Mountain & Prairie Podcast

Nicholas Triolo is a writer, endurance athlete, and educator whose life and work sit at the crossroads of ecology, activism, and storytelling. For years, he’s been exploring what happens when we stop charging toward the summit and start paying attention to the circuitous paths that wind around it. His new book, "The Way Around: A Field Guide to Going Nowhere," is the culmination of that exploration — a lyrical, wide-ranging meditation on movement, place, and the art of staying present. In the book, Nick traces a series of pilgrimages: circling a sacred mountain in Tibet, exploring a culturally significant northern California hiking tradition, and walking the rim of one of Montana’s most infamous superfund sites. Each journey reveals something deeper — about endurance and restraint, about intimacy with landscapes and with ourselves, and about the courage to face environmental and cultural shadows without turning away. The book weaves together memoir, travel writing, and ecological inquiry, and in doing so, it