Most of all, Endurance
Five highlights from a recent interview with MAD Agriculture
Three weeks ago, I chatted with MAD Agriculture’s Director of Media, Jonnah Perkins, for what might be my favorite conversation about The Way Around, among other things.
Jonnah is a deeply talented and thoughtful writer, farmer, and athlete—we worked together during my time as senior editor at Outside/Trail Runner, where I edited a series of pieces co-sponsored by POW (Protect Our Winters) on the intersection of food, movement, and climate.
Our talk took the better half of an hour, but she edited it beautifully for clarity and concision.
Below are five of my favorite snippets. (Here’s the full rap.)
1. On Subtext
“I’ve been a competitive ultrarunner since 2008, less so now, but I was pretty in the mix from 2008 to 2013 or something. I was part of this recreational mountain running culture that felt both like a deep immersion in wild spaces and a commitment to stewardship—bringing with it awe and wonder. With that came, particularly in the superlative ultra scene, this sense of longer, the faster, the higher, the better. I just was curious about what was underneath that, what was beneath that language.”
2. On Shaping and Being Shaped
“How do the shapes we follow in life shape us? I had a growing suspicion that the paths we take in modern life—so linear, so extractive, so predictable—are not just boring but environmentally and existentially suicidal. What would it mean to adopt, embrace, and walk into an alternative shape? Not one that’s new necessarily, but one that is old yet largely forgotten. That’s what the book is about.”
3. On Walking the Pit
“I designed my own walk—a 20-mile circumambulation of a massive Superfund site, an abandoned copper mine in Butte, Montana. It’s considered one of the most toxic places in the country. I spend an entire day walking clockwise around the lip of this noxious pit, a pilgrimage into the Anthropocene—both as a practice and a summoning of my own courage to, as Donna Haraway writes, stay with the trouble … How do we steward a place that has been violated? How do we bear witness to all parts of a landscape—the beautiful, the broken, the forgotten?”
4. On Magic
“It all comes back to a simple curiosity: the land is alive, stories make us feel more alive, and when you combine the two, magic happens. That’s what I’m after—creating and sharing that magic through words.”
5. On the Center
“Instead of seeking an experience, I’m learning to let the landscape move through me. That shift—decentering the human, the runner, the hero—is a core part of the book. It mirrors the shift we need as a species, with a planet on fire largely because we’ve placed ourselves at the center of everything.”
Go Deeper:
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Leave a comment or share this interview. Gosh, I love hearing from everyone.
Oh, and the title of this post pulls from the following oft-cited quote…
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.” - James Baldwin
I read the whole interview & found it very moving. I am partly moved that you spent ten or fifteen years with the book. I found myself, funny enough, thinking about slowness as part of the way around—funny, of course, since that seems to be the opposite of what running is about. And yet it seems you allowed yourself to take the slow path to this book. I wonder if you would agree & if that resonates.