Unplugged #25: Both Magazines At Once Month, unlocking the winter mountains, befriended by wild crows, and the Paperclip Maximiser

January felt like a mixed start to 2026 here at Alpenglow HQ. My part of Scotland has had something like double its usual rainfall. The valley of the Isla has been flooded for weeks, and the relentlessly grim weather is starting to feel a bit like a broken record, even for someone who likes the wild dark and the Sturm und Drang. I’ve had a heftier tax bill than expected. January’s been an eventful month as far as work goes, too, with a full schedule and a few unexpected developments. 2026 feels like it’s trying to impose a narrative of ‘this is going to be a grim year, so buckle up’.

However, it hasn’t been all bad. I’ve been able to spend some quality time in the mountains, including a winter ascent of Bidean nam Bian, Glen Coe, in conditions that felt like 2009 in all the right ways (except I’m not 23 any more). I’m starting work on some engaging new projects, and I’m finding time for personal writing. Later this week I’m off to the Fort William Mountain Festival to see some friends and maybe watch a few films.

Plus the rain has got to stop at some point, right? I’d love to be able to get out for a local bike ride or run without getting drowned at some point before spring. Time to change the narrative.

• January was Both Magazines At Once Month, which means I’ve been working hard on getting Volume 35 of Sidetracked and issue #48 of Like the Wind over the finish line. At this time of year the timelines for both magazines run in parallel. In January 2025 this led to a crazy month as I didn’t quite know what to expect, but this time I put in more prep work before Christmas, so it’s felt a lot more doable. Sidetracked has gone to press and LtW#48 is nearly there.

• I’ve been working on an exciting new project with Tim Frenneaux – something that aligns closely with what I’m trying to do here with Alpenglow Journal. Looking forward to sharing more about this soon.

• Conversations are ongoing for future projects further into 2026. It’s shaping up to be an interesting and varied year for my work.

• I have been picking away at my big traditional ‘2025 in review’ post, but in all honesty I’m feeling a bit bogged down with it, and wondering if people actually want it in their inboxes. Please let me know – should I bother finishing it?

🧭 The Great Outdoors, March 2026 issue

You might have spotted me on the front cover of the February issue, and I’m back in the March issue with an article about hiking the Toubkal Circuit in 2024 – an adventure with my colleague and friend Emily Woodhouse (check out her guidebook to Toubkal here). Great to share some pictures and stories from this fab trip.

🏔️ Unlocking the winter mountains on Ben Lawers

Glad to see this piece I wrote for TGO about getting into multi-day winter mountaineering now live on the website and free for all to read. Right now is the best time to get involved with the most engaging way to experience the Scottish mountains – in my opinion, that is.

📸 Revelry Collection Volume 002

My copy arrived! As I mentioned before Christmas, I have a piece in the new Revelry Collection – and also the inner cover image (a photo from my trip to Lochaber last November). The new larger format was a surprise, but I think it’s a strong look for this coffee-table magazine about analogue photography.

Two frames from the snowy spell in January, shot on a walk through the woods in Dunkeld – Leica M3, Summaron 35mm f/2.8, Ilford HP5+ pushed two stops in development. I think my transition from primarily 50mm to primarily 35mm photographer is now more or less complete; the 50 has become the secondary lens now. Remind me to write about this in a future post.

Another topic for a future post: in 2026 I’ll be scaling back the amount of film I shoot a bit, simply because it’s expensive and I can’t afford to keep shooting so much! I’m going to try to limit myself to one roll per month.

I’ve been neglecting my drawing over the last few weeks what with everything, but I did manage to create one small engraving. This is a version of the monogram I’ve used ever since I was a child. You can see the print at the bottom of this post.

🏰 Titus Alone, Mervyn Peake

I’ve almost finished the third book in the Gormenghast trilogy, which I’ve been steadily reading through since late 2025. My verdict: the first two books are masterpieces, but Titus Alone is not as good. It contains flashes of brilliance, but overall I’m finding it far less coherent.

😇 Paradise Lost, John Milton

Speaking of masterpieces, I picked up an 1805 copy of Paradise Lost a while ago and have been immersing myself in all its iambic pentameter Early Modern English glory. I’m about at the point where Satan, as a black mist (Dracula-style!) is seeking the mazy folds of the serpent. This is the first epic poem I’ve read since Beowulf in the original Old English when I was a teenager, and to say I’m obsessed would be an understatement. ’Innumerable as the stars of night, / Or stars of morning, dewdrops which the sun / Impearls on every leaf and every flower.’

🌿 How I Was Befriended By Wild Crows

Jonathan Foster on connection with non-human beings, the glory of nature, and how stories can help us understand the world in ways that facts and data cannot. Tremendously enjoyed this – it’s wonderful.

Fables, folkloric myths, fairy tales and legends are story-maps of social meaning and guides to the real and imagined landscapes in which we live. They are an important and uniquely human ways of making sense of the world and guiding social and cultural behaviour. They are like little lighthouses with which we navigate through the Great Darkness.

A world created through the human lens of storytelling and poetry-maps and instructive fables of social meaning isn’t less rich than one told though careful observation, rigorous skepticism and hypothesis testing. Part of the reason we’ve found ourselves in place where multiple Climate Crises are fast decimating life on earth is precisely because we have discredited the importance of the meaning created through ancient human narratives. We’ve limited the source of meaning to a very narrow spectrum and the results are clear to see.

🏃🏻‍♂️ On Movement, Self & Other

In one of the finest pieces of writing I’ve read on Substack this year so far, Adrian Howell explores a journey that many of us embark upon, but few of us even perceive as a journey before we take the first step.

In my mind, I had internalised the belief that athletics were a fight of sorts: for social hierarchy (if you were good at football, you’d be near the top no matter how much of a prick you were), for cheaply manufactured trophies, for parental validation.

It was in these moments of succumbing to the wilderness, lost on mountain trails above the tree-line, that I began to experience an absence of self that can only be described as liberating.

There is no doubt in my mind of the parallels between hyper-competitive thinking and the colonial mentality. The roots of imperialism, of conquering and taking the winnings, is surely mirrored in the way that we approach athleticism.

✍🏻 On Letters: How (and why) to write for an audience of one

Ruth Gaskovski has published a primer on handwritten letters: why they’re great, what value they hold, how to begin writing them, and plenty of visual inspiration. I’m a huge believer in letters. I don’t always manage to find the time to write as many as I would like to, but I went through a spell of sending and receiving several last year, and they are so much better than any form of digital communication.

Putting words onto paper streamlines attention, tapping into a flow of thought that cannot simply be deleted. Knowing that words are directed at one specific person, who will hold this paper in their hand, reading with undivided attention, adds worth to each line.

🤖 Is AI the Paperclip?

Short but superb take from the insightful pen of Nicholas Carr, who compares the current mania for AI to the allegorical Paperclip Maximiser.

This quote is particularly ominous. The tech titans have been speaking in religious undertones for a while, but these are starting to become overtones. There is no place for human beings in this future. The Machine may spread throughout the stars, but we won’t.

Elon Musk, having abandoned his earlier misgivings about AI, announced last week that he was merging xAI into SpaceX. The combined companies were “scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars!” he declared. “In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale.” It’s exactly what Bostrom predicted. The monomaniacs will not stop with the resources of the Earth. They’ll extend their plundering to the heavens. Everything is raw material.

🏔️ Miss Isabella Straton on Mont Blanc

I always enjoy Ronald Turnbull’s engaging accounts of historical mountaineers. Come for the story of a pioneering female Alpine climber you might never have heard of, stay for the gorgeous paintings of Mont Blanc.

📸 Winter on the Pennine Moor

These Polaroids from Deborah Parkin are wonderfully evocative. The era of achievement through perfection is over; in imperfection now we must take refuge from the glare ever brighter and more merciless.

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Images and words © Alex Roddie. No AI has been used in the creation of any work on this page. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce this material without permission.