Infinite “woulds”

On constraint and creativity

You need all-wheel drive and snow tires to get to Infinite Woods in the winter.

I found this out the hard way, when I tried to drive there in my ‘98 Toyota Corolla. It had been snowing for a few days on the weekend I visited, and I did have the snow tires on, but Infinite Woods sits on a pretty serious hill. A plow had recently come through so I was able to get most of the way up the hill in second gear. But, right at the steepest part of the driveway, the snow had been compacted into a slick of ice. The top of the hill was in sight when I realized I wasn’t going to make it. The motor’s RPMs shot up as my front tires hit the ice slick, while my forward motion ground to a halt. I threw the car in neutral, pulled the hand brake, and stomped on the foot brake, which kept me perched below the ice. If I let up either brake, I would begin to slide backwards, so I let myself drift back down to a flatter section of the driveway. Then I called Charlie.

This hill was too much for the ‘Rolly.

Charlie knows this driveway well; his parents bought this piece of land in Vermont about 15 years ago, and built their house here. After receiving my SOS, Charlie came down from the house, eager to give the driveway ascent his best effort. He did beat my high-water mark but couldn’t quite finish the climb even after we laid down a bucket of gravel and salt on the slickest spots. More snow was expected; the plow would need to come through again, and my car was in the way. So, we decided to retreat, rolling the ‘Rolly back down the hill, through the tree-tunnel driveway and across a small bridge over an icy brook, and abandoning it there for the weekend. Charlie’s parents came down and scooped us up in their Vermont-proof compact SUV. “I wish our first meeting wasn’t a rescue!” I said, clambering in.

The Corolla at the base of the hill, after a few inches of new snow had fallen.

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Readers, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I don’t blame you if you feel a little disoriented at the moment. Last you heard of Infinite Woods, it was a pipe dream — a code name for the community-building project that emerged from a chance encounter between me and Charlie out in California. But things are moving fast, and I did indeed recently visit the future site of Infinite Woods. I’m more excited than ever about where this project is headed, and I mainly want to use this post to update you on that front.

But first, why has it been so quiet around here? I’ll be honest: I’ve had major writer’s block since returning to Boston. Anyone who’s ever tried to write consistently for an extended period of time has experienced this, so I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. But I have a hypothesis as to why it’s hitting me now, and I think it’s worth spelling out because it’s actually closely related to the goals of Infinite Woods. The hypothesis is this:

On my Amtrak/e-bike trip, my life was simultaneously novel, simple, and constrained. I have come to understand this trifecta as a creative sweet spot.

The bad news — bad from the perspective of writing, at least — is that, being back in Boston, I've flipped to the other end of the spectrum on each of these dimensions. My life has become simultaneously much more routine, complicated, and unconstrained.

Ah, routine. Routine was hard to come by on the road; no set of circumstances persisted long enough for me to settle into a rhythm. This endless shifting started to get old toward the end of my trip, and I began to crave the familiar. On the other hand, when I was on my trip, new posts flowed out of my brain fairly effortlessly every few days, and I often wondered: Am I good at blogging, or are a lot of interesting things just happening to me?

There’s no denying how stimulating it is travel across the country at the speed of a train or bike. My trip was a constant stream of evolving terrain (mountain, desert, plain, bayou, forest), physical and logistical challenge (train chases, inclement weather, gear malfunctions), and fascinating people (Pat, the Poet from P-Town! Michael and Jenny!) It was hard not to write under those circumstances; in between posts, my brain was a jumble of unsettled experience, and writing provided a welcome pause for reflection and categorization, a time to make making meaning of all that raw data. If there wasn’t a routine, at least there would be a plot!

But now routine is back in full force, and (perhaps as a result) I seem to have lost the plot. After recovering from my mildly calamitous return, I fell into a nice rhythm for the spring semester. Run to work. (There’s a shower at work.) Do science. Run home. Cold plunge at the lake. Cook dinner. Visit with friends. Watch TV. Read. Most days go something like this. Progress in academic research is measured in minuscule advances in understanding, separated by weeks filled with little but head-scratching; from the outside it can look a lot like running in place. (If you follow me on Strava, expect to see days with two mirror-image runs along the Charles River, indistinguishable except for the direction.) I tried to write about this a few times and bored myself very badly. So, I think that’s part of my writer’s block — I’m back in some sort of groove, hoping it doesn’t deepen into a rut, and learning that I’ll have to observe more closely to find something worth writing about in my day-to-day.

But my return to Boston has also drastically increased the overall complexity of my life. I think it is objectively true — in terms of the mass of possessions in my orbit, the diversity of responsibilities I have, the number of relationships I’m maintaining, and so on — that things have gotten more complicated. On my trip, I carried everything I “owned” with me in my backpack or on my bike; at home my stuff is everywhere, on floors, in closets, in different houses, in garages and offices and gym lockers and cars. On my trip, I really only had one objective — always some variant of “get from point A to point B”. By contrast, these days I’m always balancing several complex objectives at once, personal and professional, social and spiritual. Relationship-wise, when I was on my trip, I socialized mostly by chance and sent electronic missives out for the curious on my own schedule; now that I’m back in civilization, there are so many people I want to see, and all of us are all so busy, that I have to use Google calendar to set up a coffee date. Calendaring is not one of my strong suits. For me, all of this complexity adds up to a significant baseline mental load. I’m reminded of something Michael, the fellow bike blogger, said to me. Michael lives in hectic Manhattan, and he told me that whenever he goes on a bike trip, after a few days, he feels a transition take place in his mental state. A feeling wells up: Things are simple again.

For me, such a feeling of simplicity is deeply connected to creativity. I am finding it harder and harder to think clearly and generatively when immersed in the bustle of urban life. Somehow the sheer complexity of activity around me crowds out my ability to notice and attend to new things; it’s as if I’m trying to paint, but my canvas is always already thick with other people’s splashes of color. I realize that not everyone feels this way; for some people, the stimulation of the city serves as a creative muse, while the quiet of the countryside is oppressive. But I have always been drawn to quiet places, and this pull has grown stronger as I’ve gotten older. My favorite place on the planet is my family’s cabin in the woods of New Hampshire, where it’s very easy for me to find brain space.

So, things have turned both more routine and more complex lately, and that’s sapping my creative mojo. But my life has also grown less constrained — shouldn’t that make up for it? On my trip, I was literally weighed down by my e-bike and 75+ pounds of gear. I was often constrained in space (e.g., stuck on a train car for 36 hours) or cramped in terms of available activities (e.g., when staying at a campsite without cell service or Wi-Fi). But now that I’m back in a city like Boston, almost anything I could hope to do or learn or eat is always at my fingertips. My job, as a climate scientist at the postdoctoral level, offers enormous flexibility in terms of where, when, and how I work. I have 24/7 high-speed internet, and institutional access to the world’s knowledge archive through Harvard’s library. There’s unlimited free coffee at my office and multiple (optional) seminars per week. I’m in an intellectual mecca; choose any topic, and there’s bound to be an expert within striking distance. I can satisfy a hankering for any type of cuisine with ease. The abundance of material and intellectual resources is astonishing. Shouldn’t all that freedom spark some creativity?

And yet, I have felt creatively barren in Boston! I think there is something general at work here: one of the great paradoxes of creativity is that it seems to thrive under constraint. Total freedom can be paralyzing, whereas obstacles, limits, and boundaries shake us out of our default modes of thought and lead to innovation. Psychologists who have studied this phenomenon find that certain types of scarcity seem to give our brains license to see the world differently.

This isn’t only about screen time, but my struggle with phone/internet addiction is a perfect example of the general problem of “underconstraint”. When I have my phone in my pocket, every passing question or curiosity that flits through my mind tends to lead me down a rabbit hole of internet research. I lose my sense of presence in the physical world and go somewhere else, temporarily disembodied; I emerge from the rabbit hole 20 minutes later, ostensibly a bit better informed about something but none the wiser. And when I go to make something new — when I try to be creative, that is — the ability to endlessly read about or watch YouTube videos of other people doing something similar undermines my drive. With unconstrained access to the internet, I get the sense that there’s nothing new under the sun; content consumption, masquerading as research, hamstrings the impulse to make something myself. As much as I try to impose constraints where there naturally aren’t any — by setting screen time limits, leaving my phone at home, working in conditions of relative sensory deprivation — I still struggle to titrate the torrent of content heading my way. Is it even possible to sip from a firehose?

So: routine, complexity, and lack of constraint — that’s my explanation for why my creative energy has been in short supply lately. What little mojo I have managed to muster has been put toward to my job as a climate scientist, which actually requires a lot of creativity to do well. My type of science also involves a lot of computer work — coding, exploring data, plotting things. After a day of creative and mentally laborious screen time in service of science, the last thing I want to do is open up Substack and stare at a blinking cursor on my laptop. Instead, I want to run. I want to plunge into the ice-cold water in Newton. I want to be embodied again.

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You know where I felt connected to the wellspring of creativity? At Charlie’s family’s place in Vermont, during that snowstorm that was too much for my Corolla. The serenity of their little slice of New England hits you immediately — 100 acres in the heart of Vermont, close to the state capital of Montpelier, their land is about one-third open pasture and two-thirds forested. The woods there are marvelous, the typical Northwoods mix of conifers and hardwoods, hemlock and fir, maple and oak. The house sits on the flank of a sizable hill studded with several natural springs and bordered by a babbling brook. There’s an old barn nestled into a sugarbush and a small spring-fed pond. I can attest that it is a tranquil paradise.

Me and Ace (a very good boy) skiing on the hill at Infinite Woods.

We XC skied on their land every day of my visit, meandering through the trails they’ve cut through the forest and zipping up and down the big exposed hillside, which is a perfect grade for doing laps.

Currently, Charlie’s parents live on this property, but they are planning to relocate to Connecticut. We have their support in transitioning the property into the site of Infinite Woods as their move unfolds. For now, we are in full-on planning mode.

So, what is the plan with Infinite Woods? Our goal, in a nutshell, is to create a solar-powered environmental research institute in the woods. Obviously, having access to Charlie’s family’s land in the woods of Vermont gives us a huge head start on this goal. Research institutes come in many varieties, but what we have in mind is probably closest to a sabbatical destination such as the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. (We definitely aspire to convince the Albert Einsteins of climate to come stay a while.)

For the most part, we don’t imagine folks living and working at Infinite Woods permanently; environmental scholars and climate-focused entrepreneurs would come stay at Infinite Woods for a while (a week, a month, a semester, a year) to hash out an idea, write a proposal, prototype a piece of technology, or finish a book. They might bring their families. This means that Infinite Woods will host a rotating cast of brilliant, passionate people dedicated to understanding and solving the most pressing environmental challenges of our time. The continuous novelty of new folks with different skills and vibes passing through will keep the creative energy fresh.

We will have a variety of private accommodations available, from spartan yurts to cozy cabins, as well as less-private communal bunk rooms. But staying at Infinite Woods will always be highly participatory — don’t expect to just hole up in your cabin! Communal duties will include firewood harvesting, maintenance of the solar arrays and renewable energy infrastructure, tending the community garden, and food preparation and preservation. These duties won’t feel onerous when you experience the simple luxury of a soak in the hot tub (fired by wood you dragged in from the woods yourself!), or when you cook dinner (with ingredients from the garden!) on an induction stove (powered by sunshine captured earlier that day!). When you take a fully-charged e-bike from the stable and cruise to a nearby pristine lake for a swim, you’ll return with a clear head and finally crack that problem that’s been stumping you for ages.

And sitting behind all of this vibrant activity and connection will be the fundamental meaningful constraint of the place: we won’t burn any fossil fuels. There’s a reason society uses fossil fuels for everything: they are so energy-dense that they make it very easy to get around, easy to stay warm and clean and well fed, easy to produce things very cheaply in vast quantities. Foregoing fossil fuels forces one to be mindful about energy use, yes, but it also encourages deep questions about how time is best spent. Without the unconstrained energy-on-demand provided by natural gas, propane, gasoline, or oil, we’ll have to do things a little differently. The problems we’ll have to solve at Infinite Woods are a microcosm of the problems facing society at large during the energy transition — problems such as how to shift the variable power generated by solar, wind and hydro to match when that power is actually needed. People who stay at Infinite Woods will see with their own eyes the size of the solar array that is required to charge our communal electric truck (hopefully, the Ford F-150 Lightning). Guests will come away with a visceral feel for the massive amount of energy on tap that Americans have come to expect, and the challenges that lie ahead as we aim to decarbonize all of that.

So that’s the vision: Infinite Woods will be a place of continuous novelty, simple luxury, and meaningful constraint. If it sounds like a perfect antidote to my writer’s block, well, you’ve got me there. But I’m not alone in facing creative obstacles. My hope is that building these values into the fabric of the institution will enable everyone who stays with us to approach environmental problems with unusual clarity and creativity.

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Where on earth does one begin with a project like this? There are infinite “woulds”, if we had money to spend. But at the moment we are self-funded and our budget is limited.

So, we’ve been doing research. Vermont is rife with organizations and institutions that we can learn from — from environmentally-conscious co-housing communities, to idealistic back-to-the-land compounds, to meditation retreats. During the weekend I visited, Charlie and I took a trip to Knoll Farm in Waitsfield, VT, where cofounder Peter Forbes gave us a personal tour. Knoll Farm grows organic blueberries and Icelandic sheep for profit, and plows some of those proceeds into a not-for-profit retreat center called The Refuge. The Refuge “offers space for deep conversation, reflection and celebration”, hosts conferences, and every summer offers fully-funded fellowships for BIPOC leaders and their allies working for environmental and social change. It’s a very cool model.

The beautiful conference room in the main building at Knoll Farm.

Marching up the hill toward the “yurt village” at Knoll Farm, where fellows of The Refuge stay.

Charlie and I were particularly enamored of Knoll Farm’s environmentally-sound solutions for heating and septic. Peter showed us their “Tarm”, a super-efficient wood boiler. The boiler heats two large, superinsulated tanks of water to between 130 and 160 °F; this water is then circulated in pipes to the cluster of buildings that make up the farm, providing cozy radiant floor heating and hot water for bathing. This is a type of “district heating” model that is super common in Europe but almost unheard of in the US. The farm burns 6 cords of wood per year (a cord is a 4’ x 4’ by 8’ pile of stacked wood). This amount of wood is very easy to harvest sustainably from their 400-acre property: a common rule of thumb is that you can sustainably harvest one cord of wood per acre, so they’re well under that limit.

You might object that burning wood releases carbon dioxide. True! But that carbon dioxide was very recently removed from the atmosphere (when the tree grew, it built itself by pulling carbon from the air). So, burning wood is actually net-zero from a carbon perspective, as long as you’re not harvesting unsustainably (i.e., contributing to deforestation). Put differently, when you sustainably harvest and burn wood from a forest, you are essentially rerouting the trees that would have fallen and decomposed on the ground — releasing heat and carbon dioxide slowly, over many years — and causing that decomposition process to happen all at once in your stove or boiler while capturing the benefit of the heat. Boom! Biomass burning isn’t a good solution for home heating in densely-populated areas and places with atmospheric “inversions” that trap smoke down near the surface, but in rural Vermont, it makes a ton of sense. We’re pretty sold on a Tarm-like system for Infinite Woods.

Charlie and I were also geeking out over the composting toilet system at Knoll Farm. It smelled pleasant, like a saw mill, due to the saw dust that one adds after doing business. The system requires virtually no maintenance and produces nothing but nutrient-rich dirt out the other end. To be honest, it was such a nice bathroom experience that it made septic tanks and sewers and the common practice of defecating into potable water actually seem kind of gross, as well as downright wasteful. Suffice it to say that Infinite Woods is all-in on composting toilets.

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Research is crucial, but a question we’ve been asking ourselves is: What is a concrete step we can take now, that will serve as a proof-of-concept and help to build momentum for the overall project?

I’m really excited about where we’ve settled on this: As a first step, and beginning as soon as this summer, we’re going to be building a solar-powered communal bathhouse, complete with a multi-level sauna, cold plunge, and wood-fired hot tub. This might seem like a strange place for an environmental research institute to begin, but we think this is a perfect starting point for several reasons. For one thing, it requires building much of the same infrastructure that the rest of the institute will need (solar panels, electricity, running water, bathrooms), so it serves as a perfect beta test. Also, who wouldn’t want to come sauna and hot tub in the woods?? A rustic bathhouse is an immediate draw that will entice people to come visit and get invested in the project.

If we do it well, I think the solar-powered bathhouse will go a long way toward helping us raise the money required to build out the rest of the vision. And we will do it well; Charlie’s dad is an expert potter and is keen to use his studio on the property to make tiles for the bathhouse, and Charlie’s godfather is an architect and has graciously offered to do some pro bono design work for us. And, as you know, I’m very passionate about somatics and the therapeutic effect of cold-water swimming and sauna. (This is one of the many passions that Charlie and I share.) With the Newton cold-water crew, I’ve seen firsthand how these practices are shortcuts to building community.

So that’s where things stand. This coming weekend, Charlie and I will be visiting a Nordic spa in Quebec to see how they do it way up north. (Now there’s a type of research I can get behind!) I’ll continue to write about our progress as often as I am able, and if you feel moved to contribute to our effort in any way — financially, or with your expertise, or just by offering your manual labor — you know how to reach me.

—Jake

P.S. Happy Spring! It’s sunny and nearly sixty degrees today in Boston, and the crocuses, daffodils, and wild irises are popping off.