How Shittymorph Saved Me From A Grizzly In Glacier National Park
Editing: Peter O’Shamseign
One of my favorite things about the Internet is the way subject-matter experts leave comments that open windows into worlds you'd otherwise never experience. Reddit in particular branded itself as a reliable source of information from industry insiders with IAmA, a popular mid-2010s series of posts wherein plumbers, pilots, deep-sea welders, and the details of every other odd profession under the sun were laid bare by insiders.
For the past 6 years on Reddit, it’s been a regular occurrence to find yourself reading a comment from an expert discussing Hollywood makeup, lava-lamp-generated encryption, or heavy equipment operation… when their story suddenly derails into a familiar phrase: “in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.”
This line has become an iconic Reddit meme, and it’s all due to one user: Shittymorph. Morph draws in and quickly disarms readers in only a few sentences, then springs what has been described as a “text-based RickRoll” on them.
As a writer, I would never consider myself concise. I’ve admired Morph’s skill and use of medium ever since I was tricked by his early work. As my fascination with the future of storytelling and technology’s role in it grew, I began to view his writing as not just a meme, but as flash fiction. In July, I decided to reach out and ask if he’d be open to doing an interview on EoSV. Morph replied that he didn’t want to do any more standard interviews, since the interviews he had already done with both CNET and KnowYourMeme, covered his online persona.
Instead, after reading my blog and seeing I had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, Morph suggested that I should fly from San Francisco to Missoula, where he would pick me up at the airport for a hike through Glacier National Park. When finished, we could write about the experience.
I said “what the hell-” and bought a plane ticket to go into the backwoods with an Internet stranger. This article is that collaboration.
Day 0
We shake hands, I throw my pack in the back of the silver minivan, and we pull away from the Missoula airport, all in just over a minute. He’s got a little Reddit goody bag ready for me in the passenger seat.
We take a lazy pace North towards Glacier National Park, making several stops along the way, grabbing food, fuel, and fun. Morph suggests a Malte Shoppe he used to frequent in St. Ignatius as a meal stop. After I order a bubblegum milkshake and chicken fingers, Morph points out that chickens don’t have fingers. The cook beams proudly when Morph says he likes his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt. He gets two grilled cheese sandwiches with extra pickles, opening the sandwiches and adding the pickles as he eats.
We wander into the St. Ignatius grocery store for last minute supplies, and Morph lets someone with a single item I hadn’t noticed skip line to check out before us. I remark how he’s more observant than me, words I would repeat several times before he dropped me back off at the airport. I’ve come to think of his perceptiveness as part of the engine powering a modest superpower— virality.
Morph has found Internet notoriety on so many separate unrelated occasions that it led us to an ongoing discussion of the skill/luck divide, and my frequent questioning as to whether he thought he could “see” something about the Internet’s economy of attention that most can’t.
Morph was at one point on Jimmy Kimmel Live for an episode involving the theft of his son’s backpack. His send-off tribute for his beloved dog(which involved sending hundreds of tennis balls to strangers) was featured on every major television network and many radio stations. 300,000 followers know him as “Juicemorph” on TikTok, where he shares videos documenting the rehabilitation of his new dog Scooby, the sole survivor from a group of dogs that were confiscated during a dogfighting bust. Morph has hours of stories about catching the Internet’s interest. This all in addition to the millions of people who know him on Reddit.
Despite all this, Morph hasn’t monetized beyond participating in an experimental tipping program run by the Reddit administration team. He’s continued to live the quiet, itinerant life he’s always lived. He’s worked as a carpenter, electrician, and an I.T. professional. He was licensed to grow cannabis for medical patients in the San Francisco Bay Area. Before all that, at 18 years old, he joined Actors Equity Association, acting in both film and theater into his 20s. He tells me his favorite job ever paid $6.00 an hour cash— washing dishes with an ocean view in the back of a loud, smoky fishermans’ bar on a pier jutting off the Oregon Coast. Most recently, he owned, operated, and closed a tech-repair shop in a sleepy midwest town. Last year, he purchased a home there with hopes of “settling down,” but never slept a night in the place. Now he doesn’t know what he’s going to do. Morph isn’t particularly fond of planning ahead, and the road is calling him once again, so loud I can practically hear it myself.
Ironically, On The Road is his favorite novel, and he admires the Beats. Gonzo journalism and work like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas motivated him to propose the adventure we’re on right now. Morph is writing a book of his own, but he dodges my questions about its contents as our drive takes us north into the mountains.
All this comes out as we swap stories of adventure, misadventure, and life. Morph has a humble familiarity about him, and I feel I’ve known him for a long time even though we’ve just met in person. We get on the subjects of altruism and the desire (or need) to show the good behind a story. I explain how I feel core emotions drive narrative; Morph details the philosophy behind his online presence: He wants his story to be an inspiring one highlighted by kindness, not mired in the divisiveness that drives the majority of online clicks. On that, we agree.
On the road to Glacier, we drive past Flathead Lake. It seems to tail us for over an hour— never-ending, expansive, beautiful. Morph tells me about other Redditors that he’s met over the years, both in person and online. His interaction and private messages with actor Val Kilmer have been his favorite. He rattles off names of Redditors that he’s interacted with, listing “405Freeway”, “Abagelnamedswag”, “MontanaTrev”, “RamsesThePigeon”, and “SubieFiles.” He talks about “SoDakZak” and “PleaseCallMeTall”, a prolific writer and trainhopping, vagabond musician. As we drive by cherry stands and apple orchards, he tells me about a Redditor who was convinced that Morph was a CIA plant. That same Redditor would end up being known for trying to start an all-out war on “the elites” in Sun Valley, Idaho:
“It was sad to watch all that unfold,” Morph says, “because I had hung out with the dude... and even though he initially thought I was some undercover CIA operative – which is strange – I couldn’t help but wonder what his personal demons looked like.”
Glacier
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Glacier is one of the most-popular national parks, and as such, it has strict permit-requirements. The “gates” are open between 6AM and 8PM. As luck would have it, we pass the abandoned entry-kiosk at 8:10 PM, as the sunset turns the sky and mountains purple-orange with its last gasps of light. We only see a few cars about; nothing compared to the midday locust-swarms. The valley feels giant, empty, and serene. We trade idle chatter about the park’s majesty while I scan the map for potential campsites. Beyond two cans of bear mace, a week’s worth of dehydrated meals, and our gear, we haven’t exactly planned ahead for the trip. Morph tells me he prefers it that way, unless he’s headed into extreme elements.
We pull into the lodge 7 miles inside the park and attempt to figure out details. Morph talks with a Park Ranger who’s short with us for trying to walk-up-camp in one of the nation’s most-popular outdoor attractions during peak season. Morph wonders who put a bee in her bonnet as we go into a gift shop to buy some water. The clerk there is more kind and lets us know about a few spots for dispersed camping outside the park. The clerk compliments my “Bad Bad Hats” tee, saying he saw them open for the FrontBottoms a few years back. I take it as a good omen: The world’s killers tend to get balanced out by its chillers.
Finding our way back onto National Forest Land after sunset, we drive down a dark (except for stars and headlights) dirt road for 20 minutes. I’m a little anxious about finding a good spot. Morph keeps the mood up and light with a wacky exultation: “DON’T PAINT THE DEVIL ON THE WALL!” He’s been on this refrain since grilled cheese and chicken fingers, and I’m amused by the folksy, bible-beating pastor persona he affects while he belts out the saying, which basically means “don’t jinx it, bro.” He talks about first learning the phrase while acting in an Irish play with The Salt Lake Acting Company. The character calls to mind why I’m out here in the first place— to meet some crazy human who manages to conjure vivid windows into the fake lives of fake people in the span of sentences, all for the sake of an Internet joke that has tricked millions of people.
“DON’T PAINT THE DEVIL ON THE WALL!”
We find a pretty awful, slightly sloped spot that would make for an uncomfortable first night in the backcountry. After a coin-flip, we decide to backtrack to a location Morph correctly called out as superior. Following tire tracks leading off the road behind trees, we find our first camp. The air smells of dry earth, pine, and moss. There are crickets chirping over the muted phwushhhhhh of an adjacent stream at the bottom of a ravine. I can just barely make out the (literally) nebulous clouds of The Milky Way, and the stars are ten times more brilliant than when I left them in the city. Tents are up quickly: We are in grizzly country, so Morph hauls the locked-down bear-canister back up the road and away from camp. We both set alarms to ensure we will be up early enough to arrive at the permitting office before it opens at 7:30 AM.
Day 1
Our first full day in the park is marked by self-imposed grief. We manage to forget the bear-canister in a rush to make it to the permit office on time, and arrive at 7:29 to find ourselves at the back of a long line. A middle school teacher shows up behind us and gives some advice on good routes to take. She needs to be back for school at 9 AM, and is an equal mix of helpful and in a hurry. I fill out the permit application based on the park map, and when we hand it to the ranger, he chuckles: The locations we’ve chosen have been booked for months, and what walkups had been available were already taken. Not to worry, though: He points us towards a campsite called “Fifty Mountain,” which would be the first stop on a 60-mile loop. I feel apprehensive that I can finish 60 miles in 3 days, especially considering all the elevation gain and loss. This isn’t the PCT, and my hiker legs have been gone for almost a year. The ranger (a liar from Georgia) assures us that it isn’t too hard of a hike at all. He wants to book it for us in a hurry, before any of the other sites on our potential loop are taken.
Just like that, we have a route to follow and a campsite to get to… 17.5 miles away, mostly uphill. First things first, we drive back to last night’s site to retrieve the bear-canister. Again in a hurry, we take a wrong turn, but we correct the error when the dirt road turns from a recognizable, bumpy-but-passable affair into what looks like the aftermath of an artillery strike. We retrieve the canister and head back to the trailhead.
Morph and I have both hiked significant parts of the Pacific Crest Trail. Despite having a bear-hanging method named after it, large swathes of the P.C.T. require hikers to carry a bear-canister, which is basically an indestructible bin where you keep all your food at night. I had read online that they weren’t required in Glacier but chose to bring one as a safety blanket anyway. Our bear can would provide most of the day’s consternation while also drawing snide remarks from hikers that were more experienced with the area.
We set out from a trailhead called “The Loop.” We’re lucky to find a parking spot amongst a bustling bathroom area halfway up the main road’s climb into the mountains. We check gear while eating clementines and homemade zucchini bread. The forgotten bin had put us behind for the day and is now overladen with food for the short, three-day trek. Show me a person who doesn’t slightly overpack food for a long-weekend backpacking trip, and I’ll show you a CHAMPION. The bin must add a good 10– 5 pounds to whatever pack it’s in.
Morph and I take “Granite Chalet Trail” – a steep, 4-mile climb from “The Loop” – to the chalet, which I am surprised to find isn’t some sort of in-joke or crumbled historical site, but an actual little set of buildings on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. If they’re more proactive than the two of us, people can book stays there in what look like quaint, old-timey motel accommodations. On the way up, we pass a gaunt, mustached man that might be cosplaying an 1850s cowpoke. He leads a train of 6 pack mules down the mountain.
“Y’all should stand over there so ya’ll don’t get kicked off the side of the cliff!” he calls gruffly as his mules pass us. They’re laden with trash and spent fuel-canisters from the chalet above.
This trail happens to be the descent for the highline trail, the most-popular day-hike in the park. We pass chipper day-hikers on a merry jaunt back to the shuttle and their cars, some of whom decide to get clever with remarks about how we are “taking the hard way up.” One even stops to ask if we were “gluttons for punishment.” It is, indeed, punishing. I drag my feet under the weight of the bear-canister and mid-day sun, which has the temperature in the mid 90s; hotter than I’m used to for alpine hiking. Halfway up, I ask Morph to take the bear-can, and we swap it every so often from here on out. When we finally reach the chalet, they don’t have a fresh water source on site. Instead, they offer bottled water... for $7.50 a liter.
Now that we are up at elevation, our campsite is still 12 miles north over what the chalet attendant refers to as “rolling terrain.” Things are rough on both Morph and I as we set out. I start getting hangry around 3pm since I haven't eaten a real meal today beyond the clementines and zucchini bread I’d stuffed into my mouth at the trailhead. Morph isn’t hungry and says he’s content with water but is getting some cramps in his legs. Lacking group consensus, I foolishly decide food can wait a few more miles. The lack of electrolytes and calories start to weigh on me (in addition to the damned bin). Any hiker who sees the thing stops with a dumb grin to say something along the lines of “ya know you didn’t have to bring that, right?”
Over the next few hours, I note the difference in mood between Morph and me. I’m not what you would call an aggressive optimist. Frustrated and feeling like we’ve bitten off more miles than we can chew, I lock eyes on the trail 10 feet ahead of me while Morph soaks in the sweeping alpine views, chipper and positive. At around 5pm, we seek shade behind a large boulder for a long break. I eat a “chili mac” dehydrated meal, drink electrolyte water, and split a bag of sour spaghetti with Morph. My mood is instantly bolstered. We make the decision to split the weight of the food from the bin more evenly, which leaves me a much happier hiker than had sat down an hour before.
The sun is starting to go down, and in consultation with the map, I’m not optimistic about our likelihood of reaching the Fifty Mountain campsite, more than 9 miles away through “aggressive terrain.” The hiking path is wide enough to feel safe, but there are places – like the cliff ledge of Ahern Pass – where a fall would mean certain, messy death. It feels foolish and unnecessary to chance this trail in the dark.
A brief aside:
Glacier is built differently than other parks that I’ve had the pleasure of hiking. Its paths are cut at much more-aggressive slopes, and its campsites are set further apart and with rigid permitting for where you can and can’t stake tents. With a pit toilet at every designated campsite, Glacier has an odd combination of the curated camping you get closer to the frontcountry and the more-rugged, dispersed camping you see in other mountainous parks. The locked-down camping environment in Glacier is presumably due to the grizzlies roaming the park; bears that occasionally attack (and kill) visitors. Every hiker you see is carrying a can of bear mace, should they happen to run into one of the park’s murder bears.
Things cool down as we press on. We agree to see how far we can get, but I am emphatic that I don’t want to overdo it and injure myself, saying that I will settle for setting up camp anywhere circumstance or fatigue dictate. Morph reluctantly agrees, then says he knows we can make it to Fifty Mountain. After dinner there is a long, 3-to-4-mile descent. The dropping temperature makes perfect hiking weather, and the steady downhill has us making awesome time. We pass a sign indicating that the Fifty Mountain campsite is only 7.5 miles away, which is 2 miles closer than I’d predicted based on the map.
While we jaunt down the easy slope, we talk more earnestly about things going on in both our lives. Morph has just experienced a difficult breakup: He’s left feeling inadequate; that the best version of himself wasn’t enough to make things work. In response to the turmoil, he closed his techrepair shop and put his house on the market. He talks excitedly about not knowing what the future holds while reviewing unpredictable variables. I talk about my own issues with people close to me doubting or trying to tear down accomplishments that I’m proud of. We commiserate, and I find catharsis in hearing that even someone as accomplished and recognized as Morph – with his platforms reaching millions – is experiencing similar issues. Despite those issues, Morph seems to be keeping his head down and remains optimistic, forging forward in his own way, at his own pace. I’ve known people who would be so embittered by what Morph experienced that they’d be sidled with a venomous pessimism about other people in perpetuity. Not Morph. His tenacity on the trail mirrors that resolve.
As the light wanes, the trail begins to climb again. My mood sours, and I push to find any site to settle down, park rules be damned. We see headlamps on the side of a mountain in the distance, maybe a mile or two ahead of us. Morph calls out the lamps and keeps us driving towards them. As I mentioned earlier, he’s much more tuned-in to the world around us. While I sweat and silently curse the darkness and slope, he calls out some heat-lightning forming in the distance that I won’t notice for another hour.
Up and up and up into the night. I like to think I have a good internal pedometer, and it is telling me that we had hit 7.5 miles around 9 pm. It’s 9:45 and we’re still climbing. The headlamps we’d seen before are now higher up on the mountain side. We’re standing where they’d been when we first saw them. I know I’m not fun to be around at this point: I tend to be very critical of unprotected cliff-hikes in the dark, especially with exhaustion looming. We stop multiple times in the dying light and disagree: I feel like we could set up camp in some areas, but Morph prefers to try and push on. He tells me he’s game to follow suit with whatever I decide, but I never feel strong enough to actually take action and make camp, and so we walk on.
Still up we go. It’s around 10:30 when we finally stop climbing. I’m sure the view would be stunning in the daylight, but all I can see in the dark are those same headlamps bobbing in the night; fairy spirits now hundreds of feet below us. We come across a sign that marks the fork to head towards Fifty Mountain Campsite, and I practically jump for joy. We’re almost there.
We begin a VERY sketchy descent. Morph remarks how dangerous the path has become: Any slip could send us hurtling down the slope with no hope of stopping save the valley floor. The trail is collapsed in many spots where the gravel, shale, and skree have slid down the mountainside... and pieces unnervingly tumble with each of our steps through the darkness. I wonder multiple times if we have wandered onto a goatpath, but my determination for camp and sleep drives me ever downwards. The only way forward is down, down towards the headlamps.
Eventually, we hit level ground and surge up and over a series of hills into the campsite, startling the two hikers who we’ve been following for the past several hours. It’s around 11pm, and the stars and Milky Way are out again. I see flashes of lightning miles off over the lip of the valley.
The hiking pair we have been following turn out to be a couple from Chattanooga. We share introductions and exchange incredulity about the trail. The same ranger (the liar from Georgia) had also told them it was an easy do-able hike... and while it had been do-able, it hadn’t been particularly easy.
Morph asks for the bear-bin so he can have some gummy bears. I’d purchased them for myself and say I want to save them, which he calls out as a dick move. It is: He’s been generous with the items he had, and this isn’t really about gummy bears. We’re just two grumpy people who have pushed themselves beyond their safe limits on day one. I’m not looking forward to another two and a half days of similar strain, and although Morph says he is still up for the hike, I sense his fire has dimmed after today’s strenuous miles.
I come into the backcountry to relax, not push myself. This was always an inherent tension of mine while on the Pacific Crest Trail: I’m much more “smiles” than “miles.” It’s a tension you’ll find in any hobbyist community, that of skill and challenge versus enjoyment. Every moment you spend relaxing is a moment you aren’t making progress. Backpacking is further muddled by the concept of “type-2 fun,” which isn’t fun while you do it, but you’re glad you did it later.
The couple from Chatanooga stays up to eat a “ramen bomb” (instant ramen and instant mashed potatoes in the same pot, a hiker staple). They say they are heading back to the Loop Trailhead in two 6-to-7-mile days – stopping at a campground halfway – and they encourage us to tag along. Morph and I discuss and agree that would be a better route and safer pace for the rest of our trip. We pitch tents, hang our food (and the damn bear-can), and turn in for the night. I stay up to read a little, and the thunderstorm’s far edge finds and patters my tent with rain as I drift off to sleep.
Day 2
In the morning, I wake to find 3 friendly Pittsburghers in the cooking area. The conversation turns quickly to the trail the day before. They’d started at Granite Chalet – bypassing the 4 miles of straight up that we had started with yesterday – and still found the path difficult. The Pittsburghers universally decry the 7.5-mile sign, and all agree it has to be off by at least 2 miles of pure uphill. It is a boisterous, friendly morning at the campground, and we’re soon joined by Morph and the Chattanoogan couple from the night before— Kyle and Amanda.
Water is scarce at Fifty Mountain campsite, so we both set out with a liter and a half, hoping to find a source in the intervening 6 miles. We leave late in the morning – around 10 – and another climb brings us to a plateau full of dead trees.
As we walk, we talk about the responsibility of individuals with large platforms, and whether or not they are exerting positive or negative force in the world. The conversation ranges broadly, moving from death of the author, to Chris Brown, to cancel culture, to Ted Kaczynski. Morph’s general philosophy is that he only wants to have positivity associated with his online persona: He finds the easiest way to accomplish this across platforms is by avoiding political and religious debates, and he reasons this leads him to having a much larger and – more importantly – happier, kinder demographic to interact with. I praise the position: I’ve seen just a sliver of the good and bad of controversy-driven traffic in my brief time creating content, and I agree with the general consensus that rage-baiting is one of the things undoing our society.
When he first started out, people would respond to Morph with comments like “You’ll never be Rogersimon10,” who was a Redditor who’d had a similar bit that always involved with his dad beating him with jumper cables. Morph didn’t ever know about the similar account when he started out, and ignored the haters. Now commenters will put down users imitating the style with “You’ll never be Shittymorph.” He says it’s bizarre, and that his focus on keeping positivity around the account often leads him to comment on those threads and tell the haters to chill out, or say he likes the work they are criticizing. We’ve both had our fair share of Reddit haters, and I can’t help but feel delighted he shuts down that negativity. There’s catharsis there for anyone who’s dealt with trolls in the past.
“When you have a platform, you have a responsibility to the community to set a good example,” he tells me. “That’s all I’m trying to do.”
The land of dead trees has little in the way of liquid. Color me surprised. As my water dwindles, I remember the desert sections of the PCT and 20-mile water-carries. I pick up the pace, hoping to reach a source before I turn into a thirst-gremlin.
I’m pressing down the trail into a hollow when Morph’s observant nature saves my life: There's a pile of bear scat in the path, and it looks like the bear passed a parasitic worm. I’m disgusted but unable to look away, staring down at it as I step over. Morph yells out from behind me in alarm.
“Bear! Come back this way.”
I stop and see nothing but a large downed tree and the path ahead. Puzzled, I begin to back up towards Morph, who’s standing on a hill with a view of the whole area. As I back away, the huge head of a grizzly peaks out from behind the downed tree I had been standing next to 15 seconds ago, followed by a cub. If you’re unaware, grizzlies are most dangerous to humans when they perceive a threat to their young. Mother grizzlies have killed their fair share of hikers just by being startled. I had been standing no more than ten feet away from this bear, separated only by a log. Had I rounded that corner and startled her and her cub, I may not be writing this right now. Morph’s attentiveness saved my skin.
Morph heads backwards up the hill we’d just come down, and we briefly bicker on what we should do. Morph argues we should wait for the Chattanoogans to make a group of 4, citing how groups of more than 4 have never been attacked, but groups of 2 have. Not two hours before, he’d mentioned he had hoped to see a grizzly in Glacier, albeit from far away. I’d retorted that I’d prefer to see no grizzlies at all if it came down to flipping a coin between seeing one up close or far away, and he agreed. That conversation is suddenly prescient.
Despite the near brush with death, my thirst is getting the better of me. I argue that we can give them a wide berth and continue down trail, since the Chattanoogans had planned to take a leisurely pace, and we have no idea how long we would be waiting. A tense 20 minutes pass while the bears wander the area, crisscrossing back and forth over the trail. The cub stands on its hindlegs to stare and whiff the air with curiosity as we bang our trekking poles and yell for the bears to “git!”
Eventually, they wander far enough that I am able to convince a skittish Morph to skirt their perimeter with me. We safely circumnavigate them, one grizzly encounter now under our belts, and continue on into what seems to be a bone-dry marshland.
No doubt earlier in the season, the landscape was flowing with fresh snowmelt, but now the cracked creek beds we cross exist just to taunt our thirst. I constantly think I hear water rushing but never see any. We take a break in the shade of a young pine, and I tell Morph I’m looking forward to swimming at Flattop Campground (the next campsite). Sadly, I’ve mixed up Flattop and Flathead (the large lake we drove by on the way to Glacier): There will be no lake to swim in.
Pushing forwards, we stumble upon a pool that looks stagnant. I’m thirsty enough to try and filter it, only to find that it is cold to the touch and flowing! The clouds grace the little oasis with 20 minutes of shade while we throw off our packs and sit to celebrate fresh, cold water.
Not a mile down the trail is the Flattop campsite. There’s an ice-cold creek flowing just downhill from the site that puts our little oasis to shame. It’s irresistible in the afternoon heat.
We find a group of 4 brothers out on a 1-night trip and get to talking with them in the food-prep area. As chance would have it, they are from my home town. We learn each of their professions. When the conversation turns to our origins, Morph relates the story of me being crazy enough to fly out and hike with an Internet stranger, to much amusement. The brothers ask about the reason I’d want to interview Morph in the first place, so I explain how the trip came together and how it all relates to that one time in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table. One of the brothers perks up, incredulous and questions Morph:
“No way? You’re the Hell In A Cell guy?!”
For someone who commands so much attention online, it’s obvious that Morph wants none of it in person. He gives a nervous laugh and replies:
“Haha, yeah, that’s me.”
We keep chatting with the brothers, and eventually move on to the topic of the bears, each recounting our side of the day’s encounter.
Before we know it, a few hours have passed, and Kyle and Amanda arrive. Up to now we have been unsure if we want to push another 6 miles and attempt to leave the park. They ask if we’ll be spending the night at the site. I mention we don’t have a permit, and since Morph and I want to respect park rules, we are leaning towards leaving. One of the brothers is quick to offer an extra permit the walk-up office had forced them to take due to the number of people in their party, which they weren’t using. Morph asks if the person who forced them to take the extra permit was a ranger from Georgia, and they don’t understand why Morph, the Chatanoogans, and I are laughing.
That decided, we settle into the site and chat with Kyle and Amanda about their hiking YouTube channel and life in Tennessee. Amanda decides to do a review for a new brand of backcountry instant meal the couple picked up on their way into Glacier. She films an intro and bumper, and begins to cook the meal. Morph tells me how much he enjoys her quirky impromptu script. Continuing the theme of observant individuals, Amanda perks up after borrowing my pot and asks:
“Do y’all hear that crashing?”
She stands up to check on the noise, and comes back 10 seconds later shouting “BEAR.”
Everyone in the site is there within a minute, and though the first of us think it’s a black bear because of its dark fur, Morph correctly points out that it had the characteristic “hump” of a grizzly. Despite everyone yelling at it to leave, it continues to graze in the creekbed just down from the designated cooking area, then moseys up and into the campsites. Even with all the excitement, it goes on its way without incident.
Amanda finishes her review of the mac and cheese: “it’s so delicious it attracted a bear.”
Day 3
The next day is a simple, 5-mile walk back to the car. While we pack up camp in the morning, we discuss ethical hacking, one of Morph's interests. Morph walks me through the technical details behind a basic deauthentication attack to sniff a WiFi handshake... and then how to crack the captured password using rented cloud computing services from Amazon. He hasn’t talked much about his tech background before this, and I’m surprised by the depth of his knowledge on the subject (especially for someone who claims to have no formal education on it).
The first 3 miles are a return of the alarmingly steep switchbacks from day 1, but downhill this time. The constant impact slope makes short work of my knee, and we are forced to reduce our pace.
Still, the miles are easy, and we’re in no rush to be anywhere. It feels like nature as was intended, unhurried and at peace.
We talk about the past and Morph’s early days on Reddit under a suspension bridge where the water is cool but not ice-cold. Fish jump out of the stream. We are unrushed by the day and the distance left to walk. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sunlight dapples reflections off the stream onto the bottom of the bridge and rocks around us.
Morph stands on rock under the bridge and jokes that he’s a real-life troll. He skips a stone and wonders out loud about LNT, or “leave no trace”.
“Is it Leave No Trace to throw a rock into a stream?”
“Probably not,” I say. He throws another.
“They’ll all just get pushed back up on shore after winter.”
“How’s that?” I ask.
“The snowmelt swells the stream and pushes the sediment from the bed back up onto the shore.”
I’ve never thought about the mechanics of it. Either way, I don’t think most rangers will ticket you for skipping stones.
“I don’t mean to sound like an authority on the subject,” Morph adds. “I just made all that up and don’t know if it’s true or not... but it sounds right to me” We laugh and wonder what will happen to the rest of our lackadaisical day. Morph tells me about his uncle, who in real life is called Hippie Longstocking. He’s featured as a prominent character in Morph’s novel. Morph paints a vivid picture of a lovable yet rabidly defiant rapscallion who enjoys getting a rise out of people ; a troll from before the “art” of trolling was considered a thing.
Up and over the bridge, we decide to walk to the road instead of a steep switchback climb. Within 30 seconds of crossing to the correct side of the street and putting out my thumb, a car stops. It’s only the second one that’s come by, and I can honestly say this is the quickest hitch I have ever received in my decade of hitchhiking. A nice couple from Seattle shepherds us back to the dusty silver minivan. As I place the now-lighter bear canister into the back of the car; it feels like all the frustration of its extra weight has sublimated into fond recollection– a type 2 fun watermark.
Back to Civilization
Driving on the way out of the park, we discuss Morph’s book titled “Morph” (surprise!), which he has been chiseling away at and revising for several years. I excitedly suggest he find an agent and offer to help on the search.
I insist on buying Morph a big meal on the way back to Missoula, and we stop for barbecue in Kalispell. There’s nothing that feels quite so decadent as eating at a restaurant after time in the backcountry, and we make the most of it. Morph spends the better part of an hour responding to tags and messages on Reddit. I send friends and family photos of bears.
After dinner, we are without a goal, and we decide to look for a campsite using freecampsites.net. It leads us on a seemingly endless drive up a mountain dirt road that deposits us at a site overlooking Flathead Lake. It’s gorgeous, and both of us are stuffed and content. I spend a long time looking out over rolling hills to the lake, but wildfire smoke and waning sunlight slowly crowd it out of view. We talk for a while, and neither of us are dead-set on camping right off of a gravel road.
We flip another coin, and it decides we will head back towards Missoula to be closer to the airport. Before we leave, Morph reads out loud the ending of On the Road (the original scroll version). His delivery is compelling, and I’m reminded of his background in hip hop, beat poetry, and acting.
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the last and final shore in, and nobody, just NOBODY knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old - I think of Neal Cassady, I even think of Old Neal Cassady, the father we never found, I think of Neil Cassady.”
I don’t know who Neil Cassady is, so Morph does his best to encapsulate Jack Kerouac’s high-strung right-hand man in a few words, briefly touching on psychotic irresponsibility, the worship or excess, willful arrested development, and a manic self-destructive hedonism, a crescendo that never reaches a satisfying peak before… well, Morph makes the sound of an airplane nosediving and crashing.
We talk about Morph’s various platforms, and of rubbing shoulders with other influencers who are trying to change the world. This time, I dig into the meat of one of the big questions I came here to ask. Morph has had lightning strike time and time again, “going viral” so frequently that at a certain point, you’re forced to stop and consider: Is that viral success really just a coincidence and dumb luck if an individual makes it happen over and over again? Is there something Morph sees that the rest of us don’t? He gives me an answer I’m not expecting:
“I don’t think I’m special or some overly insightful savant for getting clicks, but it does seem I have a knack for what might be called guerrilla-style viral marketing. I see it as a kind of evolving artform that hasn’t entirely defined itself yet. Maybe it's just a natural understanding of social engineering and how it can be applied to mass interaction on the Internet. I think I’m good at finding social engineering vulnerabilities that haven’t been exploited or manipulated… and they CAN be for both good and bad. So, if I were to write a recipe to help someone “see what I’m seeing” as far as virality, the ingredient list would include:
a heightened empathy,
some basic common sense,
a creative imagination,
and probably, most importantly, a willingness to shamelessly manipulate, present, or otherwise interact with information in such a way that could potentially move a large swath of the targeted population in the exact direction you want them to go
But for the love of god, if you figure out this equation, don’t be evil while using it.”
As I’ve come to expect from Morph, he adds a characteristic “not an expert” disclaimer at the end.
His reasonings are always just over the hill from intuitive to me. We discuss other viral episodes of his. He once created a video of an anonymous man rapping in a Spider-Man mask, then unashamedly manufactured a backstory for it, claiming that “someone found this USB at the Apple store, and the rapping Spider-Man video was the only file on it.” Those Spider-Man videos (Morph did this twice, with one video featuring himself, and the other including his friend) went viral and were discussed a couple of times on a TV show called “Right This Minute”. One of the show's hosts speculated the videos were an elaborate ruse, saying “I think someone is using these videos to get people talking, and guess what, it’s working!” Morph explains there was no financial benefit from The Rapping Spider-Man affair, but he and his friends have enjoyed some good laughs about it. I’m left convinced that there’s skill behind the perceptiveness he’s demonstrated the whole time I’ve been around him... one that most people simply don’t have.
The drive back to Missoula takes us into the night. Morph opens up as he details scenes from his novel more vividly. I’m reminded again how effortlessly he conjures vivid and interesting characters, both real and fake, to entertain. He imitates his late mentor 880 (pronounced Eight-Eighty) with the voice of a crotchety old man, detailing all sorts of trouble you wouldn’t expect a senior citizen to get involved in, including freestyle rapping.
Day 4
The following morning, I meet Morph’s mom and her 5 Bernese mountain dogs. This is a special moment for me, as I lost my Berner, Pancake, 6 months ago, and the wound is still fresh.
She and I talk about her incredible son. Morph wanders in and out of the conversation, again ironically uncomfortable as the center of attention. He pokes at his mother’s desire to have purebred dogs when so many good dogs die in shelters. She acknowledges that her position on the matter is conflicted, and that she does her part with rescue cats. Despite their obvious differences, they both ended up with a passion for animals: If Morph had all the money in the world, he’d start his own no-kill dog-rescue. His mother is deeply passionate about the ethics of purebred dogs, and speaks at length on the woes of what happens when the industry is driven towards profit.
This leads into a discussion about how Morph hasn’t used his platforms for profit. I tell her I think it’s because at heart, he fears that introducing financial incentives into his work might interrupt altruistic motivations. That fear seems to drive him to frequently question many of his actions, all in an effort to evaluate them for positive impact. There’s irony in the fact that the people who should worry the least about where they stand morally are the ones who do so the most.
Before I know it, the time has come to get to the airport or miss my flight. I hug Morph’s mom goodbye and give the berners each a pat, then follow Morph out the door.
Goodbyes
Morph drives me to the airport, and we stop at a small Mexican restaurant on the way. We talk more about the way we’d like the world to look, how we can collaborate on this article, and in general share a positive outlook for our futures.
After he drops me off, I sit in the Missoula airport, fat and happy. Content to simply exist. I haven’t felt such an undercurrent of wellbeing in a long time.
I’m so glad I made this trip. Morph confessed that he hadn’t expected me to come out. Hell, I surprised myself by buying a ticket to Montana to meet a stranger on the Internet. With Glacier in the rearview, I can confidently say all the effort to make it happen was the right decision.
So, now in Montana, the sun falls down around glacier-carved mountains. Long, big sky stretches over a vast empty nothingness, and one can sense how minuscule they are between the piles of rocks split by the frozen wanderings of daydreamers. Distant galaxies shed pieces of themselves through a darkness that caresses entirety, cools the elements, and cloaks each massive peak. When I think of Morph, I think of integrity. I think of radical integrity.
 | A guest post by |
Shittymorph’s mom here. Thank you for this lovely and vivid piece — on Montana and my son. Paul — you captured the high points of both, reflecting you may well be more observant than you think. Montana is ridiculously beautiful and wild, and my son — who morphed into Morph somewhere along the way — is indeed keenly observant, an amazing story teller, wary of wall devils, and most of all — he is possessed of radical integrity. You nailed it, Paul. And you brought your curious, clever, open mind to Montana — what a great collaboration you two created. I am glad you enjoyed the zucchini bread, the dogs send their love and I hope you will always remember that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 feet through an announcer’s table. #sorrynotsorry
This was wholly enjoyable. Thanks for the tale; it was easy to feel we were along for the trek with you. And thanks for sprinkling moments of aesthetic language, like this:
I stay up to read a little, and the thunderstorm’s far edge finds and patters my tent with rain as I drift off to sleep.
And this:
Long, big sky stretches over a vast empty nothingness, and one can sense how minuscule they are between the piles of rocks split by the frozen wanderings of daydreamers.