Date: 8/15/21 Miles: 10.6Total Miles: 221.6 What is at the heart of any trail experience? It’s a question I’ve had more time than most to ponder over, the luxury of a charmed life whose privilege is never forgotten. And over many years and many thousands of miles, I’ve come to the realization that the experience...
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The Agony and the Ecstasy of Nostalgia
Date: 8/4/21 Miles: 20.2Total Miles: 74.6 When I was a kid I loved geography. Couldn’t get enough of it. Maps, atlases, countries, flags, states, capitals. It was the first way I remember trying to understand the world I was a part of. To learn about my place in that world, and to exercise that childhood...
Triple Crown
Date: 11/7/20 Miles: 12.0Total Miles: 2457.3 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...
The Unfinished Symphony
Date: 11/6/20 Miles: 23.4Total Miles: 2445.3 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...
The Crucible
Date: 10/26/20 Miles: 16.0Total Miles: 2260.2 In 1953, when playwright Arthur Miller’s seminal work—The Crucible—about the Salem witch trials premiered, its parallels to the ill-conceived anti-communist crusades of Senator McCarthy were obvious. Like the real life protagonists of the McCarthy era hearings, those of The Crucible fight not only for their lives and livelihoods but...
Appreciation
Date: 10/22/20 Miles: 27.4Total Miles: 2166.3 Coming down the stairs from our room at the Toaster House, I could smell the coffee that I hadn't even heard Jefferson make while we were packing up. We stood in the kitchen enjoying a cup or two while admiring the convenience of it. No fuel to pour, no...
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Date: 10/11/20 Miles: 24.5Total Miles: 1939.0 A Eugene O’Neill play isn't typically the first place one would go to feel uplifted. There's a depth and darkness to the themes he explores, none more so than his semi-autobiographical masterwork, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Addiction, despair, depravity, familial dysfunction—it’s all there. And if you were waiting...
Trail Ancestry
Date: 10/9/20 Miles: 25.4Total Miles: 1889.3 It's hard to top hiking in the fall. The heat of summer is a thing of the past, replaced by crisp, cool nights and a kaleidoscope of colored foliage. The rustle of leaves a new sound effect to complement the bugling of elk. But autumn is also a fickle...
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Date: 10/2/20 Miles: 13.1Total Miles: 1772.4 Food. Hot shower. Laundry. Grocery store. An easy hitch, or better yet, no hitch at all. Sounds basic enough, doesn't it? It's a simple recipe for the ideal resupply stop. And yet you'd be surprised by how few stops we make that check even that modest list of boxes....
The Folly of FKTs
Date: 9/26/20 Miles: 30.1Total Miles: 1654.5 The 100-meter dash is not for the slow-footed. It is the domain of the rocket ships of the human race and the winners are bestowed the title of world’s fastest man or woman. One simple question though: Why? Why 100 meters? Isn't it arbitrary? Why not 50, or 40,...