When I was 13, I joined my brother and his fraternity brothers on a three day backpacking trip in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

Our first day involved a hike up the east side of Mt. Washington. I’d never backpacked before, so the 4,200 foot vertical climb over four miles seemed a lot. I was small and scrawny, and not terribly outdoorsy.

It wasn’t until we got to the summit that I found out there’s a road up the west side of the mountain, with a parking lot and visitor center at the top.

Family lore claims that I threw my pack on the ground and whined, “We could have driven up?!?”

While I don’t dispute that words like that may have escaped my lips, I believe my intent may have been to celebrate the superiority of our intrepid, stalwart squad over the hordes of lazy, slovenly tourists swarming the gift shop.

In any case, my guess is that had we merely driven to the top of the mountain, none of us would remember that day very well. I have no photographs, but 45 years later I do have clear memories of the hike, our very exposed campsite near the peak of Mt. Jefferson, the brick-like “chicken tetrazzini” that was our dinner (“oh, it says garnish with the bread crumbs!”), and the shivery chill of the wind overnight.

The hike was not at all life-altering, and I did not experience any epiphanies worthy of a memoir. It was sweaty and tiring, and I was sore afterwards. I’ve done hundreds of similar hikes in the 45 years since.

Sometimes the point is to get to the destination as quickly as possible. Sometimes the point is the journey itself. So it is with most things in life.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time we’re encouraged to get to a destination as quickly as possible, with the least effort expended. This is why students use ChatGPT to write school papers. This is why I get pitches nearly every day to have an AI write a book for me.

I’ve had AI write things for me. I’ve encouraged clients to have AI write things for them. Just the other day I told a potential client, “I would be happy to assemble and edit that submission packet for you, but AI will do it faster, for free.”

I said that to her because I knew the she would get zero additional benefit from doing that work herself. She had already done all the important work; this was merely molding it into a new form. Getting to the destination as quickly and easily as possible was what she needed.

For the books I publish through Gray Bear Publications, however, I make authors sign a statement saying all the words are their own—never AI generated. This is more than just my ethic and aesthetic, however. It’s a statement to the author that I expect them to do the work, to benefit from the experience, to feel the pride in achievement. It’s a promise that there are other, more important reasons to write than just getting to a product quickly.

Not one of them has gotten to the end and whined, “I could have had AI do this instead?!?”

The authors I’m working with on the follow-on book to Relit are in that long, hard slog right now. They’re digging into their experiences, their beliefs, and the stories they want to tell. They’re exploring their own identity, observing how they’ve grown and changed, contemplating how the lessons they’re writing about are applicable in their own lives today.

I believe this new book, when it comes out later this year, will be of great value to those who read it. Not just because the content will be high quality and the writing engaging, but also because the reader can be certain that every contributor put deep thought and hard work into their piece and that the lessons come from real lived human experience. And each contributor is a real, live human the reader could have coffee with.

In a world where everything is moving at the speed of AI, and fast fashion capitalism is de rigueur, it’s sometimes more valuable to make the long, sweaty, tiring hike to the top. At the very least, when you get there you can feel secretly superior to the lazy, slovenly tourists who took the easy, machine-assisted route to the top.

And that alone might be worth the journey.

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