Date: 11/9/21 Miles: 25.4Total Miles: 679.7 Absolutes are tiring. And also pointless. Stepping back onto the trail after nearly 48 hours worth of rest, my state of being clean does not—surprisingly—disappear in an instant. Little by little, sweat, dirt, and sunscreen conspire against this newfound state of cleanliness and begin to return me to a...
A Brief History of Time
Date: 11/7/21 Miles: 5.2Total Miles: 654.3 Honest question: What day is it? Away from the routines and patterns of home, it’s remarkable how something so familiar vanishes so quickly, each day seamlessly bleeding into the next, only the rising and setting of the sun demarcating one day from the next. Blissfully ignorant of the calendar...
Mercury Rising
Date: 11/6/21 Miles: 21.3Total Miles: 649.1 I told myself to file away the morning’s chill into my memory bank for safe keeping. Like a mental block of ice, I had a feeling I would soon be in need of opening the mental freezer to find some measure of relief from the oven we’d soon be...
Saguaro
Date: 11/5/21 Miles: 18.6Total Miles: 627.8 The flames dance and flicker to the music of a barely perceptible breeze floating down through the Ponderosa pines. Daylight fades, and the red embers pulse and shimmer. Sitting a few feet away, staring absentmindedly into the mesmerizing fire, my hands are cold. Not a deep biting chill, but...
Wilderness of Rock
Date: 11/4/21 Miles: 20.7Total Miles: 609.2 I didn’t remember having gone to sleep in the Sierra, but after rubbing the sleep both from my eyes and from my legs it sure seemed like that’s where I’d woken up. Scattered pines, lumps of stone, a trickling stream. It even had the blackened char of a recent...