Ken Ilgunas

“The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life. Men have been buried at one hundred who died at their birth.” - Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Emile Why prolong life if life is barely worth living? I'm thinking of all the futurists out there, who talk about developing technologies to prolong human life or end the process of aging. Joe Rogan has these guys on his podcast all the time. Harvard professor David Sinclair says we shou

A few weeks ago, I found myself near the town of Berchtesgaden in the German Alps. The following is my account of a two-day solo hike. Day 1: Berchtesgaden to Stahlhaus I struck out at 10:30 a.m. for Stahlhaus, one of several sleeping huts for hikers in Berchtesgaden National Park. Berchtesgaden is in southeast Germany on the Austrian border. Designated as a national park in 1978, it’s 81 square miles and home to Kehlsteinhaus, or the “Eagle’s Nest,” a Third Reich building on

“The imperfect is our only paradise.” – Wallace Stevens A few years ago, I was hiking on a trail in Death Valley National Park, thinking about a book I’d just finished called After Nature by Jedediah Purdy. Purdy’s book is mostly historical. It looks at four different phases of the “environmental imagination” in American history: 1) Providential, 2) Romantic, 3) Utilitarian, and 4) Ecological. From one phase to another, Americans’ thoughts and feelings about nature evolved. D