USFS 2019

It’s a love letter in overt terms to pop culture and dad jokes, and in sneaky terms to Montana (if you know, you’ll know when and how).

It’s a recovery story and an attempt to narrativize family history under the guise of a century-later update of Norman Maclean’s “USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky.”

It’s neurodivergent and millennial as hell and I sorely hope this machine kills fascists.

It’s an affirmation of the Mister Rogers maxim that feelings are mentionable and manageable.

It’s a Sagittarian proletarian comedy in three-ish parts.

You can use the buttons to access the chapters for each of those parts. However, if you intend to participate in the game, be sure to download the board below before you start reading.

Every tile on the game board corresponds to a pop culture reference in USFS 2019. The regions the tiles are in correspond to the respective part in the three-ish parts the reference appears in.

You’ll notice there is no “Thereafter” region on the game board. Stop playing and enjoy the view once you get to that section.

Some references will be very obvious and literal, others may be more obscure.

Use the buttons below the preview of the game board to download the board to your own device. Mark it up to keep track of the references you catch.

Count up the number of tiles you marked when it’s all over and see where you rank in the prestigious Psilocybin Standings. Click the preview to enlarge the scorecard if needed.

I’m ultrasensitive to the unusual word combo that, on first reading, imprints on my thinking for the long haul. I don’t know why some phrases stick while most don’t, but one thing is consistently true of the ones that stay with me. There’s that platitude about something being old as the hills, and that applies to what I’m talking about, but with a qualifier. Phrases I best remember sound old as the hills without imitating them. And those hills might better resemble Norman Maclean’s “rocks from the basement of time.”

I think way too much about the ideas of where we come from and where we go, especially in the context of the deaths and rebirths we undergo in a single material lifetime. It’s always earned understanding that helps me make the passage from one life to the next. I think of it as the spiritual equivalent of blood and organ donations.

Lots of texts became figurative organ and blood donations in the period that USFS 2019 was a live wire for me. That period was long, as was the list of unwitting donors, and I intend to reflect more on both after the story has had some time with the people. But I also want to recognize some of the transplants that became endemic to the spirit of the story along the way. That’s what will be going on when you see text with a gray background in some chapters (as an extra, right-aligned column in desktop view, or stacked below in the mobile view).

As corny as it sounds, many of the most distinct phrasings in USFS 2019 are homages to voices that made me feel like I’m not the only organism wired the way I am—not the last of my kind, as it were. And since USFS 2019 is in part an attempt to transpose some of the abnormalities of my brain, I want folks who might feel isolated on account of theirs to have a map to what made me feel less alone.

The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

One of the reasons I wanted to get this story to the people digitally and on my own domain is that I could do whatever I wanted with the presentation (like what’s happening here). Recognizing folks who got me through some shit is really important to me.

This marginal content may technically be marginal, but it’s not insignificant. In these sections, you can read about some folks whose work is really important to me and how their words came to be some of the bedrock of USFS 2019.