Montology

Montology is the holistic study of mountains through a Liberal Arts and Sciences lens. Montology includes a generalist approach to studying mountains, taking ideas from physics, engineering, geology, data science, biology, chemistry, art, design, economics, psychology, and sociology.

This project will follow my journey as I work towards an integrative view of the surrounding mountains through project-based learning. I will document these projects using my newsletter (progress, failures, learning), my blog (detailed processes), and project integration insights here. My own twist is that I am a dyslexic visual thinker. You can expect an equal mix of text, visuals, explainer sketchnotes, illustrations, visual essays, and comics.

It is my hope with this project that it inspires at least one individual to take on their own integrative learning challenge.

I have 4 main categories of projects: Sequential Art (SEQArt) Mechanical Engineering and Design of Bicycles (MechE) Let’s Be Ecologists Together (LBET) Visual Essays, Zines, Blog, Newsletter (VizThink)

The overview of my 5 year goals can be found on my website here, but the gist is to break things that I want to learn down into smaller units that are targeted “DIY Masters” level projects. This is how my brain works.

While this list of projects seems ambitious (because it is), there are many points of overlap for the projects. For a hypothetical example, a short comic about nature journaling in an alpine meadow next to a lake in the Trinity Alps Wilderness could count for SeqArt masters, sequential art portfolio, nature journaling portfolio, ecology zine, one of the visual essays in VizThink, and a few panels can be conceptually reused for the Pyroscapes Project that has overlapping geographic areas. Now, if one of the panels had a data visualization or some other visual that explained something relating to the bike I took to ride up to the alpine, that could be part of MechE. There is overlap with all these projects like this, and these differentiations are somewhat arbitrary. I consider this one large “lifelong learning” project.

The other learning integration innovation I started doing regularly is using “See One, Do One, Teach One” (a medical school method), but using it to explain and “teach” the characters of my graphic novel and have them interact in small learning scenes. The main characters of my graphic novel project are Tarmo and Stick—best buddies that are re-exploring the surrounding mountain ranges in the future. As I am developing the story, I want to use these micro-lessons and interactions to get into the minds of these characters. How do they process information? How do they interact with one another when learning something new? How do they teach one another? They were long-time roommates in a college-like setting at the Explorers Academy in future San Francisco. They studied engineering, biology, ecology, and human physiology. In many ways, they are my classmates in these projects. They ride a bikepacking rig into the wilds of the Mount Shasta Bioregion, questing for new plant species. As explorers, they spend time making observations in journals using Nature Journaling, Sketchnotes, and other visual thinking techniques. This is the same project, just in fiction form. :)

Projects