I remember being terrified. Insidious. That's what it was, long before I knew what the word meant. At any moment, the childhood I knew and the future I imagined would shatter like the rotten teeth of a dream. This fear that simmered just below the surface, leaving a choice in its wake: give voice to...
The Path Taken
It's a daunting question: if someone asked you to sum up the past year of your life, what would you say? What have you done, and why? Perhaps more important than any of that: what has it meant? When I had the chance to summarize not one year, but the past 16 years of where...
Triple Crown
One final night came and went, and the stars that had thrust aside the evening clouds dissolved into the gray light of morning. I rolled over and lit the stove for coffee before closing my eyes for a few more minutes thinking how, in spite of this being our last day on trail, it felt no different than any of the others.
Rookie Perspective #6: The End
Holy shit! We did it. After more than 100 days and 2500 miles we reached the southern terminus of the CDT. Most importantly, Mountain Man did it. I cannot believe he has hiked three of these bad boys. And today, when we touched the obelisk marking the end of the trail for us, he completed his Triple Crown. He set out to achieve this goal and he did it. I couldn’t be more proud of him.
The Unfinished Symphony
To walk away now would be madness. Not unlike the mystery behind Franz Schubert’s Eighth Symphony—better known as the Unfinished Symphony—which remained unfinished for reasons that were known only to the composer himself, our own symphony of a CDT thru-hike remains incomplete but only for one more day. 12 more miles and it will be unfinished no more.
Donald Trump is Still a Clown
Four years ago, I walked off the Pacific Crest Trail on the fringe of the Mojave Desert and into the cool sanctuary of a hotel lobby. There on the television was a man giving a press conference so cringeworthy, so comically fraught with narcissism that it drove me to write this equally uncharacteristic and damning post about the state of one of our country's great political parties.
To the Boot Heel
While Lordsburg floated into the distance behind us, we were swallowed by the great wide open now surrounding us. Not a tree in sight, not a cloud in the sky, and not a breath of the wind that, until now, had been a constant companion to help offset the afternoon sun.