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Selected Writing Portfolio
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jake moritz jake moritz
jake moritzjake moritz
jake moritz jake moritz
jake moritzjake moritz
jake moritz jake moritz
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design | gis | marketing design | gis | marketing
design | gis | marketingdesign | gis | marketing
design | gis | marketing design | gis | marketing
design | gis | marketingdesign | gis | marketing
design | gis | marketing design | gis | marketing
Selected Writing
Adventure writing
Excerpt from a journal piece about rock climbing and exploring with renowned rock climber Jim Donini in Chile and Argentina. January 2011
“I first climbed this route in 1976. I was here with my girlfriend who then became my wife who then became my second ex-wife, and we had a blast.” Jim was forty feet above me and had paused his rhythmic ascent of deidre de Jim, his taped fingers crumpled inside the sinuous crack in the granite, a foot wedged sideways to support his weight. And he was giving me marriage advice. I squinted at the silhouette of Jim’s lanky body against a clear sky and let the rope flow through the belay device and up the cliff like a hypno-tized serpent slowly erecting itself. I wasn’t concerned when he arched a long leg away from the cliff and glanced at me in mock-terror. Gravity bowed to Jim’s experience. Jim led the two pitches of moderate 5.8-rated crack that make up his namesake route. I followed, trying my best to imitate his style, wedging my hands and the tips of my climbing shoes into the crack to hold me in place. A skilled crack climber can ascend a sheer face with all of the fluidity and calm of a ballet dancer taking center stage, but a climber without experience with the very particular technique required will slip, grovel, swear, and grind their way up, if they manage at all. I was no dancer. Inching my way up slowly, it was a pleasure to cling to Frey’s coarsely textured granite. The off-white stone flecked with orange, black, and grey reflects the sun like a snowcapped peak but punishes poor form with bloodied fingers and torn knees. The last few moves revealed Jim happily sitting with coils of rope across his legs backed by panorama of nothing but stone and sky. I took comfort in joining him at the top of a climb that he had established when Richard Nixon was president.
Paid Review
A camping stove review sample that I presented to adventure motorcycle travel website Onewheeldrive.net. I became a contributing writer reviewing outdoor equipment that I used on a 5000-mile motorcycle trip across the United States and Canada. Summer 2009
“Would you like more lobster, more chardonnay, more frômage?” This is the sort of question you might ask your drooling guests from behind your simmering Optimus Nova Plus MultiFuel Stove. Whether you really are cooking up a lobster or simply heating up some water for the morning cup o’ coffee, the Optimus Nova is well suited to the task. The Nova is unfazed by extreme altitudes and temperatures, boasts excel-lent stability for large pots, simmer control so that you don’t scorch dinner, and will run on nearly any fuel you can find between Baja and Marrakech. It packs down to smaller than a fist and weighs in at a re-spectable 15 oz. so you can afford to put an extra pair of shoes or bottle of whiskey in your saddlebags. Bring the Nova along on a weekend out-ing or rule the kitchen area at the local rally when a “friend” pipes up about your famous pasta carbonara.
MSRP $149.95 15 oz.www.optimus.se
Academic
Introduction to an English paper ‘Maps and Melville’ on the role of geography in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Spring 2011
Melville and I, our respective contexts and influences, his ability to tell the tale of Moby Dick and my capacity to understand it, all converge on the rather unconventional topic of maps. I have few things in common with a harpooner of Melville’s day, except for the high likelihood that both of us will have spent the better part of four years drifting, wonder-ing where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going. While the whaler will have spent his time studying the waves, the whales, and the weather, I’ve looked at maps, their history, their meaning and the power we associate with them. Maps are my context, but in some subtle and some explicit ways I believe maps and geography influenced Melville as well.
Conclusion to a final paper examining how nonviolent social movements can use geography and cartography for a Senior Seminar in Geography entitled the ‘Geography of Peace.’ Spring 2010
Maps give social movements evidence and a means of arguing to promote their causes. Maps are imbued with power, and reason, and as such are powerful tools. A map user must critically assess the origin and purpose of all maps, whether one agrees with the argument of the map creator or not, in every map there is an argument and a bias. Critical cartography shall continue to evolve in response to new problems of knowledge and representation that will undoubtedly arise. Geography as a discipline is permeable to critical reasoning and evaluation, and geographers, cartographers and social activists should bear in mind that no knowledge is secure, there is always room for critical thought.
Academic
