No Borrowed Experience. | 000

I've always enjoyed talking shop with people who know what they're doing. Whether it's a conversation about equipment, arguing over a particular technique, or swapping stories about something that went completely sideways, I've probably learned just as much from those conversations as I have from any formal instruction. That's part of why I wanted to start writing these articles.

There's a lot of good information out there, especially when it comes to military training, mountaineering, and technical equipment. You've got manuals, instructional videos, forums, and no shortage of people willing to explain how something ought to be done. I use those resources myself, and I have plenty of respect for the people who put the work into making them.

What I've always found more interesting though, is hearing from the people who've actually spent time doing the thing they're talking about.

Take rappelling, for example. You can learn the procedures, memorize the equipment, and understand the mechanics well enough to explain the whole thing to somebody else. All of that is important, but there's still quite a bit you won't appreciate until you've spent some time on a rope yourself. You start developing preferences, finding little annoyances with your equipment, and noticing things that never really came up during instruction.

And the funny thing is, two people with plenty of experience can come away with completely different opinions about the same piece of gear. I like those conversations. I like finding out why somebody does something differently, what led them to that decision, and whether it's something worth trying myself. Even when I disagree, I usually come away having learned something. That's more or less what I want Field Notes to be.

I've had the opportunity to work with a fair amount of equipment and pick up some interesting skills over the years. A lot of that experience comes from my time in the military, particularly infantry work, mountaineering, and rappelling. I've also got plenty of interests outside the Army, and I expect those will find their way into these articles sooner or later. Some posts will be about equipment I use regularly. Others might cover a particular technique, something I've noticed during training, or an experience that changed the way I think about a subject. I might spend an entire article talking about a carabiner, or I might write about something much broader. It really depends on what I've got on my mind.

I'm not particularly interested in writing another set of instructions that somebody could find in a manual. Those already exist, and most of them do their job just fine. I'd rather talk about the things that come afterward. What I liked, what I didn't, what surprised me, and what I wish I'd known a little sooner.

There's one rule I've decided to stick to though.

No borrowed experience.

If I'm writing about a piece of gear, I want to have actually used it. If I'm discussing a technique, I want to have practiced it myself. I'm happy to reference other people's work, and I'll certainly give credit where it's due, but I'm not interested in passing somebody else's experiences off as my own. That also means I'm not going to have an opinion on everything. There are plenty of subjects I know very little about, and plenty of equipment I've never touched. When that's the case, I'd rather admit it than pretend otherwise.

I don't expect everyone to agree with what I write, either. I'm not offering definitive answers to every question, and I'm certainly not suggesting that my preferred way of doing something is the only sensible one. I'm sharing what I've experienced and why I've come to the conclusions I have. If you've had a different experience, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing about it. As for the articles themselves, I don't have any grand plans for how often I'll publish. I'd rather take the time to write something useful than put out another post because it's been a week since the last one.

Hopefully, somewhere along the way, somebody reads one of these articles and finds an answer to a question they've had, discovers something they hadn't considered, or just enjoys hearing another perspective on a subject they're interested in.

And if it starts a few good conversations even better.

Welcome to Field Notes.