WE APPEAR TO HAVE LOST OUR EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Rook T. Winchester was last spotted walking north near Lake Superior.

Aug 08, 2026

Rook T. Winchester was last spotted at Jay Cooke State Park — 8,000 acres of jagged river gorge and northern forest just southwest of Duluth, Minnesota, where the St. Louis River tears through ancient rock on its way toward Lake Superior.

It is beautiful. It is rugged. It is exactly the sort of place a reasonable person visits for an afternoon before returning to a hotel, ordering a cheeseburger, and continuing to participate in civilization.

Rook apparently has other ideas.

We believe he is moving north.

More specifically, we have reason to believe he is headed up Minnesota’s North Shore toward Grand Portage, where passenger ferries cross Lake Superior to Isle Royale National Park, one of the most remote national parks in the lower 48.

And then, apparently, he intends to live with the moose.

We wish we were making that last part up.

Shortly before disappearing, Rook said something about wanting to “get away from humans” and live among the moose the way Jane Goodall lived among and studied primates.

We are very concerned.

There are several immediate problems with this plan.

First, Rook is not Jane Goodall.

Second, moose are not primates.

Third, Jane Goodall spent decades becoming one of the world’s foremost experts on chimpanzees. Rook owns hiking boots, a notebook, and the kind of confidence that has previously caused federal employees to start filling out forms.

These are not equivalent qualifications.

Nevertheless, somewhere between Duluth and Grand Portage may currently be a deeply irritated gonzo journalist carrying a newly-purchased backpack and developing what he believes will become a groundbreaking new field of investigative journalism:

embedded reporting with moose.

We can imagine the dispatches:

DAY THREE: The large male continues to distrust me. I respect this. We have much in common.

DAY SEVEN: I have given them all names. They don't seem to care.

DAY THIRTY: I have been accepted by the herd. We migrate at dawn. I have been asked to handle communications.

We need Rook back.

Fortunately, we have a pretty good idea what drove him into the wilderness in the first place, and we need your help.

Earlier today, Rook opened his phone and saw that Closer to the Edge – our reader-funded gonzo journalism publication – hit #79 on Substack’s Rising in U.S. Politics leaderboard.

And then Rook looked up.

At #78 sits Scott Greer, a man who was apparently too openly white nationalist for Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller, which cut him loose after The Atlantic revealed he’d been secretly writing for Richard Spencer’s Radix Journal under a fake name.

At #66, a dozen spots ahead of Scott, sits Joseph Jordan, better known by his pseudonym “Eric Striker” — a man who performed Nazi salutes at the Charlottesville rally where Heather Heyer was killed, who wrote nearly 700 posts for The Daily Stormer, who co-founded a political party that wants Jews restricted from public life, and whose current podcast features episodes titled “The Inner Workings Of Jewish-Controlled Media.”

This is the point at which we believe Rook retrieved his National Park Pass and headed north.

Closer to the Edge at #79.

A rebranded white nationalist at #78.

A documented neo-Nazi at #66.

We can imagine what Rook felt: the gut-level, full-body revulsion of spending your days investigating ICE detention centers, traveling overseas to investigate international intelligence stories, covering people swallowed by government systems, and generally fighting authoritarian bullshit only to discover that Substack has entered you in a footrace with Nazis.

Apparently Rook stared at the screen, contemplated the current condition of American political discourse, and reached a conclusion that many Americans have probably considered but relatively few have pursued to its logical conclusion:

Fuck this. I’m going to live with the moose.

We understand the impulse.

We have concerns about the logistics.

THIS IS NOW A RESCUE OPERATION

The good news is that we believe Rook can still be persuaded to return to civilization.

The Rising list doesn’t care about money.

It cares about subscribers.

Free or paid, it doesn’t matter. Every subscription pushes the number.

Which means this is fixable.

You can help prevent a grown man from attempting to infiltrate a herd of moose.

Please go to closertotheedge.net and subscribe.

Then send the link to somebody else.

Send it to everyone in your contacts.

If your Signal group chat has been dead for three weeks, resurrect it.

Send it to your coworkers.

Send it to your family.

Send it to the cousin you only communicate with by accidentally liking each other’s Facebook posts.

Send it to your ex if diplomatic relations permit.

Send it to the guy who replaced your furnace in 2019. He gave you his email address. This is why.

At this stage of the operation, we will even accept subscriptions from nearly any mammal capable of completing an email verification.

Dogs. Cats. Ferrets. Guinea pigs.

Not moose.

The moose are part of the problem.

Every subscription moves Closer to the Edge upward.

Every position we climb gives Rook another reason to reconsider abandoning human civilization.

The objective is simple:

GET CLOSER TO THE EDGE ABOVE THE FASCISTS.

Move the number.

Give Rook something encouraging to discover the next time he gets enough cell service to compulsively refresh Substack.

Because there is still time.

Somewhere along Minnesota’s North Shore, Rook is moving toward Grand Portage.

Ahead of him is a ferry.

Beyond that ferry is Lake Superior.

Beyond Lake Superior is Isle Royale.

And wandering around that island are hundreds of moose who have absolutely no idea that a pissed-off gonzo journalist may shortly arrive carrying a notebook and asking increasingly aggressive questions about federal land management.

Subscribe at closertotheedge.net if you haven't already done so.

Tell everyone you know.

Tell your cat. Tell your dog.