Jessica Levine I Contributor

Life is short, stay awake.

This is more than a slogan on the long-sleeve tees sold at Dexter’s Foggy Bottom Coffee House. Hell, it is owner Doug Marrin’s life philosophy. To this coffee roaster and amateur mountaineer, it is the view from peaks like Rainier, Longs and Pikes—standing literally at the top of the world, straining for oxygen, your brain numb like it’s just been stabbed with Novocain. It is the stories of survival he hears over steaming mugs of house-made Kona Gold; the harrowed, yet determined looks of fellow climbers and wannabe climbers alike as they envision themselves victorious over unforgiving nature.

Marrin first opened Foggy Bottom in a nondescript strip mall on Dexter-Ann Arbor Road in 2004. He was a new coffee drinker. He was new to climbing.

It all started in a Starbucks. A former district manager for Wendy’s, Marrin had a friend order him a caramel mocha. He was hooked. Again and again, he tried different coffees, and as only a restaurant man would, started evaluating the operational efficiency of local coffee shops. That was when decided to enter the coffee business.

Pails of Foggy Bottom-roasted coffee.

Jessica Levine I Contributor

“We buy our coffee green and unroasted through an importer,” Marrin explained. “We blend it and roast it here in the shop. I take a lot of pride and satisfaction in the fact that we create our own product rather than reselling a commercial product.”

Empty burlap coffee bags are heaped along the left wall of the shop, and a musician in a cotton tunic plucks his acoustic for a huddle of empty chairs positioned around the makeshift stage. Two middle-aged women—one apparently spritzed with a spray tan and the other donning a short, feathery hairstyle reminiscent of a snowy owl—pump liberal amounts of Killer Baboon dark roast into their mugs.

“We get a pretty good crosscut of a lot of different groups,” said Marrin. “We have senior citizens, daily commuters grabbing a coffee to go, moms with kids, investment brokers meeting with clients and businessmen wanting to get out of the office for a fresh sight.”

Clearly, the majority of these customers are not professional mountaineers. They, like most of us, like coffee and the food that pairs well with it: Sandwiches, paninis, quesadillas, salads and pastries. However, he genuinely believes that people dig the outdoor life—climbing, hiking, biking, running, swimming, even slinging in a hammock with a cold one—and everything that comes with it.

That includes, as Marrin will tell you, the extreme stuff, the stuff that tests our strength.

“I love the stories, like the stories of the first conquest of Everest,” he said. “I especially like stories of survival. You know, when things go bad. How do people get out of that? What is it inside of a person where they overcome what looks like impossible odds? That’s something I really attach to, that fighting spirit that doesn’t die.”

Life is short, stay awake. Even beyond a philosophy, these are words of advice, even a forewarning: Live life for the Rainier experience, for every little, damn coffee bean-sized detail. Live life at the peak. Mountaineers seek to do that. And, you, me and the climbing newbie want to learn from their stories. That is why Foggy Bottom exists.

View from Sprague Lake into Rocky Mountain National Park.

Jessica Levine I Contributor

“We’re a coffee shop, but, I learned a while back that we do a lot more talking and more promoting of outdoor life than we talk about coffee,” said Marrin.

A quote, branded beneath the Formica of a Foggy Bottom table, reads:

“Their rope holds by a single ice screw. Dangling in panic from the mountain, choked by rushing snow, they expect the screw to fail at any moment, and death to follow. When the avalanche ceases, the sick man’s face points upward, his eyelids frozen shut. ‘I was going to unclip,’ he tells his friends, ‘and get it over with.’”

-Maria Coffey, Where the Mountain Casts Its Shadow: The Dark Side of Extreme Adventure

Jessica Levine profiles the culture and history of Washtenaw County restaurants for AnnArbor.com. Contact her at jlfoodstuffz@gmail.com.