For those of you who prefer to read on paper (or e-reader) rather than in your Substack or email app, I have converted this essay into an easily printable PDF.
Two unrelated conversations recently led me to reflect on the levels of power and influence we all hold, and how those levels are likely a bit higher than we think. Especially if we’ve been kicking around in a given arena for a while. A profession, say. We get all surprised when it turns out that we have aged into a position of authority and influence, even if that’s not the story we tell about ourselves.
For example, part of me still thinks of myself as a beginner in the outdoor creative industries – a youngster striving to establish myself. That has not been true for years now. I’m a mid-career writer and editor with pretty well-established clients and niches… and I’m knocking on the door of middle age too, something I find even harder to grasp! In my mind I’m still figuring out strategies for getting past the gatekeepers, but the fact is that I am now one of them.
I’ve recently been confronted with the fact that I have a not-inconsiderable amount of power about which voices get heard in outdoors media. I also have more power over views and opinions than I think.
I’m not saying this to inflate my own ego but as a foil against being careless with this power – a reminder to be conscious of the privilege. It’s likely that you also have more power and influence than you think. Use it wisely!
At a young age, I learned about the concept of paying it forward to younger writers – that we owe it to the next generation to support and empower them, because this calling is hard and will never get any easier. This is something I’ve always tried to live up to, but one thing I never knew is that it becomes more important as we age.
Be excellent to each other!
From my desk
Working on right now
Sidetracked Volume 36 and Like the Wind #49.
Proofreading the manuscript of a new book for a private client.
A couple of photography articles for On Landscape.
I spent half of yesterday figuring out the new Making Tax Digital scheme, which I have to enrol in from next tax year. Urgh.
A fragment
The Shy One
She treads the lonely ridges without me From pass to pass and peak to peak. And if In some year distant, far from here, a sense Of deja vu comes drifting on the breeze, My footsteps trailed by gentle presence felt Not seen – a mountain new to me and yet Known fully to my deepest soul – I’ll know The Shy One walked here once before. The way Marked lovingly, I wave again and back She waves to me. The lantern of the sun Winks out. She fades, the shadows grow, and on I go, the halo and all colour gone. —Alone on the summit of Ben Macdui at dusk
Recent stuff
My copies have arrived! This issue is all about the magic that happens when we surrender to the journey. As editor, there are so many personal highlights in this one, but I particularly enjoyed working with climber Masa Sakano, filmmaker Rachel Sarah, and photographer Hamish Frost to create a short vignette based on the new film Masa: 居場所 (The Place Where I Am). Also shipping with Volume 35 are Snow Stories, the Special Edition we created with Patagonia, and the Sidetracked Guide we created with Brittany Tourism. Get yours: https://shop.sidetracked.com/products/sidetracked-volume-35
🥾 The Great Outdoors, April 2026
In this issue you can find a Wild Walk from me, taking readers over the fabulous Liathach ridge in Torridon.
Recently processed images
A confession: I haven’t processed any new film since January. As I posted in Unplugged #25, I took a look at just how much I shot in 2025, totted up the cost (even with the savings I make rolling, processing and scanning myself), and realised that I needed to scale things back a bit in 2026.
So I’ve been getting back into personal digital photography, but I’ve been trying to keep the experience as close to film as I can: same focal lengths (35mm and 50mm), manual exposure and focus, and processing in black and white. I aim for uniformity of visual style across both mediums.
Early days yet, and of course my keeper rate is a lot lower with digital, but I’m pleased with some of these recent results. Curiously, I now find the smooth, grainless look of native digital files far too sterile, and add grain back in Lightroom…
What I’ve been reading
Books
📚 Courting the Wild Twin, Martin Shaw
What a delightful book, all about how stories can connect us to deeper truths about the world and ourselves. Many thanks to Tim Frenneaux for sending me this.
The world pushes you into poetry by withdrawing something, not giving it. The greatest poems are not written by the woman who got that last kiss; they are written by the woman who didn’t.
Magazines
📸 Black+White Photography, issue no.311
Beautiful work from Beth Moon in B+W. Her hand-coloured portraits of grand old trees are bewitching.
From the web
🤖 Brave New World? Justice for creators in the age of GenAI
Bombshell report from the Society of Authors, eviscerating claims that AI can be anything but an act of colossal harm to creative industries with no valid upsides. The full PDF is well worth reading – if you read only one thing I’ve linked to this week, please make it this.
I am angry about this and I’m not going to stop banging on about it.
A new kind of industrial collapse. The destruction are witnessing is digital – silent, invisible and global.
57% of authors say their career is no longer sustainable due to the impact of GenAI
Recent policy narratives have frequently presented GenAI as a central driver of the UK’s future economic growth. However, current economic data indicates that the UK’s creative industries continue to play a significantly larger and more established role in the national economy.
🌿 I went full Shepherd for World Book Day
finds a new way of knowing an old favourite place.
This is what Nan means when she implores “there is more than one way to climb a mountain”. Free from the pressure to be somewhere, like the top, or see something, like a boulder or cave, I could really immerse myself in this familiar but largely unknown landscape.
🤖 Please don’t put AI in my map
Thank you to for alerting the community to the enshittification of komoot, the navigation app that has just announced a dismal partnership with AI platform ChatGPT. The comments on the Instagram announcement are overwhelmingly (and passionately) negative. Nobody wants this, and I applaud Immy for her articulate stance.
To use a mapping analogy, I can’t figure out where going down this track leads us. What is the end game of this? When you boil it all down, what does adding ChatGPT actually give us?
Blindly following the apps, eroding (or even not bothering to develop in the first place) navigation skills by outsourcing thinking to an algorithm already seems risky. To outsource it even further, to me, seems wild.
Turn yourself into the little God you know you are - every whim, thought and desire catered to in an instant. The only thing you’re required for is to know what your heart wishes - and even that can be outsourced to the AI if you would like. Maybe that’s a harmless good. Maybe we are all spending a bit too much time thinking about the landscapes we are travelling through anyway. Maybe too much thinking has been the problem all along.
💾 An unquantifiable formula for social media
posted a great piece over on the new Substack about how he has created some pretty wild success for us on social media. Now dear reader, you all know me and my opinions about social media, but it is actually important for a business organisation, and the thing I really like about this is that the secret sauce was Mark’s own subjective human creativity. (Full transparency, I edited this piece.)
Reiterating the point that we are data led, it’s ironic that the winning formula here is something unquantifiable. Human creativity is central to everything we do at Sidetracked, even in the numbers world of social media.
🌿 Mt Famine, and the enduring stories of place names
:
We like to think of these hills as wilderness, a blank canvas for our weekend escape or no-man’s land where people are equalled. But Mt Famine reminds us that the landscape has always been a ledger of policy and power. The farmers didn’t choose the rocky outcrop; a system chose it for them.
Recently I’ve heard people complain that “politics should stay out of nature”. If Mt Famine’s place name teaches us anything, that horse bolted the stable long ago. Politics decided what land we could walk on, who could own it, how it would be treated, etc., long ago.
Please welcome to Substack! Andrew is one of the most skilled writers it’s ever been my privilege to work with. I edited his first two books and cannot wait to get stuck into his third. His epic account of a long-distance walk across Europe almost 30 years ago should be an example for all writers – this is how you tell a truly worthwhile nature and adventure story.
I write to explore the world and myself and to share what I find. I write in the hope that my experiences of nature will prove beneficial to others, not just to myself. I was once an introvert who struggled with life. I was unconfident, uncertain, anxiety-ridden. But my journeys changed all that. Completely. They showed me the benefits that come from connecting with nature. They revealed the benefits that come from reaching out to others, the enrichment that comes from sharing, the positivity that comes from making connections.
That’s all, folks
Your support enables me to keep publishing Alpenglow Journal. I don’t earn a living from this work, but these words, images and feelings are the most personal I will ever share. It takes a lot of time and effort to put it all together. Please consider becoming a monthly paid subscriber to support me directly – or you can always drop me a one-off tip via Ko-Fi. Thank you.
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.
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