Cory: My story is actually today-- It's very, very simple. It's not science. It's very, very simple, and it starts with climbing trees. This is a photo of me when I'm, like, two. My parents are like, “Yeah, just go get dirty. Go play.” People are like, “Hey, your son's up a tree. It's 40 feet. That limb looks pretty ...”  They're like, “He's fine.” Then it's like, ch, ch, ch, boom. Then it's like, “Ah, (beep)!” Here we are in the emergency room again. 

But early on, what I realized was that pushing boundaries has consequences. Right? Like, that's part of it. But we have to push boundaries to understand our limitations. We have to learn how far we can go. You know, that was ingrained in me very early on, that pushing boundaries was something that was important to not just where I would be, where I was, but how far I could take myself. Early on, I did everything in the mountains. That was my life. That was my family. But pushing boundaries became something a little bit more. It became about pushing social boundaries for me. That ended up becoming quite a problem. I was a smart kid. I was 12 years old when I went to high school, and I was a straight A student. That had its own challenges. That was pushing boundaries in its own way. However, what ended up happening was, rather than going out and climbing or skiing, or venting my frustrations as a young kid in high school, I basically glommed on to the older kids, and I started doing all the wrong things, hanging out with people that were more socially advanced than I was. I was pushing those boundaries. I learned very, very early on that rules, all of the rules that we follow, are arbitrary. There's only one that actually sticks, and that's that we all die. Other than that, it's all arbitrary. When you learn that when you're 14, and your parents are like, “You're grounded if you don't come home at 11:00.” You're like, “Phh. Whatever.” Maybe that's not the right boundary to push, but I was pushing those. And because of that, I ended up being a high school dropout at 14. I had gone from being a straight A student, to being a high school dropout, completely on the streets. I was in rehab three... 

Well, I ran away from rehab three times. Another boundary pushing exercise. The last time I remember the director of the rehab looked at me and he said, “If you leave, you will end up in the gutter. You will never amount to anything, and you will likely die.” He's actually-- I don't begrudge him for saying those things. That's actually fairly correct. A lot of people that do end up in that situation do just fall into the cracks. But it was because of that time when I was homeless, for the most part, that I started to learn about the larger human struggle, that story. I wanted to tell it. I wanted to tell people what I was experiencing, how I was going through that. 

So I used climbing. I used photography and climbing, to try to tell that story. That was my early attempt. It was beautiful because it's allegorical for the struggles we have. Like this photo, it looks fantastic. But the real risks there are minimal. They're tiny. That's a rope. If he falls, he's safe. But it's a wonderful story to tell. But really early on climbing for me was about proving to everybody that I was not a (bleep) up. I was just trying to prove to the world that I was not that kid that was going to fall through the cracks. I was going to use the energy that I had to propel myself and tell this story, this larger narrative. But as I got into that, I started looking at people and characters, the people I was climbing with. How pushing boundaries is a transformative psychological issue. How we change ourselves when we do that. How we continue to learn through our exercise. Not just climbing mountains, but also how our world is affected by that. As I traveled more and more and more, and climbed more and more and more, I started to observe that world. All of a sudden, something that was very, very much about me, a selfish pursuit, climbing, became about telling the larger story of the planet. Because I could not move through these environments and not care. That just couldn't happen. The mountains have always been a vehicle to voice myself. So I'd continue to go back, and I continued to push myself, and I continued to try. But that's sort of taken a little bit of a back seat. 

In 2010, in Pakistan, we went to climb the first winter ascent of an 8,000 meter peak, Gasherbrum II. But what's interesting is that, as important as that climb was for me, it was more important for my photography. Because as you'll see here in the upper left hand corner of this, is the border of Pakistan and India. So while I was there, I was actually talking with Sadie Quarrier, who is one of the photo editors here, and talking about-- She wanted me to exercise my storytelling capacity. Climbing was that, I had that, and my skills had brought me there. But what I started to actually focus on was this conflict zone. It's the highest battleground in the world. This is the Pakistani military living on the border of Pakistan and India. I became engaged in using my photography to tell this larger narrative. What does it feel like to be a Pakistani soldier fighting on the highest battleground in the world. What does that look like texturally? How do we bring that back to people? How do we translate that experience for people through imagery? That was what I dedicated myself to. I still keep a very small collection on my website that I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud of it because I noticed that I was pushing my own boundaries as a storyteller, which to me is invaluable. How do you tell the story of a broken conflict, of a broken war? How do we use media to translate that experience for people? How do we use art to do that? 

The first assignment I did for the magazine was another step in that direction, where we started bringing together three-- I call it the golden trifecta: adventure, culture, and science. We were using climbing, I had that skill set, to go into this ancient cave complex in the Kingdom of Mustang. Mustang is a kingdom that's on the border of Nepal and Tibet. We were trying to reexamine perhaps a forgotten path on the Silk Road. We were using climbing to access these ancient cave complexes. We were looking for human remains, and we found plenty. We were looking for burial crypts, because we needed the strontium. The strontium is in your tooth enamel. It's an element. It can tell you where somebody's born, based on what's in their mother's breast milk, the water we drink. Now if where they were born and where they died is different, you can start to paint a picture of human migration. So all of a sudden, I was using photography in a different way. It was not about adventure. It wasn't about necessarily being in the highest mountains in the world. But it was about communicating science to people in a tangible way, in a way that engaged them and gripped them. 

But it's never been enough for me to just stay in one spot. I'm not good at it. Ask my wife. Ask my parents. They're like, “You're a mess.” I'm like, “I got to get on another plane.” They're like, “You got back 4 hours ago. Just relax, dude.” I put myself on assignment down in Indonesia. I went down there. I wanted to expand. I wanted to push my boundaries again as a photographer. I wanted to be underwater. I felt like, Okay, I've been up on the mountains. How do I expand myself more? So I went down, and I wanted to use imagery and media to talk about things in a cultural context. The Bajau, they were sea gypsies. They always used subsistence fishing. They lived on the ocean, and from the ocean. And as the Indonesian government has started to mandate that they stay in one spot, that has changed everything. How do you tell that story? That's a very important story. Why? Because as people stop moving, they start to impact the area they're in heavily. Now that they're in stilt villages, they start to overfish their reefs. They start to overuse their resources. How do they do that? They use net fishing. But more importantly, they use bomb fishing. What happens to a reef when you throw a bomb in the water? Sure, you get a lot of fish out, and that's great. But it's not great, because it destroys the whole marine ecosystem in one fell swoop. It's dead. It's gone. It's done. 

I started to look at storytelling and imagery as a way to look at some of the harder issues, the issues that our planet is facing. How do we do that? It's not just about science. It's not just about adventure. It's not just about culture. It's about how we as a human family are impacting everything, and only through pushing my own boundaries as a storyteller and having that insatiable curiosity could I continue to do that. What does it look like when we mandate a way of life is different from something that everybody has always known? It changes everything. It changes everything instantly. How do you put that in pictures? How do you put it online so that other people care, so that they want to be engaged with this culture? 

My most recent assignment for the magazine was going to Franz Josef Land. But that's again where I'm trying to push boundaries. I don't know how to tell a natural history story. I don't know but I'm going to go and I'm going to try. I'm going to try to tell the story of a changing landscape, a landscape that is changing because of our human impacts. Right? What happens when we don't take care of our planet, when we are not stewards of it in the right way? Now, granted, this is a very, very impactful photograph. This is one tiny, tiny piece of Franz Josef Land. It's tiny. But it's very, very visual and graphic. It tells you that story instantly, that we are a damaging species. We are an invasive species everywhere we go. But I want to try and expand myself always and push boundaries of adventure and storytelling to give people a view that they might not expect. Is this the Arctic we think of? No. Big sandy plane? Not at all. How are we having that impact? What is going on there? What's our interface? How do I get people excited about bird populations, the barometer of an ecosystem? How do you do that? How do you make pictures that do that? That's what-- I've changed my whole way of thinking. When once I was completely devoted to one thing, climbing, to prove to everybody that I was good enough, I've now changed that and said, “How do I prove to everybody that are good enough to change our problems?” 

It's very, very simple. Art is very simple. The other day I was driving. I'm in Yellowstone, and I'm on assignment out there trying to tell a coexistence story. Honestly, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. I moved up there. I was a vegan and I didn't drink. I'm a carnivorous, functioning alcoholic at this point. I'm trying to figure out, how do I bring all of this together? How do I tell this story to this audience? Because you guys are all way smarter than me. That's it. Then I saw a bumper sticker. That's where my inspiration comes from. Bumper stickers. It was a very, very simple bumper sticker. It just said this. It said a little bit more than this, but just this. Art is not a painting on the wall. Art is not just a piece of music. It's all of that together. Art is about communicating ideas. We have to readjust how we think about art. Art is everything. Art is science. Art is engaging our kids in science. There is an art to education. Art is communicating ideas. That's what the first cave painting was about. It was, I want to tell you this. There is so much information in this room, and there is so much that we have to share with each other, in order to solve our problems that we're facing as a planet. When you think of this word, you have to think of what is at the heart of it, right in the center of it. That, in and of itself, alone, with everybody in this room, can change the course of our future. That's it. That's my message. It's very simple. Taking the complex, boiling it down, to something that is beautiful, simple, and complete in itself. So go forth and create.