Wayward is a print-only publication. As much as we want to share every word and photograph lining our 220-page magazine online for greater accessibility, we are committed to preserving the wonder of these contributed stories in a tangible form.
Below are snippets of the longer pieces that make up Volume 001.
● Words and images by Sandro Küng
Alpine summers
In summers past, I used to roam,far from the peaks that felt like home.
While I chased trails in lands afar,my thoughts sometimes stayed where the mountains of the alps are.
The high routes called, but I was gone,their fleeting season quickly done.
So this year, I chose to stay,a mountain summer, all the way.
I split up my holidays
through weekends wide,
escaped the heat,
climbed alpine sides.
Granite routes I’d long admired,cool stone beneath, my heart inspired.
Sunrise lit the glacier’s skin,crampons biting frozen in.
Before the light, the stars still shone,their silence loud, their moment gone.
We crossed white ridges, cold and steep, where snow still clung, and winds could creep.
Our breath was thin, our steps were slow,but what a world of ice and glow...
● Words and images by Andy Sherar
The crows hunched in the shade of the joshua trees, waiting
By the time I finished my oatmeal, I knew something was up. We had skipped breakfast in order to get on the road faster, and my hunger had caught up to me. So, I’d raced far ahead of Laura and Garrison on the bombed out Baja gravel road, looking for a spot to get out of the wind, and boiled a pot of water for coffee and oatmeal. At any moment, as gas hissed from my two-burner Coleman stove, I expected to see them coming around the bend. A breeze blew my oatmeal wrapper off my tailgate and a crow circled overhead in the silent sky.
My leaf springs creaked in feeble protest as my truck rattled over the desert washboard, retreading the tire tracks I’d left. You start floating over the bumps at about 40, and things really smooth out once you get up to freeway speeds, but I kept a conservative pace, expecting to see my friends RAV 4 around every corner and over every rise. Finally I crested a hill and saw them parked in the middle of the road, the car’s blue hood raised...
● Words and images by Owen Hunter
Room full of dust
Shaping to me is a life long learning process built off trying new things and building connections with those who came before you… I am lucky enough to have learned techniques from some of the pioneers of the modern age, yet I still don’t know the half of it. However, I do know the feeling I get when I make a pass with the planer or a cut with that flimsy old saw of mine. The way it feels to go from the nose to the tail, just like performing a beautiful bottom turn to get to that perfect line on the four-foot face outside my old mans’ home tucked away on the coast in San Diego. There’s a sense of slowing down and fully being present while feeling the foam scraps hit my warm forearms in the hot bay...
● Words by Julia Lackey & images by Abby Solis and Jon Purcell
The first embroidered topography I created was an anniversary present for my boyfriend. We climbed the Salathe Wall together in 2024 and it felt like an experience we would hold close for our lifetime. The following summer, I ventured out on several more walls and had the privilege to watch my beloved girlfriends accomplish walls of their own. We would always cheer each other on for the whole ordeal and typically have treats and love letters waiting upon return. It was a big deal to celebrate each other and our accomplishments, but these moments felt fleeting. Often, there’s a lot of prep and planning that goes into a big wall; then the wall itself may take up to a week, only to be followed by a short-lived celebration atop the mountain before racing down in time for work. It felt only logical to commemorate what will be some of our lives greatest achievements and fondest memories into something we could hold onto...
Wall Style
● Words and images by Jacob Martin
In Search of Discomfort?
Comfort.
Our modern lives are quite comfortable.
Our modern privileged lives.
Unlike some, we don’t have to search for food or find shelter for the night.
We can relax, stay warm, stay dry, and fill our bellies with relative ease.
I think this is why many of us like to climb and bike and hike and surf and swim in the cold seas.
In a weird quirk of life, we look for some discomfort...
● Words by Angie Stevens & images by Wesley Pfleeger
Shared joy in the shaping bay
Morning dew has settled on the congregation of native plants resting with impressive stature in front of San Luis Obispo-based surfboard shaper Shea Somma’s front yard. It’s just gone 8 o’clock and what remains of the prior night’s rainfall is the sharp twang of cold lingering above our Central California coastal town. We stand among the yellow flowers of Shea’s Coreopsis gigantea, the serrated, spindly leaves of the Aloe dichotoma and the paddle-like stems of the prickly pear cactus. He’s been collecting native plants since he was a kid, he tells me, as we snake around the house along dirt paths lined with Dudleya towards the backyard developments.
Shea says it was a five-year project to collaboratively plan and design the buildings with his wife, Kendra Aronson. He points first to the 450-square foot studio painted an aloe green where they lived until their daughter turned two, then looks proudly at their shared workspace where Kendra, a food stylist, photographs each day while he spends hours enveloped in his soundproofed shaping bay.
He’s owned the property since graduating college here in 2007 and over time has laid down roots that nurture and support the space. It’s teeming with life and quickly reveals itself as the connection point of his brain, a microcosm of his life’s work. As he speaks of his 16 years of board-shaping experience and his flourishing business that has grown from it, it seems I transcend with him out of the yard and into the water...
● Words by Trevor Lott and images by Abby Burns
My name is Trevor Lott.
I am a rock climber and slackliner currently living in Fort Collins, CO. Although I am currently living here in Colorado, I have spent most of the past three years living and playing in Yosemite Valley.
One day a buddy and I were riding our bikes around the valley and ended up at the Upper Pines campground which tended to be engulfed by the shadow of Half Dome looming over it. As we rode through camp we noticed a slackline in one of the campgrounds and promptly directed our handlebars towards it to go get a sesh in. As we rode up we saw a charmingly dirty and tall man with long blonde hair standing next to the line...
Buy Wayward Magazine Volume 001, out now!