CELEBRATE INTERNATIONAL MEANDER DAY
Annually on December 21

December 21st the shortest day of the year, the longest night, the point where the light turns, the days begin to grow again, and the cycle bends toward its rebirth as a new year. It is also International Meander Day. A day to embrace purposeful purposelessness.

Take the Meander Challenge.

We hope you’ll enjoy a hearty meander on December 21.
We also dare you to get ready for it.

Between October 5 and December 21, 2026, set aside at least one full day to meander on purpose. It can be a mental meander, but we encourage you to get up, get physical and get lost. Draw on the creative power a joyful meander generates to make something during that day, then show us what came of it and how.

Any form counts: drawings, paintings, poems, chapters of a novel in progress, essays, dances, photographs, songs, films, a sculpture, a recipe, a garden, a haiku. The only requirement is that your creation embodies and is informed by your dedicated day of mucking about. The work must be your own, and not AI-generated.

Send a digital version of your work, along with your name, where you’re meandering from, and the story of the meander behind the work in up to 150 words, to chancellor@evermountaincollege.com by 9pm ET on December 21, 2026. One entry per person. Open to anyone 18 or older, anywhere. You don’t need to be enrolled, subscribed, or affiliated with anything.

Entries are judged by Ever Mountain College faculty. Prizes include a conversation with the Chancellor on Dispatches from Ever Mountain, signed copies of Ever U: And the Boy Who Drew Too Much and Follow the Meander, Ever Mountain College hoodies and t-shirts, and a $150 Amazon gift certificate for the Meander Master. Winners are announced in the first Dispatch of 2027.

Read the full invitation on Dispatches from Ever Mountain  ·  Read the Official Rules

What’s Meander Day?

International Meander Day recognizes the powerful positive influence of purposeful purposelessness, spontaneity, intuition and non-linear thinking on creativity, innovation and resilience. It is a day to set aside process and productivity and indulge creative wanderlust.

Anyone, anywhere, can keep it. At Ever Mountain College we observe it as a precious holiday, because it reflects the spirit of our school and is best articulated in Follow the Meander, one of the College’s primary texts. Meandering is one of EMC’s twelve tenets. Read all twelve.

Why meandering matters.

Creative lives are nonlinear.

Watch a river. Meanders are the curves it carves when it hits something in its path. The water doesn’t stop. It weaves, and it still gets where it’s going, naturally and without trying. To appreciate meandering is to have the confidence that you can swerve and sway, twist and turn, and still move forward. The indirect route is often the most genuine and fertile path to the richest ideas.

In a time of unremitting, accelerating change and seemingly endless difficulty, the ability to meander, personally and mentally, is an essential superpower.

A meander doesn’t require a trail. You can meander at your desk, in a chair, in the shower, mid-sentence in a conversation. That said, we recommend getting up, getting out, and getting lost.

How to observe it.

Daydream, play, provoke, get provoked, ideate, stroll aimlessly, fart around, pause, improvise, meditate, jump, decide something by flip of a coin, intuit, explore, invent, be silly, find your beginner’s mind, awaken, nap, wear a clown nose, shuffle and swing, step from a 100 foot pole, dance, do a splash painting, write haiku, weave a river, break all straight lines, throw whipped-cream pies, zig-zag, zag-zig, loop-de-loop, wiggle, squiggle, try oblique strategies, adopt lateral thinking, embrace non-thinking, think like slime mold, listen to stone, see with your ears, hear with your eyes, sit like a mountain, smell flowers, hike with a dog, discover what’s missing, laugh and smile.

Then, create something.

Linear less. Meander more.

Ever Mountain College is the setting of Ever U: And the Boy Who Drew Too Much

Follow the Meander: An Indirect Route to a More Creative Life, one of the College’s primary texts.

Dispatches from Ever Mountain is the online journal/salon of Ever Mountain College.