majka burhardt
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On Motherhood
2023
Book
I had a plan for motherhood. It did not include twins. A memoir built from six years of letters, written in real time to Irenna and Kaz, about becoming a mother without giving up the rest of who I am.
On the World
2025
Film
What does community-led change actually look like? In Northern Kenya, Samburu women are healing their land and changing who gets to decide what comes next.
On the Mountains
2008
Selection
I went to climb what no one had climbed. What I found was somebody's backyard. A slice of years of first ascents across Africa and beyond, and how they taught me there is no such thing as untouched.
Podcast
Emily Oster and me, on the part of parenthood nobody puts on the birth announcement: what young kids do to a marriage.
Essay
Everyone told me to go bigger, colder, harder. I moved back to small to go big. An essay about ambition, fear, and finding my way back to climbing by paying attention instead of pushing.
Talk
In 2012, Anne-Marie Slaughter asked whether women could have it all. A decade later, she put me on a stage to answer with a different word.
2016
I went to Mozambique to climb a 2,000-foot wall and blend climbing, science, and conservation. What I found on Mount Namuli changed the direction of my life.
2011-2018
Books
I first went to Ethiopia on a coffee expedition in 2006. Seven years and two books later, one of them was featured by Starbucks.
When international funding disappeared, Ngilai’s priorities didn’t. What it means to keep moving, even if you have to move slow like tortoises.
2006
Column
The life in between the climbing you pretend is the life– a selection of my 7-year Whipped column for Climbing Magazine. From decoupling your climbing gear to the real skinny on dating non-climbers, from why capris matter to how to be a dictator of your own van-world.
2020
Opinion
I learned activism long before I had a word for it. An opinion piece about climate, the mountains I call home, and why caring for a place eventually means standing up for it.
How much truth can you afford in the mountains? An essay about fear, risk, and the stories climbers tell themselves in order to keep going. Featured in Vantage Point: 50 Years of the Best Climbing Stories Ever Told.
What happens to ice climbing when winter itself becomes less predictable? A film bringing climbers and climate scientists together to document a changing New England winter, and what can still be done about it.