But everyone knows how that goes – mountain local moves to new mountain locale and the talk is always big. Or as a friend recently joked, “How do you know someone lives in Jackson? It’s easy, they’ll tell you.”

But I regress. My wife, Kir, and I went to the Dolomites. Our goal was to climb, hike, explore and check out some via ferratas. Sure, we’d grab some culture along the way, drink some fine espressos, and dine on hand-cut minestrone or handmade pasta around a rifigio hearth.

Here’s the deal. You can climb long moderate routes forever in the Dolomites. A minor day would be the equivalent of the Exum on the Grand Teton. Want a 20-pitch-plus .10B line on the Marmolada? Go Don Quixote. Want to follow Cassin or Messner lines? Take your pick on the Tre Cime or anywhere, really. Desire a three-big-tower-link-up at a moderate grade? Go to Sella Pass and look left.

The Italian approach to weather forecasting leaves a bit to interpretation, but they make up for it with their sophisticated approach to everything else. When the forecast looks unsettled you can sport climb at an area such as the Citta Dei Sassi, or the City of Stones. Kinda like City of Rocks in Idaho, only instead of Almo as your cultural hang, Sella Pass has full leather guys in mirrored shades on Ducatis and bronzed women in tight white jeans sipping lattes.

So, is Dan right about how great it is over in the Dolomitis?

Well, probably best for you to go check it out yourself …

(Roll cursor over photos for captions.)

Among the many wonderful things that my mountain town has to offer is a community supported agriculture co-op, right inside city limits. Just a short bike ride from the downtown strip of the largest city in Vermont (pop. ~210,000) is a beautiful organic farm. The Intervale Community Farm occupies 35 acres of the roughly 350 acres managed by the Intervale Center, all of it bordering the original farm and homestead of our state’s founder, Ethan Allen.

For a very modest annual fee the ICF feeds me and about 500 other households in town for five months of the year. Each week we gather to socialize and harvest a cornucopia of greens, roots, vegetables, fruits, herbs and flowers.

Unlike a farmers’ market, where farmers travel to town in order sell as many goods as possible, at the ICF we go to the farm right in our own neighborhood, where our farmers are our friends and neighbors. We walk the fields and get to know our food and the land on a much more intimate level. We invest up front in the harvest, and have a stake in its outcome.

In a time and culture where food and society have a major disconnect I consider it an enormous privilege to know so well where some of my food comes from, who grows it, and how it affects the land I literally live on. It was with this mindset that I read the following essay written by Becky Maden for one of the farm’s newsletters last winter, and I deeply appreciated her insight into our national agricultural situation. Becky is one of the farmers that works to feed me each week, toiling in the rows to provide me food. With this essay she also provided some perspective.

Where Eating Local Isn’t a Challenge

By Becky Maden

For the past several years in Vermont, the “Eat Local Challenge” has been a huge success in raising awareness of where our food comes from, calculating the average distance our food travels and understanding just how fractured our food system is. Even as someone who grasps the realities of growing food for a living, the eat local challenges have opened my eyes to the gaps in our local food system – staples such as grains, flours, oils, nuts, seeds and soy products have few producers. Come winter, being a localvore is particularly difficult in Vermont, where each trip to the store means passing by the mounds of imported fresh food in favor of locally produced storage crops.

But this winter, my definition of local has exploded in my face. Instead of remaining in Vermont for the winter months, I have taken a leave of absence from the farm I help manage to explore farms and farming communities out West with my partner, Adam. Our entry into California was enchanting: We stopped at the first farm stand we saw, just east of Santa Barbara, and a huge veil of guilt lifted off us. Suddenly citrus, avocados, figs, dates, strawberries and olives were local! I nearly fainted from my excitement – we had been camping in the desert for 10 days, subsisting on potatoes that I transported from Vermont, some canned goods, and dehydrated tomatoes, peppers and garlic. The juice of a fresh orange, the cream of a ripe avocado, the overpowering sweetness of a date – YUM! All the foods that have been off limits for years, all the foods that we force ourselves to blindly pass by in City Market – suddenly they were LOCAL.

We’ve been feasting for over a month now. Each farm we visit, we are gifted with some treat that I can’t believe actually was grown there. This isn’t farming, I keep telling myself, this is heaven. Figs that I can just pull off a tree? Pick-your-own kiwis? Persimmons that just hang there for the taking when all the leaves have fallen off? Artichokes in December? Oranges, tangerines and lemons in abundance? Strawberries that bear fruit all year long? Do these people even know how lucky they are?

Each night we cook our meal in one pot over our camping stove. We’ve kept a log of our farmers’ market purchases, our gifts and our finds. One vegetable farm we visited gets mushroom compost from a local mushroom farm. They quickly realized that massive, beautiful portabellas continued to emerge from the compost. We were told to help ourselves, and we ate big pots of portabellas for nights. Other nights, we cook broccoli or kale because much of our time has been spent in coastal areas, where brassicas grow all year long. Occasionally we indulge in fresh tomatoes with feta cheese and olives, or couscous with delicious local dried fruits and nuts mixed in.

Then there is the wine and the olive oil. Even here, these two foods are extravagant, but local, very local, and very, very delicious. We tasted olive oil at a beautiful organic farm that was so spicy, it resonated in our mouths long after we swallowed it. And of course, in the interests of understanding the whole picture of California agriculture, we have done a lot of wine tasting, taken tours of vineyards and asked tons of questions of the tasting room workers, who simply want to pour wine and get us to spend lots of money. Instead, we take a sip, and ask, “What is your water source? What is your fertility management? Do you plant cover crops? Which ones? What trellising system do you use?” and so on, until our server realizes that we are not going anywhere quickly and will humor us with a few answers.

Redefining local, or rather, relocating myself in relation to localness, has shaken up my sense of agriculture, climate and seasonality. Traveling in warmer regions for a winter has put my system in a sort of limbo – the farms we visit still have weeding, planting and harvesting to do. Local eating here is just as easy as buying pretty much any produce you want to at City Market in the winter; indeed, most of the fresh food on the East Coast in the winter comes from this other coast. Visiting a broad array of farms – from the tiny organic farms to massive, sterile, industrial farms – has reinforced for me the truth that it is as much about how your food is grown as about where it comes from. Even though Driscoll strawberries couldn’t be more local than when we are biking through Watsonville, witnessing their growing techniques has repelled me from ever consuming their produce.

Ultimately, journeying away from a Vermont winter, away from months of winter squash, cabbage and potatoes, has broadened and deepened my appreciation of the food system we are creating in Vermont. Our community has made a profound commitment to eating food that is not only locally grown but sustainably grown. Driving through Bakersfield, Calif., one of the most artificially contrived agricultural regions in the U.S., made me wish everyone could see these sterile fields, see how the workers are treated, see how water floods the desert to grow lush food, and see how chemicals are sprayed with abandon on the fields. Witnessing this gruesome but predominant aspect of our food system disheartens me as I realize what an uphill battle we are fighting. But then I think of the CSA I help manage, and how at every pickup people praise the produce, of the abundant and diverse life in our fields, of the broader agricultural community we are blessed to be a part of, and I see a different picture emerging. One that is not about choosing between local or industrial food; it is instead about choosing community, sustainability and the pure joy we can experience when we engage in our own local food system.

Peter Wadsworth is one of Cloudveil’s Inspired Mountain Ambassadors. In his words: I’m a backcountry skier earning my turns among the weather-worn mountains of New England. I also trail run, climb, race bikes and even show up fairly regularly to a day job. But really, these other things are just enablers for backcountry skiing adventures away from the lifts and crowds.

It’s not that I’m stiffing good waiters. I always tip good waiters, at the going rate plus. (If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to eat out.) But the grouchy, the indifferent and the glassy-eyed, whom I used to tip because I too was once a waiter — well, they still get tipped. A bit. More leftover coin, less paper.

As for the phenomenon of tip jars in places where you carry your own food, bus your own dishes: there must be a dang value-added deal in there somewhere, beyond “I deserve a bonus for showing up to work.”

For these tough times, behold some random tips to improve your random tips. (I waited tables in hoity-toity dinner joints; not everything applies to working days and working counters.)

Know where to put a sock, and when. Of course, counter help and busy breakfasts require a gift of gab. Still, even if you have a degree in enigmatology, suppress the urge to let your customers know that you’re really too smart a person to be merely waiting tables. Unless your restaurant is lit with fluorescents, evening waiters should, like a good writer, use only necessary words. Spend the extra time listening. More to the point:

Don’t self-narrate. “Here’s some more water.” “I’m taking your plate.” The self-narrating waiter is annoying for two reasons. One, it’s needless racket. Two, it’s a subconcious plea for a bigger tip. You might as well be saying, “I’m working hard for you.” “I just performed even more work for you.” “Did you catch my extra effort? Remember that when you pay your bill.”

“Still working on that?” Don’t ever say that. Ever. This should be a shooting offense.

Wear a tie. Why did I wear a tie while waiting tables at a steak house in Jackson Hole? Because I am a frigging rebel. Seriously, sometimes I wore a tie, sometimes I did not. The tie seemed to unloosen an extra 10-20% in tips. People are funny that way. You can think, “I ain’t wearing a tie — that’s giving in to the man.” Or you can think, “A more formal image plays with people’s heads and right into my hands.”

Observe, Grasshopper. Another trait of the self-narrating waiter is to ask too many times, “Is everything okay?” Often, an honest response would be, “Everything is okay except for the waiter who keeps interrupting our conversation.” Rather than pester your diners, go Zen. If all your customers are jabbering, eating, laughing and generally having a good night out, you’re golden. Examine faces from a distance. You’ll eventually spot one neck craning. Zoop, you hustle up on her blind side as if by magic: “May I help you?” The mind-reading servant is most treasured.

Remember our tea-loving friends. It’s a coffee world. When dining out, tea drinkers feel like they’re second-class citizens. If you have to, smuggle in your own stash of fresh (important!) teabags and make sure piping hot tea water shows up at the same time the coffee does. Sweet old lady tea drinkers gave me loving forearm grips of gratitude, an appreciation that invariably appeared on the final tab.

Ones and fives. This should be Waitering 101. When making change, the customer should be able to tip to the max in green. Leave fives ones instead of a five, two fives instead of a ten — are we to 10 Benjamins for a Cleveland yet?

Pretend. There is a famous exchange between Dustin Hoffman and Sir Laurence Olivier on the movie set of “The Marathon Man.” Hoffman was a hot new star, Olivier of course the epitome of the professional actor. The story has been told many times and in many ways. I repeat it here as best I can, making up the dialogue:

Sir Laurence Olivier: “Good god, Dustin, you look terrible.”

Dustin Hoffman: “Yeah, I’ve been up for three days.”

O: “What’s wrong with you? You should get some sleep!”

H: “It’s my method, man. My character has been up for three days. It’s how I prepare.”

O: “I don’t prepare. I pretend.”

All true professionals have one thing in common: if someone is watching, they seem to enjoy their work. Sometimes they actually do enjoy their work. But when they’re not feeling so hot, they have the wisdom and grace to keep their burden to themselves. They pretend.

Apparently, quite a few waiters and counter workers have been trained to expect three perks from a customer: sympathy, tolerance, and a nice tip. True, life is cruel, meaningless and pointless — then the first pancake never comes out right. All that, however, is a personal problem.

I like my latte with the illusion that someone was happy to make it. (Conversely, it feels wrong to encourage someone to keep a job he obviously hates.)

A truce, then, to help us through these troubled times? Pretend you’re happy to help me and I’ll pretend to be happy when tipping.

Based on the incredulity this latter fact has been met by, it seems no one else has discovered the gloriously gruicy (greasy/juicy) caloric bang-for-a-buck of the McDonald’s double cheeseburger (490 calories for just over $1).

You guys do know about Hostess fruit pies, right? (480 calories for just under $1 … but less protein and more sugar … and harder to transport.)

And that Snickers really can satisfy?

I put in massive amounts of training, skinning up Snow King sometimes upwards of 20 times a week, for 24 Hours of Sunlight. (One day I did 10 laps.) I spent only slightly less time thinking about food. (Out of both boredom and an interest in my caloric needs.)

Eating horrible foods like double cheeseburgers (with Big Mac sauce) isn’t the main reason I’m drawn to ultra-endurance events and long days in the mountains, but it’s certainly one of them. But then, I’ve never before suffered from the exercise-induced gastritis that has plagued me since Sunlight ended.

Are the 10 pounds I’ve lost in the six days since Sunlight ended the result of eating too many or too few double cheeseburgers? Or maybe it’s because of the chicken broth that got me through the night? Or the ramen I’d slurp down without chewing?

During Sunlight, the skinning wasn’t the hardest part. Neither was the tedium of covering the exact same path 23 times. Eating was the hard part. Knowing that no amount of laps on Snow King can help me during a race in which I don’t eat enough, I had a goal of 200-300 calories an hour.

But that, for the first time ever, was challenging for me. Both physically and mentally.

Physically challenging because although I can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can’t consistently eat and skin simultaneously. At least not without a concentrated effort.

It taxed me mentally because, even though I majored in math, figuring out different food combinations to reach my 200-300 calories/ hour goal was a strain and also because – at least from lap 18 on — I was so bloated (from the blood that was evidently beginning to collect in my stomach – fun stuff), eating was the last thing I wanted to do. And then my taste buds went all whack. I know Ensure (another great caloric bang-for-a-buck) and chicken broth taste very different, but they sure didn’t then. Both were equally gross. I might even have described them as tasting like, “rotted, burnt poo.”

Not surprisingly, between the inadequate eating and the guy following me playing Eye of the Tiger on a mini boombox, my last laps got pretty slow.

Crossing the finish line after my very last lap (the 23rd), I distinctly remember saying, out loud, “I don’t need to do that again.”

Now that I’m (mostly) recovered (and 10 pounds lighter!), I’m remembering something else: to my initial goal for Sunlight. It actually wasn’t to set the women’s world record for most vertical feet skied uphill in 24 hours. It was to skin 37,500 feet, a figure that would also happen to get me the record (which was 33,000).

So, even though I got the record, I didn’t really reach my goal. Which brings me back to thinking about food. I really couldn’t stand to train any more. As it was, one more lap up Snow King and I think I would have lost it. Besides, 30,000-40,000 vertical feet/week is enough. I can’t dial in my gear any more (Goode rando race skis are amazing). My mental game is good. I can’t cut down on breaks during the race. (I only took one, which lasted about seven minutes and was necessary to switch socks and liners.) Food is all I can change.

But the question remains, should I have eaten more double cheeseburgers (with Big Mac sauce) or less?

Skinning 34,500 feet, Jackson-based Dina Mishev won the women’s solo division and set a new women’s world record for the most vertical feet skied uphill by a woman in 24 hours at the Fourth Annual 24 Hours of Sunlight. She welcomes most any food input (especially any input that involves increased consumption of gruicy foods).

Still, this holiday season, I’ve started researching ways to green the gatherings. I came across a rather bloody cartoon PETA video, as well as some practical steps toward sustainable celebrations.

Enjoy the fruits of my research. And have fun playing the turkey-plucking game, if even for 4 seconds. The biggest problem with the game is that while the images are gruesome, the game ignores the reality of delicious smells emanating from the oven stuffed with a turkey that is stuffed itself with rosemary, gravy, bread, cranberries and juices. I’m sorry to say that the game will feel like a forgotten comic strip to meat lovers sitting in the kitchen inhaling that juicy warmth. Still, there are green options for everyone, from carnivore to vegan.

Check out To Turkey or Not to Turkey.

Some ways to thank the earth and give some green love:

*SEVEN TIPS for a GREENER HOLIDAY SEASON (including throwing an outdoor party to save some heat by making your own).

*GREEN YOUR THANKSGIVING (including donating your turkey fat for biofuel!).

*SUSTAINABLE THANKSGIVING TABLE (with meatless and meatful options).

*SIERRA CLUB HOLIDAY CHEER.

*YAHOO’S GREEN GIFT GUIDE (including a Trendsetter section for the “coolest person you know”).

*HOLIDAYS IN HARMONY WITH NATURE (as in, in the comfort of your own “holiday yurt”).

It’s true (it’s plastered all over the Internet): Michael Phelps eats mayonnaise for breakfast (along with three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and fried onions, two cups of coffee, one five-egg omelet, one bowl of grits, three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar and three chocolate-chip pancakes).

If Phelps lived in Jackson, he’d probably eat most of his meals at Bubba’s (he’d order about five Working Man’s specials) with breakfast burritos from Down on Glen as an appetizer and maybe interludes at the Teton Steakhouse to spice things up.

Can someone please write a kid’s song about Phelps’ menu for aspiring Olympians?

America’s Darling consumes about 12,000 calories a day and you can, too. In fact, about a quarter of our country’s people may already be on this diet.

Personally, I’m closer to the Olympics than the average American. For, I have two out of three ingredients in the Recipe for Winning More Gold Medals Than Anyone Ever In The Whole Wide Entire World*: Grow up in Towson, MD/attend Towson High School (I went to school with Michael’s sisters Whitney and Hilary), eat egg sandwiches and pasta at most meals and
swim- five-hours-a-day-six-days-a-week-maintaining-a-cut-bod-a-good-attitude-
and-a-sense-of-humor-despite-serious-pressure-and-a-young-age.

So, yeah, the last one is a bit lacking my life (read: non-existent). But, not bad for a commoner. Now, about that exercising/ripped/composed elite athlete part….

* In five days, the 23-year-old “human dolphin” has won five races and set five world records (often beating his own previous world record); he has broken 30 since he was 15.

Lauren M. Whaley thinks maybe if she rode her bike 10 hours a day, she could start to maybe possibly approach the Phelps Diet, which would include, but not be limited to the following: McDonald’s bacon, egg and cheese biscuit (at least two), Caramel Machiattos (at least two), warm raspberry rubarb pie, crunchy apples dipped in chunky peanut butter, crunchy brownies topped with cookie dough and oreo ice cream, as much cheese as possible, especially brie, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cap’n Crunch, Fruit Loops, Honey Smacks, Lucky Charms, shrimp scampi and Fettucini Alfredo, cannolis, garlic bread smeared with real butter and lots of danishes, pastries and croissants. YUM!