The Pacific Crest Trail: An Epilogue
Three weeks ago, I sat slumped against a picnic table outside of the Tuolumne Meadows Grill, knocking back beer and fries with ravenous, calorie-deprived abandon. It was the end of my summer in the...
View Article(Emotionally) Naked and Afraid
In a flash of quick hugs and lingering dust, Marc was gone. I waved at his receding form a bit longer than necessary, my hand mindlessly stirring up the atmospheric inferno that was already brewing...
View ArticleTo Love A Mountain
To love a mountain is to get up close and personal with it – but also it, to you. It starts innocently at first, a glance out the car window or a set of concentric lines on a map leading like a...
View ArticleThings I Have Ingested While Backpacking: An Incomplete List
Swedish Fish candies (red only) Chocolate pudding containing all of the things we couldn’t fit into our bear canister that night The charred remains of a solitary square of over-fried SPAM Multiple...
View ArticleOn Departure’s Eve
After a week of firsts and fist bumps, I huddled around a campfire, all raw muscles, beer in hand, love in heart, singing and shaking tambourines with good, good folks. One by one, our little impromptu...
View ArticleThe Struggle I Choose
You can’t run from Mother Nature. At least, I can’t. I grunted up miles of switchbacks, tracking thunderheads as they flexed their fluffy might maybe a ridge or two over. Now above tree line, a...
View ArticleBest Laid Plans
I had big plans for December 31, 2016. Like many years prior, I was going to usher in the new year from the most excellent party central of my well-worn Big Agnes Fly Creek UL2 tent, or maybe even...
View ArticleWe, The Land Lovers
I woke up this morning, the day of the presidential inauguration, hoping to stretch my legs and mind on a sunrise hike. Instead, rain fell – is still falling – from an opaque, grey sky, perhaps an...
View ArticleHappy Five-Days-After-Earth-Day!
Friends, colleagues, strangers who sometimes read things I write on The Internet, I was writing a thing in which I tried to explain how I spent Earth Day, or at least partially how I spent Earth Day,...
View ArticleAnatomy of a Western Road Trip
In California, there is home, and then there is the road. There are slugs of caffeine and blurry eyes that grow more clear with the soft palette of sunrise. There are eggs and there is salsa, and...
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