I'm sitting on the beach in the Bahamas. The water is an impossibly deep shade of turquoise, the sand as bright and fine as baking flour. The wind blows, filtering through the palm trees and issuing a gentle, constant rustling sound as they sway slightly.
The Case for Less Stuff
It's funny what you don't miss. Maybe surprising is a better word. When you first leave everything behind, my mind makes plenty of room to pine for the things I don't have. That cozy, familiar bed? I miss it. The couch, the chair, the dining room table? The books, trinkets, toys, and artwork hanging on the walls? There's a slightly uneasy, untethered feeling to being without them.
Rookie Perspective #3: A July in Colorado. My Top Eleven.
The last time this rookie wrote we hadn’t even started hiking in CO yet. And, here we are, just three days (less than 70 miles) from the New Mexico border. I have a lot more miles under my belt, but don’t worry, I’m still a rookie.
Threading the Needle
Life is full of curveballs—no different here than at home. Adaptivity, above nearly all else, is a prized commodity when the best plan is to obliterate any plan from your mind. Mike Tyson, the colorful and feared heavyweight champion, said it best: “Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Better yet: don't get punched in the mouth.
The Wilderness Paradise
Edward Abbey had it right. So did E.T. There's no place quite like home. Not the four walls and roof that most of us immediately conjure in our minds when we think of what “home” means, but the other “home”. The one stripped clean of steel and pavement, the place that we’re truly from. It's easy to forget.
Farewell, July
The older I get, the faster time passes. As a kid, summers felt like they would last forever, each day stretching to its maximum, time expanding as if exposing a flaw in Einstein’s theory of relativity. I miss that feeling—the feeling of infinite time. A never ending summer.
This is Where I Leave You
Everyone learns differently. Myself? I've always been more visual than auditory, which made a brief time this morning all the more interesting as I became transfixed by the bugling of the resident elk herd. Unmoved by our presence in their valley last night, we awoke to find them sprawled across the high alpine meadows just beneath the Divide, happily grazing away and calling to one another.