and then I jogged along the Fenwick Lumber Railroad Trail towards Hunter, you know, dodging the columnar ice, the little ice spikes on the trail, and I—somebody saw me passing Hunter, and they posted, "I saw this crazy barefoot guy on Hunter, and it was 26 degrees," so maybe that was my best cold exploit, and then I came down the other side, and I saw a butterfly wing lying on the trail, and I thought, you know how sad—it's past the season for those sparks of color in life, so that trip was all barefoot and no permanent damage, although my feet were sore for the next few days, but yeah, you asked about what did I learn about myself—it's just practice and trying to be more in control and learn to manage myself and, you know, make myself more useful and more reliable and more dependable and therefore more able to do the other things I have to do in life.

[00:44:50] Brett Barry: There's, I think, an element of asceticism to some of how you take on these challenges—the barefooted hiking, the lack of food and water in some cases—and I guess that also contributes to mental development, and also maybe I've gone through this. I can certainly handle this—whatever confronts you in life.

[00:45:12] Ken Posner: That's right, and first, there's a point in the book where I talk about frustrations at work, you know, some new project being dumped on my lap and my boss tagging along on a trip somewhere, and it's like, well, you know, this is annoying, but it's not as bad as a fir-spruce thicket when you get stuck in a bad one, so I'll let you in on what I think is a secret because in the Western Tradition, you know, cynicism is associated with self-denial, and it doesn't look like much fun, right? It's by, you know, people, religious people maybe, who are undertaking the world's sins and pains in reflection of the fact that we're all fallen people, but if you go back to the Ancient Greeks, they had a term, "askēsis," which is the same root word, but it wasn't necessarily meant to connote a lifestyle of self-denial. It was more about an athletic practice or a practice for developing both athletic and spiritual qualities and so physical challenges, including going without food and water and feats of endurance, and, of course, going barefoot. That's how the Greeks competed and exercised back in the day. That was thought to be part of just how you developed yourself, so it wasn't about self-denial. It was just about finding and developing your inner strength, and I think in other traditions around the world, you'll find that too. For example, in the Northwest, the Yurok Indians have a traditional training practice, which they call "hohkep," and it involves the same disciplines: going without food and water and getting out on the trails and getting out at night and in bad weather, and they describe this practice on the one hand as a way of seeking spiritual powers from the spirit world, but on the other hand, it's also a way to make yourself strong, to make your mind strong, so that you can achieve your purpose in life instead of being somebody else's pet, which is the word that some of those informants use. So these kinds of training traditions, I think, are universal or nearly universal in cultures around the world, and the real secret is when you go out and do this stuff, it's a lot of fun. It's, again, the type 2 fun. It's the fun that's intense. It has pain as well as pleasure and excitement, but I, you know, as odd as it sounds, getting out in the beautiful Catskills mountains and whatever kid or setup you have, it's joy, it's experience, it's intensity, it's the beauty of the natural world, and I think if you can get some of that into your life, it makes you a happier, more positive person, and then you can share that positivity with other people, and that's the energy we all need just to go out and do our job.

[00:48:07] Brett Barry: What do you hope readers take away from this book?

[00:48:10] Ken Posner: Well, I don't, you know, I'm not trying to specifically encourage, you know, more grid aspirants, but I think getting people outdoors is good, but also the grid for me was—it was a pivot. It was a project. It wasn't a race. It was more like a pilgrimage, and so I do think pilgrimage is a useful concept for us in this super high-tech digital world, and historically, a pilgrimage meant going away somewhere, and so I'd like to suggest there's another way to do this, which is, you know, I sometimes—I call it a synthetic pilgrimage. Instead of picking up and leaving and going somewhere else, you can start to use those weekends and a little bit of vacation time to work on this kind of project, and as you work on the project, it's specifically to learn about yourself, and you're taking yourself off the path of productivity, out of the cubicle, out of the shopping mall, and you're going into a wild environment, an unmanaged environment, which is going to force you to learn about yourself, and I think, you know, these kinds of projects can really produce great opportunities to learn and develop and maybe change your direction ever so slightly because the modern world is totally happy if you're just productive and do the same thing over and over and over again, and then you're done, and it's like, "Was that it?" So I'm a—I'd love to see more people think about projects and learning and taking charge of their direction, so that would be, I guess, the real hope.

[00:49:46] Brett Barry: Great. Well, I really enjoyed the book, and thank you for taking some time to talk about it. This has been fantastic.

[00:49:53] Ken Posner: I'm just delighted. Brett, thank you so much for having me on your show.

[00:49:58] Brett Barry: Ken Posner's book "Chasing the Grid: An Ultrarunner's Physical and Spiritual Journey in Pursuit of the Ultimate Mountain Challenge" is available now wherever books are sold. You might be suggested to checking in with one of our local booksellers, such as...

[00:50:15] Campbell Brown: Briars & Brambles Books. The go-to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path, open daily! For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call (518) 750-8599.

[00:50:33] Brett Barry: And if you're hankering for a little challenge of your own, now is the perfect time to join The New York-New Jersey Trail Conference's Annual Trail-A-Thon, a community-driven fundraiser that helps preserve tomorrow's trail lands. Trail-A-Thon is a four-week hike-a-thon-style event in October that's open to everyone and completed anywhere. Whether you hike, bike, run, or stroll, every mile you track and dollar you raise supports the Trail Conference's mission to protect and maintain public trail lands in the Northeast. Getting started is easy. Set a personal mileage goal, rally your friends and family to support your journey, and then start moving! Log your miles anywhere, whether on forested paths, city streets, or even on the treadmill. Along the way, you'll earn awesome rewards, from Trail Conference maps and gear to exclusive prizes for top fundraisers and mileage milestones. Trail-A-Thon runs October 1st through 31st, and registration is open. Register now at bit.ly. That's bit.ly/gotrailathon to join the movement this October. Trail-A-Thon: Where Will Your Challenge Take YOU? Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. I'm your host, Brett Barry. Transcripts by Jerome Kazlauskas. Announcements by Campbell Brown. If you're enjoying Kaatscast, and we hope you are, please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts, keep in touch at kaatscast.com, and follow us on Instagram [@kaatscast].

[00:52:13] Campbell Brown: Join us as a monthly member listener or make a one-time contribution at kaatscast.com/support.